As for the presidents and sex, oh sure you could name more (and subtract some of the unfounded gossip here, I'm afraid). But how many of them talked endlessly about the importance of the family. Remember that film made for the 92 Demo convention on Clinton's life that mentioned his alcoholic step-father but not his Rhodes scholarship? Of course in the last election those Republicans all supported someone whose most memorable line on family values was "I want out".

Monica thoughts

The Guardian notes that one of those phone calls Clinton may have been a little too, uh, distracted to give proper attention to, was with Alfonso Fanjul, the zillionaire sugar baron, a connection that was much more dangerous to the republic that anything Brillo Head was getting up to. Thank to import restrictions, Americans pay twice as much for sugar as we should, but what was particularly worrying Fanjul that day was that there was a suggestion that the sugar industry actually pay for some of the cleanup for its vast destruction of the Florida Everglades. Of course Fanjul was a major Clinton fundraiser, so that idea went nowhere.

Will Durst suggests that the real source of outrage in the media is that the Starr report was so detailed as to ruin their chances of selling a tell-all book, as it's all ready all been told. The disconnection in views between the pundit-industrial complex and the great unwashed has been described by David Corn in the Nation as an "umbrage gap". Learn that term and use it in all future conversations about this, because there is a real danger not only that we'll be setting the bar too high for politicians in the future, as most NY Times columnists have been suggesting as the worst long-time result of an impeachment/resignation, but that in a few months or a years when the last witches have been burned and the smoke is dissipating, and the monumental silliness of all this sinks in, it will be remembered, as Robert Harris of the London Sunday Times has put it, as a coup d'etat. Sorry about the length of that sentence.

Trust Clinton to form a committee of ministers to assist him in keeping it in his pants in the future.

I have a PC question: is it ok for a member of the masculine persuasion such as myself to call Monica a "ho", or is that acceptable only for women on Politically Incorrect, like nigger and queer?

Today's NY Times has an advertising section for the newspaper industry (y'know, like when Bahrain takes out 10 pages to try to stir up investment), featuring the following timely pull-quote: "A Texas expert in newspaper education believes that newspapers can be useful reading for a child beginning in third or fourth grade, although some teachers start as early as kindergarten."

A quick reminder of some of the news no one is paying attention to: Serbia has now cleansed 1/4 of Kosovo's population, and Montenegro just closed the border. There are elections in Bavaria and Bosnia that might repay some attention. There are coups pending in Pakistan and Lesotho. Israel killed two Hamas leaders and has decided to keep their bodies as bargaining chips.

Several Americans are seeking political asylum in the UK because in the US they are forced to pay for their own medical care. Eventually they'll be turned down, but the backlog there is as long as it is here so in the meantime they get free treatment on the NHS (these are mostly AIDS patients), accomodation and, oh yes, free legal aid to put forward their asylum claim. I wonder if I can apply for political asylum in Canada before my next operation, eh?

Starr's father was a fundamentalist minister who once delivered a sermon on the perils of women dressed in Bermuda shorts.

Well, I've read it. All of it, including the footnotes, which are funnier than the actual report. For example, "Ms. Lewinsky testified that she had multiple orgasms." I don't think anybody can read the report without asking themself one question: who would have blow jobs without ejaculating? I think we need another special prosecutor to get to the bottom of this important question. Monica does come across as quite the emotional blackmailer. More than emotional, I guess, since she wanted a cushy job as well. And Clinton with the cigar (Gallup polls show that 63% of Americans who have accessed the report simply did a word search for "cigar".) does not seem any more perverted than Starr in dredging out every last sordid detail, including the names of the Congressmen the Big Schmuck talked to on the phone while Monica did what Monica does best. The extensive coverage of their conversations seems intended to further either Monica or Kenneth the Menace's agenda of showing that it was a relationship, rather than just a sex thing. I can't believe Starr subpoenaed her psychologist.

It doesn't come to much, does it? Is there really nothing to say about Whitewater after $30 million? Starr's self-righteousness comes through when he counts Clinton's putting forth of perfectly credible (some of them) legal claims of privilege as further charges against him, and the refusal to testify voluntarily. Also, "The combination of the President's silence and his deception of his aides had the effect of presenting a false view of events to the grand jury." Reaching just a tad.

This is where having a different wife would have come in handy. Trying to protect your wife from your indiscretions would be a reasonably acceptable excuse if Hillary was more of a delicate flower than she is.

One interesting detail of the independent counsel law, as I understand it, is that all those aides and whatnots can have their legal bills picked up by the government, but only if Starr doesn't indict them. Not convict them, just indict them. Now that's too much power.

To sum up, the tortoise seems to have won this race. Starr was able to choose his forum and instead of the courts where most of the report would have been ruled inadmissable and he couldn't have made his accusations in this bombastic form, he chose to go to... the Internet, where it seems right at home. And somehow we're gone past censure to impeachment, which took on the air of inevitability for no really good reason. Even Paula Jones is somehow supposed to be vindicated.

Chernomyrdin, taking his rejection well, compares the decision with the Munich pact.

The INS is currently detaining 16,000 immigrants, 11,000 in ordinary jails and prisons over which it has no control. Welcome to the US.

Helen Chenoweth (R-NRA), friend of the militias and enemy of fuzzy animals everywhere, who says that Clinton makes Nixon look like a saint (Saint Richard!), has been outed as an adulteress, after running ads linking her opponent with Clinton and saying that "personal conduct and integrity does matter", which is not only hypocritical but bad grammar as well. She defends herself by saying that she was single at the time, although he wasn't. Actually she was single by the end of the affair, but only because she got divorced after she began screwing around.

Dan Burton was evidently known back in Indiana for screwing everything that moved.

Next?


Bad Hollywood remake idea of the week: The Prisoner, starring Mel Gibson.

Independent Counsel Kenneth the Menace Starr?

In the shitstorm of hypocrisy that will follow the release of the report, remember: "We are the sum of the things we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be." (Kurt Vonnegut)

Back to school, and many districts now require see-through backpacks, exposing students to the ridicule of their peers for carrying last year's gun.

Kaliningrad (or is it Kalingrad?) declared a state of emergency today. Moscow told it that it couldn't do that, but one aspect of the breakdown of the Russian government is that the 89 regions are taking unilateral illegal steps like regulating prices. Meanwhile, Yeltsin, the invisible president, hasn't resubmitted Chernomyrdin's name, and Lebed says that if anyone wants him to save the day, he'd be happy to do so.

---

New York Magazine Competition. Oxymorons:

Fast Food
Franco-American Spaghetti
Smart ass
Lassie
Common courtesy
Parental guidance
Rapid City, South Dakota
Sly Stallone
Internet access
Coach class

[NOTE: More New York Magazine competitions here.]

First line of a NY Times story: "Today might be one of those rare heady days for Russia's post-Soviet Communists, if only someone could say what a post-Soviet Communist is."

I started a thought a couple of days ago, got distracted and failed to finish it. I mentioned that Gerhard Schroder was courting the Germany gay vote. I meant to contrast it with the problem the CDU is having with replacing Kohl: the #2 man is a guy in a wheelchair. So since the Nazis, gays have been rehabilitated but not crips.

The WP runs an AP story reporting that California congressman Randy Cunningham has apologized for saying last Saturday during an appearance at a medical center that a rectal procedure he underwent during his recent treatment for prostate problems was "just not natural, unless maybe you're Barney Frank."

The next German chancellor Gerhard Schroder has been courting the homosexual vote.

There is one open homosexual in the Reichstag, a Green. What color do you get when you mix pink & green?

Jewish settlers in the West Bank and Gaza have increased by 12.4% over the last 18 months.

As I understand it, there should soon be a new country. The newly elected government of Malta intend to invite the Knights of Malta back in. Now the Knights are currently a state with UN observer status in the same way as the PLO was, but without an actual country. But when they return, they get back their old Fortress, thus combining government with actual territory, making them an official country sort of like the Vatican, but smaller.

The Tory party's attempts to save hereditary peers may have been damaged by Lord Joseph Philip Sebastian Yorke being caught selling cocaine in the House of Lords during the debate on the terrorism bill.

Said bill includes a provision which makes it illegal to plan crimes committed abroad, a move resisted for over 150 years by more liberal-minded MPs (the Emperor Napoleon III was pissed off that the bomb in an attempted assassination on him was made in England). The provision includes an exemption for MI6, so evidently there really is a license to kill.

McNeill-Lehrer, of all things, had an exposé no one else seems to have picked up, on those Iraqis the US first used against Hussein, and then tried to deport from the US using secret "evidence" they could not see. You will remember they hired a former CIA director as their lawyer, but even he couldn't see the evidence. Then 95% of it was declassified, and guess what, there really wasn't any evidence. The FBI mistook someone's tribe for a last name, used unsupported hearsay, and one agent told the judge that according to his long experience, Arabs just plain lie.

So Dan Burton has an illegitimate kid from an affair. That means two women have had sex with him.

Even if you take Chernomyrdin's economic plan seriously, it amounts to a massive tax forgiveness. First they will massively inflate the economy by printing money, and then later they'll crack down on taxes. Who wouldn't want to pay their back taxes with worthless rubles? The Washington Post today has a good story on the disappearance in the crash of South Korea's middle class, but it's the Russian middle class that has really been screwed. The poor barter, the rich had their money outside the country....

Hurricane Earl. Finally a storm with an appropriately white trash name.

Clinton in Moscow: "a country that rebuffed Napoleon and Hitler can surely adjust to the realities of the global marketplace." Russia fought Napoleon and Hitler by withdrawing deep into its territory, poisoning the wells, destroying crops and so on. So Yeltsin's already made a pretty good start.

Dachau PR + giraffes in platform shoe

Palestine holds its first executions. Another state joins the elite death penalty fraternity, with Jamaica set to.

I haven't seen today's tv coverage of the Potemkin Summit yet, but when I do I'll be looking to check out my theory that Yeltsin had a stroke at some point. With no government in Russia, what can they have to talk about? If next month Clinton takes up vodka and Yeltsin takes up interns, I guess we'll know.

The United Kingdom was invaded today by the Kingdom of Arucania and Patagonia. I've read two articles in two papers about this (the Guardian evidently didn't find it newsworthy) and I still don't quite understand, except that some Frenchman was elected king in 1860 or so by some Indians who owned the Falklands, and today some Patagonians on a yacht raised the flag on the Minkies Reef and claimed the southernmost outhouse in the UK.

5,600 of Ecuador's 9,500 prisoners have served more than one year without a trial (which is now unconstitutional). Their protest has progressed from hunger strikes to sewing their lips together.

MGM is selling a walk-on in Pierce Brosnan's next movies for $10,000. Of course there is no guarantee against winding up on the cutting-room floor. No one mentioned it in the article, but the price might go up (or down) if it is realized that this is a remake of The Thomas Crown Affair, a 1968 or so film with Steve McQueen and Faye Dunaway known as being the first American film to feature open-mouthed kissing.

It has been announced that the prime minister of Norway is too depressed by the onset of the long northern winter to do his job. This is not the first time that this has happened in Norway.

Yesterday's testing by North Korea of a new missile, which overflew Japan, should perhaps be getting more attention than it has. The missile is actually intended to be aimed at Japan or more specifically at the US bases in Japan, so that in the event of another war, the US can be forced out quickly by North Korea inflicting damages in the form of a fast 20,000 casualties.

An interesting story in the London Times, for which some historical background is required. Fortunately, you have me to explain it. The British Labour Party has its origins in the Labour Representation Committee, formed something like 125 years ago. For the first few decades, the Labour party had no policies separate from those of the Liberal Party but existed simply to elect members of the working class to Parliament, who would bring their own experiences to bear on parliamentary debates, in the same way that Emily's List tries to get women elected today, in theory irrespective of their party affiliations. Eventually the Labour party developed its own platform. And now, the Amalgamated Engineering and Electrical Union has formed a fund to elect working-class members of Parliament, because in 125 years we have come full circle and the Parliamentary Labour Party now contains only 13% former manual workers.

As I predicted right off the bat, the Sudanese factory was probably not what the US said it was. Oops. Incidentally, soil samples from where? The land around it is evidently all paved.

And in the camp in Afghanistan, we killed mostly, well, those of in the big UC campuses should have expected this--foreign exchange students from Asia (in this case Pakistan). We've managed to push Pakistan further into Islamism, with the prime minister announcing a total shift to sharia law with mandatory five-times-daily prayer. Oh, and they have one of our intact cruise missiles now and are taking it apart. Fortunately, this one already missed its target by 400 miles, so they may not be learning anything all that useful. That's the thing about Afghanistan: chickens always come back to roost there. That was my first thought when I heard that foreign-financed terrorists were operating out of Afghanistan: boy, must the Russians be laughing up their asses at us over this one. The lost cruise missile (or maybe two) is like those stingers we gave to the Mujahadin and then spent years trying to buy back at inflated prices after the Russians left. And Iran is massing its army over the Afghan border because the Taliban seems to have taken a bunch of Iranian officials--yes, including embassy officials--hostage.

New game for reporters: figure out which Russian businessman seems to be giving Chernomyrdin and Yeltsin their marching orders this week and write an article calling them the new Rasputin. Hours of fun.

Not helping Russia any is that its chief foreign banker, Germany, is having an election in which another fat leader who way outstayed his welcome is going to be booted out.

Speaking of terrorist targets, Radio Free Iran begins operating in a couple of days. There would have been a Radio Free Iraq too but the US decided to operate it out of Prague without actually bothering to ask the Czechs whether they'd like this future ground zero in the middle of their capitol. Next to a nursery school. So it's been postponed a bit.

Britain is thinking about changing its law to prevent anonymous sperm donation.

OK, since the Church of England allowed the ordination of women, a lot of clergy have defected to Rome, but there's one whose wife is one of the new priests. And you thought Clinton's home life was a little frosty.

Speaking of which: cigars?

From the Sunday Times (London): "Eleven garden gnomes have been found hanged from a bridge in northeastern France in what appeared to be a mass suicide. Police at Briey found a suicide note in which the gnomes said they wanted to "quit this world" and join a "sect of the temple of submissive dwarves". The gnomes' origin remains a mystery: local gardeners report nothing suspicious.

If the lottery is a tax on innumeracy, what do we call Clinton's terrorism policy (I'd call it an anti-terrorism policy, but the US did drop missiles on Khartoum)? Some terrorists mount an operation probably costing a few thousand dollars to destroy embassies worth millions. So we respond by destroying a primitive training camp (barracks, tents and an obstacle course) worth thousands of dollars, at most, by dropping 50 or 60 missiles worth $1 million each on it. Surely a win-win situation, even at the loss of Terrorist University (watch out for the frat initiations, but the keggers are awesome, dude!). And this is the "war of the future," huh?

Let me be the first to say that chemical weapons are a bad thing, but I have yet to be convinced that the plant in Khartoum produced anything more than human and veterinary medicine. For a start, a fair number of westerners have been inside it and haven't seen anything untoward. And I'm getting increasingly curious as to the terminology being used--"precursors" to nerve gas? Does that not mean that we know damned well the plant was incapable of producing actual nerve gas and are so claiming only that it could have produced components of nerve gas, like any pharmaceutical, chemical, or paint factory in the entire world? Something like the airstrips in Grenada that could have landed Soviet Migs--or Canadian tourists? No, I suspect this was just added on as a justification after intensive focus group studies, just like Bush didn't start talking about Saddam Hussein's weapons of mass destruction until other rationales failed to produce high enough poll ratings. And because Clinton needed two targets to match the two embassies.

In the same way, I suspect this bin Laden character has been promoted, and probably promoted way out of his league, to Darth-Vader-of-the-year to put a human face on the Enemy.

The language I dislike most is the language of legality. I've heard several times, I think from both William Cohen and Madeline Albright (incidentally, one hates to give in to anti-semitism, but having those two fronting this policy doesn't really help a whole lot in the Middle East), that this was a legal action. What is meant by this? It is true that the 1996 Terrorism Act does allow the president to do literally anything against he wants against anybody he deems to be terrorists, which is pretty much the same as having no law at all, but it doesn't matter since these actions took place outside the boundaries of the US. So Sudanese and Afghan law should apply, unless we claim that the cruise missiles have diplomatic immunity, and I'm willing to bet there is nothing in the laws of either nation that says that other countries can bomb them, although perhaps the lawyers on this list will correct me. Recycled paper isn't even legal in Afghanistan, so I doubt missiles are. That leaves only United Nations law, which allows for self-defense. Which is what we're claiming, although normally revenge doesn't quite count. So we're claiming to have foreknowledge that bin Laden was planning lots more terrorism. Probably picked it up off his web site or something, since if we had such great intelligence sources, I suspect they'd have mentioned something about the embassy bombings in advance.

I suspect Helen of Troy was much more attractive than Monica, but did she give blow jobs?

Just heard the Boxer/Fong debate. Fong is playing the poor victimized Chinese card, which is a little bizarre to a Berkeley student. One-fourth of the debate was on Clinton's penis. Key phrase never to be used again: zero tolerance.

Clinton's response to calls for evidence about the Sudan plant: trust me. Yeltsin's response to the ruble crisis and the run on the banks: I'm in complete charge.

Yeltsin, by the way, has disappeared.

Thu, 20 Aug 1998

Just read an e-mail, which I won't forward since it's too long-winded to be worth it, but someone having problems with a Microsoft product called up their support line, which charges money, and a lot of it, and doesn't necessarily refund it if they fail to fix the problem, and then called the Psychic Friends Network. A comparison showed that the latter was faster, cheaper, more courteous although, admittedly, the psychics didn't solve the computer problem either.

According to a newspaper story, Chelsea is the glue holding the family together right now. I can just picture it. "Chelsea, can you ask your mother to pass the ketchup?" "Tell your father to get one of his bimbos to pass the damned ketchup!"

Newt Gingrich has been awfully moderate this week. Do you suppose it was that lying-to-Congress thing and that fine he had to pay a while back? Is he still in hock to Bob Dole, I wonder? Now, here's a question. One way in which Gingrich lied was in promising not to orchestrate a spin campaign, which he then did. Now, with which other Congresscritters was he closeted that weekend, and are any of them calling Clinton a liar this week?

I know the first question a reporter asked the defense secretary today was whether he'd seen the movie Wag the Dog, but I didn't hear what the answer was. Now was the bombing because a vacation at Martha's Vineyard turned out to be an inappropriate follow-up to a national almost-confession, sort of like OJ on the golf course? Or was it to put a break in that line-up of Senators and such calling for his resignation, which I don't believe anyone has done since the bombs fell?

A chemical plant in the center of a capitol city. No, nothing dangerous in that choice of target, no sirree billie-bob.

Terrorism is just a license for anything we want to do, isn't it? Yesterday, the Irish prime minister announced a bunch of new measures which he described as draconian, for use against the Real IRA and such. That must be the only time I've heard someone supporting actions use the term draconian, as if it was a positive term. Britain, too, is talking about going back to the good old days of internment, conviction on the word of a single cop, supergrasses, further cutbacks on the right to silence, etc., that brought us the Guildford 6, the Bradford 4, etc etc etc.

Starr is still going to try to match up the semen stain. Is there anything probative in that after Clinton has confessed fucking her? Monica, by the way, is seriously put out because she thinks they had a genuine relationship which he is reducing to mere sex. Poor girl.

None of the people Clinton made lie for him have seen fit to resign. Who was the last person to resign on a matter of principle in this country, anyway? William Jennings Bryan?

Meanwhile, the Russian economy has collapsed and Yeltsin is showing more signs of dementia, and Congo-Kinshasa is about to erupt again, but wait, let's hear some more about that tie!

Some British tourists who were unsatisfied with their accommodations in Malta sued the company. The judge decided this needed to be looked into very carefully indeed, has just returned from Malta, and says their expectations were too high.

Words not used by Clinton in yesterday's speech-let: affair, sex, lie, sorry, apology, aardvark, semen-stained dress.

Quayle, the master of irony, said on Nightline last night that Clinton should resign.

Matt Drudge says that Clinton was wearing the tie Monica gave him yesterday.

Clinton testifies. Whee. So where is the made-for-tv movies, already? And who should play Monica? I think we all fondly remember Sherilyn Fenn's ability on Twin Peaks to tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, but I understand that Shannen Doherty has already gained 30 pounds in preparation for the role, a la Robert De Niro.

Speaking of crappy movies, the review in the NY Times of The Avengers, which was released without reviewers being allowed to see it in advance, was headlined "Shh, They're Trying Not to Be Noticed." I understand the movie could still make a profit if they just take out ads emphasizing the key's sole asset, which is that neither Uma Thurman in the catsuit nor Sean Connery under his kilt, are wearing any underwear.

The Union Bank of Switzerland, which conveniently lost its records of money deposited by Jews before and during World War II, spent years trying to collect the rather piddling sums it lent to British and other Allied soldiers who escaped from POW camps and arrived without money or food and unable to get their British pay.

OK, it was the Oakland City Council that deputized the cannabis buyer's club to make its activities legal, not Berkeley. What does that tell you?

The 9th Circuit rules that people on Medicare have constitutional due process rights not to have claims turned down without a reason giving and a hearing by those HMOs the Feds are trying to force everyone on Medicare into. The decision is sensible and obvious enough, which means it will be reversed by the Supreme Court, which hates sensible and obvious almost as much as it hates the 9th Circuit. The interesting part is the Clinton Administration's position, which is that the decisions of the HMOs aren't subject to court review because they are not the actions of government. This is where privatization leads us, to a world where the Constitution no longer applies to actions taken by people working for the government because those people are alleged to be private. I know there are privatized federal prisons whose managements claim not to be bound by federal rules on things like excessive force and not killing prisoners and stuff.

I'll say it again: just when I think I have no expectations of Clinton left to be disappointed, he manages to disappoint me. Who would have thought they actually didn't want to find any evidence of Iraqi "illegal" arms programs because it would mean, I don't know, all that paperwork, I guess.

Finally, according to the LA Times, Sharon Stone, Michelle Pfeiffer, Ellen deGeneres, Madonna, Andie MacDowall, and I forget who all else, are turning 40 sometime this year. Feel old, feel very very old.