California is heading towards another execution, now scheduled for August 5. My familiarity with this case isn't that great, probably because I read about it in the LA Times, whose stories all now seem to be written by Dilbertian middle management types: long on vague generalities, short on actual detail. But my impression is that the special circumstance required for a death sentence, rape, is pretty much unproven, and that the conviction in general relied a little too much on prison informants with bad track records, one of whom said the guy confessed but was innacurate on the very same facts that were misreported in the newspapers. If anyone sees something on this, please send it to me.

Alabama has been devastated by Hurricane Danny. Now if it were my home--er, trailer home (Alabama, ya know)--being destroyed, I'd prefer it to be by a hurricane with an adult name. Imagine filling out your insurance forms (again, this is hypothetical--no one in Alabama is literate) on the devastation left by Hurricane Skippy.

Follow-up: the guy who put the Hebrew curse on Rabin a month before he killed, who was convicted under the Prevention of Terrorism Act, was sentenced to 4 months.

Long live the dictatorship of the proletariat: judges in Hong Kong have decided that they will still be called Your Lordship.

A woman in Virginia (but from NC) was arrested after piercing the ears of a baby deer. The earrings, if you were wondering, were zircon.

Next month is California's Breast-Feeding Awareness Month. Be aware. Be very aware.

Favorite LA Times headline: Kennedy Baby Sitter Probe Dropped.

Governor Wilson has been temporarily stopped by the courts from cutting off prenatal services to illegal aliens, but is continuing his crusade to cut off their fishing licenses.

I'm beginning to catch up on the British news I missed while being Webless. The most important seems to be that Jamie Lee Curtis is now Baronness Haden-Guest. Husband Christopher Guest, of Spinal Tap, is the baron. There may be something to hereditary peerships after all.

The Taliban order women not to make so much noise when walking.

The new big thing in India: sacrificing kidnapped children to the gods.

Employees at the Eiffel Tower went on strike defending their right to be rude to foreign tourists, after one is fired for berating and manhandling a vertiginous American.

Mon, 7 Jul 1997

In March I sent out a story about a British law firm that billed the mother of a member of the firm who had hanged himself for their time in discovering the body and so on. Evidently British solicitors, unlike American lawyers, cannot get away with such lawyerliness: the firm was just dissolved by the regulatory body.

Headline from Wash Post: “South Korean President's Son Says He Took Money, Not Bribes.” So that’s all right then.

More on Oklahoma: its obscenity law, which makes no mention of artistic merit, covers anyone *portraying* someone under 18 having sex. Let's all agree to define as obscene anyone over 30 portraying someone under 18, cancel Beverly Hills 90210, declare victory and go home.

The LAPD just had to ban another form of violence against black people, the hogtying of suspects. But according to one cop interviewed by AP, this may mean that cops will have to escalate into a higher level of force. Isn't that the LAPD motto? "Escalating to a higher level of force since 1911"

Chinese president Jiang Zemin says that the example of Hong Kong will provide "the final solution" of the Taiwan question.

Britain's largest remaining colony, by population, is Bermuda. Its largest remaining Pacific colony is Pitcairn Island, pop. 54, the one the Bounty's mutineers settled. This is also their last Pacific colony. The largest remaining colony of any power (unless you count HK as a new Chinese colony, or Tibet, or East Timor), is Puerto Rico.

The Montana Supreme Court overturns the state's ban on gay sex, passed oddly enough in 1973, under a right to privacy derived from the state const.

The California Sup Court says that juvenile felonies can count towards 3 Strikes, although it sounds like the 3rd one must be adult. This includes cases handled by juvenile courts, which means prosecutors rooting around in what were supposed to be sealed records.

Some small nations make money off of stamps. Tonga is making money from a fortunate internet nation domain: .to. It is selling sites to companies that want to be fly.to or pota.to or suchlike.

So Gerald Ford altered the description in the Warren Commission report of the wound that killed Kennedy, hell altered the location, to make sure it gibed with the magic bullet theory.

Mark Shields says that Al Gore is a heartbeat away from the vice presidency.

Andemus Jura Nostra Defendere

Chris asked me about a report of a man in Alabama who responded to a 20-year sentence by giving the judge the finger, and promptly had his sentence increased to life. If anyone runs across this story, which is not in the NY or LA Times or Wash Post today, please send it to me. Also, has anyone heard about this one, which I found in an archive search of the LA Times, but I can't retrieve the original story without paying $1.50 for 64 words:


Nation IN BRIEF; ALABAMA;
Governor Asks Judge to Defy High Court;

Saturday, June 28, 1997
Home Edition
Section: PART A
Type: News Brief
ID:0970057944
Words: 64
Byline: From Times Staff and Wire Reports
Gov. Forrest "Fob" James Jr. urged a federal judge in a school prayer case to defy the U.S. Supreme Court and rule that the Bill of Rights does not apply to states. The high court is plagued by "lawlessness" and must be resisted,

Alabama, by the way, comes from an Indian word meaning Clear the
Thicket, the state motto is We Dare Defend Our Rights (Latin above), and is known as the Heart of Dixie, which inspired a crude but obvious subject line I decided not to use, since the Bill of Rights doesn't apply to them and who knows how they'd come after me. A pickup truck and a deer rifle would probably be involved.

Alabama is also mentioned in my next e-mail.

By the way, the state assembly has passed a law permitting breastfeeding in public. When they make it mandatory, I will be a happy man.

(Later:) I have found the letter from the Alabama governor to the US district court judge. It is 79 screens long, and available at Fob James's web site, which y'all can find as easily as I did if you want the full text, under press releases. It goes on endlessly quoting Madison from the debates around the adoption of the Constitution, the Magna Carta, the history of the oath of office, and all sorts of stuff, forming one of those seamless pieces of logic usually found in statements by militia groups proving that there is no such thing as the income tax, or that guy proving that Stephen King, the bastard, killed John Lennon on the orders of Richard Nixon.

I believe I sent a brief item last week about Oklahoma City police seizing copies of the movie the Tin Drum, which won the Oscar for best foreign film in 1979, and whose sex scenes are nowhere near as offensive as the one where people eat eel. Those Germans! As long as it's phallic they'll eat it. It seems they actually got Blockbuster to release the names of people who had rented it, including a local ACLU official who had known what was coming, then went to their homes and grabbed the tapes.

Another follow-up: a Belgium court reprimands 2 soldiers who roasted a Somali boy over a brazier. They said it was just a game. A photo of the incident is on the June 24th cover of the Village Voice.

If you want to buy a piece of the moon or mars, try www.moonshop.com.

July 1 in Hong Kong, celebrating the principle that sovereignty over human beings can be leased. All that partying reminds me of Edgar Allen Poe's Masque of the Red Death, written the year Britain acquired HK.

The NY Times says 70% of deaths in hospitals are "passive euthanasia" in which treatment is deliberately withheld, and still more are from pain medication given at lethal levels. The problem is, the doctors don't seem to be discussing any of this with the patients, it being illegal and all. I'm in favor of euthanasia and all, but isn't this just a tad too much unchecked power in the hands of people who already think of themselves as gods?

Disney's records company, whatever it's called, just pulled a new CD from Insane Clown Posse (I think I heard that right), which evidently has unpleasant lyrics of the sort which which they do not wish to associate the Disney name. Funny, I'd have thought that a group called the Insane Clown Posse would produce tender love ballads.

You're all probably wondering if I've forgiven the Supreme Court, and the answer is no. The opinion on the internet indecency act was more broadly protective of the 1st Amendment than I'd have expected of this court, and unanimous too. And while I disagree with them politically about assisted suicide, only a loon or a lawyer could find an actual right to assisted suicide in the constitution. I'm also willing to allow it to kill the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, since we already have a perfectly good 1st Amendment. But what is this nonsense about congresscritters not having standing to challenge the line-item veto? If they don't have standing to ask the court to protect the separation of powers, who does? Evidently if Clinton had vetoed their free parking spaces, they could have sued because they lost something tangible, but if their legislative powers are stripped from them, they have no recourse in the courts. An interestingly materialist way to look at something as abstract as constitutional powers. This means Clinton will actually have to veto something before the Court acts. And if he vetoes, say, money to the UN or foreign aid, then no one at all has standing to challenge it, since furriners don't count.

It has been discovered that one of the, er, um, "fellows" at the all-women Newnham College, Cambridge, in fact once was a fellow before one of those operations we men don't like to think about.

From the AP: "Prosecutors have dropped aggravated sexual battery charges in the case of a 9-year old boy who was accused of pressing himself against a girl in a lunch line."

The Kansas case that led to that stupid Supreme Court decision on sexual offenders was worse than I realized. The prisoner involved had served 10 years on a plea bargain. A plea bargain! He could have been sentenced to 180 years if it had gone to trial, but the prosecutor pled it and then, the very same prosecutor went back to get more time via civil commitment.

The Whitewater prosecutor's drones have been interviewing Arkansas state troopers and every woman Clinton's ever been rumored to have slept with (that should drag it out until Clinton's Strom Thurmond's age) about his various affairs. What does Kenneth Starr plan to do, prosecute Clinton for adultery?

Way out there

This week is the 50th anniversary of both Roswell and the murder of Bugsy Siegal (who has a street named after him, although misspelled, in Las Vegas). A coincidence? I think not!

The truth is out there.

Fuck the Supreme Court

Right now I am so pissed off about the sexual predator decision that I don't have room to be pissed off about the decision allowing state teachers to teach in parochial schools.

First, let me point out, as neither the NY Times nor the Washington Post had the bad taste to, the incredible irony of Clarence "Pubic Hair in My Coke" Thomas writing a decision about so-called sexual predators. So people without the legal definition of mental illness can be incarcerated in mental hospitals forever, after serving criminal sentences. Nice to see mental hospitals (doesn't that word imply treatment?) being used for criminal purposes, just like the Soviet Union used to. Thomas says this is not punishment, hence subject to some sort of constitutional protection, such as that against double jeopardy, because it doesn't involve retribution or deterrence. Sure it doesn't. And it's ok that no treatment is on offer, by definition making the incarceration life-long. The people covered by the Kansas law are defined as suffering a mental abnormality or personality disorder that prevents them exercising adequate control over their behaviour. And who in prison does this not apply to? Including most of the guards.

If you're ever in Somalia, don't drink the water, since every UN soldier sent there in 1992 seems to have gone insane in a way that prevented them exercising adequate control over their behaviour. The meek, mild Canadians tortured Somalis, so did the Italians, Belgians roasted a Somalian boy over a brazier (and they will be sentenced this week to as much a month in jail and a $300 fine), and that's the most polite thing I know of Belgians doing; I will spare you the rest. Operation Restore Hope, wasn't that the name?

Hong Kong's currently illegal shadow legislature will not only implement all those awful laws you've been hearing about, but doing so retroactively to the first minute of Chinese rule, so that the demonstrations on the stroke of midnight July 1 will be illegalized ex post facto. The day after this announcement, Britain caved in to Chinese demands that it's troops be allowed in early, presumably so they can be in place to Tiananmen the Hong Kongese.

It's now clear that JFK had truly lousy intelligence during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and that armageddon was a lot closer than he ever realized. It also now comes out, from the Russian archives, that there were still 98 tactical nukes in Cuba when Kruschev was promising there weren't. They'd have stayed there, too, but the Cuban foreign minister couldn't keep his mouth shut about them.

I trust you're all following the tobacco settlement ($2 billion for the lawyers! Money so well spent) and the Louisiana implementation of two-tier marriage law (married, and really really married) without my prodding. And of course, the Russian justice minister videoed frolicking with naked women in a mafia sauna. And the sudden realization that since no one ever did anything about a crimes against humanity tribunal, if Pol Pot is ever really arrested, there's no place to try him.

Oh, I think I forgot, when I was making fun last week of the House analysis of the CIA, to mention that one provision of the new intelligence budget is whistleblower protection, for anyone who brings to the attention of Congresscritters, and only those on the appropriate oversight committees, of crimes, fraud and lying to Congress by the intelligence agencies. Clinton has the nerve to threaten to veto the bill because of this provision. Evidently it interferes with his authority to, well, um, presumably to order crimes, fraud and lying to Congress. He gets more Nixonian every year.

McNutrition

During the British McLibel suit just ended, Micky D's senior VP for marketing, answering the charge the their food was not nutritious, said that Coca-Cola is nutricious because it is "providing water, and I think that is part of a balanced diet."

The House Committee on Intelligence thinks the CIA should have more money. Its report says that the CIA lacks analytic depth and that information is collected but not analyzed. Asked to respond, a CIA spokesman, and I am quoting the NY Times here, "said the agency had not seen the panel's report and could not comment on the criticisms it contained." Point taken.

OK, a couple of days ago two Orthodox rabbis in NY were arrested for laundering Colombian drug money, yesterday it was two SF interior decorators. I'm sure there's a pattern here, but I can't think what it might be.

Cardinal O'Connor joined the anti-Disney bandwagon, criticizing the new movie Hercules for I guess promoting the worship of pagan deities. Also, it lacks the homoerotic element he so enjoyed in all those badly-dubbed Italian Hercules movies. (Joke courtesy of the Daily Show)

The Russian Duma passes a bill, sponsored by a Communist yet, establishing the primacy of the Orthodox Church and establishing registration of religions with an aim to illegalizing any activities, including publishing and missionary work, by any sect they dislike. Especially the Baptists.
Probably a joint Disney-Russian Orthodox plot.

Not content with a Prime Minister who models himself after Clinton, Britain's Tory party elects itself a vibrant (cough) young leader, one William Jefferson Hague (yes, really). Mr. Hague was more ambitious at a younger age than even Clinton. When other kids were memorizing football team lineups, he knew by heart the names and constituencies of all 650+ MPs and regularly read Hansard. His mother (who is not a Tory and thinks he should have gone into business) still gave him a Tory party membership for his 15th birthday. When he was 16, he was annoited by Thatcher in a moment akin to little Billy Bob Clinton shaking hands with JFK. He vowed not to have a girlfriend until he became a cabinet minister. By an amazing coincidence, he became the youngest cabinet minister in quite some time. OK, that part's not that much like Clinton, but he has been called Hague the Vague, and now Hague the Younger. But remember, he is completely bald, and that makes me feel better.

Watergate

I think it's CNN that has rented the actual room of the break-in, 25 years ago today, and hired G. Gordon Liddy. What a great career move that burglary was for him; I wonder how the Cubans are doing? The Washington Post is still wallowing in Watergate nostalgia, so you might check out their web-site. I wonder if I'd feel less of a personal connection to all this if Nixon hadn't chosen my birthday to resign on.

My question about the Cubans might be significant, for all I know. Remember Mohammed Hashemi, one of the lesser figures in the Iran-Contra affair? He's been talking to the Sunday Times (of London), and I think has a book coming out. It seems that in 1984 the CIA spirited him out of the country to London after he was charged with 56 counts of various malfeasci (or whatever the plural of malfeasance is), where MI6 put him to work at what he did best, arms dealing. 1st they were trying to buy some Chinese Silkworm missiles, to see how to counter them. They aborted that purchase when the US did it first, but Hashemi wound up brokering the delivery of Chinese weaponry to Iran, in breach of the UN embargo and with MI6's permission for every deal. He sold them those fast motorboats that were used to attack American and British freighters, and the Silkworms used for the same purpose. Basically, he made possible the tanker war of the mid-80s, with all that lead to.

I hope everyone is breaking the barriers in their heart, as Clinton has suggested we do to rid the country of the scourge of racism. I have put "breaking the barriers in my heart" on my To Do list, right after washing the car and having sex with a supermodel.

Hollywood needs another pet cause now that the Dalai Lama has said that homosexuality is a bad thing, along with anal and oral sex (I leave it to your imaginations where these are on my To Do list), but that prostitution is okay, as long as you pay for it yourself. This was presumably to placate Richard "Pretty Woman" Gere.

Clinton is thinking about apologizing for slavery. Bill Maher says he wants to start off by apologizing for things that happened 200 years ago and work up to Paula Jones. Gingrich thinks we shouldn't apologize for slavery because that would just be meaningless "emotional symbolism." He said this the day after the House again passed the flag burning Amendment.
Speaking of which, the shadow Hong Kong legislature has already passed a law providing a penalty of 3-years prison for defacing the Chinese flag.

Stupid criminal tricks

A judge in Michigan resigns after newspaper finds he phoned sex lines 124 times from the courthouse. He says he's quitting "due to continuing difficulties with my hearing." That's probably how he was found out: "SPEAK UP, GIRLY! YOU WANT TO DO WHAT TO MY WHAT?"

And while a Santa Rosa real estate person can't benefit from the insurance he had on the partner he strangled, evidently his son can get the $500,000. This is the famous case where the victim's parrot was heard to utter "Richard, no no no no."

What is it with Alabama politicians lately? How many items have I sent out in the last few months about Alabama? Well, here's another one. Sleazy former governor Guy Hunt is pardoned by the Pardon Board, most of which he appointed, on the grounds that he is totally innocent and didn't really mean to steal $200,000. The only previous time the Board has ever pardoned someone on the grounds of innocence was one of the Scottsboro boys, in 1976, a tad late. But the interesting bit to me was that his original fine was $211,000, payable at a rate of $100 per month. You do the math.

A Spanish court just issued the first ever sentence for cruelty to animals. I forgot what for. But I know it wasn't for bullfighting. Or those people at the festival who force-fed a cow whisky until its heart exploded. Or that guy who likes to hang greyhounds. Or that town that has the festival (hey, this is tourism, folks!) where every year they put the fattest person in town on a donkey and beat the donkey to make it move. Or....

100 years of the Swiss army knife. And remember, if it doesn't have that loud click, it's a cheap Chinese knock-off.

George Bush has decided to be the first president since Truman who didn't actually have his brains splattered all over his wife's pill-box hat not to write his memoirs. On the other hand, Kato Kaelin's memoirs are forthcoming...

Desert droop, indeed

A recent Village Voice movie review said that Wesley Snipes is a very versatile actor who works well with a variety of weapons.

From the Sunday Times (London), which has been doing sex lives of the rich and famous for several weeks now. The last couple of weeks it was Hitler and his niece, and Bertrand Russell at 79 with his son's wife. Beats real news. By the way, does the name Bertie Ahern not sound exactly like someone clearing their throat? The only interesting thing about the Irish election is that Ahern has been shacking up with a woman not his wife.

Jeez, how can I get any work done when the cat is doing her Elmer Fudd impression all over the living room. "Be vewwy vewwy qwiet. I'm hunting dwagonfly."

Duplicity, senility

And you can decide which is which:

Item the first: Yesterday Hong Kong held its probable last-ever commemoration of the Tiananmen Square massacre. Amazingly, it was covered by the Chinese media. Oh, of course they reported that it was a celebration of the end of British colonialism, but they did cover it...

Item the second: Strom Thurmond, 3rd in line to the presidency, wrote the foreword to a book which says that all of recent American technology was adapted from the crashed Roswell UFO. The author, who evidently participated in this program while in the military, was an aide to Thurmond, now chair of the armed services committee, so he must be in on it too. Which explains the hair.

The truth is out there.

Paula Jones's lawyer is running for Virginia attorney general, which I'd never have known if I just read the NY Times. He recently got into trouble when one of his former clients reported (or had a tape of? I've already forgotten) him suggesting she pose for Playboy. He excused himself by saying that it was after he'd had a couple of drinks. So that's ok then.

Frank Rich in today's column says that the AMA's sudden switch to support of the bill banning late-term abortions is not without precedent. In 1964 the AMA opposed putting warning labels on cigarettes, trying to get Southern congresscritters to support its opposition to the establishment of Medicare.

After Palestine said that selling land to Jews now carries the death penalty, there was a lot of coverage of the 2 people assassinated, but none of the fact that 12 people have so far been arrested under this law. Which Palestine just extended to cover all Palestinians living in Israel, marking the first time, I believe, it has tried to claim sovereignty over the whole area of Israel.

Speaking of enlightened acts, Israel just sentenced a right-wing Jew under the Prevention of Terrorism Act for having put a curse on Rabin a month before the assassination. It was news to me that Jews even had curses, just like gypsies. Anyone care to speculate on what a Jewish curse would be like?

Just saw the Clinton-Blair summit on tv. I had to turn the "smarm" knob way down.

Blair's "spiritual mentor" at public school turns out to have been a major pedophile.

Your fact of the day: the phrase Peeping Tom comes from the one guy in Coventry who peeped at Lady Godiva. Which makes the term several hundred years old. I just read this in a 1849 book.

Tony Blair may not be reversing any of the disastrous policies of the Thatcher-Major years, but he is setting up a review of the cases of the 307 soldiers executed during World War I for cowardice.

A NY Times story on the many executions in Texas says that the last meal cannot include liquor, cigarettes or bubble gum, as these are against the rules. And no dirt either. Evidently someone once asked. He ate yogurt instead.

Everyone has noticed that the new dictator of Zaire has banned political parties and demonstrations, but I haven't seen much coverage of the Taliban-style decrees banning women from wearing pants and short skirts.

The commerce secretary is trying to get fast-track authority from Congress to add Chile to NAFTA. To do it, he's willing to drop those pesky labor and environmental provisions. By the way, there was supposed to be a report on the environmental impact of the existing NAFTA by now, but Mexico wanted a veto.

A company has denied lead-free, environmentally-friendly bullets. Now when you dump that corpse in the river, you won't be poisoning the water supply. Not with lead, anyway.

The former East German spy chief Markus Wolf, who the government keeps trying to put in jail, is about to publish his memoirs. First revelation: the US offered him $1 million to come on over in 1990. Just like '45 all over again.

Someone copyrighted the phrase "Summer of Love."

Why can't a woman be more like a gay man?

That air force pilot was discussed on Politically Incorrect tonight. Harvey Fierstein says that while she's being court-martialled for lying, gay men are supposed to. So she'd have been ok if she slept with a married woman, but not a married man.

Also, Reagan's son Michael insisted that Bill Clinton's friends all die of gangland-style killings, but he's not drawing any conclusions.

Why can't a woman be more like a man?

Does anyone else think that the court martial of the woman B-52 pilot is actually an elaborate practical joke? I mean, I thought it was amusing that they were charging an unmarried woman with adultery, but today's NY Times says that another part of the charge is conduct unbecoming an officer and a gentleman.

Speaking of conduct unbecoming, there's a new biography out of Viscount Melbourne, the British prime minister 1834-41. Evidently he beat up his wife and his mistresses pretty regularly, but really got off on whipping children. He encouraged his friends and relatives to leave their children with him so he could "educate" them. He actually had discussions with young Queen Victoria about this. She thought that the practice of beating school boys was degrading, while he said that Eton hadn't flogged him enough. This was before the birth of Victoria's children, so she may have changed her mind later. Edward could probably have benefited from a good paddling in his 50s.

Speaking of mad, bad and dangerous to know (actually originally said about Lord Byron, whose mistress Melbourne's wife had once been--he beat her up too--and who wrote the first vampire literature in the English language)(ok, it's not a great segue, but it's still a segue), Romania has lately taken up Vlad Draculya as a national hero and is quite pissed off at all the fuss over the 100th anniversary of Bram Stoker's little book.

Speaking of not treating your citizens very well at all, it seems that 5,000 Russian soldiers are now dying each year. 1,000 are suicides, the rest are, well, hazing. Really really bad hazing.

And speaking of soldiers behaving badly, I trust you are all following the newly-released British intercepts of German radio messages in 1941, indicating that it was not the SS but ordinary German police (well, occupation police, but still police) who killed most of the Jews in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, starting at the very beginning of the invasion of Russia. This could bring those Holocaust figures up another million.

Bribery made easy

Singapore sentenced a 16-year old to 2 yrs for the crime of possessing a pack of cigarettes. Think all those Southerners who were so enamored of caning are paying attention?

Just what beautiful downtown Ashkhabad (the capital of Turkmenistan, but of course you all knew that) needed: a 240-foot tower topped by a 40-foot revolving statue of President Niyazev. Yup, I knew that skyline needed something.

A followup to my e-mail of December 3:

Secondly, a heart-warming story from the NY Times: a 14-year old girl sets fire to her house after years of physical and sexual abuse such that one could only be sorry she hadn't taken out more of her family. Her father has never visited her in jail but did send a picture of the burned-out house on her birthday. Naturally, the state of Indiana put her in a maximum-security prison ($25,000 a year) instead of the juvenile treatment center ($82k) the judge begged the state to put her in. You're waiting for the punchline, well I've got two: she has found a new mom in the joint, or "the closest thing to a mom I ever had" in another murderer, and second, she has been ordered not to talk about being abused in group therapy sessions because her fellow inmates in the special-needs unit are upset by her stories, since they all abused or killed their children.

The Indiana Court of Appeals now says incarcerating her with adults violates the state Constitution.

The British Parliament is shy 2 members, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuiness, elected for Sinn Fein from Ulster. They can't take an oath of loyalty to the Queen, so they can't take their seats. On a historical note, the first woman elected to Parliament was also a Sinn Feiner, and therefore was not technically the first woman MP, who was another damn foreigner, Nancy Astor. I don't know why they couldn't just take the oath with their fingers crossed; after all, Labour MP Tony Banks did...

I don't expect much from Tony Blair, although if Scotland gets its own Parliament again it may be worth it. I especially don't expect much on the civil rights front, given that the new Home Secretary Jack Straw is as rabid as the last one, about whom more anon, in the same way that Janet Reno is a worse Attorney General than whoever held that job under Bush (I know she's worse since I can't remember his name). But there might be some improvement on immigration. Amazingly, the Tories were sending 97% of Algerian asylum-seekers back. One just got killed, so that's been suspended. And everyone's favorite sob story, a Nepalese boy brought into Britain by a millionaire whose life was saved in the Himalayas by the boy's father, who died a bit later, only to be ordered out of the country years later by Michael Howard, has also been reversed.

But my favorite soap opera is the Tory leadership fight. The front-runner to replace Major was Michael Portillo, who lost a safe seat at the general election (to one of the 2 new gay MPs). The new front-runner Michael Heseltine withdrew from his hospital bed when his heart acted up again. The current front-runner may be William Hague, who is 36. The theory is that he may be too young now, but by the time his party has any chance at all of regaining power, he should be 45 or so. Or it may be Michael Howard, the ex-Home Sec. Neither is close to electable, so I'd be happy with either. Howard right now is facing charges that he misled Parliament about the circumstances in which he fired the head of the prison service a couple of years back. This used to be a serious matter when there were still standards in British public life, before sleaze or sex scandals became the Tory equivalent of a bar mitzvah, like a statutory rape charge is for a Kennedy. The charge is coming from the former Prison Minister Anne Widdecombe, so Howard's people are responding with a really offensive sexist smear campaign, suggesting that the fired guy wooed Widdecombe over to his side by sending her chocolate and flowers, the inference being that a 49-year old spinster (her term) is so starved for affection....

Finally, a quote from Jonathan Swift: "The bulk of mankind is as well qualified for flying as for thinking."

Paper or plastic: In Afghanistan, only the latter is now an option. See, the recycled paper in paper bags may be recycled from the Koran...

John Redwood, the right-wing candidate for next leader of the Tory party, announced his candidacy in a press conference at the Goring Hotel.

A disappointing headline

The story "Heroin found hidden in elephant" turned out to be about a wooden elephant.

I've watched way too much of the BBC coverage of the British elections this week. I know this because right now I can't get Labour's crappy pop song theme music "Things can only get better" out of my head. It's only marginally less annoying than Clinton's "Don't stop thinking about tomorrow."

Last night I woke up from a dream that inspired a great joke I was going to pass on to you all today when I finally got up. As I recall it went like this: "Gpiyrb sadter3t dafsgertgre dzxm ewrerdf sd3hjgv." Ha ha!

An article in today's NY Times says an unnoticed provision of the Welfare Act allows AFDC money to go to, get this, for-profit orphanages. There is one chain of these started by the founder of Jiffy Lube. Any takers on coming up with a suitable joke based on that fact?

"Bob Dole is lending Newt Gingrich the $300,000 to pay off his ethics fine. You know, most Republicans talk about taking money from the sick and old -- but only Newt actually does something about it."
-Bill Maher on "Politically Incorrect"

Happy 60th Saddam. What the wacky dictator really wants, though, is a clone. Evidently he got really excited by the sheep thing.

Does anyone know anything about Pat Robertson's finances? There was a story that a few years ago his tax-exempt organization sent planes to Zaire allegedly for humanitarian aid but actually to work in his diamond mines there. Diamond mines?

Japan finally sent compensation for the Indonesian "comfort women," but the Indonesian government decided to keep it instead of handing it out. They say they'll use it for old folks' homes and the like.

A Chinese amusement park called Flying Dragon World Park, tried to set the world record for locking people in a room with thousands of poisonous snakes. 100 days. The Guiness World Book of Records says it no longer keeps those sorts of records (marathons). Boy, if you were to imagine what a Chinese amusement park would be like, that's about what you'd come up with, right? Now what would North Korea's be like?

Montana passes a law to allow chemical castration of rapists and incestists (or whatever the noun is). Yeah, there just aren't enough pissed-off guys in Montana, are there?

Speaking of which, there was a segment on the Daily Show today about a group called NORM (Norm!) which stands for something something Regaining Manhood. These are people who don't like the fact that they were circumcised, and are determined to recreate their foreskin. It involves a lot of pulling and stuff I don't think any of us wish to know about. Sorry I brought it...up.

Stupid virtual pet tricks

Silliest Web idea of the week: a site in which a virtual monkey typing on a virtual keyboard to try to reproduce Hamlet's solloloquy.

Evidence of the existence of God: the vacation home of the president of RJ Reynolds was burned down due to a discarded cigarette.

Two items from the with-Democrats-like-Clinton-who-needs-a-Republican-Party-anyway file:

1) Some Cuban jazz musician who's evidently famous is turned down for citizenship under the existing Cold War rules of the INS because he joined the Communist party in order to effectuate his defection.

2) Social Security Admin ordered its administrative judges to ignore all Federal court precedents (below the level of the Supreme Court) and enforce only agency policies.

A judge in San Diego reduced a murder conviction to manslaughter, saying that the deceased, a neighborhood bully, was a "jerk" who got what was coming to him. Boy, that judge! What a jerk, huh?

A man in Merced tried to rob two banks by pointing his finger at the teller, you know, in the shape of a gun.

Also: a British Royal Marine survives his court martial. He was on a stakeout of a car-smuggling operation in Hong Kong, and shot at a rat.

Russia's press is now experiencing Western style freedoms, where censorship is by corporations linked to the state, rather than by the state. Izvestia, which accused PM Chernomyrdin of making billions off his connection with the gas industry, which he used to run, found itself bought up by an oil company, which plans to make a few changes...

Irony

Responding to the German court decision that Iranian officials ordered assassinations of Kurdish leaders in Berlin, demonstrators in Teheran have been chanting, "Death to Zionist Germany".

Gladstone & Disraeli revisited

Ok, background: you will remember the man in the chicken suit who followed Bush around when he was stalling on debates. The Tories have stolen the idea. As it turns out, the guy hired for the job isn't even a Tory himself. Read this one to the end, it just keeps getting weirder.

UK News Electronic Telegraph Friday 4 April 1997

Cries of foul over headless chicken
By Robert Shrimsley, Jon Hibbs and Rachel Sylvester

THE Tory chicken had the stuffing knocked out of it yesterday when a teenage girl tore off its head in Scotland.

Tories said the young woman who decapitated their creature was a "Labour thug" who "set upon our brave chicken to stop him asking difficult questions".

The chicken was waiting in Port Street, Stirling, to tackle Tony Blair on devolution and his refusal to join a television debate with John Major. A Tory activist said Labour supporters surrounded the bird, shouting abuse at it. Suddenly, the girl burst out of the crowd, grabbed its head and ran off down the street to loud cheers.

Fortunately for Noel Flanagan, the man in the chicken suit, the head was recovered in one piece by Scottish police. In the words of one Tory press spokesman: "The chicken goes on."

Police refused to comment on the incident but it is understood that the offender was released with only a telling off. Labour denied that any of its workers was responsible for the incident.

A spokesman for Mr Blair said the chicken had been invited to dinner but had flown back to London.

Mr Flanagan, hired to highlight Tory claims that Mr Blair was running away from a television debate, had flown to Stirling. He shared the shuttle with George Robertson, the shadow Scottish secretary.

The chicken was to follow the Labour leader, who was campaigning in the marginal Tory seat held by Michael Forsyth, the Scottish Secretary. However, his efforts to henpeck Mr Blair were hampered by a man from the Scottish Daily Mirror dressed as Freddy the Fox, who blocked his path during a 15-minute walkabout.

As Mr Blair approached, the chicken was seen to stumble and was pushed to the back of the crowd surrounding the Labour leader, where it waved a placard before skulking off. A jubilant Freddy observed: "I had him for dinner. I stopped him getting anywhere near Tony. Tony shook my hand and thanked me for it."

However, Mr Blair's guardian refused to identify himself, saying: "The whole thing is embarrassing enough as it is." The incident came at the end of a traumatic day for the Tory chicken. Earlier, he got into a nasty fight with a rival chicken with a detachable head, sent by the Mirror newspaper, as he strutted across College Green in Westminster.

He was also pursued across London by another fox, two teddy bears and a plastic rhinoceros.

The scuffle with the Mirror chicken, carrying its head under its wing, came as he returned to Conservative Central Office. The two birds war-danced around Smith Square "pecking at each other very aggressively", according to one witness. As the confrontation turned nasty one of the Tory media minders crossed the road to separate the two.

Alex Aiken, the Conservative head of regional press, wrestled the Mirror's chicken to the ground and told his own bird to return to the Central Office coop.

But the Mirror chicken was furious. "He threw me against a wall and took my head off," he said. The Tory minder had "mad eyes" and was "quite burly", he added.

The bespectacled Mr Aiken, who is actually far from burly, denied excessive violence, saying: "It was a Labour stooge chicken."

John Major defended the stunt, saying: "We are just attempting to egg Mr Blair into a debate."

After the fracas, Mr Flanagan flew straight to Scotland, disappointing two men in teddy bear suits who said they were the Teddy Bears' Alliance. They camped outside the Labour launch to challenge the Tory chicken to a debate.

The chicken also missed the man in a huge grey plastic rhino outfit who greeted Mr Blair outside a west London shopping centre.

Rhino man refused to give his identity but said he wanted to protest at the way "the level of debate in the political campaign seems to have become ludicrously cheap with a lot of people dressing up as animals".

An article in Slate suggests that Clinton's re-election strategy of spending huge amounts of money, garnered from anywhere, for large media buys, was advocated by Dick Morris partly because he was getting a percentage of the money so spent.

Twofer

The Tory holding the safest Tory seat in Scotland resigns his seat after a Tory twofer, committing adultery with a woman he met in rehab. Last year he lost his government job when he threatened a road protester with a pickaxe. How we'll miss the Tories.

Especially since Tony Blair's favorite, excuse me, favourite, Dr. Who is Jon Pertwee. I mean really.

A man showed up for his trial in Wichita for robbing a shoe store wearing a pair of size 10 1/2 boots that....

Liggett gets released from billions of dollars of liability for tobacco health problems by issuing a statement that says that smoking is addiction, causes cancer, and that advertising targets children. This is known as the "Duh" Statement.

In the last week, a deputy solicitor general argued before the Supreme Court in the internet indecency law case that it would even be ok to illegalize indecent speech in front of a minor, meaning speech speech, as in normal conversation, including presumably in one's own home, given that he acknowledged that the internet act could be applied against parents.

Similarly, a Justice Dept lawyer defending the line-item veto in Fed District Court accepts the judge's hypothetical proposition that Congress could delegate to the president the power to raise however much tax was necessary by whatever means he wanted. The Senate legal counsel agreed.

The newest bill against "partial-birth" abortions includes a provision allowing the father of the fetus to sue a woman who has the procedure, but only if he is married to her. Thank god this is all about protecting feti and not about controlling women.

The rest is from another New York magazine competition, from the 3/17/97 issue. Famous Last Words:

"If it stops your heart, you must depart." Johnnie Cochran

"I wonder if Roy remembered to feed..." Siegfried

"I'm going out for some couscous." Salman Rushdie

"See you in the movies." David Caruso

"I think I'll try green eggs and ham..." Dr. Seuss

"Bye." Gary Cooper

"Hom'm I doin' on time?" David Letterman

"Wrong!" John McLaughlin

"What time did you say? Fourteen after the hour?" Andy Warhol

"I am not too big--it's the coffins that got small." Norma Desmond

"...and never, never sell the movie rights." Nathanial Hawthorne

"I don't get no last respects." Rodney Dangerfield

"I thought you said at the count of five." Alexander Hamilton

"I'm tired of London." Samuel Johnson

"My fellow Corinthians, what you do not understand you will find in *St. Paul for Dummies*. St Paul

"Eeeeeeeeek!" Stephen King

"Rubber ducky, you're the one
You make bathtimes lots of fun..." Jean-Paul Marat

"Uhh...conspiracy...uhh...." Oliver Stone

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

I just saw Leaving Las Vegas on cable. I couldn't help notice that as Nicholas Cage drank himself to death, he kept running across gorgeous women. Every bank teller, every woman sitting in a bar, every stripper. Every hooker was pretty and fresh-faced, without excessive makeup, and heavily aerobicized. Now, is this the world-view of an alcoholic (as in, there are no ugly women when the bars close) or is it the world-view of Hollywood producers?

The British general election began today. The betting odds are 1-4 in favor of Labour, so you'd have to plunk down a fair amount of money, but it does seem a good way to enhance one's retirement account. Gallup shows Blair ahead by 28 points, and even the Sun is endorsing him, which led to the spectacle of him being asked on national tv for his views on naked women in newspapers. He has no views on naked women. Major will make an ass of himself standing on a soapbox as he did in 1992. One commentator says that if he wins, the soapbox will be broken up and sold as holy relics for centuries to come. However the odds are still longer on Screaming Lord Sutch becoming the next PM, 15 million-1, slightly longer odds than for a UFO piloted by Elvis landing on the Loch Ness Monster.

An item I passed on a couple of days ago reminded me of how good New York Magazine competitions can be, so I went to the library today. Evidently someone has systematically torn out all the crosswords, which are often on the other side of the comp, but here's one of the few which survived the vandalism that was also good. From the 10/7/96 issue, opening lines of human-to-Martian colloquy:

Hi! We met in Roswell.

Gimme three.

Pleasure, Mr. Perot.

You may already be a winner.

Abduct my wife, please.

You talkin' to me?

Hot enough for you?

Ray guns don't kill earthlings, Martians kill earthlings.

Welcome to planet Earth. Use as directed.

You left your lights on.

Uh, that a rental?

Okay, so your people will talk to my people about 25% at the back end for an exclusive option to your life-story rights regarding book, television, cable, and motion pictures, plus 10% of all ancillary worldwide product sales for the first five years...

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Although it is illegal for US companies to comply with Arab boycott of Israel & Jews, the Air Force, with Justice Dept approval, *ordered* private contractors to exclude Jews & people with Jewish names from a project in Saudi Arabia. The poor company involved is fined by Commerce Dept.

Henry Hyde just escaped attention (judging by the brevity of the Washington Post/Reuters coverage) for his involvement with a Savings Bank (evidently not quite an S & L--whatever) that went bankrupt at a cost to the US of $67 million. The settlement recovered $850,000, with the government actually proud of having recouped the cost of litigation only. Hyde somehow swung a separate agreement under which he didn't have to pay any costs for the legal failures of the directors, of which he was one.

Gingrich says election financing by the Democrats is bigger than Watergate. Bill Maher asks, but who will break the news to G. Gordon Liddy?

3 million Americans have the right to classify documents. I don't know about you, but I feel left out.

The NY Times on the Senate debate on the balanced budget amendment: "The closing debate was arranged in an unusual way, not with speakers alternating in support and opposition, but with sizable chunks of time given first to one side and then the other. That freed senators from having to listen to the other side."

Common Phrases Redefined

A few entries from the New York magazine competition where they asked competitors to change one letter in a familiar non-English phrase and redefine it.

Harlez-vous francais?
(Can you drive a French motorcycle?)

Ex post fucto
(Lost in the mail)

Idios amigos
(We're wild and crazy guys!)

Veni, VIPi, Vici
(I came; I'm a very important person; I conquered)

J'y suis, J'y pestes
(I can stay for the weekend)

Cogito Eggo sum
(I think; therefore, I am a waffle)

Rigor Morris
(The cat is dead)

Respondez s'il vous plaid
(Honk if you're Scots)

Que sera, serf
(Life is feudal)

Le roi est mort. Jive le roi
(The King is dead. No kidding.)

Posh mortem
(Death styles of the rich and famous)

Pro Bozo publico
(Support your local clown)

Monage a trois
(I am three years old)

Felix navidad
(Our cat has a boat)

Haste cuisine
(Fast French food)

Veni, vidi, vice
(I came, I saw, I partied)

Quip pro quo
(A fast retort)

Aloha oy!
(Love; greetings; farewell; from such a pain you should never know)

Mazel ton!
(Lots of luck)

Apres Moe, le deluge
(Larry and Curly get wet)

Porte-Kochere
(Sacramental wine)

Iic liebe rich
(I'm really crazy about having dough)

Fui generis
(What's mine is mine)

VISA la France
(Don't leave chateau without it)

Ca va sans dirt
(And that's not gossip)

Merci rien
(Thanks for nothin')

Amicus puriae
(Platonic friend)

L'etat, c'est moo
(I'm bossy around here)

L'etat, c'est Moe
(All the world's a stooge)

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Just saw an ITN story about a 3-legged cat in Ireland ordained a minister over the Internet by the Universal Life Church. I see they haven't raised their standards since they made me a minister.

There are plans for a restaurant with an Elvis theme, and yes the menu will include fried peanut butter and banana sandwiches, but you have to bring your own pills.

1st sign that CIA agent Harold Nicholson was selling secrets to the Russia: that photo of him taken 10 years ago wearing a t-shirt saying "KGB Is For Me".

An article in the New York Times about warning labels on products shows a Batman toy with the warning: "For Play Only: Mask and chest plate are not protective; cape does not enable user to fly." Duh! everyone knows that's the Superman cape.

The creepiest man in America is now officially NY mayor Guiliani, last seen in Marilyn Monroe get-up singing Happy Birthday. He replaces the Unabomber, who replaced...David Letterman, wasn't it?

As of the new IRS rules, if you have medical marijuana, you cannot deduct it from your income tax as with other drugs.

In last fall's Georgia debate for US Senate, the Republican said of the Democrat, Max Cleland, the Vietnam vet & triple amputee who won the election, "Your walk says so much more than your talk." Oops.

And you can't spit afterwards, either

Oral sex has been declared illegal in Singapore unless it is practised as a prelude to full sex, the island's Court of Appeal ruled. The court said the practice was "against the order of nature".

Rep. Helen Chenoweth said that term limits would get rid of out-of-touch politicians. Still holding those endangered-species campaign BBQs, Helen?

State Dept spokesman Nicholas Burns, cornered by the BBC on the differences in policy regarding trade with China and Cuba, said that constructive engagement worked in South Africa.

New in NY City: a kosher cybercafe.

An Alabama judge is ordered by the circuit court to stop his prayer sessions with jury pools and remove the large carved 10 Commandments.

Governor Fob (Fob?) James threatens to send in the National Guard and the state troopers to protect the plaques, saying "If we accept all judge's orders, we don't have a government of law, we have a government of men."

Is it my imagination, or a lot of really stupid stories coming out of Alabama lately?

The reward on Salman Rushdie's head is upped to $2 1/2 million. The British government has spent over $10 million keeping him alive.

Imperfect and ok with it

This is from www.pennpals.com, a website for folks in the joint. (Update: link no longer works) This is the women seeking men section, but check out the men seeking women section ("I love pizza, Big Macs, and Coors Light Beer. Are you out there?") and the death row section, where everybody is wrongly convicted. The typos are the web site's fault, not the prisoners', by the way.


Penn-Pals
Women seeking Men Penn-Pals Master Sheet

Click on a name or a picture and view that Penn-Pals Home Page!

[2]Gidget Lewis I am a Black-French-Indian Native. Currently in Texas Women Prison in Gatesville. Doing a 30 year sentence, been down 6 years. I have learned from my mistakes and I am seeking a long term friendship of lover, age 35 and up. Race is unimportant. My days spent here are very lonely. Without a companion to enjoy the night hours and days with. I'm in search of someone who knows the pain and fears of such admissable circumstances that have become part of my life. ......


[4]Kim McCullough HELP ! ! ! Single mother of two daughters. I am a perfectionist who is imperfect and OK with it. I am a dedicated, loyal, hard working, intelligent, loving and loveable woman. I am an artist, who is kind, empathetic, dependable, a great friend in need of constant challenges because I bore easily.

I am self-sufficient, versitile, eager for knowledge, ......


[6]Lora Zaiontz Honesty is a high priority. I'm incarcerated serving a life sentence for being a party to the crime of capitol murder. Please don't be afraid for I am truly a lost and lonely kitten, who continues to trust in peoples good intention. During my incarceration I have achieved my Associates Degree and now work on my batchor. I've been here thirteen years now. I was 17 years old at the time I came. The world I'll enter once free will be all new. I seek someone who will hold my hand always.

[8]Kim Leavelle Greetings Friends ! Don't let this prison garb picture scar you off. I'm Cinderella at heart; seeking pumpkins of all walks of life. I'm lonely and desolate; despite singing songs of dispair. . . and pity parties . . . I find humor does the soul good. I'm incarcerated for a non-violent robbery because of my previous addiction to drugs. If you are facing adversity in your life, let me pick you up and dust you off, then journey through life with smiles on our faces : ) Who needs glass slippers anyways? I hear they cause bunyons! ; ) 'wink & a smile'.......


[10]Je Donna Young Dynamic Multifaceted Lady - who wishes to correspond with a diverse sincere gentleman. I am a warm, compassionate woman seeking just the right man for me. True Old Fashioned Gentleman - Please respond to a sincere lady who wishes to correspond with a gentleman from a by gone era.......

[12]Jean Federico Hello, I have taken some wrong roads in life but now my head is together. I have spent many years in here. It's very lonely. I'm seeking an amiable, magnanimous man to write a lonely woman like myself. Please find the time to write me. I am lonely for companionship. I desperately need to socialize with people in society. I cry at movies whether they are sad or happy......


[14]Leslie Faulkner Hi There, I am looking for a nice man who is kind and understanding to write me. I do not receive any mail at all and desperately seek companionship. I am very outgoing & athletic. I am in here on a non-violent crime. I have turned my life around and need some mental suport. My family turned on me after this happened and I need someone to care.....

[16]Vicki Heyer I seek a sincere, caring, warm-hearted man, age 25-48, for friendship, possibly something more. I believe inner warmth is more inmortant than looks, age, race or nationality.....

[18]Aquilia Horace Hello ! I am a very young and sexy lady. I'd love to start to receive mail. I'll answer all letters. I'm presently incarcerated. I'm really not a hardened criminal, I made a mistake and am paying for it now. I've learned a hell of a lot. I'm in need of some new loving and caring friends who will grow to love me for the person I am today.

[22]Denise Jacques A 6' 2" Blue Eyed Doll looking for a man who is financially secure and willing to give a little help. Also willing to forgive a mistake and be emotionally supportive. I am willing to relocate. If interested please send a letter and photo....

[24]Robbie Coakley Single White Female, 34 years old, 5' 6" . Small, slim lady looking for a friendship, possible companionship, willing to relocate. I'm a fun, loving cowgirl looking for someone who is willing to live life to the fullest...

[26]Linda Paisley A "normal", attractive, vivacious, 5' 7" brown eyed beauty with a killer smile, outrageous personality, whose mission is to seek out and and find a professional or businessman 30's - 50's, who still has a twinkle in his eye.....

Coddling criminals

The guy who got life under CA's 3 strikes law for stealing a slice of pizza has had his sentence revised on appeal. He will be out after only 4 years (with good behaviour). With such leniency towards pizza theft, the republic must surely crumble.

Speaking of republics that crumbled, does anyone have the *words* to Virginia's "state song emeritus", recently demoted from its status as state song, or perhaps that's kicked upstairs, when it was discovered that it was the "darkies" who were supposed to be doing the Carrying Back to Old Virginny.

The State Dept accuses Germany of discriminating against Scientologists. Evidently, Madeleine Albright is now dating John Travolta.

Finally, from an LA Times article about yesterday's TV coverage of Yeltsin, designed to prove that he was in fact still breathing:


"This situation reminds one of the last days of Konstantin Chernenko," Sergei Markov, a political analyst with the Moscow Carnegie Center, said in comparing Yeltsin's staged appearances with the heavily edited glimpses Russians got of their last leader to die in office.
After a 13-month stint, the wheezing and frail Chernenko died in March 1985 at age 73.
Recalling one highly choreographed shot of Chernenko congratulating visitors to his "office" on International Women's Day--two days before his death--Markov said the film was taken at an awkward angle to obscure the fact that the hospitalized leader had no pants on.


What a coincidence: that's just how Clinton likes to celebrate International Women's Day!

Tom Carson of the Village Voice says that Clinton's new cabinet does look like America--pudgy, bamboozled, potentially truculent, bereft of fashion sense, mysteriously unconvincing.

Incidentally, to give the middle class a greater say in the running of the country, the Lincoln Bedroom is now charging hourly rates.

Italian prison inmates will be allowed to keep pet birds and fish, the Vatican came out against smoking, the ban on pornography in military PXs was declared unconstitutional, the Vienna Philharmonic will allow in women, Brigitte Bardot was acquitted of violating France's anti-racism laws, Playboy magazine is now the best-selling magazine in Ireland less than a year after it was unbanned, and the local Tory party in Kensington-Chelsea, the safest Tory seat in Britain, has found a suitable replacement for Sir Nicholas Scott, who you will remember for being found drunk in a gutter: Alan Clark, the world-class adulterer, who once screwed a friend's wife and both her daughters, presumably not at the same time, a man so rich that he criticized Michael Heseltine as being the sort of man who buys his own furniture, and whose motto, I quote here from his published diaries: "Girls have to be succulent, and that means under 25." The good burghers of Kensington-Chelsea found him suitable, extracting only one promise from him: that he not vote in favor of banning hunting.

Some Federal District Court judge in NYC decided not to find anti-abortion clinic blockaders guilty of contempt of his own injunction. He says that since he acted as both judge and jury at the previous trial that resulted in the injunction, he had the right of a juror to ignore laws he believes are wrong. Needless to say, he is a Reagan appointee.

Pyromania in the news

2 women leave the Citadel, citing harassment. The president of the Citadel says nonsense, it's customary to set all new recruits on fire.

In the Sunday NY Times Week in Review section, there is a picture of a South Korean striker on fire. The headline: "Seoul Takes Its Cue From Mrs. Thatcher".

A pig just got a face-lift. There are real reasons, but the story's funnier if you don't know them.

Poland is starting a cavalry unity. If there are real reasons I have yet to determine them. They can use pictures from the cavalry in action against German tanks in 1939 in the recruitment posters. Are we sure we want these people in NATO?

Y'all will remember several articles I sent a few months ago about a British insurance company offering policies against haunted houses, second comings and alien abductions. Well, it seems the whole thing was a fraud. It collapsed as the guy in charge issued a fake giant check for 1 million pounds, supposed to be presented by the chick from the X-files, to some abductee. Oh the perfidy!

Christmas traditions

At the South Pole, the tradition is the annual run around the world, 2.7 miles that covers 24 time zones.

The mayor of Moscow decreed that stores in central Moscow not displaying ornate xmas decorations would be fined. Remember: if it's not banned, it's compulsory.

Finally, the British holiday tradition of betting on whether they'll be snow on xmas has cost bookmakers over 100,000 pounds.

I love Christmas news stories. Here's one: 6-year old British girl electrocuted by xmas tree lights while family looks on in horror. Yes, that's real. Finland sent its annual huge xmas tree to the holy land where Israel, exercising its stewardship of the world's holy sites, put it into quarantine for a month. A Buddhist decided to escape the materialist world to meditate on a Welsh mountain; a helicopter descended on him to try to "rescue" him. In Belgium, the paedophile-paranoid police raided a Satanic cult. The high priestess, or whatever she's called, said she found the raid "terrifying". Now, correct me if I'm wrong, if you're planning to deal with the Forces of Darkness, shouldn't you be able to deal with a little police raid with relative equanimity?

Humanitarian aid X 2

Our first story, broken by the London Sunday Times, is that Israel smuggled tons of hashish into Egypt from the 1960s until the late 80s for sale to Egyptian soldiers, who showed a massive increase in addiction.

2nd:
Toxic Waste Sent to Bosnia as Aid.

John Major, in an interview with Good Housekeeping designed to increase his appeal to women, revealed that he calls his wife "Little Grub." Tony Blair refuses to disclose any pet name he might have for Cherie.

In entirety, from the NY Times digest for the NY region section: "The Queens teen-ager who was beaten into a coma by several youths in a subway station had been harassed recently for being "clean cut," his father said."

By the way, the last words of Len Tuggle, executed in Virginia yesterday: "Merry Christmas." And to all a good night, I guess.

British fox-hunters, in their perrenial fight against hunt saboteurs, are now going after them with helicopters, which sounds a heck of a lot more fun.

JFK's second-most-famous mistress, Judith Exner, whom he shared with Sam Giancana, says that she got pregnant by him in 1962 and had an abortion with his knowledge.

McDonald's opens in its 100th country. Believe it or not, there has never been a war between 2 countries possessing McDonald's. Civil wars don't count, which is good because Belarussian riot police attacked the crowd that gathered at the opening.

Irony

At Carl Bildt's party celebrating the 1st anniversary of the Dayton peace accords for Bosnia, many celebrants were hospitalized with salmonella.

Authorities in the Czech Republic wanted to establish a Sigmund Freud museum in the house in which he was born. The landlord preferred to make it into a massage parlor, or, perhaps, a "massage parlor".

It must be the silly season. The London Times is full of stories about people on trial for running over ducks, a scientist trying to get an import license for rhino dung, complaints from its neighbors that the French embassy is too dirty, a man whose photos of his expedition to the Arctic were lost by the chemists and wants 30,000 pounds to go back, etc. Yesterday we got the news that the newest hot business in Kabul is the sale of bones to Pakistan for soap, chickenfeed and something else I forget, and yes that includes human bones, which for some reason are easier to find in Afghanistan these days than animal bones. An adult male skeleton weighs 13 pounds and fetches about 45 cents.

According to the SF Examiner, the word Nixon used for the rich Jews was cock-sucker. I was hoping for something ethnic.

Keep the faith

New story from the Nixon tapes: September 1971 Nixon asked Ehrlichman on several occasions to go after the tax returns of the rich Jewish contributors to Democrats. "I can only hope that we are, frankly, doing a little persecuting."

I'm curious. The Reuters report says that Nixon used an expletive to describe the Jews. Anyone know which one?

Also on Nixon, you've read the stories, now read the transcripts from the alcoholic-in-chief:


CONVERSATION BETWEEN NIXON AND H.R. HALDEMAN
4/30/73 BETWEEN 10:16 AND 10:20 P.M.:

Nixon: Hello.

Haldeman: Hi.

N: Hope I didn't let you down.

H: No sir, you got your points over, and now you, now you're, you've got it set right and move on. You're in right where you ought to be.

N: Well, it's a tough thing, Bob. For you, for John, the rest, but Goddammit, I'm never going to discuss this son of a bitching Watergate thing again. Never, never, never, never. Don't you agree?

H: Yes sir. You've done it now. And you've laid out your position. You've laid out your, you've taken your steps. You've...

N: Interesting thing. You know we haven't heard. The only cabinet officer that has called , and this is 50 minutes after the thing is over, is Cap Weinberger, bless his soul.

H: Hmm.

N: All the rest are waiting to see what the polls show. Goddam strong cabinet, isn't it?

H: You'd better check and be sure, cause I, they may, you know, we've had a...

N: Nah, nah. No, no, no. They know. They know. They know to call, you know. They know they can get through. But in any event, I just wanted you to know that Cap called & he was all the way.

H: Good.

N: But let me say, you're a strong man, Goddammit, & I love ya.

H: Ha.

N: And I, you know, I love John, and all the rest, and by God, keep the faith. Keep the faith. You're going to win this son of a bitch.

H: Absolutely.

N: You notice what I said about the violence and so forth on the other
side.

H: Yeah.

N: I mean there were some, there were some intricacies in this, that only (unclear) would understand.

H: I got those. And I want to get the (unclear word), cause there are some things to work on from there that.

N: All right.

H: That uh...

N: I thought it was good, too, to sort of end on what I deeply felt (unclear word) on a religious note, you know, God Bless America. I mean, I don't, I'm certain, I must have, have, you know, I must have driven you up the wall.

H: Didn't drive me up the wall, but I felt that way (crosstalk). I'm all for that. I completely agree.

N: I don't know whether you can call and get any reactions and call me back, like the old style. Would you mind?

H: I don't think I can, I don't, I don't.

N: No, I agree.

H: Puts me in kind of an odd spot to try and do that.

N: No. Don't call a Goddam soul. The hell with it. Let me just say,
(unclear words)...from me, from you, I haven't heard from any cabinet
officer except Weinberger an hour afterwards, and thank God, and no
staff member.

H: Well, now, when I called the board said they were instructed not
put any calls through, so...

N: The hell with that. I told them to put all the calls through.

H: Well, that may be why you haven't gotten them though. Because
that's...

N: All right.

H: What told me.

N: All Right. I'll change it. I'll change it. Fine, but God bless ya,
boy, God bless you, I love you. You, you know.

H: Okay.

N: Like my brother.

H: Oh, we'll...

N: All right boy.

H: We'll (unclear word) it up from here.

N: Keep the faith.

H: Right.


CONVERSATION BETWEEN NIXON AND WILLIAM P. ROGERS
SOMETIME BETWEEN 10:20 AND 10:32 P.M.:

Nixon: Hello.

Rogers: Hi, Mr. President.

N: Hi, Bill.

R: Gee, that was terrific. Really superb.

N: Don't give me that shit, you know. You know.

R: No, I really mean it.

N: You and I (unclear)...kind of rough, you know, afterwards, I, I,
shouldn't have done, done it, but, you know, I, uh, think, you know,
the, the operators and the rest. All of a sudden, I sort of, sort of
broke down a bit, and I, I don't, you know, I'm not that kind of a
man.

R: Oh, hell (unclear). I tried to get you right away, but your damn
system is tough to get through. I finally got through to Barker,
but...

N: Been trying to get through to you all day. I mean I told Rose,
Goddammit, any cabinet officer is to get through from, from the minute
after the speech. And only one I've heard from is Weinberger. So I
wondered what the hoot, what the hell's happened to everybody else.

R: I don't know what the Goddam system is. Anyway, I called. I tried
to get Barker, I tried to get (unclear). I finally got Barker, and he
took a message. Anyway, I thought it was superb, I don't know how you,
I don't see how you good have done any better. I think it's the best
delivery I've ever seen you give. I thought the delivery...

N: What, what parts of it did you like, Bill?

R: I liked all of it. I just thought it was great. I, um...

N: You didn't mind the God Bless America? That was my intuition
(unclear) I just sorta felt that way.

R: No, I, I, I thought it was, you know, I thought it was great. I,
uh, suppose some of the (unclear word) editorial writers may not like
it, but the public is going to love it. That's what counts. Uh. And I
thought the whole, the whole tone couldn't have been better. I didn't
think it was, I didn't think it had any, any rough spots in it. I
didn't think that you had any (unclear words) or anything of that
kind. No, I thought it was superb. I couldn't improve on it. I just
thought it was great. Adele was watching...

N: What did Dell think?

R: She thought the same thing. She, you know...

N: Smart woman.

R: She's critical.

N: You married a smarter wife that you, than you are. You know, like I
did.

R: That's right. Now, how'd you think it went? I

N: I don't know anything about it. You know, I've, I've gotten. You
know, I've been through a hell of an experience, you know. I was just
reading, uh, Adams' memoirs, and Adams, you know, to his credit, did
come in and say, look, I'll resign.

R: Yeah, yeah.

N: But Haldeman and Ehrlichman didn't. I had to tell them they had to
resign. That was a Goddam, tough son-of-a-bitch.

R: Yeah.

N: You know.

R: I, I tell you this (unclear), you made a lot of improvements on the
speech. I thought it was pretty good last night, but it was a hell of
a lot better tonight. You must have done a lot of work on it today.

N: Worked all day on it. Yeah.

R: And, well, I, I just think you oughta be happy with the speech. I,
I don't...

N: But, the cabinet thing, they were putting out Thursday, but
(unclear) move to Wednesday. I think we ought to get it over quickly.

R: I think it's probably better.

N: Is that all right with you?

R: Right, right.

N: Because, you're, you're the cabinet now, Boy.

R: No, no.

N: No, I'm not givin' you any bullshit, you know that.

R: Incidentally, I, I think things look pretty good for Packard, I, if
you still want him. I think you ought to give him a call. I thought
the

N: I think I'll wait til tomorrow, though. I mean it's...

R: I don't want you, I don't want you to do it tonight, but I just
mean...

N: Right.

R: I talked to (unclear), I talked to Mansfield, I talked to George
Mahon.

N: What'd they say?

R: Well, they thought he'd be great. They thought he'd be great.

N: And they'll, they'll waive the...

R: Oh, we'll figure out something to do about that.

N: That's right, that's right. Good of you to call, Bill, you've been
a...

R: That was a great speech, and get some sleep.
N: Great (tape cuts off)


CONVERSATION BETWEEN NIXON AND BILLY GRAHAM
BETWEEN 10:20 AND 10:32 P.M.:

Nixon: I had, I had, I had to tell Haldeman and Erlichman to resign,
which they wouldn't do voluntarily, and that was tough.

Graham: Well, your sincerity, your humility, your asking for prayer,
all of that, had a tremendous impact.

N: You really think so, Billy?

G: I really, I'm telling you the truth, and I'm not trying to just
encourage you. I know you get all that. But I really mean it.

N: Well, that's good of you Billy. You've been a friend, and, and
(tape cuts off)
________________________________________________

Transcribed by Washington Post Staff researcher Barbara J. Saffir from
tape Tape #197 RC-3, available at the National Archives

Russian cuisine

It seems that "prescriptions" for marijuana under Prop 215 are valid under current Nevada law, and possibly other states as well.

Clinton's book Between Hope and the Remainder Table, or whatever it was called, sold miserably, and most of the copies are being returned to the publisher, which thinks it's unseemly to remainder a book by a president, but I suspect will swallow Clinton's pride. It sold nowhere near as well as the book by the former FBI agent about Clinton's love life etc, much less Hillary's book, but did outsell Dole's book. Interestingly, the publisher of the latter says that the Dole campaign lied, inflating the number of copies printed. In other good news, fewer than 20% of Newt Gingrich's 1945 sold.

John Deutch's last act as Director of Central Intelligence was to revoke the security clearance of the State Dept official who leaked to Rep Toriccelli that the Guatemalan colonel responsible for killing an American was a CIA informer.

There is an interesting 7-part series in the LA Times on homicides in LA, and how badly they are handled, with loads of anecdotes like the guy who rotted in jail for 4 months because the LAPD couldn't be bothered to check his time card at work that showed his alibi. Well worth reading but long, so I'm not sending them out, especially as most of you are on vacation right now. I'm afraid I didn't save the 1st one, or see the next 2, but I will send out the rest to anyone who asks.

A new record was set today when a Japanese furniture mover ate 23 1/4 hot dogs in 12 minutes.

A heart-warming story from the NY Times: a 14-year old girl sets fire to her house after years of physical and sexual abuse such that one could only be sorry she hadn't taken out more of her family. Her father has never visited her in jail but did send a picture of the burned-out house on her birthday. Naturally, the state of Indiana put her in a maximum-security prison ($25,000 a year) instead of the juvenile treatment center ($82k) the judge begged the state to put her in. You're waiting for the punchline, well I've got two: she has found a new mom in the joint, or "the closest thing to a mom I ever had" in another murderer, and second, she has been ordered not to talk about being abused in group therapy sessions because her fellow inmates in the special-needs unit are upset by her stories, since they all abused or killed their children.

And Thurgood Marshall used to be an FBI informer. I don't get it.

IRONY ALERT: a couple of days ago the NY Times remarked that a biography of a Chinese general, a veteran of the Long March I believe, gave the impression that he had retired rather than spent the last 15 years of his life under detention. Well, the Chinese minister of national defence is right now arriving in Washington and the official bio of him handed out by the US Defense Dept fails to mention that he commanded the troops responsible for the Tiananmen Square massacre.

UPDATE: My long-term readers will remember Sir Nicholas Scott, the hapless former minister for Northern Ireland and later minister for the disabled, banned from driving after a hit & run involving a baby's stroller earlier this year, and then found by police dead drunk and face-down in the gutter during the Tory Party Conference. Well, despite the endorsements of 130 MPs, other former ministers, other former drunks, and the KGB agent whose job it used to be to try to bribe him, as I reported a couple of days ago, his local party deselected him as a candidate for the next election. The hapless Sir Nick lost his job as Minister for the Disabled in 1994 after having to admit misleading Parliament in an attempt to weaken a bill for access for the disabled. Activists for the disabled, chief among them his own daughter, demanded that he resign.

I THOUGHT THEY WERE ALL THAT LONG: The longest-ever Church of England service was held, 5 hours long, in an attempt to get into the Guiness Book of World Records.

SCRAP, MISSILES, WHAT'S THE DIFFERENCE: the US DOD has been selling as scrap military systems that were supposed to be decommissioned but weren't. Parts thus sold include functioning encryption devices, propulsion parts for submarines, advanced radars, parts of Patriot and cruise missiles, Stealth fighter guidance systems, etc. Buyers include Iran, Iraq and especially China.

UNCLEAR ON THE CONCEPT: At a benefit, Princess Di called the homeless "Englishmen without castles".

Germany is to give $1.8m to the town council of Guernica as a "gesture of peace" and certainly not as reparations for blowing the town to bits. Like Japan, Germany is not thrilled with the idea of reparations and is resisting in court having to pay its old slave labor any. My favorite legal argument is that they don't have to pay because Auschwitz wasn't even *in* Germany. The Bundestag hopes that Guernica will build a sports centre: basketball, the universal language of peace.

Messing with the privates

From today's NY Times: "This is a wake-up call," said Sergeant Smith, a 30-year old drill sergeant instructor... "If you're messing with the privates, you'll go to jail. It's as simple as that."

Head of State (nudge nudge wink wink)

From Gennifer Flower's book Sleeping with the President [note that the title is an example of resume inflation, since Clinton was governor at the time]: "We continued to make love for several more hours, as Bill demonstrated more sexual libido than I have ever seen in a man. I'm not sure exactly how many times he came, but he seemed to be inexhaustible. I remember thinking that maybe this is the kind of drive a man needs to become president of the United States."

It's a wonderful monopoly

An AP story says that Comedy Central has cancelled a parody planned for Xmas of It's a Wonderful Life in which Jimmy Stewart's character would announce that he was gay. "That angered Republic Pictures, which owns the right to the movie. Comedy Central was planning to go ahead anyway, until it found out that Republic is controlled by Viacom Inc., which owns a stake in Comedy Central."

That's the problem with all these takeovers. It's so hard to keep track of who can censor whom.

Most frightening human being of the week

On the Daily Show, a former LA cop who has had plastic surgery to make himself look more like Tom Arnold.

More important news: Lady Chatterly's Lover appears for the first time in an unexpurgated version in Japan.

The "restored" Klingon edition of Hamlet is available for $20 (or 3 strips of gold-plated latinum).

Bob Dornan: "I will not concede to an inarticulate, flaky, non-qualified person." At least he didn't call her a "lesbian spear-chucker" like he did his opponent 4 years ago, a phrase I still don't claim to understand.

Another loon to keep an eye on: Jim Ryun, former Olympic runner and new Congresscritter from Kansas. Another Christian rightie, this man has published his daughters' dating rules in Focus on the Family. The guy must approach her parents, where they will then pray together over whether he is ready for marriage. They will then spend time with the whole family, doing missionary work and taking walks. The article (LA Times, 11/2/96) did not say what happens on the actual date, but I suspect no one has ever gotten that far. Dr. Ruth came out against Ryun during the campaign, saying that his rules amounted to arranged marriages (or would if they ever got that far). The girls are aged 21 to 26.

Anthony Lewis's column yesterday tells the story of a Cuban dissident type, a school teacher who joined the Cuban merchant marine in order to jump ship. The American immigration judge said that although the man had fled because of his political beliefs and would doubtless be royally fucked if he was returned, indeed possibly executed, it would be for something like desertion, which is ok, because we executed Eddie Slovick in WW II (the last American soldier to be executed), so he should be deported. The 9th Circuit overruled him. Under the new Immigration Act, future such cases will not be subject to judicial oversight.

You can now buy "medical marijuana" pipes on the streets of Berkeley.

Clicking his Bic, if you know what I mean

How can you tell when Elizabeth Dole has had sex with Bob?

She has pen marks all over her back.

And a happy Guy Fawkes day to you all, but watch out for those fireworks.

According to a Wash Post article on election superstitions, James Carville has a pair of lucky underwear (boxers or briefs Jimmy Bob Bubba?), Dan Quayle goes to the dentist, and Al Gore has nothing, no lucky socks, no lucky tie, no lucky stick up his ass, or anything else that might reflect a personality.

I leave you with this thought: for half a century, Bill Clinton has done just one thing, run for the presidency. He may win the election today, but he will still have to find a new occupation. To quote Robert Redford in the candidate, "What do I do now?"

Sunday NY Times week in review section article: "Vying for the Breast Vote". Something about breast cancer.

A divorce lawyer is the new president of Bulgaria. Might have been more appropriate to the Czech Republic or Slovakia, or Yugoslavia.

There is a story that in the early 1970s Bob Dole accompanied a woman to the University of Kansas Medical Center for an abortion. Dozens of reporters have worked at tracking this story down, and the Washington Post had a long-term discount on hotel rooms in KC. So where's the story?

My first anti-209 commercial on tv, featuring David Duke and a burning cross.

So many options

From the Daily Telegraph (I think):

IN THE School of Islamic Thought that has shaped the ideology of the Taliban, there is an active debate on the appropriate punishment for homosexuals.

Mullah Mohammed Hassan, Governor of Kandahar, the fundamentalist movement's home province, explained the dilemma: "There are two kinds of strong punishment. There are those who say homosexuals should be thrown to their death from a high fort, and those who favour putting them in a pit and pushing a wall on top of them."

Animal house

is what Dole says the White House now is.

We are now in a great race to see which will happen first, the election, or Bob Dole's head exploding.

Dole is now running against the New York Times, which he mentions every day. The Times is beginning to run back. Dole said that the Times wouldn't print the size of one of his crowds--and they printed the Secret Service estimate, along with the town's population.

Dole says it's time America had a real man in the White House. (To anticipate the late night comedians: we do, and it's Hillary)

"Double-talk has a bad name because of this group, this group of elitists in the White House who've never done anything, never done anything, and now they're running the country, running the country." He really must get that repetition thing looked into, it's beginning to sound like a political Tourett's syndrome. Still, the thrust of this quote, as I understand it, is that the Clinton administration is giving double-talk a bad name, is in fact ruining double-talk for the rest of us. Where is the outrage?

Halloween is now the biggest commercial holiday in the US after Xmas, having surpassed MOther's Day & Easter. For the Web version of the holiday, there is virtual pumpkin carving (really) and the Web ouija board (2 people put their hands on the mouse...)

There is a hilarious picture on the front page of today's NY Times from the Angola (Louisiana) Prison Annual Rodeo, from the convict poker event, wherein convicts play poker while a bull charges them. The last person to leave the table (either running or flying) wins.

25 police forces in Michigan bought a computer program to manage their case records. The vendor has since vanished, as have 4 years of records.

Where US feminists & Iranian fundie loons agree: Barbie is Satanic

From the Daily Telegraph, May 7, 1996:

Barbie dolls ‘satanic’

THE appearance of smuggled Barbie dolls in shops in Iran has prompted Islamic hardliners to dub them "satanic" in an attempt to dissuade people from buying them.

Hardliners say that the "unwholesome flexibility of these dolls, their destructive beauty and their semi-nudity have an effect on the minds and morality of young children".

And today, Iran issues its own Islamic Barbie, although I suspect the Taliban would still consider her a whore.

In a related story, Israeli Jewish religious loons have created a server, presumably on the order of those run by Singapore and other such countries, to shield customers from un-Jewish thoughts and images (like the Talibani, they don't want to see any women).

And in an unrelated story, a conference in Italy hears that a lot of Catholic saints were anorexics.

In a demonstration of the relationship between money and politics you wouldn't normally expect to see out in the open this close to an election, the House National Security Committee objected to the forthcoming ending of the subsidy of tobacco sales at military PXs, which costs the taxpayers $30+ million per year not counting deaths (13% of military deaths) and medical costs. 11 of the 12 members of the house committee get tobacco campaign money.

Celebrity

Ecuador's only famous person, Lorena Bobbitt, returns home, where she meets with the president.

The Washington Post truth scorecard somehow missed the Dole claim that we have the worst economy in a century, but it does note that the frequent claim of 30 administration officials kicked out or in jail or under investigation actually includes people Al D'Amato is hounding, and people who were investigated and cleared, and people investigated for stuff that happened before the Clinton administration.

Clinton actually had a radio ad bragging about signing the bill against gay marriages. It has been pulled. If anyone hears where that ad was played, what cities or type of radio station, could they tell me?

Commercials featuring the Big Mac will soon be forced off Israeli tv for offending kosher sensibilities. (insert joke here)

In perfect timing as the British gov. proposes banning all handguns except for one-shot .22s locked up securely in gun clubs, some idiot clay pigeon shooter accidentally shoots himself to death. One Tory MP says that the parents of the children killed in the Dunblane massacre are too emotional.

Senator John Warner's campaign, caught having faked a picture of his opponent Mark Warner (no relation) with Clinton & Douglas Wilder, calls sticking Mark's head on Chuck Robb's body "a technical adjustment".

Salad shooters for democracy

GEN Colin Powell has apologised for using an ethnic slur against Chinese in a speech to businessmen in which he said: "If you give 1.3 billion Chinamen access to home shopping on television, [communism] is over, because there is no way communism can compete with a Salad Shooter for $9.95 (#6.37)." He now says his use of the word "Chinamen" was inappropriate.

Dennis Miller says that Gore's people say he accomplished his goal in the debate, which was to make a clear distinction between himself and the podium.

Veep debate

"Affirmative action should be predicated on need, not on equality of reward, not on equality of outcome," Kemp said, adding that Abraham Lincoln would agree with him.

"I do not believe that Abraham Lincoln would have adopted Bob Dole's position to eliminate all affirmative action," Gore said.

Bob Dole knew Abe Lincoln, Abe Lincoln was a friend of Bob Dole's....

Quotes of the day:

"Maybe people in the lower economic brackets don't necessarily want the History Channel." Chief Justice Rehnquist

"There's something magic about riding around on a bus with Governor Whitman." Bob Dole

"Dope-Hemp 96" t-shirt in Berkeley

Best spin on the debate, from Clinton's campaign chair Peter Knight: "The President was very presidential."

I can't believe they're using the Whitewater counsel guy. If the Clinton people have any sense at all (which they don't--they'll continue to play defense on Whitewater and hope it goes away), this is precisely what they need to label the investigation convincingly as partisan.

By the way, haven't seen the photos, but Scalia evidently now has a beard, the 1st bearded justice since 1941. Way to go Tony! Just keep those beard hairs away from Clarence Thomas's Coke--you know what he's like!

Biggest jerks of the week who are not members of the Taliban: the golf club in Surrey who ejected a mother and son from the mother and son competition because he was adopted.

Biggest jerks who are Talibani: the Taliban, who have banned pet birds, chess, kites and marbles.

The debate

The Washington Post says that Senator John McCain's job during the debates was to sit in the front row and smile the whole time, to remind Dole that he was supposed to.

Most of the immediate reaction after the debate on CNN and such seemed to be that Dole had won, evidently because he had not drooled on himself. The Post is a little less kindly, because I was wondering just what debate the tv people had just watched. To me, Dole wandered, lost track of his own thoughts and the questions, and kept bringing up things he said he wasn't bringing up, like Whitewater and Clinton's drug use. But at least he called him "Mr. President", though once too often, David Broder thinks.

The fight for the alleged political center was downright unseemly, with Dole continuing his mantra of liberal liberal liberal, which is evidently a dog that won't hunt, which is Arkansasese for am not am not am not. Clinton several times brought up the 60 new death penalties and cutting welfare and the alleged 100,000 new cops, and said the American people would judge whether that was a liberal record or a record that was good for America. Gee, Billybobbubba, what's behind door number three?

PBS provided not only dull as dirt questions from Lehrer, who is supposed to have a personality in real life, but amazingly, even duller analysis. When asked what would be remembered from the debate, Mark Shields said the part after it was over where the candidates and their families were all standing around, and Paul Gigot said just the fact that they showed up. Whatever those two are paid, it is not enough.

I regret that I didn't have the patience to hear Nader and the Libertarian and the Natural Law candidate on CNN, but they had Perot first, and after a minute, I had to lie down.

I'll conclude in the words of Robert J Dole: "Mr President, stop scaring the seniors!" Be afraid, Bob Dole, be very afraid!

P.S. The Berkeley spellchecker doesn't know the word mantra. I don't know what this place is coming to.

From a NY Times movie review: "Chemistry project: Take the powdered contents of a small box of Jell-O. Add Water. The volatility of the reaction will give you some idea of the excitement generated by the teaming of Steven Seagal and Keenen Ivory Wayons in "The Glimmer Man."

Latest piece of brilliance from the Taliban loons now in charge of Afghanistan (Taliban is the Pushtu word for Khmer Rouge): not content with banning women doctors and nurses, they are now throwing women patients out of hospitals. I am still waiting for an explanation for how soccer is unIslamic. Award for best explication of a policy that is nowhere near as comforting as it is supposed to be: well, most Taliban fighters have never
seen a woman over 10 not wrapped head to toe, so we wouldn't want to excite them.

News you may have missed:
-a reporter for Le Figaro is murdered (or committed suicide if you're not very bright or a member of the Spanish police force) was working on reports that organs were "harvested" from the concentration camps in Bosnia.

-the key witness against Mumia Abu-Jamal (that must be what happens when you send a perfectly normal name through the Jive program in Zurich) says she was forced by police to change her story

-can you believe Gingrich and the Newtzies tried to water down the provision about denying guns to wife batterers by restricting it to cases where they were convicted by juries instead of judges?

-This week's award for slimiest site on the internet: www.seduction.com.
Joe Bob says check it out!

-Orrin Hatch did it, he snuck a provision into the budget outlawing virtual child pornography (where no actual child is involved) on the Internet.

After 12 years, you can forget about pants too

THE sartorial habits of Natan Sharansky, a key member of the Israeli summit team, raised eyebrows in the White House, a Tel Aviv newspaper said.

Maariv said President Clinton asked the former Soviet dissident, now the Trade and Industry Minister, why he had come to the White House without wearing a tie. Mr Sharansky responded without batting an eyelid: "There is a law in Israel, according to which anyone who was incarcerated in a Russian prison for longer than eight years is exempt from putting on a tie." Mr Sharansky had been a guest of the former Soviet Gulag for ten years.

I'm not as think as you drunk I am

Bayer (as in aspirin), a corporate descendant of IG Farben, the manufacturers of Zyklon B, have been advertising an insect killer in Guatemala with the slogan Sudden Death is a German Specialty. Truth in advertising at last!

It makes me feel old to hear of Agnew's death on the BBC--which mispronounced his first name.

Almost unreported is the only intelligent thing Dole has said this year, an acerbic comment on the economics of firing $1 million missiles at $60,000 Iraqi radars.

From Comedy Central's The Daily Show: the new Miss America says that God wanted her to win in order to be a role model for children. And today, all over the country, children are greasing their teeth, taping their breasts and spouting delusional crap.

NY Times headline: "North Carolina Groggy After Hurricane". All together now: HOW CAN YOU TELL?

Note also a propos the previous message, that at least 20 members of the Senate are divorced. Well, as "Dick" Morris used to say, marriage should be defined as a union between...oh, yeah, keep sucking my toes, oh baby oh baby, and then Al Gore oh yes yes yes aaaaaah, and could you just charge that to the campaign?

I could swear I heard Dole give a speech yesterday calling his opponents "scareheads".

The mystery explained

There was a letter to the NY Times a couple of months ago that suggested that Saddam Hussein's behaviour could be explained by speculation, Hussein's that is, in international oil spot markets. All the man has to do is move a few troops or make a speech and he can send the price of oil wildly up or down. The ultimate in insider trading. It may not be true, but as a theory, it does fit all known facts.....

China blocks Internet access to human rights groups, Taiwanese & Hong Kong democratic groups, and to Western news sources, such as the NY & LA Times, CNN, Wall Street Journal. USA Today is unaffected. I did say news sites.

If you want to send a message, use Western Union

27 cruise missiles are launched at Iraq to send it a message. As usual, the message says "boom".

Alternatively, we are sending a message that Americans are still geography-impaired. The Kurds are in the North, the bombing is in the South. The Kurds are still in the North, the extension of the air exclusion zone is in the South. Our bombs are smart, our leaders are fucking idiots.

A cartoon in the just-arrived SC Comic News quotes Dole telling his little joke about a busload of supply-siders going over a cliff and the bad news is that there were 3 empty seats. The next panel shows a bus going off a cliff with Dole running behind it shouting Wait for Me!