German prostitutes are to be fully legalized, able to take their johns to court for payment (well, it sounds like there might have to be a written contract, which seems a bit unlikely), and to retire on state pension at 60.

That's my second old-prostitute story in the last couple of months.

Thank god Israel kept its head down and indeed kept its head, and
certainly didn't invade Bethlehem and kill children and assassinate people and make rash comments about the age of Arafat being over. Because that wouldn't be very helpful right now.

Yesterday the Pentagon announced that it had destroyed the camps in Afghanistan, today that it had sent in Rangers. What is this, the war of the Boy Scouts? I picture a lot of people wearing short pants, running around tying knots and rubbing two infidels together to start a fire and ... I think I'll just let this concept die a natural death right here.

I finally figured out what all those comments about bin Laden, Taliban et al not representing "true" Islam reminded me of, and it was the endless, obnoxious, hopelessly smug "Who counts as a Jew" debate that Israel engages in.

What's more worrying, anthrax in the heating ducts or Bruce Willis in the heating ducts?

2 websites:

http://homepage.mac.com/gwchimp/
http://206.67.50.61/assetsFromHumor/comics/dancingbush.swf

Another sign that science must be stopped: phone lie detectors, soon to be used by British insurance companies to deal with claimants. They claim over 90% accuracy rate.

A Guardian columnist, suggesting that the American political elite isn't up to its new task of dealing with foreign stuff, quoted Joe Biden, now chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, who suggested that the Norwegian countries could act as intermediaries with Afghanistan. Knowing Joe, he was just reading off the paper of whoever sat next to him (Jesse Helms?)

Colin Powell is busy negotiating the shape of the next Afghan government with Pakistan, Iran, Peru for all I know, anyone, basically, who isn't actually Afghan. He is willing to include "moderate Taliban members." I think we once exchanged arms for hostages with their Iranian cousins.

Funnier than moderate Talibans was the description on ITN of Rehavam Zeevi, the guy assassinated yesterday, as the hardline tourism minister. Or possibly it was the minister of hardline tourism. I think hardline tourism is where you demand that the locals serve you food you're familiar with, speak your language, and you speak very loudly and slowly to them if they don't. No wait, that's American tourism. Zeevi has been advocating a full-scale invasion of the West Bank and Gaza, so I'm guessing he wasn't that good as a tourism minister. Actually, Zeevi was a big ole shit (I was going to call him a pig, but it didn't seem kosher, although Muslims keep calling Bush a dog, probably because they've heard that he can lick his own genitals, but I digress) and when he joined the government I correctly called it an act of war. I haven't heard what the US reaction has been, although it'll be interesting to see if they label this assassination terrorism but not the one by the Israelis that this was in reaction to, and whether Dubya knows that Zeevi once called his father a lying anti-Semite.

The House by a vote of 404 to 0 suggests that public schools use the slogan God Bless America, presumably because America has just sneezed. The pledge of allegiance is also big just now, even in Madison, which reversed its previous decision and will now allow either the pledge or the Star-Spangled Banner, which under the old rule was to be instrumental only, you know, the easy listening version. This is to comply with a state law requiring a daily display of patriotism. I'm assuming that foreign students are also required to sing God Save the Queen or O Canada or Waltzing Matilda, as appropriate. I don't mind them singing the Star-Spangled Banner, as long as they sing all of it, including the "their blood shall wash out their foul footsteps' pollution" line some of us spent too much time at Santa Cruz trying to figure out how to sing.

The 9th Circuit says that a new trial is needed in the case of someone sentenced to death by a judge with a history of major marijuana abuse. They could tell because he kept giggling, I'm guessing.

Imelda Marcos says the new fraud charges against her are a witch hunt. Yup.

Speaking of the free market, the Pentagon has been buying up all the civilian satellite images of Afghanistan. Not because they need them for operational purposes--the Pentagon has 7 satellites including 4 Keyhole satellites over Afghanistan, which are better than the civilian ones. Let me give you a hint: they started this policy last Thursday, when they first bombed a large number of civilians. You're wondering why they didn't just order the satellite company not to sell any photos to news organizations? Yes they have the legal right to do that, but would have been challenged in court under the 1st Amendment by someone (at least I hope they would have been--the news networks were already amazingly supine before they started getting fan mail). It was easier just to buy everything (no I don't know the cost).

The military have also admitted targetting the leaders of Afghanistan's military, which they say is legitimate "decapitation" of command & control. By which definition the plane crashing into the Pentagon no longer counts as a terrorist act.

The US has evidently given a security guarantee to Uzbekistan. Terrific.

The terrorism bill is moving rapidly towards becoming a law. Who knows what it'll turn out to have in it; not the Congress, which is being asked not to bother reading it (this is supported by chairman of the House Rules Cmte, David Dreier, who I've never heard of). This laziness extends to the newspapers. The Post yesterday (or the Times?) said that it was believed that the government could in practice hold foreigners indefinitely without charges, despite the theoretical deletion of that provision. What's the loophole? The paper didn't say. Russ Feingold had 3 amendments. What were they? Who knows? (It's not on his website either). One had to do with the definition of a cyber-terrorist, which is now anyone who accesses a computer without authorization. I assume all the definitions of new crimes are equally vague, since the one about harboring a terrorist doesn't require any proof of knowledge of any actual
terrorism.

There's a piece below from the Sunday Times by John Le Carre. There is also a good long piece about how Arab countries got the way they are by Fareed Zakaria (www.sunday-times.co.uk, the terrorism section).

Has anyone noticed that Bin Laden still hasn't claimed credit. In fact, his son just denied it.

Saturday's Post has a story whose headline is that Afghanistan isn't just being bombed, but they're smart bombs hitting select targets. Guess that got out there before a smart bomb (and it was a smart bomb) missed it's target by, literally, a mile and took out a village in a poor neighborhood.

I saw a tiny bit of the footage of Dubya continuing to read to children on 9/11. It was on MSNBC and I tuned in just at the wrong time to see much. There were a bunch of reporters and they all knew what was going on and, horrifyingly, started asking Bush about it the second he closed the book, in front of all those children.

Medical tampering in God's domain story of the week: It is possible to transplant working wombs into infertile women. You'd transplant it in from a relative or a hysterectomy patient, have a child or two, and then get rid of it (so you wouldn't have to remain on anti-rejection medication).

It's official: Hollywood is all out of ideas. Despite fewer films than ever being green-lighted, one of them is a version of Hawaii Five-0.

The moron / the war

A nauseating editorial in today's NY Times, "Mr Bush's New Gravitas." It follows what Bush has been saying to his staff, which is that nothing the administration was doing before 9/11 counts anymore (except for drilling in Alaska--that's evidently now a national security issue. Oh, and Son of Star Wars). No no, you only get one do-over in life, and then only if you're white and rich, and he got his at age 40. If Clinton was the
Come-back Kid, Bush is the Etch-a-Sketch Kid.

Asked about Saddam Hussein at his press conference, Bush said that he was an evil man because "he gassed his own people." Right, what was it you used in Texas--electric chair, lethal injection? Mr. Humanitarian, all of a sudden.

Evil-doers

NY Times headline: "Stock Market Shrugs Off Airstrikes". Who called in airstrikes on the stock market? I mean it's a great idea, don't get me wrong....

That widow will not be deported as an illegal alien. They still plan to take more of her death benefits so she won't be able to afford her mortgage, but lawyers are donating their services on that one.

According to a driver trying to cash in, or perhaps this is inspired by those frat guys at the CIA, some of those hijackers had hookers in their rooms. And, to answer the question you're all asking: 20 minutes.

Speaking of those fun-loving frat guys, do you think they believed that all the news networks would fall for that line about encoded messages? It actually worked, though. CNN promised not to run any more bin Laden et al tapes without asking permission from the government first, and everyone else pretty much followed.

Still more embarrassing than that America Strikes Back thing is how the news channels switched so completely from covering the war to those anthrax cases.

Finally, a quote from Arnold Toynbee from 1954, from a review of the Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotes, which sounds like it would be a great gift, a great gift for someone to buy for me, if I was being too subtle earlier in this sentence: "America is a large friendly dog in a small room. Every time it wags its tail, it knocks over a chair."

The US is dropping cluster bombs on Afghanistan. Which means children will die when picking up the brightly colored unexploded ordinance (5-12% of the bombs dropped).

I'd have to say Bush has indeed managed to kill more foreigners than Americans now. Within a couple of days he should reach the next plateau, when he kills the same proportion of the Afghan population as died in the terrorist attacks.

At his press conference today, how many times did he use the phrase "evil-doers"? I think he's channeling Adam West as Batman talking about the Penguin.

Moron's War

Within an hour of 9/11, someone in a British department was sending a memo to the minister suggesting that now was a great time to release embarrassing information. And they did.

Bush says that his act represents the collective will of the world. Odd, I didn't think it was a UN operation. No, the thing about decision-making in the global world is that it's like the 19th century (or at least 19th-century Britain): a tiny electorate, all rich.

So evidently America Strikes Back. This is the title on the graphic at CNN. And MSNBC. And Fox News. And McNeil-Lehrer. There's nothing like unanimous jingoism.

Ashcroft says that we should be alert to our surroundings. For example, Bush just realized that he lives in the White House now. And don't think he wasn't surprised.

According to the bin Laden tape, the world is now divided between believers and infidels. Great, as long as I don't have to be on the side of either Bush or bin Laden. Go infidels! My peeps!

Finally: Rush Limbaugh is a big fat deaf idiot.

Morons' Crusade

The Taliban Ambassador to Pakistan, looking pointedly at Pakistan, said "Afghans are never prepared to compromise their religion and their honor for money." He later corrected the statement, saying "I meant to say `asked,' not `prepared.' What's up with that?"

A Guardian columnist considers the way the CIA & FBI are puffing up the bin Ladinettes to be excessive. Poison gas, germ warfare, nuclear weapons. Sure they've got all that stuff. But they brought down those skyscrapers with a few penknives. But how can you defend upping the CIA budget 9% to defend against that. So they have to turn him into Ernst Stavro Blofeld (I know I used the Blofeld thing last month, but the Guardian got there 3 weeks late. Actually, I used Darth Vader in '98, and I was saving Lex Luthor for whenever it seemed appropriate. Did you notice Congress decided not to investigate the CIA on how they failed so abysmally? Cause the CIA has always done so well when allowed to regulate itself in the past.

The Slate tries to guess what the hell bin Laden was talking about in his video, like what happened 80 years ago that was so bad. Who knows, really, what the hell he thinks. His head is so full of weird ideas you'd think he gets the internet in that cave. A reporter who interviewed him a while back says he thought that some US states might secede because of Washington's support of Israel.

I facetiously asked what was written on the sides of the bombs. As it turns out, "NYPD".

I could go two ways at this point: either a joke about Dennis Franz's ass, or a reference to "Guiliani Time"--extra points if I work in a mention of a plunger.

Morons with missiles

To war, to war, Fredonia's going to war.

Would it have been so hard for Tony Blair not to have participated in the first day, when the reporter Yvonne Ridley had been released but was not yet out of Afghanistan?

A new book is due out trashing Clinton for his actions in his last days, written by Barbara Olson. Terrif.

Yes, I'm sure dropping a few aid packages with big notices that they are gifts from the American people will really win over the Afghan people. What's written on the sides of the bombs?

I remember suggesting a pool for when Bush would have killed more foreigners than he has Americans (actually, a comedian I saw on tv said that he wasn't worried about that--Bush was just executing Texans, right?). Did anyone have this week? New pool: when will he have killed more people than he claims bin Laden has.

The FBI went after the American web-site of the Real IRA
(motto: Really!). It was raising funds.

A piece in the Guardian used the term Western Fundamentalism, which I rather like. Its key characteristics mirror those it complains about from bin Laden: unquestioned belief in its own superiority; assertion of universal applicability of its values; lack of will to understand what is different from it.

The problem there, though, is that the Morons Crusade is a step back from an attempt to impose Western beliefs and values. Well, it is and it isn't. We do hear about the Taliban's treatment of women, which hasn't noticably exercised anyone in the US government the last few years (although not about its tendency to drop walls onto homosexuals), but it's not like we're going to care what the next Afghanistan gov does with its women, any more than we pressured the Saudis to let women drive or Kuwait to let them vote. Western values may be a stick with which to beat the
wogs, but it's not like we care that much about it in principle. See an article in the Village Voice (villagevoice.com) on treatment of homosexuals by our new bestest friends. Similarly, we cared so much about the Taliban's cultivation in poppy, but didn't applaud them when they stopped it, or note that our other new bestest friends the Northern Alliance now produces 90% of it. Think anyone will object to Pakistani president for life Musharaf grabbing more power and jailing his opposition, as he did today? Think anyone will suggest to the Saudi leaders that they'd have less opposition if they were less blatantly corrupt? Oh, whatever, I've lost my train of thought and I need a nap. Happy Indigenous Peoples Day, everyone!

So when they finally identify the bodies of the hijackers, do they give them back? So far, they're trying their damndest not to identify them, but it'll have to happen.

The US (Ashcroft, at least) is pissed at Britain for requiring that anyone it extradites not be executed, as required under European law.

But we are happy to send them back the widow of one of their citizens. The couple had lived in the US I believe 8 years and had 3 sons here. Since they were here on his work visa, the INS told her, two days after he was killed in the World Trade Center because he made sure children and people in wheelchairs got out first, that she would be deported. And they plan to keep 60% of the life insurance too.

On the day Sharon was doing his poor little Czechoslovakia act, he also sent quite a few troops and tanks into Poland. I mean the West Bank.

Has the bipartisan consensus ended yet? Cause I'm getting bored. And because Bush wants to give tens of billions in tax breaks, permanent ones, to the healthiest corporations, just like his airline bailout didn't distinguish between healthy and dying airlines. It's all free money, after all. See the thing is, Bush believes in free money, because it always has been. When he wanted to go into the oil business, his father's friends gave him lots to play with and didn't ask for it back when he lost
it. When he wanted the value of his baseball team to increase
dramatically, the good people of wherever it was decided to raise their sales tax so that he could be a millionaire.

Gregory Hemingway, son of Ernest, has died, in the Miami Women’s Detention Center. That probably requires some explanation. I know he liked dressing in women's clothing, but he was found wandering around naked, so I'm guessing even the Miami police could tell the difference.

Chinese immigrants to Australia don't die. Only 6 out of 55,000 in the last 10 years. It's assumed their identities are being passed on, but where the hell are the bodies?

No need for additional evidence

There must be convincing evidence of bin Laden's guilt. Tony Blair says so.

Although it seems that we're actually beyond the proof phase. This is a technique I have commented on before, adopted from Bush the Elder in relation to Iran-Contra, when he couldn't tell what he knew, couldn't tell what he knew, couldn't tell what he knew, and then, whoops, now it was ancient history and he wouldn't dwell on the past. Yesterday I heard Rumsfeld saying that there was convincing evidence that we should all have been convinced of by now. Rummy: "There is no need for additional evidence." As Alice said to the Mad Hatter, how can I have additional evidence when I haven't had any yet?

The Car Show website has a list of the top 10 gay cars.

The Taliban still want to negotiate with the US over bin Laden. I foresee a Solomonic compromise....

The House intelligence committee calls for a "cultural revolution" at the FBI and CIA. Cool, let's send them into the countryside to learn from the peasants.

For those playing along at home, the last 3 items contain one literary, one religious and one historical reference.

A woman in Britain is suing her (private) school for loss of future earnings because they inadequately taught her Latin. She's going to be a lawyer.

Al Kamen's column in the Post says that the Christian Coalition, under the headline Protect Your Family, says that defending against terrorists isn't enough, you need to give them $23 a month for a porn filter.

Oddly enough, they may be right. An article in the Guardian on the Blair government's proposals, like Bush's, to be able to decrypt any e-mail, it says that actually the bin Ladinistas avoided using decryption, which would just have drawn attention to themselves. Instead, they embedded their messages in porn image files.

What is it with the South African government and bogus AIDS cures? A company owned by the government has been testing one such cure, made from burnt coal, on Tanzanian soldiers. Or were until the Tanzanian government caught them doing it.

I've been reminded that Pakistan's military leader is one of those whose name Bush was unable to come up with when a reporter gave him that pop quiz last year. Remember how some people derided the idea that he'd ever need to know that name, which I seem to recall he guessed as "Mr. General."

Things are beginning to return to normal. Bush was smirking all over the place today, Guiliani has reverted back to being an asshole...

There are now (I haven't seen them) public service announcements by celebrities about how we shouldn't beat up or discriminate against Muslims and Arab-Americans. One (transcript in the Friday NY Times) was by John McCain. You know, the guy who called Vietnamese gooks last year and didn't see anything wrong with that.

I wonder if American foreign policy hasn't become slightly dechristianized in the last 2 weeks. Sanctions have been removed from Sudan, which was on the Fundamentalist hate list because it killed and enslaved Christians, and you haven't heard much about those missionaries imprisoned in Afghanistan, either.

Historian Sean Wilentz suggests that Guiliani, instead of trying to retain his mayoralty by arguing that he is more indispensible than Lincoln in 1864 or FDR in 1944, should be appointed next ruler of Afghanistan.

There is a letter to the NY Times today from someone who announced that they were a member of a support group for people who have lost a loved one to suicide. They are upset by the term suicide bomber, and wish people would stop using it. It just adds to the stigma associated with suicide, she says.

Bush says that we are in "hot pursuit" of bin Laden. It's unclear whether he knows that this was a legal term, one used in the past to violate the borders of other countries, such as the hot pursuit of Pancho Villa into Mexico in 1916 or the invasion of Cambodia in 1970.

Two Air Force fighters were scrambled to help stewardesses force a passenger to put out his cigarette.

A State Dept document says that the Taliban do not represent the Afghan people, who never elected them.

And they say irony is dead.

Attorney General Ashcroft says that the suicide bombers (take that, support group!) don't represent Islam. Mr. Ashcroft, you will remember, thinks that dancing is Satan's handiwork.

Thank you Silvio Berlusconi for making Dubya look good by comparison. It's a dirty job but someone's got to do it.

Richard Perle on the Newshour today, but without repeating (or being asked about) something he evidently wrote last week, in which he called people who don't join the Crusade "Vichyites."

John Major admits that the allies did try to assassinate Saddam Hussein by bomb during the Gulf War.

Britain has pretty much lost interest in the crusade, thanks to the scandal that one of the many tv companies that followed Prince William on his first day of college failed to leave afterwards as they promised. And the company is owned by Prince Edward.

So the Bushies almost admit that they lied about threats to Air Force One, which never made any sense to begin with. If America had a 2-party system, the fact that they were spinning just like Clinton from minute one might have consequences. Fortunately for them, we don't.

I understand they also tried to get NBC not to interview Bill Clinton last week.

Bush told the Afghan people to overthrow the Taliban but don't expect any help from us. Ask the Kurds or the Iraqi opposition what that's like. In Bush's words, "We're not into nation building." Just blowing them up. He also made a speech at the CIA today. I only caught about 30 seconds of it on C-SPAN before nausea overcame me and I switched off, but in that 30 seconds he said 3 times that bin Laden is "misunderestimating" the American people.

He really did give Chechnya to Putin, just as a I said he would.

The week before 9/11, Salman Rushdie was pretty much banned from airplanes by the FAA and we don't know why, but the answer is probably quite interesting.

Seen the tape of bin Laden's 10-year old kid reciting anti-American poetry? Talk about your hydras: bin Laden has 17 kids. The event on the tape was the marriage of his 19-year old kid to a 14-year old Egyptian girl. Yick.

Morons' War

Say what you will about Bush, but Clinton would have bombed the shit out of something by now.

The Queen now has a mobile phone. She has not yet customized the ring.

The FAA grounded crop-dusters yesterday for fear that Osama bin Laden was going to try to kill Cary Grant.

Bush, who last month was undercutting efforts to cut down on foreign banking secrecy because his campaign contributors don't like to declare their income, is now trying to force every bank in the world to obey his orders and freeze bank accounts of people he doesn't like. This came a suspiciously late 13 days after the attacks.

If you want a metaphor for the Bush administration's inability to understand how people could see things any other way than exactly the way they do, how about the changing of the offensive-to-Muslims Operation Infinite Justice to Operation Enduring Freedom. Remember: "enduring" is meant as an adjective, not a verb.

Britain's foreign minister, talking to Iran and thus causing Ariel Sharon to throw a hissy fit, offers it a role in deciding Afghanistan's next government.

All the talk about how disciplined the Bush people are, and there they go briefing against each other: we will overthrow the Taliban; the Taliban aren't a target; we will give evidence; no we won't.

The pilots' union wants their members to be allowed to carry guns. But it says that those allowed to would first be given psychological tests and background checks. Oh good, because we'd hate for them to put in charge of something that could be used as a weapon without.... Oops.

Moron's Crusade

Last week I asked just what deals Bush might now be making. We've got some hints with the ending of sanctions on India and Pakistan, the two countries in the world most likely to go nuclear, and one of those a bit fragile at the moment (to say nothing of being ruled by a coup leader). How 'bout the Central Asian republics granting the US the use of airbases? Both have hundreds of (mostly Islamist) dissidents locked up. How about Bush's request for the authority to waive sanctions against Iran, Syria etc if they join the Morons' Crusade? Bush was on the phone with Putin today, doing that thing at which he is most dangerous--talking. What did he give away? Probably nothing on Son of Star Wars, but how about a promise not to criticize any actions in Chechnya? or not allow the Baltic states into NATO? How about the fact that Bush was callling him in the first place to get Russia's permission to use air bases in countries that are not part of Russia anymore?

In today's NY Times Week in Review there is a fake picture evidently making the rounds of the internet, showing Satan's face in the smoke of the World Trade Center. The story it's connected to is about the Nostradamus hoax and so forth. Remember that the next time you see one of those stories about how ignorant the Afghans are with no outside media, thinking (like everyone else in the Muslim world) that it was really the Israelis behind 9/11 (9/11 seems to be the official name now).

Also in the Week of Review, and nowhere else in the paper, and tucked into the middle of a story, it says that this was the week the Times was supposed to have given the results of its recount of Florida, and now it may never.

I don't think I've written this in actual electrons, though I've said it to some of you, but a genuinely oppositional press, well tv, could seriously damage Bush. When he was first told of the plane hitting the WTC, he was reading to children in Florida. We've seen that image, so there were cameras there. He went back to the book. They interrupted again and told him of the 2nd crash. He went back to the book. For 6 minutes, I believe. Imagine seeing the footage of those 6 minutes. To be really cruel (remember what CNN did to Bush the Elder during the Gulf War?) you could run it split screen with pictures of what was happening in NY in those minutes. Or with the black box tape from the Penn. crash. Unfair, you say? It was certainly clear by the 2nd if not the 1st crash that terrorists were using airplanes as weapons. Only 1 man had the authority to authorize shooting down airplanes. And instead of collecting the information he'd need to make that decision, and ordering planes scrambled, he was busy with the hungry caterpillar. (Update. Sorry: pet goat, not hungry caterpillar. My bad.)

75% in a poll say the assassination ban should be lifted. It's in an executive order, so who's to say it hasn't already been? Clinton said this week that the ban only ever applied to heads of state (professional courtesy, I guess), and that he tried to have bin Laden assassinated.

I wondered why that list of banned songs included Sinatra's NY, NY. "Top of the heap". Oh yeah.

The latest brilliant idea re Afghanistan (which by the way has never, so far as I know, sponsored terrorism in the US, unlike, say, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Libya...) is to restore the monarch. Who is 86.

The problem with Bush's jihad is of course the one Republicans saw in every one of Clinton's military adventures: no end strategy. Asked about that 2 days ago, Rumsfeld hemmed and hawed and then said that the end would be when Americans were persuaded that they were safe. Actually, much of what we've heard about security the last 2 weeks has been entirely about PR. Listen to it the next time someone talks about planes or skyscrapers: the language most of the time is about making people feel they are safe, not actually making people safer, except inasmuch as it is necessary to the goal of altering perception.

See the Salon article "God bless Big Brother" for some of the details of Bush's wish list for tearing down constitutional protections, email, wiretaps, lowered standards of proof, indefinite detention of aliens, use in US courts of information collected by foreign countries in violation of 4th Amendment rights, including info obtained by torture, etc etc.

The Constitution proper is also being edited. Rumsfeld is spending money not appropriated by Congress, under the Food and Forage Act from the Civil War, which I assume had something to do with Union troops needing provisions not having telephones and credit cards. And the "Homeland Security Agency" (what a title), headed by a Cabinet-level official Bush who does not intend to have ratified.

In the World Latest section of the Guardian, see the story about the importance of TM (transcendental meditation, remember that?), Yogic flying and so on in the Mozambican government.

And see the Tom Toles cartoon for the 17th, available on Yahoo or ucomics.com.

Contrary to what someone I spoke with thought, and indeed the NY Times editorial page thought, Bush didn't actually tell Americans to stop beating up anyone wearing a diaper on his head (to coin a phrase). He said "the enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends". The phrasing constructs Muslims as not being part of America, as outsiders, friends of America but not actually capable of being Americans.

The demand that Afghanistan destroy training bases and then let Americans inspect them must be clear to everybody as something not intended to be accepted. The Taliban are still persisting in their demand that some sort of evidence be presented first, which is of course a stalling tactic, but is also something demanded by countries we actually have extradition treaties (and indeed, diplomatic relations) with, such as Canada and France.

The US is using a military base in Saudi Arabia, constructed by the bin Laden family.

If you thought Bush should have used his little speech to mention something about not beating up Muslims, how 'bout Rep. John Cooksey (R-LA), who said that everyone wearing "a diaper on his head" should be stopped and questioned.

By the way, the most disquieting thing about being on campus during a period like this (the flags are back on the fire trucks, by the way) is hearing essentially your own political opinions in the language of 19-year olds. Scary.

God not neutral

I had to check the Web to confirm that I heard a line in Bush's speech correctly. Yes, he did say that God was on our side. Well, that God was not neutral between various things--maybe he was saying God was on the other side, but he was certainly positioning God somewhere. He just does not learn. I'm getting a little tired of God being invoked, of being ordered into church to pray, but probably not as pissed off as the Muslims were who heard Bush declare that the terrorists blaspheme Allah. One victory for the Muslim PC crowd this week, however, was that the code name for the Moron's Crusade, Infinite Justice, had to be changed when it was pointed out that only Allah can provide infinite justice.

Incidentally, what do you think of "Moron's Crusade"? I wanted something that would invoke the Children's Crusade. I'm open to suggestions for improvement, including the question of where to put the apostrophe. I'm leaning towards alternating.

Bush opened by criticizing the terrorists for trying to remake the world (New World Order anyone?) and "impose their... beliefs on people everywhere." He closed by saying "Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. Do as I say, not as I do.

Once again, he forgot to ask the good patriots of America to stop beating up Muslims (and the occasional Sihk).

Meanwhile, the mission in Macedonia was quietly extended, but the hardliners are stalling introducing rights for Albanians by demanding a referendum, months down the line. Why are out troops there?

The Russian Duma has legalized the ownership of land.

The Daily Californian
U.S. Flags Removed From Fire Trucks for UC Protests Officials Attempt to Avoid Confrontation, Safety Risks
By STEVE SEXTON and NATE TABAK
Thursday, September 20, 2001

Berkeley fire officials ordered flags to be removed from the city's fire trucks Wednesday, at least temporarily.

The decision was made by top department brass in order to avoid a
confrontation between protesters who might try to steal the flags and the firefighters who would defend them, said Assistant Fire Chief David Orth. Orth said the "operational decision" was made in preparation for a protest today on Sproul Plaza at UC Berkeley.

"We are fearing protesters might try to rip the flags off the rigs," Orth said. "I am not concerned about losing a flag; I am concerned about them defending the flags instead of doing what they are supposed to do. They would defend the flag."

Rumsfeld threatens to bomb Afghanistan (or whatever) even if bin Laden is handed over. OK, it is now time to state the obvious: Bush does not want bin Laden turned over to the US alive. As I suggested yesterday, there is that little problem of evidence, but there is also the question of what he could reveal about the CIA aid he received over the years, the problem that there might well be more terrorism and hostage-taking specifically aimed at securing his release. And so on. So comments like Rumsfeld's, or Bush's, may well be deliberate, to make sure we're not ever embarrassed by getting what we say we want.

Not that Afghanistan could turn him over if it wanted to at this point, since he disappeared into the mountains.

I'm told that the Afghan populace really don't like the "Arab Afghans," the Muslim Arab loons who helped them "liberate" the country and stayed for the women. You'll notice there is no suggestion of even one Afghan national involved in any of bin Laden's alleged plots.

Today's announcements were all a little odd, like reading one of those documents released under the Freedom of Information Act with all the important parts blacked out. Bush makes a public plea for Arab states to help us secretly (some secret), while Ashcroft says that the terrorists were helped by some foreign state or states, which he won't name.

The state most likely to go into civil war over all this is Pakistan. Isn't it nice to know that it's a nuclear power?

Well, my friend may lose his job at US Air, but according to the papers there are plenty of businesses thriving right now, and he should clearly get into selling flags, guns, or Nostradamus. The first person who figures out how to combine the three should make out just fine.

For days I've been meaning and forgetting to say this: perhaps the creepiest statement to come out of the administration is not any of Bush's nonsense but a considered remark of Colin Powell that other nations are either with us or against us. This is not a cliche, this is a threat.

The Justice Department has draft legislation allowing Attorney General Palmer, I mean Ashcroft, to detain and deport aliens, including those with green cards, without showing evidence to any court. The "terrorists" he can deport are defined as people who use a weapon, any weapon including a pen knife, for any reason other than "mere personal monetary gain." I love that "mere."

Opposition has come to an end, with those jets evidently having sheared off the balls of the Democrats, shriveled though they were. Ashcroft's nonsense (and I hope you all understood the Palmer reference, although I noticed not one of you noticed what I swear was a typo last week when I gave the wrong year for McKinley's assassination. For shame) and his wiretapping bill will doubtless pass. The ACLU's press officer has all week been telling the press, without a hint of irony, “I'm not at liberty
to say anything”; the Dems dropped a provision in the Pentagon budget stopping missile defense testing that violated the ABM treaty; and the Sierra Club has decided not to criticize Bush on anything whatsoever. Thank god you still have me, eh?

Chihuaha state in Mexico has repealed a new law reducing the minimum sentence for rape to 1 year if it could be proved that the victim had "provoked" it.

In Spain today, the very first attempt to steal euros. Didn't succeed.

British rats have learned how to dive for mussels, shell and eat them. Expect the rat population to explode. Still, not a surprise after the last week that the rats are getting smarter, is it?

There's always that problem when someone's stated rationale is valid, but isn't their real motive. The Taliban are saying that before they hand over bin Laden, they'd like to see some actual evidence that he's guilty of something. Hey, you and me both. Remember we never heard of this guy before 1998 (when long-time readers will remember I expressed my doubt about whether he really was the '90s Blofeld), and have never been presented with anything resembling evidence. What I've heard doesn't even amount to circumstantial evidence. "Well, it's terrorism, right? And he does that kind of thing, right?" Oh sure, it's secret intelligence stuff, so it can't be made public. Then how do you expect to hold a trial? Not that bin Laden could get a fair trial. Maybe we should stop using legal words altogether. Afghanistan isn't refusing to "extradite" him--there is no extradition treaty with Afghanistan, whose government we don't recognize. Any process would be extra-judicial. Which may be acceptable under the circumstances, but let's not pretend it's something other than what it is, an act of pure power politics.

The evidence would presumably come from the same intelligence agencies that last week fucked up fairly dramatically. And what is the standard of evidence applied by the Bushies, anyhow? If they're convinced that bin Laden is responsible, does that mean the evidence is better than that suggesting that arsenic in the drinking water is bad? better than the evidence for global warming? better or worse than the evidence that Star Wars will work?

Sharon says, out loud, that he is refusing talks with Arafat in hopes that Arafat won't join in Bush's little crusade, so Israel can continue its own crusade against Arafat with impunity.

Bush's use of the word crusade is another reason they should never let him speak in public again. He couldn't have said something more disturbing to the Islamic world if he had called bin Laden a sand nigger. And today he said that he wanted bin Laden "dead or alive," which provides the perfect excuse for Afghanistan not to give him up (yes I know how ironic a Taliban stance in favor of due process is--though I'm sure they always have a trial before knocking a wall on top of a homosexual--but irony tends to go unnoticed in politics, as seen in the confirmation last week of Negroponte.)

Speaking of choosing the right words, I've got one to replace all the talk of "an act of war." Actually 3 words: crime against humanity.

Catholic churches in England are to replace the traditional confessional with glass screens, to cut down on sexual abuse of children.

Speaking of which, Swaziland bans sex for 5 years for young women. Also shaking hands. Also trousers. And they're supposed to wear a tassel or something to indicate virginity. I'm assuming they'll also wear other clothes. This will of course wipe out the scourge of AIDS. Good luck with that.

Thanks but no thanks: 1,000 prostitutes marched in Calcutta condemning the terrorist attacks and offering to donate blood.

Austria has a program to deal with arrested young neo-Nazis, forcing them to take a course in History and Democracy. It's assuming that they're just young and bored and ignorant rather than assholes. We'll see.

The term terrorist is great, isn't it? If you can use it to describe your enemies, you're automatically one of the good guys. After something in the 1980s, possibly the discoteque bombing, the first one on the phone to offer crocodile sympathy was the South African president, Botha or De Klerk, because of course the poor white South African people were also fighting terrorists. Ditto the Israelis, who seem to be having trouble refraining from rubbing their hands together in glee (and some didn't refrain, including a couple of cabinet ministers and Netanyahu), and of
course Sharon, who is no more in the right today than he was a week ago, and has no less blood on his hands, thinks he can stop negotiating with Arafat.

At my end, my real modem still isn't talking with Windows, possibly for similar reasons to Sharon and Arafat, my front door broke, my VCR broke, and my diverticulitis seems to have flared up again. On the bright side, my landlord fixed the door, I bought a new VCR I think I kind of like (but not its remote), and there's a cat on my shoulders. Nope, there he goes. Oh dear, Opie and Turquoise just reached the food bowl at the same time. Now they're calling each other terrorists (the extra k's are from using an old unfamiliar keyboard with my old 386 computer which still has a working, if very slow, modem). Now Opie is eating my cat's food and my cat is on the back of the chair I'm sitting in. More bulletins as necessary.

Ridding the world of evil

According to Jerry Falwell, several members of this list, one way or another, are responsible for the terrorist attacks. We should probably all apologize at once.

Rep. Don Young of Alaska thinks the real culprits might be the
eco-terrorists.

Bush says that we will now rid the world of evil. I see him travelling the world fighting evil wherever it arises. Like that guy in Kung Fu. And now he has $40 billion in walkin' around money. You can rid the world of an awful lot of evil for that much. Congress gave him everything he wanted (although the wording on the Tonkin Gulf Resolution is a little better than the first draft), basically a blank check. It then abolished itself and declared him king. Princess Jenna is now second in line of
succession.

Ariel Sharon says that every nation has its own Osama bin Laden and that Arafat is his. (He also sent tanks into Jerico today) Isn't it interesting that he wants to universalize some experience and not others? Just last week they were complaining at the use of the phrase "European Holocaust" in some documents at the racism conference, because the Holocaust is a unique event in their view.

Bush is talking about whipping terrorism. I think he should have buttons printed up: Whip Terrorism Now. I knew Gerald Ford...

The Bush administration is no longer isolationist or unilateralist. Oh goody. Remember how much they were willing to give away to try to win international support for Star Wars--Chinese resumption of nuclear tests, no hassling India over its nukes, etc etc? What sort of bargains do you think he's making now?

Fiji reestablished apartheid this week, if anyone cares.

A panel of the 9th Circuit ruled that the kidnapping of a foreign national (a Mexican) to face charges in US courts is unconstitutional. Probably bad timing on that one, but it'll be overturned in any case.

Bush went to Congress with his version of the Tonkin Gulf
Resolution: power to use the military to do anything against anyone, now and in the future, and $20 billion to spend as he sees fit. Other Bushies have their own wish list. I may have already mentioned the unseemly haste with which Rumsfeld brought up his project of an Official Secrets Act. There will be more of this, of course.

The following piece is an analysis of Bush's performance, in more than one sense. I especially liked how he said at the Pentagon, "Coming here makes me sad." The man is a walking emoticon.

Today I saw (in Berkeley, natch) one of the new VW Bugs painted like one of the old VW Bugs, with rainbows and hearts and such.

Speaking of returns to the old ways, the Empire State Building is now once again the tallest building in NY, which is as it should be. Some of us never took too well to the sacrilege of the World Trade Center.

Speaking of which, the Empire State Building was briefly evacuated today after a bomb-sniffing dog made a mistake. Thrown off by the lingering giant-monkey smell, no doubt.

There was a story I heard this morning and then never heard again, which I assume means it was a fake, but feel free to correct me on this: one of the survivors of the World Trade Center was said to have been on the 82nd story when it collapsed, and sort of rode the collapse down.

As incredibly unlikely as that was, the tv people just put it out there, and there's been a lot of that. The thing I said yesterday about the flights to California having been chosen because they would have more explosive fuel, as obvious as that was, nobody on tv said it during all the time I watched. Another thing they were told and just repeated endlessly was how well organized and coordinated this was. Uh huh, once they were all trained and ready, they demonstrated this coordination by buying tickets for flights that took off within a few minutes of each other, and their organization by all showing up on time for their flights. Big freaking deal. And another: the FBI claims to have evidence that the Pennsylvania plane was targetted at the White House--and Air Force One. What was it supposed to do to Air Force One, which was presumably in Florida and is impossible to hit at the same time as the White House, since it rarely parks in the back yard, or even in the garage.

In the future, first class passengers will no longer be given steak knives. I like to picture a bunch of fat white businessmen eating steak with their hands.

While I was on the phone, I could see that Congress was in session at nearly 1 in the morning, and voting on something. It turned out to be a resolution against terrorist attacks on the US. Sorry I missed that debate. If you're wondering, I won't leave you in suspense: nobody voted against it.

Congress is so desperate to act as if it has a role in this that members are talking about declaring war. Against what or whom, they do not know or care.

Some favorite quotes from the front page of this morning's NY Times. From a guy at an Internet firm in the World Trade Center: "I'm a combat veteran. Vietnam, and I never saw anything like this." No shit, I'm guessing that's because there were relatively few 110-story buildings in the rice paddies?

And from Bush's speech: "These acts of mass murder were intended to frighten our nation into chaos and retreat, but they have failed." Wasn't that Bush's campaign slogan, "Chaos and Retreat."

Personally I think this was all a plot by Gary Condit to get the media off his back. That's the corollary to the theory that Robert Blake killed Chandra Levy to get the media off his back.

The Latin Grammies were cancelled. Damn you terrorists to hell!!!! Now we'll never know what Jennifer Lopez was going to not wear. Also, Texas postponed an execution. No sense of irony, the Texans.

A cartoon, titled, how they get the froth in the cappacino, shows a cross section of the machine, which contains two large bins, below which are converging pipes. One bin is labelled salt, the other is labelled slugs.

A lot of talk about Pearl Harbor, which should do the video rentals of that crappy (so I hear) movie a lot of good. Too bad it didn't happen 4 days ago, the 50th anniversary of the day Bush the Elder *thought* was Pearl Harbor Day. And in general, a lot of talk about war. It's like the old line that if you owe the bank $1,000, they own your ass, but if you owe them $1 billion, you own their ass. A small enough act of terrorism, and it's a crime, big enough and it's an "act of war."

To interrupt, I've remembered the other thing I meant to say. The 2 biggest fuckees of the day are the guy they just caught who hijacked a plane in 1971 and doesn't think it was a big deal, and the guy who killed someone and, at the sentencing phase, the mother of the victim asked the judge for the maximum penalty--and then dropped dead right there in court. Now, that's fucked.

This might all be good news for Al Gore, who headed the commission that called for much greater airline security, that was rejected on the basis of cost by all the airlines. Good call, guys.

Anyway, I was talking about the war/Pearl Harbor analogy, and I tend to think it's not helpful. Terrorism is a way for a group to punch above its weight. Like a lot of people before them, they came to New York with no more than a dream in their hearts, a knife, and some time in playing with the flight simulator. They're happy enough being called terrorists, but they'd just adore being thought of as warriors, which is how they think of themselves. This is not something we should give to them, and they don't particularly deserve it anyway. Call them criminals. Criminals with small penises. There may be something to the conscious and concerted decision of the country in 1900 not to use Czolgosz's name any more than absolutely necessary.

9/11

Well, you have to be impressed. They hijacked 4 planes and didn't get caught even once, and I presume they got the exact planes they were looking for, since all 4 were trans-continental flights, presumably chosen for their full fuel tanks. Where was the Pennsylvania plane going?

I've forgotten who was the first Congresscritter I saw today crass enough to use this as an excuse for supporting Star Wars (yeah, I'd have thought it did the reverse too, but you know that, against all logic, the fight against missile defense just lost.)

One thing to remember is that the US makes well-deserved enemies without noticing. To wit, two stories I had planned to mention the next time I e-mailed, which is now: 1) Remember the banana wars? Over the years I've sent out a couple of humorous Parliamentary sketches from the Times about attempts during PM's Question Time to make Blair say the word banana. Anyway, the US, acting on behalf of either its banana industry (it has none) or just possibly large multinationals like Dole who contribute heavily to candidates of both parties, succeeded by threat of trade war in forcing the EU to stop protecting its former colonies by buying their produce at above-world-market prices. As a result, several small countries the US couldn't give a shit about, except when it's invading them, have gone bankrupt. Well, it didn't make the NY Times, but Libya just offered to buy the entire banana crops of St Vincent, Grenada (remember them?) and Dominica at above-market prices.

2) Remember Bush's first act in office? The global gag rule on
international family planning services. There was a story in the New Statesman about what this actually meant on the ground, detailing clinics that have had to close in Kenya, Ukraine etc and what they did.

And that's what happens when the US isn't paying attention.

When the news reached Dubya, he was reading to children, which is just about within his capabilities. He finished the book.

Oh, speaking of Curious George, the Daily Show reported that the character's owners of same were pissed that Jews for Jesus were ripping them off in their propaganda. They could get millions for copyright infringement, but, as the show said, it was likely that the defendants would try to Jew-for-Jesus them down.

The NY Times Week in Review has excerpts from yet another book on the philosophy of the Simpsons (the D'oh of Homer). This is getting frightening.

SF Chronicle headline: “Fox Stuns Bush With Demand for Pact”. Of course this is Bush we're talking about, so the headline might as easily have been Fox Stuns Bush With Demand for Coffee With Two Sugars.

First, for a picture of Prince Charles with a woman with a pointy bra, click here.

Phil Gramm and Jesse Helms are retiring. The Senate is in some danger of experiencing a relative shortage of major assholes. I don't know if this is really good, since it always helps to have the enemy's position expressed in the stupidest possible terms in the stupidest sounding accent.

I ask again, why is NATO helping the Macedonian government. The interior minister, Slobbo with training wheels, was seen last month in a revenge raid on an Albanian village at which he insisted that the only casualties were terrorists, including a 6 year old terrorist.

Among the latest UN peacekeepers in Kosovo: Zimbabwean police, who lately have come to a certain expertise in the field of ethnic cleansing.

So the US has been developing a super-anthrax, but it's only for defensive purposes, so that's ok then.

A New Statesman competition plays off some radio program in which someone defined an intellectual as "Someone who, alone in a room with a tea cosy, doesn't try it on."

Other definitions: He speaks several European languages, often in the same sentence. An intellectual looks upon football songs and mobile phones as interesting social phenomena. An intellectual knows exactly how things work, but is unable to work them.

One competitor chose the decalogue format, including: Thou shalt have a bad haircut. Thou shalt not take Foucault's name in vain. Thou shalt watch no television, except Bugs Bunny. Matching socks are mere vanity. Alone in a room with a tea cosy, thou mayst try it on, but then thou shalt leave the room still wearing it.

After coming across that competition, I found an example from the real world: An intellectual is someone who, reviewing (trashing) a made-for-tv movie on Catherine the Great for the American Historical Review, fails to mention that she is played by Catherine Zeta-Jones.

Also reviewed in the AHR is a British documentary about the electric chair. Evidently it was part of the rivalry between Thomas Edison and George Westinghouse, which was also a rivalry over whether DC or AC would dominate. Edison promoted the use of AC and Westinghouse generators for executions to make the point that AC was more dangerous. Westinghouse therefore funded the appeal of the guy who would become the first to be executed by electricity in 1890 in New York, arguing that it constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

No one has yet explained to me why on earth NATO is in Macedonia disarming Albanians, when the government is conceding Albanians nothing, the interior minister is openly threatening genocide the minute they are disarmed, death squads roam the streets, and arms are being imported by the planeload.

The race to lead the Tory party into its next humiliation is now in its 83rd exciting week. Last week Kenneth Clarke called Iain Duncan Smith a "hanger and a flogger", which is related to his social policy preferences, not his personal life, I think, and said that if Duncan Smith won, there would be an influx of far-right racists into the Tory party. IDS responded that he personally is one-eighth Japanese. So that's all right
then.

In a story that will go ignored, the remains of 15 bodies (so far) have been found buried at an old US base in Honduras, where the Contras used to be trained....

Unclear on the concept

The woman who sent a tape of Bush preparing for debates to the Gore campaign is sentenced. The judge tells her that what she did is very serious--"Our whole system of government depends on free elections."

Wasn't paying a lot of attention, was he?

Two stories in yesterday's paper. That woman in the Oklahoma city police lab testified in one guy's trial that his DNA was found in the semen found at a crime scene. There was never any semen. He was executed last year. And a guy in jail for burning down his family's house killing his children--the prosecutor whited out bits of the material they turned over to his lawyer that clearly a) exonerated him, b) put the blame on his
firebug son.

A federal judge for the first time upholds the ban (Florida) on gay adoptions. He says that homosexual unions are not as stable and are more stigmatizing. Like this ruling helps that. But he did turn out the rationale amazingly enough offered by the state of Florida that the law expressed the state's moral disapproval of homosexuality.

The list of side-effects and so forth with my antibiotics say that I should consult my doctor before breast feeding. I don't know if that means giving or receiving breast milk, but I decided not to ask my doctor anyway. If the issue comes up, I'll just risk it.

Some idiot theologian is bringing out a book called The Gospel According to the Simpsons. Evidently, the Simpsons is the most religious tv show there is.

Still, it has to be doing a better job than the Church of England, whose Birmingham bit is bringing out a series of ads designed to bring in the two teenagers who still use the word "hip", while pissing off everyone else. My favorite: "Body piercing? Jesus had his done 2000 years ago."

One of my favorite Doonesbury's from the 1980s features several aides talking to Reagan. They tell him there's a theory going around that his ridiculous insistence that he could cut taxes and raise defense spending at the same time was actually a cunning plan to force cuts in the welfare state. Gee, asked Reagan, am I that smart? That's what we were wondering, sir; try to think back.

Bush last week actually said that the collapse of the always-fictional budget surplus is a good thing because it puts Congress in a fiscal strait-jacket. Trust Bush to find the bright side of recession.

Jamaica is thinking about legalizing marijuana. The US is threatening to impose sanctions. On another country for having its own legal system.

The Interior Department names the Fresno municipal dump a national historic landmark. Plan your vacations accordingly. But don't forget your Visa because they don't take American Express. They do, however, take AOL discs.

The 11th Circuit says that race doesn't count as diversity. So it's not ok to award points to U of Georgia applicants for being black, but it is ok to do so for children of previous students. Like, say, from the time it was all-white.

Well, if they can't get into the U of Georgia, they can get into the newly accredited Astrological Institute, with federal student loans. The accreditation people say that they're not validating astrology, just saying that the school fulfilled its promises to students.

Iranian schools are to reintroduce sex ed. The mind boggles.

Jesse Helms is history, Linda Tripp is broke and all is right with the world.

Zimbabwe's invasions of white-owned farms, beyond destroying this year's harvest and Zimbabwe's economy, is now spreading foot and mouth disease.

Last year Utah's Republicans stopped the legislature passing a bill to ban guns in schools and churches. This year, they've
decided to allow them at the state Republican convention, which Dick Cheney will address.

Well I'm still enjoying the Tory party leadership battle, now going into what seems like its third year. Ian Duncan Smith, it seems, has padded his lack of resume. See, he's been bragging that he has been so disloyal to his party leadership that he turned down offers of government jobs to be able to fight the Major government on Europe. But he was never offered any such job. Kenneth Clarke, on the other hand, has had a day job, as deputy chairman of a tobacco company, BAT (the 2nd biggest in the world), in which capacity he lied to a parliamentary committee about his knowledge of cigarette smuggling operations.

Don't know if anyone else is following Zimbabwe, which gets nastier and nastier. Today it threatened editors and reporters,
including one editor who reprinted a Sunday Times story about Mugabe being haunted by ghosts of his former aides. Anyway, he's now looking to buy 30 riot control vehicles. From Israel.

Recently, I think in the last News of the Weird, there was mention of a St Louis filibuster in which the alderwoman had to use a bucket while a quilt was held around her. She has been charged with public urination.

The LA Times reports that Bush is getting around the Congressional limit on civilian contractors used in Colombia by having the State Department hire foreign pilots, and not reporting the fact to Congress.

Coincidentally, that bill I mentioned some weeks ago in which Colombian military authorities are given supreme authority, and many other nasty provisions, was just enacted.

Prince Edward and Princess Sophie have gone on strike. To quote the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, "Who would that inconvenience?" They have no royal engagements scheduled for
the rest of the year, but evidently still plan to keep the $250,000 or so they are paid by the British public each year.

Headline from a while back, "Canadians Flee in Spanking Dispute." Actually, I never heard more about that. Some cultists left Canada for the US, hoping their belief in rather stern corporal punishment of their children would be protected under the 1st Amendment.

A letter to the LA Times that I clipped as quintessentially SoCal calls for controls on immigration because the guy has to spend 4 hours commuting from Orange County to his job in Culver City, which is much longer than he thinks it should be. The letter doesn't say, but somebody like that has to drive an SUV.

So Israel, pissed with the way Palestine has been policing its terrorists, keeps flattening police stations, presumably pour encourager les autres (which is a French historical reference, translating as "to exercise the Darth Vader School of Management").

Presumably by now little Napoleon Beelzebub, or whatever his name is, has been executed in Texas. Killed the father of a federal judge, who used every contact to have him offed in return. For the first time in history, Supreme Court justices have to recuse themselves from a case, and 3 of them have to, leaving only 3 willing to stop the execution, and evidently ties are resolved in favor of death. Was a minor. Was a black tried by an all-white jury, judge, prosecutor, etc. who had the son looking over their shoulders. [Actually, after I wrote this a stay was issued, but I don’t know on what grounds]

The British suspend the Northern Irish government, in order to reactivate it one day later. The IRA withdraws its disarmament offer from 6 days ago. If you can grab this marble before my hand closes, Grasshopper....

Bush thinks India has suffered long enough for starting that whole nuclear arms race and violating the nuclear test ban,
and lifts sanctions. Also pardoned: the Indonesian military, poised to do who knows what in Acheh.

According to the NY Times of a day or two ago, the drug OxyContin of which so much has been said lately (the high of choice in 2001, for those of you who keep up with those things) could easily have been engineered so that abusing it (snorting or injecting it) would have produced no high at all. The drug company decided not to. I'm sure it was just an oversight.

I'm home again. At two spots on I5, there was only one lane because of what they laughingly called construction. Added an hour to the trip, which I will never get back. After the merger at the second one, we had gotten back up to half-speed when there was a sudden slow-down. Well, not really that sudden, but the truck behind me wasn't paying attention and didn't have time to stop. That’s ten years scared out of me that I’ll never get back.

It would be fun to sheherezade that story and pick it up in an e-mail tomorrow, but I guess I won't, and just tell you that the truck swerved onto the shoulder, avoiding pulverizing me.

So what did you think of Spurious George's stem-cell speech? His very first address to the nation, if you can believe it. Hardly worth interrupting his or my vacation for, if you ask me. It was very Clintonesque, in that it compromised his principles but still undercut the people it was supposed to help, while pissing off both sides. Very gays-in-the-military. My mother pointed out that he was wearing seriously thick makeup to disguise his recent skin cancer procedures. Come to think of it, why is moron-boy outside playing golf every day after that? The New York Times points out that his policy turns out to be more liberal than Clinton's because it dumped all the ethical protections for acquiring stem cells, like not asking permission exactly at the moment they're trying to impregnate a woman, when she is emotionally vulnerable (not least from all the hormones they pump her full of in preparation) to such pressure.

This morning as I was reading the LA Times, a peahen and 4 little peafowl came up to the door, just like Jehovah's Witnesses. I told them I didn't want any.

Germany is looking for a new but really long name for gay
marriages. The new registered homosexual unions (and if you were gay would you be wanting the German government to have your name on a list?) are called Eingetragene Lebenspartnerschaft. There's a bad pun in there, but far be it for me...

Bush is torpedoing yet another international agreement, this one on land mines.

After all that fuss about a new Japanese textbook that whitewashed Japanese atrocities, none of the local education authorities adopted it. It will be used by only 1,300 children (in schools for the mentally handicapped and chronically ill).


From the Daily Probe:
BUSH: "AMERICA NOT ISOLATIONIST, JUST SHY"

Smuggling

Last night I watched a made-for-cable movie in which someone attempts suicide the day before his birthday. Think Showtime was trying to tell me something?

Bush on his month-long vacation in Texas: "I am the kind of person that needs to get outdoors.... it keeps my mind whole." Bush, who is not good with fractions, was of course rounding up.

According to today's LA Times, Ariel Sharon thinks that the whole problem with Israel's current world standing is one of PR. He thinks that besides stressing security, they should repeatedly stress that the land is theirs by divine right. I bring this up to emphasize how out of touch with the universe Sharon is, making an argument based on theology only Jews and a few fundamentalist Christians believe in.

Germany is shocked that the incoming US ambassador, former senator Dan Coats, who has not even been confirmed, is speculating aloud that Germany needs to raise its military spending. In the same story (in the Daily Telegraph) is a side-bar that German soldiers have been ordered to use less toilet paper. German soldiers have become such wimps. It used to be traditional for them to wipe their asses on France.

Dick Cheney says there is "some justification" for Israel's assassination policy.

The Italian parliament passes a law decriminalizing false accounting--coincidentally one of PM Berlusconi's crimes.

A region of China (Huaiji) population unfortunately not named in the article, has been ordered to conduct 20,000 abortions and forced sterlizations by the end of the year.

rebates

I'm in LA, where gas prices are even higher than up north, and indeed even higher by a full dime than what I paid in Kettleman City on I5.

LA is actually more densely built up than ever before, what I saw of it on either side of the SD Freeway, so most of that expensive gas is used in idling. That's the thing about LA: it's laid-back, but even laid-back is expensive here.

Not Nice

A nice headline from the Times: Tories will still oppose Nice, says Clarke. That's the Nice treaty; they're not actually against niceness, at least not to hear them tell it.

Follow up: That Egyptian feminist who was hauled into court by Islamic loons who wanted her forcibly divorced has had the case thrown out.

William Kennedy Smith is thinking of running for Congress, and has already commissioned focus groups to see what they think about a rapist, oh excuse me acquitted rapist, representing them. Wouldn't you love to watch the video on that one?

Yesterday I saw a gas pump with a little tv screen in it, so you can watch CNN Headline News while pumping your gas. This is just plain silly.

Even sillier, walking across a whale carcass in Australia so you can pet the shark feeding on it.

In 1914 and to a lesser extent in 1915, there were Christmas truces in World War I, where British and German soldiers came out of their trenches and played football. The last surviving participant in any truce just died at 106. He was also the oldest man in Britain.

The Danish Justice Minister is threatening to arrest Israel's new ambassador to Denmark, a former head of Shin Bet who has admitted to authorizing torture.

Just plain mean:
BOSNIAN Serb police have sent a £175,000 bill to organisers of a commemoration for the thousands of Muslim men massacred in Srebrenica, saying they must pay for security services.

Everyone reported that when Wahid went out on the balcony to declare that he was still president of Indonesia, he was wearing shorts and a polo shirt. This space can also confirm that he was wearing flip-flops. This is why it's a little hard to take his attempt to retain power all that seriously, although it's not as good as when a couple of days ago his declaration of a state of emergency was read out by an aide while he took a nap--on camera.

I just want to point out that, like Estrada being forced out in the Philippines, this was not repeat not an example of "people power." These were elected leaders who should never have been elected, because it was obvious what they were.

Speaking of wing-nuts, Bush ended the Clinton program of buying back guns from housing projects, which took 20,000 guns off the streets.

On an unrelated note, Ashcroft is on the cover of the NRA magazine this month. I understand the fold-out is an Uzi.

The Basque government plans to hold a referendum on independence, despite threats from the Spanish government.

An Anglican nun was talking about the hostility faced by nuns in East London. Someone yelled "fucking nun" at her, and she told him it was one or the other.

Not a very funny story, but you don't often see the word "fucking" in the Daily Telegraph. But as it turns out, they were quoting the Church Times.

Saw a story on the BBC about an Australian swimming coach who made his students faster by putting a crocodile in the pool with them (mouth taped) (the croc's, not the students'). The Beeb didn't remark on this bit, but the town was Darwin.

There is a credible theory now going round that Van Gogh did not cut off his own ear, but that Gaughin did it. Certainly makes a lot a more sense.

And that leads me back to the question of Lincoln and mercury, addressed here a few days ago. I read that story in two British papers. The NY Times didn't have it and I didn't see it in the Washington Post either. The British are more interested in the American past than the Americans are.

Knowing how trend-conscious all of you are, I thought I'd pass this on: soup is the new salad.

Bush has found yet another international treaty to wreck: chemical warfare.

The Israeli Jewish terrorist group that killed the 3-month old Palestinian is called the Committee for Road Safety.

Why have the police been bothering Gary Condit all this time if they knew he had a brother named Darrell Wayne Condit?

Bush is trying to increase the number of "civilian contractors" sent to assist the Colombian military and/or death squads.

A () bites () story / Getting your sea-legs / exploding cow (oh, is that what it takes to get your attention?)

Bush was in Britain today, chowing down with the Queen. Someone streaked, which is just so '70s. Daughter Barbara went along, but had to eat with the other kids at the card table. No one is saying whether she, like Bill Clinton at around her age, took advantage of the laxer laws of the mother country and had a little wine with her meal.

When writing about Cheney's plan not to pay his electricity bills (and the Daily Show did my joke better with a line about Cheney being plugged into a nickel-cadmium charger over-night), I neglected to mention the small print, which is that he also wants to be able to take donations (read: bribes) from corporations for consumable goods for official functions at Blair House.

As is its usual practice, the Pentagon first declared victory in its Star Wars test Monday, and then admitted later that the system had actually failed, again.

The G8 conference in Genoa will be met by an Italian-style protest. The locals, already pissed off at the heavy-handed security arrangements, are really annoyed at being told not to hang their washing out. Expect a lot of underwear. A lot.

Colin Powell, showing that facility for the language that no doubt won him his current job, said this week, "It takes a while to tighten your saddle and get your sea legs." I think I see what his problem is...

Neat

As expected, Michael Portillo, the only Tory leadership
candidate with a chance of making Blair even breathe hard, was eliminated from the race today. Times' columnist Matthew Parris said that the during the counting it was so quiet you could have heard a dagger drop.

Cheney, about to start his tour in support of his Saving Our Precious Life Style By Putting a Power Plant on Every Block energy plan, has asked that his office not have to pay the skyrocketing electricity bills at the VP mansion. The extra electricity is necessary to charge the robot which replaced the late Mr. Cheney last month. The robot is thought to be the old Gorebot but with a new head. Dick Cheney: his love is real, he is not.

Spurious George has been doing interviews with the British press. He told the Times that the Queen is "neat." He told the BBC that Russia is no longer our enemy, therefore it is necessary to set aside the ABM treaty, which locks us in a hostile relationship.
Something like that. Who knew it was just an arms control treaty standing in the way of eternal peace.

Philip Morris has told the Czech government that killing off smokers 5 years early saves the gov much more money than the additional medical costs. Our heroes.

Abraham Lincoln for years periodically went into homicidal rages because he was taking quack medicine with a large amount of mercury. He went off the stuff several months after becoming president. This never happens with robots.

Virgin nurses and the return of Stakhanov

Turkish student nurses and midwives will have to take virginity tests. I'm gonna take a guess that this applies only to females.

Continuing his onward march to the 1930s, Putin has implemented a program in which model workers will be honored.

Molly Ivins's column today is on the proposal to change North Dakota's name to Just Dakota. She says that since if they seceded from the US they'd be the third largest nuclear power, we should really let them call themselves anything they want.

I now have a position on this. I think it should change its name to Extreme Dakota! That exclamation point isn't my way of ending that sentence; I think it should be part of the name.

Bush Lite will be visiting Britain this week. In advance of that, the British ambassador will present him with a bust of Winston Churchill. He will spend the rest of the trip wondering why they gave him a bust of W.C. Fields.

The Pentagon finally got a successful Star Wars test the only way it knew how: it cheated. They gave their missile crib notes so it could distinguish a real from a fake missile. In real life this wouldn't happen, and the Star Wars system would flounder around like Bush after Cheney's fatal heart attack.

The front-runner to replace Hague as head of the Tory party is about to go down in flames. Michael Portillo, aka The Spaniard, will crash and burn because he's too reasonable for the party (and he's not that reasonable), because he's had sex with men, because his people claimed that he was backed by Margaret Thatcher, who was not pleased, loudly, and because he is a conniving little back-stabber, who leaked against Hague to the press during the last election. This should have come as no surprise. When John Major, in a stunt, resigned as party leader and told the party to back him or sack him, Portillo expressed complete support, but the BBC followed around British Telecom trucks and discovered that he was setting up a campaign office.

Book seen in the window of the UCB bookstore: A History of Lesbian Hair.

A man in Ohio was sentenced to 10 years in prison for child pornography. Not pictures. He wrote stories. In his diary. Which he showed no one else.

Fun web sites

German tv stations are cancelling almost all of their comedies, after finding out that Germans don't get humor.

Bernard Goetz (remember him?) is running for mayor of NY on a platform of vegetarianism, but has yet to be noticed by the NY Times.

Some web-sites to check out:

http://www.kukluxklan.org/just_for_kids.htm is just what it says it is, and could hardly be more creepy. Check out the "But some black people are nice, aren't they?" section. Then click on the main KKK section and buy a t-shirt at the gift shop.

The following will present a dilemma for Chris, because it is the web site of the Dull Men's Club, whose web-site lists all sorts of dull things for dull people to do. However, if Chris reads the whole URL, he will realize that this one has something to do with airports, and will be unable to resist clicking on it.

Actually, the site missed one activity. I mean it mentions watching corn grow, but I seem to remember that there's an actual web-cam somewhere.... Fill out the test to find if you are dull (did you ever have an urge? were you able to get over it?) (and I fully realize the irony that I have been reading this site on a Friday night).

http://www.yourgoingtohell.com
You may be able to guess what this one's like just from the fact that there's a misspelling in its URL. Find out why you will be spending eternity in hellfire, by clicking on atheists, Jews, Catholics, scientologists, people who pray to angels, etc etc etc (some do not work). Also, neato music, more misspellings, and images that seem to have been clipped from some odd sources.

Say kids, what time is it?

Well, someone's finally invented a clock accurate
to a quadrillionth of a second (a femtosecond), and I say it's way overdue.

Actually, the project was based on a misunderstanding caused by a stuck keyboard at the White House, which produced a memo saying, "President Bush will be taking a nap, could someone wake him up around 2:00:00000000000000000."

It's so crazy it just might work: Kenya's Daniel arap Moi says that AIDS can be stopped if all Kenyans would just not have sex for two years. Which is easy for him to say, since he must be pushing eighty.

Come for the legislation, stay for the snuff

According to the Guardian, smoking has been banned in the British House of Commons since 1693, well before the invention of California, but snuff is not only not banned, but is available free to members, not that many have taken advantage of it since Churchill retired in 1964. Indeed, the supplier reports that there have been no re-orders for 7 years. The Guardian is going to ask some poor MP to try it and report back, and I will pass the information along.

Thursday's Washington Post explains the nature of the dealings between the White House and the Salvation Army.

Perhaps I'm wrong in connecting two stories on the same page in today's NY Times, but it seems as if China is proving its capability of staging the Olympics Games by staging war games off Taiwan. Now remember, IOC, a vote for Beijing is a vote for mass deportations of beggars, mass arrests of dissidents and mass slaughter of stray (and other) dogs.

I haven't talked about Gary Condit yet. I'm tired of police engaging in public relations exercises and making deals with other people's PR people, such as whatever deal required them to say over and over that Condit was not a suspect. Of course he is.

Did anyone else see that thing at Kennebunkport, where Bush was asked about Putin and said something about Putin being concerned with extremism and Bush was too, where it was obvious that any follow-up question would have exposed that Bush had no idea what he was talking about?

Puns!

In Berkeley today I saw a woman with a t-shirt that said "I make boys cry."

Well, I was planning to make fun of a headline in the NY Times business section--"Switzerland: Hip Implant Lawsuits"--but I think the pun quota for the day has already been filled by the London Times, which reported the return of a Croatian Wimbeldon winner to his home town of Split with the headline "Split goes bananas for local hero Goran."

Fun stories this week you may have missed because they were broken by one newspaper and not generally picked up by other newspapers:

When asbestos was banned, W R Grace found itself prepared to move into the market vacuum suddenly opened up with a product that did the same product but didn't have asbestos. The only problem: it actually had asbestos. But less of it. So they pressured the (newly formed) EPA into setting a standard just high enough to ban all other products but theirs, and then spent decades lying about its asbestos content, and the danger therefrom.

Bush has a deal with the Salvation Army where they lobby for his "faith-based" policy and he exempts them from state and local government policies about groups that discriminate against gays. The Bush administration's first reaction was to call the Salvation Army a bunch of liars. (By the way, the Salvation Army is about to be banned in Moscow although not, I think, because of its policy re homosexuals.)

The Germans are about to remake Fawlty Towers, starting with updated versions of the scripts used for all but 1 of the originals. No cash prizes for guessing which one.

Most wonderful human being

New Yorker cartoon shows parents talking to their, say, 8-year old son: Now son, its very very important that you remember where you electronically transferred mommy and daddy’s assets to.

The media are a little schizophrenic (or just ignorant) about the Afghan warlord/vice president who was assassinated. I’ve read that he had an aggressive drug eradication program, and that he was implicated in drug sales (not necessarily mutually exclusive, I suppose, on the Bill Gates model), and The Times has 2 headlines, one saying Afghans Mourn Murdered Leader... and the other Feared Warlord... (again, perhaps on the Bill Gates model).

Director John Frankenheimer has died. I think we can all agree that he was the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I’ve ever known in my life.!

Speaking of schizophrenic and/or ignorant media, during the conference on African development a couple of weeks back, I saw two different reports, one in a newspaper, one by the BBC on Botswana, presented as the one African country was economy wasnt in the toilet. They looked for the secret of its success, brushing past the obvious answer: location location location; in this case, on type of huge diamond deposits. However today the story in the Telegraph and the Guardian is that Botswana faces extinction from AIDS, now affecting 39% of its adult population.

Headline that could and probably should be taken two ways: Bush Readies Corporate Scandal Plan.

Jenna Bush is slapped on the wrist. A fine and a one-month suspension of her driving license. First, it is stupid to suspend drivers' licenses for offenses unrelated to driving. Second, she'll just get the Secret Service to drive her.

I keep hearing rumors about a fourth Indiana Jones
movie. The Times commented that Indie is an archaelogist searching for old relics before pointedly adding that Harrison Ford is 59 and Mishter Connery 70.

Evidently Stalin used to draw humorous caricatures. For example, in one cartoon, which Ilizarov believes Stalin drew around 1930, his finance minister, Nikolai Bryukhanov, is depicted naked, hanging from a rope by his genitals. You can find the drawing at the www.sunday-times.co.uk, world news section, but it's kind of small.

Weird shit

Putin, through Gazprom, just silenced the last independent national media outlet, a radio station. Not surprisingly, the event received very little coverage inside Russia. And probably not much anywhere else.

If nothing else comes from the war crimes trials of Milosevic, etc, at least it made Ariel Sharon this week have to avoid Belgium, where an investigation of his war crimes is going on (the old ones in Lebanon, not the new ones). Not, of course, that being banned from Belgium is especially onerous.

Click here; don't ask any questions, just do it.

It is now illegal in Colorado to wear aluminum underwear. "This is serious business," insists State Sen. Stephanie Takis, who sponsored the bill. "We have laws against using crowbars as theft devices, but if you were lining your underwear with aluminum foil, that was not a crime." It is now. Apparently, shoplifters found such so-called "iron pants" allow them to sneak stolen items past anti-theft scanners at store doors. The law also allows store security officers to detain people who "crackle when they walk," but provides an exception for aluminum britches worn for "personal amusement". (Colorado Springs Gazette)

Dubya has been told by his advisors to look more relaxed. So he's been playing golf, which as we all know is very presidential. And he cheated, which is also very presidential.

From the NY Times review of Scary Movie 2: "Perhaps, in a rare instance of subtle social satire, this film is being released on July 4 to remind America of the high cost of freedom of speech."

Decision-making

I just got a call from the Chronicle. The caller asked if I was the decision-maker of the household. I said, "Yes, and I'm gonna make a decision now." And hung up the phone. How I do adore a straight line.

Israel says that it is sticking to the cease-fire, except for tracking down and assassinating people.

Zhirinovsky (born Eidelstein??) admits that his father was a Jew.

300 witches are killed in Congo-Kinshasa.

The Dubai husband who divorced his wife by text message
is back with her.

In Britain, the Co-op has decided to resist EU directives not to sell under-size fruit and vegetables. The headline (in both the Times and Daily Telegraph): We Will Fight Them on the Peaches.

NY Times business section headline: "Burger King Pledges Humane Use of Animals." For example, they're planning to eliminate the 1% beef content of their hamburgers. According to the Burger King spokesmodel, "We are the caretakers of God's creation."

Vladimir Putin met Jack Nicholson yesterday, and I still haven't thought of anything funny to say about it. Evidently Putin's favorite movie of Nicholson's was the (banned in the USSR) One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest. Putin was in the KGB at the time, so he may have thought it was a comedy.

Cheney is getting a pacemaker. Well, they're always saying that Bush is "a little slow," so maybe Cheney should just use him. Cheney said "that he had no long-term concerns about his health". Maybe he should re-phrase that.

So the writer who led Clarence Thomas's character assassination of Anita Hill admits that he made stuff up and blackmailed a witness with information supplied by Thomas. I've been waiting all week since then for anyone, and I mean anyone at all in politics or the media or professional wrestling, to call for his resignation. No one else has, so consider it done. As I remarked in my corner of the ether when Clinton admitted lying to everyone including the Cabinet members who he had front for him about That Woman and no one resigned in protest, shame is absolutely dead in politics.

So every review of Tomb Raider (and no, I wasn't thinking of seeing it, but I do enjoy reviews of bad movies) mentions Angelina Jolie's physical attributes. One could say that they review Angelina Jolie's physical attributes. The NY Times Week In Review section had excerpts from a bunch of reviews just about her lips, but let's face it, even the Daily Show's incredibly gay film reviewer talked about her breasts. When did this become ok? Indeed, is it ok, given that the studios do spend a lot of money to buy a nice pair of breasts, with actress attached, in the hope of using them to open a movie. In Swordfish, for example, a badly reviewed film that just opened, Halle Barrie went topless for the first time and was paid an extra $250,000. Each. Under those circumstances, perhaps it would be appropriate to review the breasts just as one would do for any other expensive special effect ("Every penny is right there up on the screen"). Maybe we need another drawing for that little man in the SF Chronicle.

I forgot to mention the initiative in North Dakota to change its name to Dakota, because evidently "North Dakota" evokes an image of boredom and cold. Or is that Canada?

In case you thought Iran was going to rejoin civilization, the mad mullahs rule that a woman should be flogged 100 times and then stoned while buried up to her neck (men are buried up to their waist and if they have confessed and can escape, they go free). Evidently the size of the stones is carefully regulated. If she survives, which she won't, she gets 16 years in jail. It's for adultery and murder, if that matters, although last month a woman was stoned to death for acting in porno films. Everyone's a critic.

That whole squeaky clean Vicente Fox was trying for didn't last very long. Elected on an austerity campaign, he is refurbishing the presidential mansion, and I really would like to know what you get if you spend $443 each on bath towels. The remote control curtains are $19,000 each.

Sony, the company recently discovered to have invented fake reviewers for its print ads and fake "real people" for its commercials, has rented some real US Army Rangers and combat helicopters for a Ridley Scott film. Better yet, the US military is being deployed in a foreign country--Morocco--on behalf of a movie studio.

Ethnic cleansing comes to Macedonia. Serbs are rioting because of a cease-fire. And that's the side we're on.

In today's mail I received a form from my insurance
company telling me that they'd re-evaluated one of last year's claims and are increasing their payment by $0.12.

Nixon's dog Checkers is to be dug up and buried next to Nixon in Yorba Linda. Next to Nixon for all eternity.

A couple of Russian military planes were almost seized by debt collectors at a Paris air show, but flew off instead, as planes will do.

Interesting piece by William Saletan in Slate comparing the strategies of anti-abortion and anti-death penalty activists.
He says that the foot-in-the-door, slippery-slope strategy that led the former to go after so-called partial-birth abortions is being replicated by the latter in going after the execution of the mentally retarded.

Dead children, dead dog, dead hot tub...

The father of the 5 children whose mother killed them explains: "She wasn't in the right frame of mind." That cleared it up for me, so I didn't bother to read the actual story.

The guy who threw the dog into traffic in a road rage incident (very big news in the Bay Area for a while), is sentenced to 3 years in prison, which the Daily Show explained is actually 21 anal-rape years.

A Washington Post story explains that the California fake energy crisis is damaging the hot tub business. I foresee a mass exodus from Marin County. Something like the Okies, but with hot tubs strapped to the SUVs as they seek a better life.

Bush sent a messenger to Congress to threaten to veto the Patients' Bill of Rights, as they were discussing it. I mean a formal messenger, not quite up to Black Rod's standards, but some sort of formal thing I don't recall having seen before. I watched a bit of the debate on C-SPAN, or actually I watched Phil Gramm for two minutes, after which I felt like I needed health care. He was explaining how forcing health plans to cover Emergency Room visits made ERs unwilling to negotiate prices with insurance companies because under this provision they could charge whatever they wanted, so really we should be restricting people's ability to go to emergency rooms. That sort of logic is the best argument there is for a single-payer health plan. There is an article by Michael Kinsley on this in Slate that's worth reading.

So a 62-year old woman had implanted an embryo from her brother, crippled by 1992 since he tried to blow his brains out. It's not incest, she insists, because the egg, obviously, isn't hers. The offspring would ensure inheritance worth $3 million. On today's Jerry Springer: high tech hillbillies. Worse, they're French.

Jesse Helms is complaining that Bush Lite over-praised
Vladimir Putin. "For these reasons," Helms said, "Mr. Putin was far from deserving the powerful political prestige and influence that comes from an excessively personal endorsement by the president of the Untied States." (typo courtesy of the AP). Yes, Jesse, George Bushs's opinion really does carry that much weight in the world. I know I had to rethink my opinion of Putin because George looked into his soul. Yes, Bush's recommendation is worth a shade below that of one in an ad for a Sony movie.

Saw someone in a t-shirt in Berkeley the other day that said "Satan is a big pooh-pooh head". Probably a Graduate Theological Union student.

Failed to catch the state opening of Parliament today, though I suppose it's available on the Web. I always like to see them slam the door on Black Rod, which only sounds dirty. Only caught some of the provisions of the Queen's Speech before the London Times website packed up, but evidently Blair will eliminate jury trials, the presumption of innocence, and protection against double jeopardy.

But not fox hunting, not yet anyway. The queen practically ran out of the chamber after reading the speech in her usual monotone, so that she could get to the races.

The next feminist outrage (that is, outrage to feminists), will be a study from St Lawrence University which says that women are more likely to get pregnant from rape than from consensual sex
(8% v. 3.1% for women who are using no contraception and actually trying to get pregnant). This "proves," sort of, that rape is a sound evolutionary strategy, which is why it will piss feminists off.

The floodgates are open. The 2nd federal execution. The Attorney general, who doesn't see how 17 of 19 people on the federal death row being non-white could possibly be racist, insists that this execution is ok, because not only is the prisoner Hispanic, but so were his victims and the judge and I forget who else, maybe the prosecutor and some of the jurors. No, Mr. Ashcroft, that's why those people are allowed to call Garza a "wet-back" or possible a "beaner" and you are not, not why he should be executed. Ignoring that his consular rights and a couple of international treaties were violated, the jury was told that he committed murders in Mexico (in addition to those with which he was charged), despite not having been convicted in Mexico--or indeed tried--or indeed arrested.

According to Putin, the arms race is back on.
Thanks, Georgie.

Well, this whole post-Cold War thing is a real let-down anyway. Bulgaria just put its old child king back in charge, despite the fact that he's spent only 2 months of the last 55 years in the country. I'm sure that all his experience in fascist Spain will be a big help in getting Bulgaria back on its feet.

Putin says that he tried out his not very good English on Bush, but he thinks Bush only pretended to understand him. There isn't any joke I could put here that wouldn't be too easy.