convention

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

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

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

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

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

Convention

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

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

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

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

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

Convention

As I write, and surf, the Republican convention is droning in the background. I should pay more attention to the music introducing the speakers, since someone speaking about education was brought on to the tune of "Don't know much about history". And someone said, and I quote, "Literacy and the Bush family are practically synonymous." To paraphrase a famous quotation, Millie the dog Bush has written more books than W has read.

A Russian company has patented the bottle. Also nails and railroad tracks.

A Lithuanian businessman wants to start a theme park called "Stalin's World", for those nostalgic for good clean Gulag living. Visitors would enter the park in cattle cars. It still sounds like more fun than the mile and a half roller coaster the Japanese just built.

The Washington Post, despite having an article on gay Republicans in today's issue, has still not mentioned Mary Cheney. The NY Times alluded to it, referring to the ABC interview with Lynn Cheney yesterday in which she inned her daughter.

The R platform, by the way , specifically condemns the "gay lifestyle" and supports the ban on gays in the Boy Scouts and in the military.

Obviously I wasn't in the pocket of the NRA

John Tukey, a statistician who seems to have lead a much more interesting professional career than you'd expect from a statistician, and who coined the terms "software" and "bit", died this week.

Congress votes to ban states executing pregnant women, just in case anyone other than Al Gore had a question as to whether that was a good move or not.

Some quotes from the porno team of Bush and Dick (no, I said I wasn't going to do that joke, didn't I?):

Bush: "Secretary Cheney brought people together and helped win a war, which stands in stark contrast to Vice President Al Gore, who tends to divide people to create war." In other words, Gore = Saddam Hussein.

Bush: "Of course I knew his votes. But I also know his record."

Cheney: "this notion that somehow I was opposed to freeing Nelson Mandela is a typical distortion of Al Gore." Well, you voted against a resolution that Mandela should be freed. Where's the distortion?

Cheney on voting against a ban on plastic guns, which even the NRA did not oppose: "Well, obviously I wasn't in the pocket of the NRA."

You heard it here first?

Dick Cheney's daughter is a lesbian. Like we're not going to have enough "Dick and Bush" jokes as it was.

Nothing on this in the NY Times or the Washington Post, but the British papers all have it, not that it was ever much of a secret, and still less so when Bob Woodward cocquetted at the news on tv a few days ago.

Here's a joke you've already heard ten times: Bush-Cheney is the Wizard of Oz ticket, one needs a heart, the other needs a brain.

Cheney is praised as bringing some much-needed gravitas to the campaign, with everyone pretty much ignoring his extreme right-wing record across the board on any issue you care to name. If you don't foam at the mouth or have the uncouthiosity of a Gingrich, you're ok in Mark Shields's book (however, thanks to Shields for reminding us that 25 years ago when Cheney was White House chief of staff, Bush the Younger was snorting coke off a prostitute's ass in a Houston bar. Thus Cheney has become--you will be sick of this observation by the end of the convention--the "babysitter" of a man 4 years younger than himself. Cheney is the adult, Bush has demoted himself to the post of this year's Dan Quayle, where I always said he belonged.

When the pundits say that he chose Cheney from a presidential perspective rather than a campaign perspective, one of the things they mean is that he has given up the option of pretending to be an insurgent outsider storming the Beltway.

By the way, Alan Keyes has dropped out of the race, a stunning development that has completely crowded the Cheney decision, the inevitable failure of Camp David and that cool picture of the Concorde on fire, right off the front pages.

Ya gotta have heart

So Shrub did what I told Kevin two days ago he wasn't stupid enough to do, picked Dick Cheney as veep. Consider me corrected as to the level of Boy George's stupidity. In Washington there are already pools on how many times he'll use the word "heart" in his convention speech. You know, Christ changed my heart, don't judge my heart, etc etc. (by the way, read a Monday Washington Post piece about--maybe Sunday--about Bush's form of Christianity. Remember, most of the religious stuff is coded in a language not intended to be understood by people like y'all and me; it helps to have a guide). This will maybe cut down on that language, since they've already sent in the cardiologists to do just that with Cheney. Scott Shuger of Slate asks whether the statement issued by the doctor that Cheney's condition shouldn't affect his campaigning was maybe not getting it the wrong way around from what a doctor is supposed to be saying. And just to kick it off, Bush called him this morning before dawn. There's nothing like the phone ringing when you're sound asleep to jump-start the ol' heart, right? See Slate for Table Talk today about the Cheney nomination, and another piece about what a bitch Lynne Cheney is.

The good news is that it's no longer illegal to say "sorry" in the state of California, or at least to have it held against you in a civil suit. I look forward to hearing it from Albertson's checkers now, since their cash registers over-charged me two out of the last 3 times. I'm a strong believer in the effects of legislation to improve our lives by altering speech. Remember when Proposition 121 banned "Have a nice day"?

Think big

A 67-year old Russian pensioner is being hailed as a hero after shooting a thief who was stealing potatoes from his allotment.

And Swiss authorities would like to talk to the Russian Prime Minister, known as Misha Two Percent, for the misappropriation of $4.8 billion in IMF loans in 1998.

That's a lot of potatoes.

Message to the Sunday papers: it doesn't count as a restoration of civilian government in Ecuador if the elected president has to leave the country. Come back, El Loco, all is forgiven.

A Chechen rumor that hasn't made the American papers: an actual gunfight earlier this month between the biggest warlord and the defense minister. I believe it was a fight over who hates the Russians more.

South Africa is to start renaming its major cities. Sigh. Pretoria will be Tshwane, which is pronounced to rhyme with Tshwane, I'm guessing.

NATO is finally capturing Serb war criminals from the Bosnian war, by offering massive bounties which are mostly being paid to Serb war criminals who capture other Serb war criminals.

War is Hellibut: Britain is to compensate trawlermen who lost their livelihoods in the Cod War of the 1970s, in which Iceland kicked their pale butts.

Speaking of old wars, you can now buy a Spitfire. A company started making them, sort of half from scrap from old WW II-era Spitfires and half new, for the anniversary of the Battle of Britain. Now they're selling them to you the punter, for a low low one million pounds or so. Some of the parts can no longer be made in the UK. The propellers, for instance, which were made of can you believe it wood, are made in Germany.

A Koranic scholar has written a book called Women in Islam, recently translated into Spanish, where there is a bit of a furore because it tells Muslims (the book is aimed at Muslims living in non-Muslim societies) how to disguise their wife-beating. For the record, wife-beating was legal under Franco.

Putting education somewhere in the top 3, or so

"When I was in college, there were certain words you couldn't say in front of a girl. Now you can say them but you can't say 'girl.'"
- Tom Lehrer, in the liner notes to his newly-released 3-CD set

Shrub's new web site lists his top 3 priorities. Number 3 is "Putting education first."

The big issue in the Meg Ryan-Dennis Quaid divorce case: who gets custody of their guru?

Chicago has kicked out of the school districts an abstinence program run by Moonies which preaches something called "absolute sex," which means sex with whoever the Unification Church assigns to you. Yeah, I'd have thought "absolute sex" would mean something more interesting too.

Sheriff Joe of Maricopa County, Arizona is at it again. This time his idea is putting web-cams at the county jail so that guys arrested for soliciting prostitutes can wave to their wives on the Internet.

I'm still waiting to hear whether the guy the Philadelphia police beat up actually had a gun or not. It can't be taking them this long to find a throw-down gun.

I'm also still waiting for Trent Lott to apologize to Hillary Clinton for suggesting that her alleged anti-Semitic statement was recent rather than in 1974, and was made because she's annoyed at not having locked up the Jewish vote in NY. This is the guy who was caught a few months ago lying about his involvement with the CCC, non? He made the statement on Fox
News, owned by Rupert Mudorch, which also owns the newspaper that broke it, and the publisher of the book in which the claim is made. Synergy!

I'm getting a little tired of being woken up at 7 in the morning by EBMUD, which is rebuilding the sewer system around here. I never know what obstacles I'll have to navigate in trying to leave the house. Last week I found they'd dug a huge trench in front of my driveway without knocking on doors to see if somebody might actually want to move their car first. And right now, there is a large truck parked right up to the driveway, just to make getting out of it as hazardous as possible; yup, I like my left turns like I like my women: blind and dangerous.

Probably a longer run-up than that joke required.

The Bermudan Parliament has relaxed the dress-code for MPs. They will now be able to wear Bermuda shorts.

Last week, the Middle East peace talks started with Barak and Arafat each offering to let the other one go through a door first. And then the news drop-out fell. Do you think they've spent the last week arguing about which one would go first?

In Afghanistan, in the middle of a football match, the religious police seized the visiting Pakistani team and shaved their heads for the crime of wearing shorts.

Hope everyone got a chance to read the article in today, Friday's NY Times on a death squad massacre in Colombia. Your tax dollars at work.

According to the US trade ambassador, on McNeil-Lehrer yesterday, the trade agreement with Vietnam will force them to implement the rule of law and democracy. You really have to have heard it to understand why Americans are considered arrogant assholes the world over.

Ok, Philadelphia PD: did he have a gun or didn't he?

Heinz is soon to produce green ketchup. Like the blue M & M's aren't bad enough.

5 years since the massacre at Srebrenica. 4,000 bodies, or parts of bodies, still waiting for someone to get off their ass and run tests to identify them.

Speaking of DNA, does anyone else think that the news that the only person whose execution Dubya ever delayed for DNA testing turned out to be guilty, supporting his ridiculous assertion that everyone executed in Texas is guilty guilty guilty? I smell a rat, and a large rat, since everything is bigger than Texas.

Israel has dropped plans to sell China weapons it can use to threaten the US to keep it from supporting Taiwan. Wasn't that nice? Evidently they were finally pissing off the very Congresscritters they expect to be able to extort a large bribe from in order to underwrite any peace agreement. Such a nice client state. We tell them to jump, they ask how much are you willing to pay.

The president of Montenegro declares that Yugoslavia no longer exists. And not before time, either.

There is a website, which you could look up, devoted to US currency issued by the states before the Civil War, specifically currency issued by Southern states with images of happy slaves.

A Russian rocket will fly parts to the International Space Station tomorrow, with a big ole ad for Pizza Hut on the side. The article didn't say in what language, but one assumes English since the price given was $1 million.

You ain't seen nothing yet

The Star Wars test fails, unfortunately for the wrong reason. Still, any failure is one for the good guys, especially since the Pentagon had already dummied down the test to the point where it was like a Larry King interview with George W. Bush. In this case, though, it was like Bush broke his leg in a freak chewing-gum-and-walking-at-the-same-time accident on the way to the interview.

The NY Times quotes Gore's "pet slogan" as "You ain't seen nothing yet." Two problems with that: 1) Gore can't say it without wincing at the bad grammar (no problem for Dubya, who a couple of days ago in a school said that literacy was the "basics" of education), 2) after 8 years of Clinton, we have in fact seen everything.

The World Bank rejects funding a Chinese project to settle 58,000 Chinese in Tibet.

OK, here's a story that took 50 years to come out: during the Korean War, there were regular aerial dogfights between Russian and American planes. The Russians wore Chinese uniforms and their planes had Chinese markings, and they shot down several hundred American and South Korean planes.

A week after Tony Blair floats an idiotic proposal for the police to be able to fine drunks on the spot and march them to an ATM in order to collect, his own 16-year old son is arrested, found in Leicester Square lying in his own vomit. Euan gave a false name (well, wouldn't you if your name was Euan) and address (11 Downing Street would be a bit of a giveaway).

A report is released on the plane crash of John John Kennedy. It says that he was the victim of "disorientation." He is a Kennedy, so I assume this means he thought he was the center of the universe.

The Yugoslav parliament changes the constitution to allow Milosevic to become president again. Montenegro is threatening not to recognize the change, so look for another war.

Pitcairn Island, settled by the mutineers of the HMS Bounty a couple of hundred years ago, and whose 44 inbred descendants have evidently not figured out that the coast is clear and they can just leave, is threatening to secede to France. Interestingly, the Times says that Tom Fletcher (yes, descended from who you think) speaks with an 18th century accent.

If you've ever been in a phone-box in London, or indeed have ever been looking for a hooker in London, you probably know that the boxes are festooned with cards advertising prostitutes. Well, London elementary school students have started collecting and trading them. Oh great, a Naughty Nellie rookie card! At least it's less pernicious than Pokemon.

Location location location

The NY Times reports that almost all firecrackers blown up today were made in China, as were most of the little American flags waved around. And to top it off, a Japanese man, a little thin Japanese man yet, has again won the hotdog-eating contest on Coney Island, setting a new record.

With no particular sense of irony, the British Parliament spent Independence Day debating the Queen's budget. One Labour MP noted that Buckingham Palace has 58 bedrooms and 78 bathrooms, and asked "How many palaces does the Royal Family need in order to discharge its functions to the state?" No comment.

In the UK, Texaco has a promotion in which people play some sort of game in order to find 5 sportscars which are buried 20 feet underground. Convertibles yet.

In the very same week as California's Insurance Commissioner, Hugo Z. Firefly, resigns from office for extorting money from insurance companies in order to make himself look good on tv, the governor decides that rather than reducing the car tax, the state will first charge the higher rate and then mail out a rebate check. Davis said that this was because otherwise people would not know they were getting a rebate. This little campaign stunt will cost $22 million.

The KGB is back to its old tricks, blackmailing people to make them inform. The latest victim was a student they were trying to get to spy on an opposition party for them. They got him expelled when he refused. They were threatening to have him sent to Chechnya, so presumably that's the next step. If anybody's up for a "Who lost China" witchhunt, I think it's not too early to start.

Clinton said of the human genome project, which let's face it none of you understand, "We have learned the language in which God created life." Pig Latin, I'm guessing.

A Conservative Jewish synagogue was bombed in Jerusalem this week. Congratulations on your understanding of the idiocy of the human species if you immediately guessed that it was done by Orthodox Jews.

Germany is thinking about destroying the bunkers and tank traps that constituted the Siegfried Line, which held off the American invasion of Germany for so long during World War II. Environmentalists want them preserved because badgers and other wildlife have been using them. Proposals to turn the bunkers into laundromats have not gotten off the ground.

Guatemalans tore themselves away from Sabado Gigante long enough to catch two televised executions by lethal injection.

In the last 6 months or so there has been a minor surge of stories about drugs in Africa. Gore was persuaded to u-turn and stop trying to jack up the price of AIDS drugs to Africa, some drug companies have lowered prices on various drugs. I must have mentioned that while there are all these great impotence drugs and whatnot being produced, no one is working on new drugs for tropical diseases, which are becoming increasingly resistant to
drugs. One of the stories is that the cheapest anti-malarial drug, whose name I still remembered a couple of days ago when I first meant to write about this, used to be manufactured rather cheaply on the African continent itself, and that some of the same politicians (more in Britain than here) who have been pointing out that for just a few cents a head you could save all sorts of people from death, made no objection when the plant that used to produce it in Africa was blown off the face of the earth by US missiles (in Sudan, of course).

The New York Times editorial page comes out in support of the two-party system. Evidently there is so much difference between Bush and Gore that Nader is just being a big selfish spoiler by exercising his right to run for president.

The next editorial is on the Mexican elections, and says that they will be an important test of the country's progress is democracy, while admitting that there is no difference between the two main candidates whatsoever. All hail democracy!

Elian is back in Cuba. Ha ha ha, your magic dolphins cannot save you now!

The Russian high school student, although offered a free scholarship at a university, although one specializing in the wrong field, still has not had her grades restore. Someone needs to parachute in some spin doctors. The local education authority report that marked down her grades included in its four pages 33 spelling and 97 punctuation errors, according to one newspaper.

The Supreme Court upholds Miranda not because it thinks Miranda is constitutionally required, but as part of a separation-of-powers pissing
match with Congress. Right decision, wrong reason.

The Supes also strike down Nebraska's partial birth abortion law, while telling it how to write one they will accept. So not the victory it has been portrayed as.

They also allow the Boy Scouts to exclude gays on the grounds that the courts have no right to examine an organization's claim that discrimination is part of its "expressive message."

That said, I have no objection to the Boy Scouts excluding gays, just so long as they get no government funding and their uniforms are banned from schools.

In South Africa, the parties which were bitter enemies under apartheid, the Nationalists and the Democrats, have merged to form a single party, to be the official opposition to the ANC. In other words, they have submerged all their political differences to form a party based solely on ethnicity. South Africa has finally joined the African mainstream.

School prayer got banned by the Supreme Court again. By the way,
wasn't that Texas law great, allowing the students to vote for a student to lead prayers before football games? Who would have thought that a school sponsoring a vote over whose religion was better would had any problem with the Supes?

Oxford University, which has been the target of government attacks as being elitist, will not give Tony Blair an honorary degree. The chancellor says that Blair has only a "second-class mind." Whether pissing off the PM is the action of a first-class mind remains an open question.

Although that Russian girl's grades remain marked down, she did get that camcorder she asked for. She will now have a permanent record of the day her life's dreams went down the toilet.

In chapter 839 of Hollywood's war against culture and sanity, we come to the planned remake of Alec Guiness's Kind Hearts and Coronets, with Will Smith and Robin Williams.

The Daily Show quoted Bill Gates as saying that whenever something gets too popular, the government tries to take it away--like slaves and Thalidomide, they added.

In 1972 Shrub was suspended from flying for having failed to take his medical. Coincidentally, this was the first year in which his medical would have included a drug test. That is one interpretation. The other is that he simply failed to do it like he failed to do any of the other duties he was supposed to perform in his last year in the National Guard, like show up.

When NATO made the ceasefire agreement with Serbia last year, it deleted a clause from the first draft requiring it to release Albanians held in prisons. 1,300 still remain. If I'm reading this right, last month 143 men who had been arrested at random were sentenced to long terms for the murder of a Serb policeman, which occurred after the arrest of some or all of them.

Check out the Chicago Tribune website for an analysis of all 131 (whoops, 132 since they published this morning) of Shrub's executions. Find out how many lawyers have been disbarred, how many jailhouse informants were used, how many lawyers presented no witnesses during the sentencing phase, including one who didn't know he was allowed to. Find out who "Dr. Death" is. And he is not the forensic scientist temporarily released from a psychiatric ward to testify, or the pathologist who made up autopsies. Thrill to the story of a confession coerced by El Paso police, who had Juarez police break into the home of the suspect's Mexican relatives and threaten to hook their genitals up to generators. (A harmless violation of his rights, according to the Texas Court of Criminal Appeal, which is all Republican and one of whose members made up most of his resume and was caught practicing law without a license in Florida, and all of that was known at time of his election and he was elected anyway and he has since been arrested for ticket-scalping). Very entertaining in the sickest possible way. And how about this for a closing argument: "Ladies and gentlemen," Pena began, "yesterday when I was talking to you all the lights went out. I don't know. Maybe that was a message. Today it rained. Maybe that was a message. Maybe the rain drops are the key issues, but that's what you have to decide today." "The system. Justice. I don't know. But that's what y'all are going to do."

Should be available for a while. Long but well worth it. If anyone can't access it, I'll pass on a copy on request.

Tony Blair is being criticized in embarrassing leaked policy memos for being out of touch, and was heckled last week at the Women's Institute. To prove that he is not out of touch, he is finally going to tackle the fox-hunting issue. According to a report released today, "There is a lack of firm scientific evidence about the effect on the welfare of a fox of being closely pursued, caught and killed above ground by hounds. We are satisfied, nevertheless, that this experience seriously compromises the welfare of the fox."

A twin was born in Britain today, 28 days after the other twin.

In order to place bets, I guess, on which inflated internet company is going to go under next, go to www.fuckedcompany.com. I'm telling you, there is a site for everything.

In another example of democracy at its finest, the other son of deceased President Assad of Syria has put in a claim to be his successor. This will last until someone finds a dictionary with a good definition of "president."

The Supreme Court ruled that a person who was told to wait 8 days with appendicitis cannot sue her HMO because her appendix burst, as this was what HMOs were designed to do, and what Congress intended.

Jehovah's Witnesses will no longer be excommunicated ("defellowshipped") for having blood transfusions, but they're still not supposed to.

Some of Barak's coalition partners are pulling out because their rabbis ordered them to.

Beaver College in Philadelphia is giving in after 147 years of tittering (so to speak), and changing its name, although I haven't heard what to. Clitoris University springs to mind. Well maybe springs isn't the best verb. Evidently some prospective students couldn't get to the college's web site (beaver.edu) because of censorship software.

addendum

The state psychologist in Texas who told the jury that Hispanics are dangerous and should be put to death did the same in other trials. See the Sunday NY Times article on the Texas lawyer who represented more people who have been executed than any other lawyer in the US, in between drinks, and how in at least one case he put up no witnesses, including perfectly good alibi witnesses he had been too busy even to interview, and didn't cross-examine the only state witness.

I've been meaning to say this for two weeks, but it seems that Austria's neo-fascist Freedom Party has always been heavily subsidized by Libya.

That idiot judge in Alabama who insists on posting the Ten Commandments in his court, no doubt in the original Hebrew, is going to be the next chief justice of the Supreme Court there.

The Supreme Court vacated another Texas death sentence, in which the jury was told by the prosecutor, with no objection from the defense lawyer, that Hispanics are inherently dangerous, as is shown by their over-representation in the prison system.

If more proof were needed of the utter contempt politicians feel for the intelligence of the electorate, Congress passed a repeal of inheritance taxes, that fall on the richest 2% of the population, in an election year. I don't know what's worse, that or Dubya's sudden conversion to such popular issues as air pollution and insurance, when his record as governor indicates no such prior interest, meaning that even though he planned to run for president, he didn't feel obligated to do anything, as opposed to making speeches during the election year.

Prince William of Great Britain, Northern Island, Gibraltar and the Falklands, is about to turn 18. Let the media feeding frenzy
begin. Charles has shut the queen out of contact with the prince, in a successful effort to get her to cave and meet Camilla. Philip made a totally gratuitous defense of genetically-modified foods, precisely in order to annoy his son. The dysfunction goes on. Rather surprisingly, I read that Charles was actually present at the birth of William. Typically, Diana thought that he was paying too much attention to the baby, and not enough to her. Does anyone else see a parallel between Diana and Marysleysis, or however you spell it?

Chernobyl is finally to close down. At the employees' farewell party, all beer will have two heads.

The Justice Dept. says that there was no conspiracy in the Martin Luther King assassination. So that's all right then.

The UN is censoring "hate speech" in the Kosovan media.

NY Times headline: Democrats Try to Redefine Gore in Ad Blitz. As a mammal?

An Egyptian court says you can't divorce your wife (I divorce you I divorce you I divorce you) by e-mail.

Further raising the question of just how committed to democracy Japan is, after all those Shintoist statements by the prime minister, it seems that 1/4 of the seats in Parliament were inherited, some in their 3rd generation since the war. And this has been going on for a while. Why didn't I hear of this before?

The media in China are not allowed to use the name of the new Taiwanese president.

The Antiques Roadshow (British version) this week evaluated what turned out to be stolen silverware (worth #20,000).

I haven't looked at it yet, but the site charity.artificial.com evidently rates the panhandling techniques of actual homeless people. The mind boggles.

Clinton offers to extend the Star Wars umbrella over civilized countries, defined as "if you have to ask, you're not."

My cat decided I wasn't eating enough and brought me a bird. The first time that's ever happened, but not from want of trying. Any creature stupid enough to get caught by Turquoise does not deserve to be in the gene pool.

In a man-bites-dog story, an African country, Benin, has apologized to the US for the slave trade. This is actually legitimate, since the Dahomean state (as it was then) based its wealth on raiding parties into the interior, which captured slaves from other states and sold them on. It was also known for its king having a bodyguard composed entirely of women. Topless women, if I'm not very much mistaken.

Compassionate conservatism, Shrub-style: it is compassionate to grant a stay of execution in order to run DNA tests. It is conservative to sweat the guy until 18 minutes before the scheduled execution.

Israel has pulled out of Lebanon. After Kosovo and Chechnya, it has decided that occupying armies are just so '80s; aerial bombardment is the new black. The head of the South Lebanese Army, which took all of 1.3 seconds to disintegrate after its masters left, said that he had thought they were allies and has now realized that Israel only cares about itself. I couldn't stop laughing for five minutes after I read that.

A Texas death-row inmate tried to sell seats to his execution on eBay, until he was caught at it. Oddly enough, no one was buying.

A "black box" has been developed for guns, in the first instance police guns, that will tell when and where it was shot and at what angle.

The Israeli Supreme Court abolishes the law against women reading from the Torah at the Wailing Wall, formerly subject to 6 mos in prison.

A committee of the Arkansas Supreme Court votes to disbar Clinton. I guess it was a bad decision to have slept with all of their wives.

John Gielgud is dead at only 96. Dammit, he was still working, he was too young to die! It'll be interesting to see if the NY Times obit mentions that he was gay. Gielgud was known for gaffes, which may or may not have been. Seated next to the prime minister 50 years ago at a dinner, his opening conversational gambit was, "Where are you living now?" If history records Attlee's answer, I haven't seen it. Similarly, he once asked
Christopher Reeve what he was currently working on. Reeve was at a studio in London, and was wearing a red cape and a blue shirt with a big S on it. According to the Times obit, "If marble could speak, it would have sounded like Gielgud."

And if any of you only remember him from Arthur, you should be ashamed of yourselves.

One of those new regional leaders in Russia was the last member of the KGB to make an arrest for political crimes, in 1988.

Tony Blair's wife Cherie Booth has a baby. For those betting on "Leo," collect at once (the British will bet on anything). It seems that not only was Cherie's father an actor on the British prototype for All in the Family (I like to think playing Meathead, but I've never checked on this), but there were several other actors named Booth in her family tree, one of whom made a bit of a name for himself in 1865.

OK, so I revealed here a month or so back that the racial epithet used by whatever Texas official that was, was "porch monkeys" (which Kevin would really like to know to what that term refers) (that was terrible English, wasn't it?). Anyway, it seems that as a kid, Barbara Bush washed Dubya's mouth out with soap for using some racial epithet. Anyone care to find out which one?

In Britain, an animal rights group attacked a meat factory today, firebombing ten lorries. In non-animal rights circles, we call that a "barbeque."

The ears that wear the crown

Prince Charles was speaking out this week against genetically modified foods. The victim of a botched genetics experiment himself, Charles said "And Monsanto is developing these huge ears of corn. What, what's everyone laughing about?"

13 members of the House voted for increased fuel efficiency standards for cars & SUVs, three hundred and some odd for freezing them, the lop-sidedness of the vote telling you something about how the guardians of our collective interest are no smarter than those acting from self-interest. As to vehicle safety, well, if you could buy a vehicle that increased the likelihood of having an accident in which you killed someone else ten-fold, while reducing the likelihood of death to your own children to zero, you might well consider that to be in your own interests, but the collective interests of society should compel government to stop you doing it. This is why we have a government. Incidentally, when you see the statistics about SUVs hitting smaller cars, you never see stats about what happens when SUVs hit each other--which would be a good start, if you ask me.

Can you tell I was nearly side-swiped yesterday?

Clinton is to forego his plans to address the nation on China trade tomorrow, realizing it would be easier just to bribe members of Congress.

The Sunday Times says that Israel started tapping Clinton's e-mail in 1998. Didn't Ken Starr say something along those lines too?

I mentioned a few days ago that Putin had organized Russia into 7 new regions. He has appointed the heads of those regions, 5 of whom are generals from the Chechen wars or KGB people, at least one famous for his treatment of dissidents. Bad treatment, that is.

Best book title of the day: Speak Clearly Into the Chandelier: Cultural Politics Between Britain and Russia, 1973-2000.

Washington Post headline: "Fire Ruined 5 Historical A-Bomb Buildings".

In Britain, a "Champion for Older Persons" has been named, to advocate whatever for people over 50. He is, of course, 46, which makes him too young, he claims, to know why everyone is now referring to him as Champion the Wonder Horse.

So the IRA finally agrees, not to decommission its arms, but to put them beyond use, subject to inspections. It is the inspections bit that I don't think they've quite thought through. Since they are not giving up their arms, the inspectors must keep the locations secret. Now imagine a black South African, Cyril Ramaphosa, and the former president of Finland wandering around Ireland trying to look inconspicuous.

Vladimir Putin, who we still know very little about and so don't pay enough attention to, has just given his plan to tackle the problem of centrifugal forces. He is dividing the country into 7 regional districts, which precisely overlap with the military districts, with the same headquarters. Not very subtle, really.

The 100th birthday of the Queen Mum in August will be the first royal occasion to sell seats to corporate sponsors. Next they'll be putting Pepsi ads on her oversized hats.

The Pakistani Supreme Court says that last year's coup was legal because the government was corrupt. I therefore feel legally justified in asserting that the current military government is corrupt and that I am now the King of Pakistan.

Los Alamos is on fire. The people of Hiroshima must be laughing their asses off.

A casino in Coachella Valley, wherever that might be (California is all I know, so it's obviously a reservation) has bought a defibrilator.

Chuck Quackenbush, the state's insurance commissioner, had a secret fund of nearly $2 million to fund tv commercials featuring Chuck Quackenbush right before his last election. One said that his department had a billion to return to Californians. He was referring to the assets of 86 failed insurance companies. The filing deadline had expired for 84 of them.

Sierra Leonean rebels are threatening to skin UN hostages alive. And they could do it, too.

Maureen Dowd describes Guliani as a charismatic, drink-the-Kool-Aid kind of leader.

A sumo wrestler is disqualified after his loin cloth falls off. Evidently that's against the rules.

In 1958 the Air Force investigated the possibility, since it was so far behind in the space race, of exploding a nuclear weapon on the moon. On the dark side, with the sun behind it, so that the mushroom cloud (would there be a mushroom cloud in a vacuum? Somehow I doubt it, but the reporter wasn't up on his physics) would be visible from earth. It would also have been a serious plastic surgery job on the Man in the Moon.

Speaking of which, there is an operation to stop blushing. Evidently it's a serious problem for some folks. By the way, I forget what they're calling it, but shyness seems to be the big new psychiatric growth market. You may have seen ads for drugs for this on tv. Anyway, stopping the flow of blood to the cheeks is not as easy as it sounds. It's actually controlled by something or other near the lungs, so this is major abdominal surgery.

A story about someone who collects collective nouns. In case you were wondering, which you weren't: a smuck of jellyfish, a grist of bees, a bale of turtles, a siege of herons.

It's a girl! India has its 1 billionth Indian-type person born today. Indian authorities say they can't imagine how their population keeps growing so rapidly. The girl, whose name I can't remember offhand, but it means faith in Hindi, was born this morning. Her engagement was announced this afternoon.

A town in Cornwall, drawing up a map to hand out to all the tourists, found out that one of its roads was called Cowshit Lane. They are deciding whether to include that on the map.

A long piece in the Friday Washington Post on Texas and the death penalty (hey hey GWB, how many kids did you kill today? [so it doesn't rhyme, shoot me, but not in Texas if you know what's good for you] Why, one, actually). That lawyer who kept falling asleep during trials? 12 of his clients have been executed.

The US Air Force tried to keep secret a report that says that in Kosovo NATO only hit 14 Serb tanks, while claiming 120, 18 armored personnel carriers, not 220, 20 artillery pieces not 450. This won't be a secret to you people, since I said the same thing last June. Newsweek got it this week.

NY Times Headline: Pilot's Rapid Descent Cited in Osprey Crash. That's pretty much the definition of a crash, isn't it?

The US plans to seek the death penalty for the embassy bombings in 1998 in Nairobi and Dar es Salaam, although I'm pretty sure neither of those places were in the US. By the way, I wonder how the Sudanese pharmaceutical industry is recovering. The US is never going to admit it was wrong on that one, is it?

Speaking of never admitting you're wrong, Salon has a piece on a probably innocent person Texas is planning to execute next month. He was convicted on a) the fact that he's an asshole in general, b) an eye-witness who the police corrupted by showing a photo alone before they put it in a photo array, c) his alleged fellow-murderers. The fun part of the article is the way the latter kept having to change their testimony, under the direction of the police, when it was simply wrong. That car was proven to
be up on blocks the night of the murder? Well, then it must have been this other car. I said she was screaming but she was found with a gag on her mouth? Um, he must have gagged her after she was dead. And so on.

One detail: the Texas Parole and Pardons Board never actually meets, hold investigations, even has conference calls. They just rubber stamp every execution.

Finally, a report says that cockroaches and other bugs feel pain. The scientists seem to think this will change the way people deal with insects. They are wrong.

San Francisco bans discrimination against fat people, although "sizeism" probably includes people of other sizes and shapes as well. I predict a really tangled lawsuit when a fat person accidentally sits on a midget.

An op-ed piece in the Times notes that while Dubya brags about having ended social promotion, the kids it affects are now in kindergarten. By the way, isn't "social promotion" the perfect term to describe Dubya's whole career to date?

The Zimbabwe attacks on white farmers look like spreading to Kenya.

Had it not been for a sarcastic piece in The Onion, "NPR Listener
Concerned About Sierra Leone," I might have said something here about Sierra Leone, where UN peacekeepers, in another stunning demonstration of competence, today ran out of bullets.

From the table of contents page to the British news section of the London Times:

[26]Impotence 'doctor' is jailed for deception
Potentially dangerous drugs sold to vulnerable clients at inflated
prices

Inflated...prices. Talk about adding insult to injury, huh?

Zimbabwe just imported 21,000 AK-47s for distribution to the police and squatters. This should be a fun election.

The Italian police, living up to their reputation for competence, have failed to capture an escaped prisoner after 46 days. The prison is on an island 1 mile square, and he hasn't left it.

Britain is celebrating a little rock slide in Dover, which means that France is now officially 60 feet further away.

Bumper sticker: Jesus is Coming--Look Busy.

The French Foreign Legion is actively recruiting gays. Make of that what you will.

A nine-year old boy who is the leader of a children's peace group in Colombia goes on tv to call for peace. The next day he is kidnapped. A simple "no" would have sufficed.

At a witches' festival in the Czech Republic, some participants accidentally sort of set themselves on fire, just showing again that witches and bonfires don't go together that well.

Chutzpah of the week award: a woman sends her lover off to pretend to be her husband so that his insurance will cover impotence treatment.

A cute little thing in the Times says that Jesse Helms quietly snuck a provision into an unrelated bill a while back that allows the Senate rather than the president to decide if Russia has inherited the Soviet role in the ABM Treaty, so that at any time the Senate could simply annul it.

In California news with great entertainment value: 1) Willie Brown made a deal with the SF Examiner for editorial support if he let them buy the Chronicle without opposition, proving what we've always thought about the morals of both the Examiner and Willie Brown. 2) The flaming wreck that is the career of Chuck Quackenbush, the former next-Republican governor.

That voodoo that you do so well

I didn't think I'd be returning to this subject so quickly: So New York police ram a plunger up a Haitian's butt, and then the mayor gets prostate cancer. And somewhere in Port au Prince there's a little doll of Rudy with a toothpick shoved up its backside.

Someone was going to make that connection sooner or later, but I thought I'd go that extra step and actually say it out loud.

You can now be gay in Vermont or smoke marijuana in Hawaii. Plan your vacations accordingly.

So whatever happened to Japan's Prime Minister Obuchi, who is on life support except they haven't said a word about his condition in a month? Well, the wife would like to pull the plug, but the ruling party is looking for a badly needed sympathy vote. Look for him to pass into the great beyond just a little bit before the next election.

First I heard of it, but evidently the British had a Jewish Brigade during the Second World War. Est. in 1944, it consisted of Jews from Palestine. After the war ended, they became a death squad, tracking down and executing Germans, while the British turned a blind eye. The Brigade was disbanded in 1946, and they went back to become generals in the Israeli army.

A resort in the Costa del Sol (Spain) is turning off its beach lights between 1 and 2 a.m. so that people can have sex on the beach. Happy hour, they're calling it. So plan your vacations accordingly.

=================================================================

Another competition, this one from the New Statesman, modern proverbs:

To err is human, to forgive does not come within the parameters of best management practice.

It's a wise hacker that knows his victim's password.

A problem solved means enemies for life.

He who hesitates causes road rage. [Mine actually; I've altered one that isn't as good]

Let sleeping teenagers lie.

The other man's cappuccino is always more frothy.

A friend in need is an acquaintance.

If at first you don't succeed, reboot.

Better to phone a friend than ask the audience.

A bird in the hand is probably sexual harassment.

It's a long road that has no McDonald's.

A phone is only as mobile as its user.

When the mat's away, the mouse has problems.

The president of the United States was woken up to be told of the raid in Miami. Priorities.

The South Carolina Legislature has voted to stop raising the Confederate flag on the capitol dome. In future, when getting lucky, they will instead put a sock on the capitol building's door knob.

In Britain, a garden was stolen today. Shrubs, cement ornaments, furniture, sundial, pond with 17 fish. No gnomes.

If you want to worry about a six-year old snatched by the authorities, spare a thought for the Panchen Lama, whose 11th birthday today was. He has not been seen in five years, and is being reeducated, imprisoned like the Dauphin Louis XVII, slowly going crazy imprisoned in his own filth, or is already dead.

A lawyer in LA is suing the phone company for listing her under "Reptiles" in the phone book.

Soon, blacks can take a DNA test and find out where in Africa their ancestors were taken from.

Mayor Benito Guiliani called the INS agents who took Elian "storm
troopers." He added, "But Cubans are nothing like Haitians, right? Cause we don't want to insert a plunger up the wrong anus."

Speaking of people confused about their Nazi forebears, the Germans (possibly just the Berlin regional government) have proposed that dangerous dogs be identified by having to wear, and I am not making this up, a yellow star.

Some of the folks in that Miami neighborhood were earning as much as $300 a day renting out parking spaces and so forth to camera crews.

The Supreme Court ruled that a conviction can't be overruled on grounds of inadequate counsel if the defendant has missed the filing deadline at the local level. I'm guessing that the reason they'd miss that deadline is, what, inadequate counsel?

The French dauphin's remains have been DNA checked, and it was indeed him, which means that he was not saved from the revolutionaries at the last minute by the Scarlet Pimpernel. Damn you, television, you have lied to me again!

The Chinese, in one of their increasingly silly attempts to get pandas to mate, are showing them films. Panda porn.

People are now taking sick people to Elian's house so that he can heal them. I say, when we send him back to Cuba, let's make him walk.

Murders in the news today: a guy in an Arizona old age home after a dispute about garden shrub height. The second was only an attempted murder, I now remember. A husband and wife agreed to quit smoking together. He did, she didn't, he got really pissed off and stabbed her in the neck. He went into prison the day after their 31st wedding anniversary, which I'm guessing was a fairly tense affair.

One of those Indian holy men--or is it Indian circus freaks, I can never tell the difference?--bathed in 55 pounds of boiling butter and came out completely unharmed. The Daily Telegraph ran this story under the headline "I Can't Believe It's Not Burning".

Early in the Korean War, the South Koreans executed at least 2,000 political prisoners, and the Americans knew about it, even watched. And successfully kept it secret 50 years.

I don't think I've mentioned this, but the Germans have long had stories that the Americans and British machine-gunned survivors escaping from the Dresden fire-storm. A German historian has disproved this, but the Germans, some of whom claim to remember being shot at, are not convinced.

Janet Reno is said to be looking for the perfect time to transfer custody of Elian. She has a team of experts trying to figure out when he won't be cute any more.

Yesterday I made that joke about National Secretary's Day before seeing a NY Times story that said that not only are Easter & Good Friday this week, but also anniversary of the Bay of Pigs (39 today!), the Branch Davidian massacre, Ruby Ridge if I'm not mistaken, the Oklahoma City bombing, and Columbine.

The Bush campaign boasted that his wonderful job on education in Texas was praised by none other than "Al Gore's Secretary of Education, Dr. Bill Riley." This is evidently one of those "see how many mistakes you can spot" tests. Um, three.

Al Gore revealed that as a child he learned how to hypnotize a chicken. This would explain a lot.

Just in case you thought the Russians were hiding some of the soldiers killed in the Chechen war, they buried 101 today. I don't think I mentioned it last week, but the Times ran the most disgusting story of the week, which said... oh, before I forget this little detail, the 101 were killed in the 1994-6 Chechen war, not the current one. Which said that there were hundreds of these bodies kept in railway cars, some on military bases, some evidently in Chechnya, from the earlier war. Refrigerated cars, but the refrigeration cut out a couple of years ago. They're supposed to do DNA tests or do something to identify the bodies, but of course haven't. I'll stop here cause I just had dinner and I'm beginning to disgust myself.

Thabo Mbeki, who if you've forgotten is the president of South Africa, has declared that he is looking for an African approach to solving AIDS. This after last year's scandal when the government refused to pay for a fairly cheap drug that would have prevented or at least made less likely the transmission of HIV from pregnant mothers to feti. Now he's throwing in his lot with the idiots who insist HIV has nothing to do with AIDS. If you're thinking he got this off the Internet, you're right.

Israel wants legislation to legalize hostage-taking. I don't understand those people.

Not to suggest that racism ever went away, but it really does look like racism has become the new ideology. And unlike free-market capitalism, democracy and communism, it never goes out of style. The Italian government just fell on an upsurge of anti-immigrant sentiment. William Hauge, in a speech the Telegraph claims is the most important of his leadership, says that asylum-seekers should be interned. Mugabe says that whites are the enemies of the nation, and he says it after two are murdered. Even Mbeki's speech on Western medicine and AIDS comes across pretty racist, and South Africa is considering adopting the sort of land distribution that's doing Mugabe's popularity so much good over the border. And Belgium is about to deport 1,500 Slovak gypsies (I knew I had another example).

The Vatican is revising the rules for exorcisms, unchanged since 1614 (did you know the pope performed an exorcism himself, as pope in 1982?). In the future, the "evil eye" does not count.

Congressional historians are trying to construct an oral history of the Lewinsky matter. The London Times suggests that they must have no sense of irony.

Amazingly enough, there was no Elian news today. How will we fill the empty hours? A couple of days ago the Miami Gonzalezes said that he shouldn't be returned this week because it was Easter. They also noted that next week there was National Secretary's Day...

Gore's new issue: a ban on guns in churches. Well, it's no sillier than Bush pretending to care about the environment and health care. There is an interesting review of the new bio of Gore by Jacob Weisberg (the review, not the book) in Slate.

A few weeks ago I commented that any time Clinton travels, in this case to South Asia, they expel beggars, arrest dissidents, close off entire cities and ban all demonstrations. Well, Clinton himself has admitted that his visit was the cause of the massacre of Kashmirs. He didn't sound especially worried about that, either.

Word to be used as often as possible: globaloney, to describe the nonsense about how globalization is the future and anyone who doesn't spread their legs for the multi-nationals is a raving luddite.

The most expensive Congressional campaign is expected to be that of Clinton prosecutor James Rogan, despite the fact that he's running against Adam "Just make the deal, Jack" Schiff.

The Clinton administration, in responding to the many subpoenas, evidently didn't go through back up hard drives. Evidently subpoenas were just suggestions, requests that they find any information that didn't involve too much work on their part.

Visiting Britain, where he got to sip tea with the Queen, Vladimir Putin, sticking one blood-soaked pinkie out in the approved manner, said that Russia had been left to fight alone in its struggle against Islamic fundamentalist international terrorism. Isn't that what the Serbs always say?

Brazil just checked by satellite, and 70 schools the state was funding in the deepest Amazon turned out not to exist. Others were over the border in Peru or Bolivia.

I was reading that a military museum in Scotland is getting a new exhibit, one of those mythical Bibles-that-stopped-a-bullet. The guy involved, a WW I soldier, lived another 74 years. And probably told the story several thousand times.

Several days ago, the papers all reported that a Dubya appointee to the Commission on Law Enforcement Standards in Texas denied that a certain racial epithet was a racial epithet. Unfortunately, the papers didn't report the actual racial epithet, in one of those PC moments that no one can be proud of. I can now report that the actual term was "porch monkeys".

In an effort to save giant pandas from extinction, they will be given Viagra, and I intend to make no joke about this.

As the Washington Post points out, Ralph Reed, the Christian Coalition weasel turned lobbyist, has expressed regret for doing exactly what Microsoft hired him to do, lobby politicians, including the one he also happened to have been hired by.

Quote of the week: Rep. Joseph Pitts (R-Penn.) said that amendments to the bill to ban "partial-birth" abortions would allow a woman "having a bad day" to get an abortion.

As I said, I hate to be supporting the white landowners in Zimbabwe, but there it is. Incidentally, an opposition leader says that if he wins the next elections, he will seize the farms which have been seized by Mugabe cronies. This could be fun, but I don't foresee a lot of planting getting done. Which is too bad, since the banking system is dependent on mortgages paid by white farmers and the economy on farm exports.

Florida is doing something or other to make it possible to harvest organs from those it executes. I assume with their consent, although you never know in Florida.

Just because Nawaz Sharif's wife declared her intention to lead his party after his conviction does not, as it turns out, mean that the party has to accept her as its leader. And it didn't.

If Germans were not all comfortable with the Christian Democratic Union being run by a cripple, they surely won't be happy with the female Easterner they just replaced him with. Don't bother learning her name, she will never run the country, being about as electable in the modern Germany as someone named Seymour Lipschitz.

London Times:

Gnomes released into wild
FROM ADAM SAGE IN PARIS

A SINISTER threat returned to haunt suburban France yesterday when the infamous Garden Gnome Liberation Front (GLF) claimed its most daring exploit to date.

In a statement, the Paris branch said that it had "freed" 20 of the 2,000 gnomes on display at an exhibition in the Bagatelle Park on the outskirts on the French capital.

A GLF statement said: "We want to end the ridicule to which these garden gnomes are subjected. We want to return them to their natural habitat by releasing them into the forests they should never have left."

The theft came more than two years after French justice dismantled a movement that began as a student joke but turned into a wide-ranging social trend that forced home-owners to buy guard dogs and lock up their gnomes at night.

On that occasion, in November 1997, three men were given suspended prison sentences and a fourth lost his driving licence.

Some must-reads in the Friday Washington Post (which can be accessed at least a day or two later, if need be). In the world section, there's a story about massacres of Vietnamese civilians during the Vietnam War, by, of all people, South Korean troops. And a story about Quebec, which I've mentioned before, about how all the orphanages turned into insane asylums because there was more federal money in it if they were, and the nuns (all social services in Quebec being run by the Catholic Church, which from all reports was represented in Quebec entirely by paedophiles and sadists) started treating these perfectly normal orphans and illegitimate children like mental patients, drugging them and electro shock and so on. In the national section of the Post, there's a long but entertaining story about St. Elian of Little Havana and exile politics, with guest appearances by famous Cubans like one of Nixon's Plumbers. No one mentioned Ricky Ricardo, though. Hey, isn't it about time Bush or Gore named Elian as his running mate?

In other horror stories, Israel finally released one of its Lebanese hostages, this one after 10 years (and 4 years held by the Lebanese Christian militias before that). The only country in the world in which torture is a recognized aspect of the judicial process and hostage-taking is announced government policy. I saw Netanyahu a few days ago in an interview with Israeli tv, telling improbable stories about how he happened to have in his possession all these expensive gifts given to the nation of Israel by foreign leaders.

Thus proving that all politicians are criminals. More cases in point: the Republican who asked Bill Gates, now touring D.C. (the Washington he owns only half of) drumming up support, why Microsoft hadn't given more money to Republicans. It hardly gets more blatant, unless you count Japan, which has chosen as its new prime minister one of the thieves in the Recruit scandal a little over a decade ago, one who walked away with a million dollars in ill-gotten gains. And Helmut Kohl, now trying to suppress Stasi tapes of him taking bribes as long ago as the mid-70s.

The good news: Tennessee did not execute anyone this week, making it still the only Southern state not to have executed anyone recently. One of the targets was a man who was involved in a shoot-out with police, although it's pretty damn clear that the cop who was killed was actually shot by another cop. By the way, if and when Pennsylvania gets around to executing Mumia, remind me to tell you what I know about that case; no one story ever includes all the sordid details, of which there are a great many.

Today's NY Times had an article about consultants who help school districts make Medicaid claims (some of them semi-fraudulent) in exchange for 20% of the rake-off.

The street betting in Pakistan on deposed Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif getting the death penalty tomorrow is 4:1. His wife is already threatening to take his place. We've seen a lot of these Asian widows/daughters taking over from dead male relatives, but this may be the first time it's been suggested before the event.

I haven't decided yet how I should feel about the situation in Zimbabwe, where Mugabe is encouraging squatters to terrorize white farm owners into giving up their land. Put that way it sounds clear enough, and ex-colonialists or not, some of these families have no doubt been there since most of our ancestors came to America, but they do own a rather huge percentage of the good farmland. If the government seizes it, as Mugabe failed to get approved in a referendum just a month or two ago, it will all go to Mugabe's friends where it will be left to rot. Still, it's hard to have to side with the imperialists. Britain is making plans to evacuate the country of whites, and Mugabe keeps calling them gay, today specifically naming junior foreign office minister (something like an assistant secretary of state in the US) Peter Hain of being gay, which I'm pretty sure he's not. Hain earlier in his life was an anti-apartheid activist forced out of South Africa, where he was born (I should probably say that he's white).

In theatre news, Kathleen Turner appears naked in a production of a stage version of The Graduate.

Dubya thanked Kansas for voting for him in the primary yesterday, except there was no primary yesterday: it was cancelled in February.

The Wall Street Journal points out that while Gore piped up on the issue of Elian Gonzales, he won't express an opinion on the fate of Microsoft. I think a truly Solomonic decision would involve splitting up Elian and sending Bill Gates to Cuba.

A mother went to testify to the character of her 18-year old son, just convicted of murder in North Carolina. Except they stopped her at the door for being 3 times over the legal limit.

The Project Censored report is out. You can find it in this week's Bay Guardian and no doubt on its own site. Some of the top censored stories you heard from me, on Kosovo and such. They mention the relationship between multinational companies and 3rd World violence, a recent theme of mine. The one story that was new to me said that the American Cancer Society not only spends most of its money on its own bureaucracy but also won't say anything about the actual chemical causes of some cancers and that it sides with drug companies. Another story is about the neglect of research into drugs for tropical diseases like malaria.

Dubya: "Reading is the basics for all learning."

Last week Dubya vowed to remove the federal "cuff links" from local schools.

Maine passes a law renaming every place with "squaw" in the name.

From one of the countries responsible for the $1.79 it cost for each gallon of gas I put in my car today: the United Arab Emirates sentences a woman to four months imprisonment because she cast a spell on her husband and sister-in-law, causing them to be possessed by a demon. The court appointed a committee of religious scholars to hear the demon's testimony.

Really.

A German general says that the Serbian "plan" to ethnically cleanse Kosovo was pretty much a fake. Those maps we saw as proof last April were drawn up by Germans, and the name of it, Operation Horseshoe, wasn't even rendered correctly, as the Germans evidently didn't know that the word horseshoe is slightly different in Croatian than in Serbian, and used the former.

The Scottish police, who already take DNA samples of prisoners convicted of rape and burglary and such, are now taking them from those convicted of racial offences. There's something rather ironic about DNA being used in this way.

The queen was in Australia this week. At one pre-school, a three-year old boy who hadn't had the benefits of the months of training in how to treat a monarch, repeatedly asked her "What's your name?" She failed to answer. If she had, I have no idea what she would have called herself. I'm Liz; Mrs Windsor; I'm the fucking queen, that's who I am....

Courtesy of the NY Times and the US Supreme Court, the exact description of one part of the body which is supposed to be covered in strip clubs in a Florida county (they were less forthcoming about the legal description of a nipple):

"The area at the rear of the human body (sometimes referred to as the glutaeus maximus) which lies between two imaginary lines running parallel to the ground when a person is standing, the first or top of such line being one-half inch below the top of the vertical cleavage of the nates (i.e., the prominence formed by the muscles running from the back of the hip to the back of the leg) and the second or bottom line being one-half inch above the lowest point of the curvature of the fleshy protuberance (sometimes referred to as the gluteal fold), and between two imaginary lines, one on each side of the body (the 'outside lines'), which outside lines are perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and which perpendicular outside lines pass through the outermost point(s) at which each nate meets the outer side of each leg.

"Nothwithstanding the above, buttocks shall not include the leg, the hamstring muscle below the gluteal fold, the tensor fasciae latae muscle or any of the above-described portion of the human body that is between either the left inside perpendicular line and the left outside perpendicular line or the right inside perpendicular line and the right outside perpendicular line. For the purpose of the previous sentence the left inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary line on the left side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is one-third the distance from the anus to the left outside line, and the right inside perpendicular line shall be an imaginary line on the right side of the anus that is perpendicular to the ground and to the horizontal lines described above and that is one-third of the distance from the anus to the right outside line. (The above description can generally be described as covering one-third of the buttocks centered over the cleavage for the length of the cleavage.)"

The Uganda cult death toll has beaten out Jonestown, although it is still well below the Crusades. There are still several thousand people unaccounted for.

Since the mayor of Miami and the mayor of Dade County (I know, that doesn't make sense, but that's how I remember his title) have effectively seceded from the union, I say that there is a simple solution to the Elian Gonzales issue: give Miami to Cuba.

----------------------------------------
New York Mag competition 3/27/00

Epitaphs:

It's a Plot--Oliver Stone

Afterthought--Rene Descartes

Not to be--Hamlet

So what's the deal with tombstones?--Jerry Seinfeld

I am dead. Dead I am.--Dr. Suess

Forest Lawn 90068--Tori Spelling

William H. Gates has performed an illegal operation and been shut down.

George Washington. Born: the Fourth Monday in February. Died: December 14, 1799

R.I.P.E. --Dan Quayle

If I'm not entombed / You must exhume--Johnnie Cochran

Celebrity
9:45 p.m.-10 p.m. --Andy Warhol

For a horrifying look at Sweden's 1935-75 sterilization campaign, using laws copied from the Nazis, see the Friday London Times.

Canada may repeal a 1756 proclamation offering a bounty for Indian scalps in Nova Scotia.

Oslo, Norway will allow Muslims to broadcast the call the prayer, and will allow atheists using megaphones to proclaim "God does not exist!"

The same Shas party rabbi who's been calling for the death of the Israeli education minister last year accused Supreme Court judges of having had sex with menstruating women. No word on how he knows this.

DNA tests say that there is no trace of Neanderthals in Homo sap.

I was quite excited for a minute until the story turned out so much less interesting than I'd hoped. The first case of sexual harassment in space. Except it wasn't, it was on the ground in a reproduction of the Mir space station, in which astronauts were stuck for 110 days. Evidently they had a millennium party that got a bit out of hand and one of the Russians assaulted a Quebecer. The Russians are saying it's a cultural difference, that for the Russians a kiss on the lips is just like a kiss on the cheek. She's saying, he stuck his fucking tongue down my throat. Still, it would have been a real story if it had happened in space.

If the Russians aren't big on political correctness, how 'bout them Swedes, who just introduced a maternity military uniform for pregnant officers.

After all that talk about Chile being allowed to try Pinochet themselves, Congress passed a law giving former presidents complete immunity from prosecution.

Clintonism of the week: This is from the Bloody Sunday inquiry in Britain. General Robert Ford says of his leaked 1972 memo, "The suggestion to shoot a few leaders was not a suggestion to kill them."

The House of Lords has just had defibrilators installed.

So 550+ Ugandans are murdered by cult leaders who promptly disappear with their money and it barely even makes the papers. You really have to wonder.

You heard it here first: Jorg Haidar is gay!

I should feel guilty about knowing and enjoying the fact that this particular "charge" is what could really damage the fascist asshole, but I don't.

The new status symbol among billionaires is evidently sleep. 8, 9 hours a night.

David Trimble wins the challenge to his leadership of the Ulster Unionist Party, but they put a new condition on re-entry into a power-sharing executive for Northern Ireland: the Royal Ulster Constabulary, long a symbol of occupation, remain that symbol by retaining its name and the crown on its insignia and so forth. An entirely symbolic measure is to be the make-or-break condition for peace in the North. These people are idiots. On the other hand, last I heard they were still looking for a new new name for the RUC when Northern Ireland Police Service was shot down for what should be obvious reasons.

The British military has a new toy: a £25,000 pound sniper rifle capable of taking out a tank.

Speaking of toys: the Israelis plan to safeguard their new border if they hand back the Golan Heights by the use of nuclear landmines.

In 1972, 3 members of Black September were captured at the Munich Olympics. I'm a little unclear on the details, even after reading the Observer's story twice (www.newsunlimited.co.uk if you want to give it a shot), but the Germans evidently faked a plane hijacking in order to hand them back (Black Sept. were threatening a bombing campaign if they weren't released) not 8 weeks after the massacre. One is still alive. This is the reason the Israelis spent all that effort tracking down Palestinian terrorists and the occasional waiter (oops) and killing them.

If you'd like some more oil companies to boycott, how about the ones including BP and Amoco, but also Exxon and some others, who financed the 1993 coup in Azerbaijan that put dictator wannabe Aliyev in power. BP has close connections with MI6, so I'm assuming that that coup was one of ours as well as Britain's. Which makes it one of Clinton's.

Thai elephants, fired from their logging jobs and making themselves obnoxious begging in the streets, have now been given new careers as artists. That was a really sentence I just wrote, wasn't it? But true, of course, and their paintings are going for quite a bit of money. They're evidently rather like De Kooning's.

Moscow has its first Ikea store.

But does it have democracy? This is the question asked in two op-ed pieces in the Sunday New York Times. You know, will Putin operate democratically, will democracy win in this election. The obvious answer is no. Putin refused to run for office, accepting only a coronation. He has refused to campaign, refused to advertise, refused to debate and refused to issue a platform. There may be an election tomorrow, but there cannot be democracy without some sense of what is being voted for.

The real question is, who are those idiots in Russia who are reassured that a government run entirely by KGB hacks, as Putin is threatening to install, will clean up corruption? Who says the KGB isn't corrupt? You only have to look further up this page: Aliyev was KGB, and he sold out his country to British Petroleum and Standard Oil of Indiana.

Various people have been vandalizing oil pipelines in Nigeria, so the government has set up a special police force to shoot them (that's what it says, not arrest them, shoot them). So it must be about time to boycott Shell again.

Fun fact of the week: people whose penises have been amputated because of cancer report having phantom erections.

The spiritual leader of Israel's Shas party issued what can only be described as a fatwa against the education minister. I was expecting to hear today (no I wasn't, but let's say I was for the sake of argument) that Shas was expelled from the governing coalition or asked to repudiate the statements, since calling for the murder of your coalition partners is usually not considered to be (yes I know, but I'm going to do it anyway) kosher.

According to the TV Guide, the following two game shows, whose descriptions I am putting down verbatim, believe it or not, premiere Monday on the USA channel:

Crush: In this game show, contestants question three acquaintances and try to guess which one has a crush on them.

Friends or Lovers: Contestants must choose between their best friends and their lovers when the two clash, then go on vacation with the partner they chose.

The apocalypse is at hand, people, and it's listed in the TV Guide. Whatever tv executive thought, Hey, let's turn the Jerry Springer show into a game show! made more money last year than you did.

Other stupid ideas: a gentleman tried to smuggle a 16-inch boa constrictor in his underparts when he flew into Paris from Colombia. Ignoring the obvious is that a boa constrictor in your pocket joke, who puts something called a constrictor in their underwear?

Taiwan just voted out of office the only foreign leader whose name Dubya could guess at in that quiz.

The British government plans to let insurance companies require genetic testing and charge people higher rates accordingly.

Clinton is to visit his 62nd country while in office. He must have the coolest passport in the world. India is throwing all its beggars out of wherever it is Clinton's going, Pakistan has banned all demonstrations forever, and god knows what Bangladesh is doing. At least he's not going to China where they always put all the dissidents in jail before the visit of any US official, leading you to ask why the Americans show up at all.

Answer: because they don't care.

The British government is planning to change some of its laws to deal more effectively with repeat criminals. So it's setting up focus groups, as is the Blair government's wont. With convicted burglars.

Robert Mugabe says that the British government is promoting homosexuality throughout the world and only Zimbabwe is standing in its way. Damn you to hell Hugh Grant, we will thwart your evil schemes. (I know Hugh Grant isn't gay, but doesn't he seem like he should be?) Personally I think Magabe's just over-compensating, like Tony Randall. I mean would a straight man rename Salisbury, Rhodesia as Harare, Zimbabwe? I think not. Actually, they both sound pretty gay now that I'm thinking about it.

2 New York Magazine competitions

1/17/00, children's books:

Goldilocks Does the Three Bears.

Victoria's Secret Garden

Little Crackhouse on the Prairie

The Little Search Engine That Could

Charlotte's Website

So You're Going to Be Tried as an Adult

See Dick

Horton Hires a Ho

Fun with Old Refrigerators

The Caramel Sutra

Why Little Irving Has No Foreskin

Have You Smelled the Muffin Man?

Alice in Wonderbra

How the Leper Lost his Spots

Fear and Loathing at FAO Schwartz

Look, Mommy, a Drag Queen

My Day with Dad's New Trophy Wife

Noddy Goes Postal

Curious George W. Bush

Timothy Outs the Tooth Fairy

A Donner Family Christmas

The Hardy Boys Go To Amsterdam

Where are Waldo's Underpants?

My Mommy is My Sister (Chinatown for Children)

Stuart's Little (But It's Okay)

A Pokemon Passover

You Might Be Adopted If....

===================================

2/14/00: one-letter substitutions

You've Got Bail

Torched By an Angel

Love me or lease me

New York, the City that Never Sweeps

Boys will be boss

I'm OK, You're OJ

The first thing we do, let's bill all the lawyers

These are the mimes that try men's souls.

That will does not kill us makes us stranger.

A horse divided cannot stand.

The truth shall make you flee

Anything you lay can and will be used against you.

Hostile makeovers

Anna and the King of Spam

PMS Pinafore

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

Presidential candidates have been saying that it was a disgrace that military families were on food stamps. Yes it was, not because they are paid too little but because the USDA evidently calculates eligibility in such a way as to exclude all the free housing those people get.

I've received my census form and I'm trying to decide what race I'm going to be. I'm thinking of writing in "none". Or perhaps something from the Star Trek universe.

In 1941 the Census Bureau told the government where to find Japanese Americans for internment. I may have to rethink the idea of listing my race as Romulan.

The Finnish Prime Minister is taking a week's paternity leave.

So, to what extent was the Bosnian civil war a matter of ethnic conflict and to what extent a decision by Tudjman and Milosevic to carve it up? Well, the new Croatian president has discovered a secret hotline to Milosevic. If we're really lucky, there are tapes somewhere.

The Vermont "civil unions" look about as good as marriage to me, including a couple of elements I hadn't thought of. The funny part is that there will be a divorce procedure. Imagine the state making it difficult to get out of a gay marriage! One benefit: immunity from testifying against one's spouse, or civil co-unionist or whatever they're supposed to be called.

NY Governor Pataki has a gun idea I swear I've never heard of before and should have, indeed should have thought of myself: require that all guns sold be test-fired and their ballistics recorded.

A Swiss town got to vote on which immigrants get to become Swiss citizens, in one of the creepiest ideas to have come out of this creepiest of countries. The voter pamphlet included information that included the number of children and amount of savings of each applicant. In the end, most were voted down, including all of the Yugoslavs, and only Italians were voted in. A rep of the racist People's Party said, "The people from the Balkans are too far from our thinking." Religious hatred, ethnic cleansing, yeah I could see how that would be just too foreign for you,
Adolph.

Aborigines in Australian jails are to be allowed to eat emu and kangaroos.

Italy's Court of Cassation says that sex in a parked car is part of the Italian way of romance and not a crime. Including sex in a parked car with a prostitute. Part of the problem is that Italy is a nation of mama's boys who don't leave home until they're married, so have no place to have sex. The other problem is that Italians drive really small cars.

The old Soviet navy dolphins have been sold to Iran.

Super Tuesday

Ah yes, Super Tuesday. I put on my cape and tights and flew to the polling station to vote. In the booth I changed back into a mild-mannered average citizen, putting on my glasses so that no one would recognize me (this is why I've gotten so little done lately -- I've been saving the world from Lex Luthor. Well, it's very time-consuming).

Actually, none of that was true, except for the bit about changing out of my tights in the polling booth. In reality, I limped to the polling station, having fallen downstairs the night before and severely boobooing my little toe (not so little at the moment) and coming [ ] close to hitting my head on concrete, in which case I'd have probably wound up voting for Gary Bauer unless I got medical attention in time.

Yup, falling downstairs is pretty embarrassing, right up there with those Canadian fighter pilots who were grounded because they were too fat for their parachutes to work.

Election results: the California people have voted themselves fucking idiots once again.

The Supreme Court, with its usual concern for due process and being innocent until proved guilty and all that shit, votes 7-2 that prosecutors can tell the jury that a defendant's testimony is untrustworthy because he attended his own trial, as is a) his constitutional right and b) mandatory in some states, and therefore heard other witnesses and could have tailored his testimony--absent any proof that this actually happened. Next up: the Court's decision on the "he has beady eyes, doesn't he?" prosecutorial theory.

Pat Robertson says of McCain: "That kind of anger, the concept that there are people who are agents of evil, that kind of thing isn't civility in politics." This is the guy who said God was going to destroy Florida because of the queers?

Bumper stickers seen yesterday: “Dog is my co-pilot.” “Oh, evolve!”

The Serbs, planning to sneak in just one last war before the US presidential elections, is blockading Montenegro. In fact, they're even preventing Serbian troops entering Montenegro, since the government there has promised real money (Deutschmarks, not dinars) to any soldier smuggling food in, and there have been many takers.

"Red Ken" Livingstone is running as an independent to be mayor of London, and I am very happy, although the Tory candidate seems to have sewn up the people-who-have-gay-sex-in-public vote by saying that police should look the other way.

The Italian Supreme Court has ruled that unwanted footsie does not constitute a sexual advance.

Dubya has received the endorsement of Canadian Prime Minister Jean Poutine, who doesn't actually exist. A Canadian satirist gave the news to Governor Smirk, who was very pleased and is not known for his knowledge of the names of world leaders. Poutine is a Canadian fast food chain.

The French government has refused to give even a symbolic one franc compensation to the victims of the Vichy regime (I'm not sure whether that's one franc each or whether they would have been expected to divide it) because that government is "null and void." So that's ok then. It gets better. According to the interior minister (who I used to have some respect for), the victims would suffer if the government admitted liability because they died for their country, which would now be identifying itself with the regime they fought against.

On a completely unrelated subject, an Austrian project to get ex-soldiers to speak to schools has caused some controversy because no one is going to screen out old SS and Wehrmacht.

The governor of whatever that state is with the shooting by the 6-year old said that parents and teachers should take aim at the problem of violence.

The Yakutia region of Russia (no, I've never heard of it either) has made English the national language, to spur internet development.

Thatcher sends Pinochet a 500 pound silver plate in a design cast in 1588 to celebrate the defeat of the Armada. She refers to the defeat of Spain's attempt to impose "judicial colonialism" on Chile. Thatcher, of course, likes Pinochet so much because he assisted Britain to retain its hold over the Falkands-Malvinas. Not big on irony, is our Mrs. T.

Pluralses

Clinton blames the Republicans for the 6 year old shooting the girl, because Congress failed to mandate trigger locks. If there had only been a law, those law-abiding folks in the crack house would no doubt have obeyed it. In tonight's debate, Bush raises the specter of a jackbooted trigger-lock police force breaking into people's homes to check for trigger locks.

Mexico, which was just cited as satisfactorily cooperating with the US on drugs, last summer stopped polygraphing its drugs police because they all kept failing.

Jacob Weisberg writes in Slate that Bradley thinks of the race as being only about his own self-worth, but has actually done his party the service of sharpening up Gore's campaigning skills. "Bradley leaves the race thinking of himself as Al Gore's better. Most of us will remember him as Al Gore's appetizer."

The Scottish Parliament holds its first debate in Gaelic in 600 years. On what subject, I don't know. Nobody does, since no one speaks Gaelic. They might as well have held it in Ferengi.

And Jack Straw, in another in a recent string of idiotic decisions, releases Pinochet.

----------------------------------------
NY Mag. competition. Group names:

A syzygy of Scrabble players.

A clique of online shoppers

A sprout of vegetarians

A shul of gefilte fish

A je ne sais quoi of affectation

A coveye of Quayles

A rush of addicts

A polyglot of parrots

A pac of lobbyists

An extra ration of oxymorons

A purge of supermodels

A curry of cabbies

A prenup of trophy wives

There is a challenge before the CA Supreme Court of the way in which primary ballots are to be counted. I've said all along that it was unconstitutional for the legislature to negate the effects of a ballot initiative, but then I am smarter than at least 7 members of the Court, so who knows. The problem is that the entirely symbolic vote I was thinking of could turn into a real vote, and that it could happen retroactively, depending on when the Court decides. What to do, what to do.

And a reminder: this is a primary to decide who will be the candidates for each party for each position. If, for example, you have a Congressional district like mine in which there are 3 Republicans running but only 1 Dem and a Natural Law, the only vote that means anything is for a Republican. One result of this, and I'd be curious to know what other people's experiences are of this, is that some of the junk mail I'm getting does not specify party. I've heard from 2 of those Republicans, and neither mentions it. Also, their material is pretty broad. My mother's experience is the same, but we both live in districts that are nearly equally D & R. What I'm wondering is whether registered Republicans are getting different material from these candidates that a) specifies their party, b) goes more into Republican issues.

Khaddafy has the right idea: he just abolished Libya's central government.

Russia is trying to get countries to send it nuclear waste for dumping an reprocessing (and pay for the service, of course). Who do they think they are, South Carolina?

Calif. Governor Gray Davis has now officially gone mad with power. Who would have thought. He has said that all judges he appoints are obligated to share his views and resign if they suddenly decide that they oppose the death penalty or support gay marriage.

Indonesia, with a singular lack of understanding of the history of the twentieth century, has hired Henry Kissinger as an adviser on the transition to democracy.

When McCain attacked the Christian right, he specifically exempted homophobe and general asshole James Dobson, presumably as part of the price for his endorsement by homophobe and general asshole and dwarf Gary Bauer. Also, one of McCain's major supporters, Lindsey "No it's not a girl's name" Graham, who you learned to hate during the Clinton impeachment, denounced Dubya's visit to Bob Jones University, although Graham himself has an honorary degree from it. Incidentally, why is the main controversy about BJU (and doesn't a university with such an informal name as Bob sound like a laidback Santa Cruz kind of a place?) the anti-catholicism of its presidents rather than its racism?

Molly Ivins's current column takes Bush to task for his commercials saying that he "passed" a patient's bill of rights, which actually passed over his dead body and after he vetoed the first one, it was passed again with a veto-proof majority and went into law without him signing it.

Robert Mugabe, the increasingly asinine president of Zimbabwe, has been touring the flood damage in two helicopters. There are only 3 helicopters doing actual rescue work. There are also a couple of dozen air force copters, but they're all in Congo fighting that stupid proxy war.

From the wonderful world of sharia, the 3 northern Nigeria states that recently passed sharia just revoked it after quite predictable religious rioting. And Saudi Arabia executes someone, by beheading, for sorcery. (Note to Daily Telegraph: when you say someone is executed for sorcery, a little more detail might be appropriate. If anyone sees anything, please pass it on).

Bob Herbert reports that Dubya said "I know how hard it is to put food on your family."

CA election & whatnot

The Washington Post has a headline that Mexicans are stunned at the murder of the police chief of Tijuana. Given that a previous police chief was killed on the same street, it seems unlikely that it comes as that much of a surprise.

The latest in 10 Commandments gimmicks, as passed most recently by the Indiana legislature, is to post it in classrooms alongside other "historical" documents like the Magna Carta and the Declaration of Independence. Nice try.

The Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of a lovely practice, drug-testing pregnant women without their consent and then reporting them to the police. Is there an actual question here?

McCain and Bradley are preparing to go out in a final burst of glory. McCain said what everyone thinks about the Christian right, which must feel good. Now tell us, what do you really think about the North Vietnamese? And he calls Bush a Pat Robertson Republican who will lose to Al Gore. By the way, he said will lose, not would lose, which is an admission unto itself. Bush says that he is a problem-solver and McCain is a finger-pointer, whatever that means. And says that Reagan was never so divisive, so far as he remembers. Of course he spent the '80s in a drug-induced stupor, and probably remembers Reagan as the guy who beat off the invasion of giant spiders from the Crab Nebula.

And Boo Bradley is running really hard in... Washington state. Ignoring, oh say, New York and California, just so that he can say he won one state when he has to pull out.

OK, the California election. It seems that I was wrong about 29 being the evil twin of 1A. It's actually the puny younger brother, and should be voted for in case 1A is defeated.

Also, I finally have an opinion on Prop 25, campaign financing. The need for campaign financing is shown by the fact that Governor Beige is raising money he won't have to disclose the source of for another year and can use for whatever he wants, including defeating this proposition. But this one ain't it. Too many loopholes and, the killer provision, unions are restricted to the same limits in total as a single individual person.

Prince Charles was in Trinidad this week. They just could not get the man to limbo.

I'm sure you all want to know just what Monica Lewinsky's deal with Jenny Craig is. Well, she's paid by the pound. $25,000 per pound she keeps off for a year, to a maximum of 40, and more for a second year. They can weigh her at any time and she doesn't have to do anything she considers immoral.

The Utah House of Reps votes ban discussion of birth control in public schools and that children be taught that "any sexual relations outside of marriage constitutes criminal conduct." One presumes the latter is not actually true.

A jury in Albany acquits four NY city policemen of shooting Dialou, whose name was not spelled that way, but never mind. The trial was marred only by the fact that when the foreman of the jury reached into his pocket to bring out the verdict, one of the cops yelled "Gun!" and the rest shot him 682 times.

If you wish to consult an actual South African witchdoctor, his website is woza.co.za. I know what woza means, but I can't remember if it's from Zulu or Khosa.