A follow-up: a while back I mentioned that the South Carolina Republican party had been criticized for not opening polling booths for its primary in black areas. I don't know if that situation is changed, but the D's realized that if they were going to criticize the R's, they'd better not do the same. Then they realized how expensive it would be, and cancelled the primary.

Speaking of primaries, it's time for the Californians on this list to make up their minds who they're going to vote for for president. Remember, the vote doesn't count in any meaningful way unless it's in the party in which you are registered. So you can technically vote for Alan Keyes to make mischief for the R's, but under the compromise by which the parties decided to ignore the express will of the voters, they would get to ignore you. This only applies to the presidential race. If you want to change your party registration, the deadline is Feb. 7.

Speaking of circuses, one of the first things his caring relatives did for Elian Gonzales after he came to this country after watching his mother drown, was take him to Disneyworld and stick him on a boat in a ride. He was heard to ask whether it would sink. Worse, it was It's a Small World. No fit guardian would subject a child to It's a Small World at the best of times.

The EU, en masse, told the Austrians not to let fascists into government. Finally, the EU is good for something.

And the governor of Illinois is planning to actually pay attention to executions and maybe stop them altogether, because they keep convicting innocent people. Put that way, it's entirely reasonable, but I don't see any other state doing it. I understand that Michael Moore sent a brass band to join one of those little Fry the Guy parties they hold outside the prison during executions in Texas, and some cheerleaders--George George, he's our man, if he can't kill him, no one can!

The Times & Post are downplaying it for some reason, but Britain just convicted a doctor of 15 murders. He killed old patients, some of whom he got to leave him him money. And he didn't kill just 15, he killed as many as ten times that number. Don't know if they were National Health patients. They also have a doctor over there who is defending, nay proud, of having cut the perfectly healthy legs off a couple of people with strange ideas of what is sexually arousing. And a doctor last week took out a patient's good kidney, leaving the ailing one. There's a simple solution when such things happen--at least, depending on how many kidneys the doctor still has left.

So those are the stories I've been reading for the last week in preparation for my doctor's visit today. Which turned out ok.

T-shirt seen on sale in Berkeley: “Fuck your Valentine.” Who buys these things?

Bush Lite said of McCain that "You can't take the high horse and then claim the low road." No indeedy, you cannot.

On Nightline Friday he corrected Ted Koppel, no, you can't call them anti-abortion, they are more properly called pro-life. A minute later he referred to the other side as anti-life.

We just can't elect another president who pronounces nuclear as nook-yu-ler. We just can't.

Speaking of anti-life, this week Boy George gets to execute his, I believe, 120th, a great-grandmother of all things.

Has anyone else noticed that the California ballot contains one initiative against gay marriage (22) and another that would pretty much create them (21)?

Anyone else seen those ads against Props 30 & 31 featuring a discussion of how to jump in front of a car and then collect insurance? What did they call it, curb jumping or something? Winner of this year's Reefer Madness award.

King Letsie of Lesotho gets married and says that he will only marry the once. Of course Lesotho doesn't have that annual topless women dancing event like Swaziland, whose king always seems to pick up a new wife each year.

Prague refuses to name a square or street after Kafka. Insert your own joke here, I can't be expected to do all the work.

During yesterday's Republican debate, Governor Smirk said that his economic policy was to make the pie higher. Something like that.

Dubya now has a campaign finance reform plan, which somehow magically only affects stuff that McCain might ever have done, and not anything he has ever done. Last month of course campaign finance reform was evil because it would hurt the Republicans and help the Democrats. Now he's got one of his own, without evidently needing to explain why this u-turn is anything other than a cynical ploy to steal McCain anti-establishment voters. Or does it have something to do with those stories that he's running out of money?

At Clinton's press conference today, some reporter asked if he had any advice for his wife on how to connect to women voters. 'Cause if anyone knows how to connect to women, it's Billy Bob. I can't remember what his answer was, but it probably wasn't anything to the effect that if Hillary connected with women, he wanted to watch.

Czech prime minister Zeman says that there is no place for women in his cabinet.

Under sharia law, the eldest male relative of a murder victim gets to personally execute their killer. In Afghanistan this weekend, a ten year old shot his father's killer four times with a rifle in a sports stadium.

At tickettoheaven.com you can buy, for a mere $10, a ticket that gets you into heaven. I'm guessing Greyhound.

New product, available soon: Crop Circle Beer, brewed entirely from barley grown in fields with crop circles.

The next story is about how if you really want to screw up a situation beyond imagining, it requires a lawyer. Which reminds me. I've been reading the ballot statements for superior court judge, and none of them are written in decent English. "Respect and courtesy are the way I treat victims of crime, jurors, witnesses..." One guy ends "I have a wonderful wife and two beautiful children. We ask for your vote." Well, I might vote for the wife and one child, but two seems excessive.

Governor Smirk is now accusing McCain of taking special interest money. Of course no one has more of that than Shrub, and everyone knows it, so the point is to increase the cynicism and apathy of the electorate, reduce turnout and slide through unnoticed.

Putin to reestablish military training for school boys (and girls to a lesser extent), including lessons in patriotism. The good old days. Remind me, didn't Yeltsin promise to abolish the draft?

Haidar's illegally-gotten estate is worked by underpaid immigrant workers. It just gets better and better. (Please note that I just used Dubya's technique of pointing out the hypocrisy of my opponent, of which I complained two paragraphs ago).

Prince Charles is thinking about becoming a King George rather than a King Charles.

George II says that Bob Jones University's ban on interracial dating is not based on hatred or bigotry. So that's all right, then.

China orders that Tibetan women be sterilized after two children, in violation of previous promises.

Northern Ireland devolution, RIP, age 72 days. I told you so. Well I did.

Another reason to vote for gay marriage in California and elsewhere: the demagoguery about the "marriage penalty." Which is actually a penalty for only a bare majority of married couples filing jointly, as it turns out. In the context of this mailing list, that means that the rest of us will pay higher taxes to subsidize Kevin's chosen lifestyle. Say thank you to the good people, Kevin.

Another Israeli soldier was killed in Lebanon by a missile. What you don't see in the US media is a discussion of where those missiles came from. Remember Iran-Contra? Remember the TOW missiles given to Iran in exchange for hostages, a deal brokered by Israel? Well guess what...

Other countries' troops are being sent to "support" French troops in Kosovo. Which actually means doing their job for them, since by all reports the French have been incredible cowards, even by French standards.

British soldiers in Kosovo are still in tents. They could have used the Serbs' barracks except the US insisted on bombing them all. Not because they were of any military use, having already been abandoned by the Serbs, but because they would look good blowing up on CNN.

The Bay Guardian says that P G & E donated $50,000 to Prop 21, the one to put juveniles in adult courts and prisons.

Today the British Parliament voted to reduce the age of (male) homosexual consent to 16. This gave a lot of Tory MPs the opportunity to see how many times they could say buggery in the course of a ten-minute speech.

Don Imus said that Forbes spent $100 million to make himself a laughingstock. The New York Times says that is is "a harsh formulation." It was actually $70 million.

NY Times headline: Bush and McCain, Sittin' in a Tree, D-I-S-S-I-N-G

Finland elects a single mother president. The US is making great progress in that direction, as there are now fewer straight white guys running for president than there were last week.

The East German illegitimacy rate is now over 50%, about twice that of the West.

Jorg Haidar today offered to compensate Austrian Jews who were victims of Nazis. Of course he linked it with compensation for Austrian Nazis who were victims of the Russians. He has also demanded compensation from the Czech Republic (would that include Slovakia as well, I wonder?) for Sudeten Germans expelled after the war.

The embargo on Austria is already breaking down. Princess Whosis of the Belgium went there, although Prince Charles cancelled a planned visit. But the right wings of several European countries are not cooperating. Tory MEPs, for example. And the Bavarian CSU is going out of its way to be friendly with the new Austrian government, because 1) they are assholes, 2) they have links with the other party in the right-wing coalition.

Tony Blair's attempt to give freedom to Wales through devolution and then given them slavery by imposing his own First Minister on them failed spectacularly today.

Russia gives the monopoly over Chechnya's oil and gas reserves to the last remaining state-owned company. Also, they're talking about leaving Grozny in ruins...well, they'll do that in any case...and remove the capital to the 2nd city.

It seems that in 1862 Abe Lincoln offered the command of the Union armies to Garibaldi, the Italian who led the country to unity. Only, Garibaldi wanted a statement that the war was to end slavery, and Lincoln wasn't willing to do it.

Spain lowers the minimum IQ to get into the military from 90 to 70.

Vietnam is going to pave the Ho Chi Minh Trail and turn it into a freeway. There's a joke there about turning the country into a parking lot, but it isn't worth the effort.

Israel has announced it will ignore its agreement not to kill civilians in Lebanon.

This Chinese guy who's been living in the US 20 years goes to China with $25,000 in charity money for the victims of Tienanmen Square. They arrest him and demand that he turn all the money over to them or they'll put him in prison. He agrees, leaves the country, the check he wrote is stopped. Now they're threatening his 78-year old father with taking away his house unless he gives them the money.

This week's Bay Guardian (in paper or on the Web) looks like having some useful articles on the California propositions. Even for non-Californians, some of it looks like fun reading.

Greece is *still* trying to pressure Macedonia into changing its name, this time to Northern Macedonia.

And the good news from the pharmaceutical industry is that Eflornithine may go into production again. It cures sleeping
sickness, an especially nasty disease that unfortunately for them, only effects poor people in Africa. So no one's made it since 1999. But since it also eliminates facial hair in rich white women, there's now a market that the industry cares about. How'd you like to explain that one to the Africans?

Correction of the Week

"Because of an editing error, an article on Tuesday about the court case in Chile against Gen. Augusto Pinochet misidentified the ocean into which the military apparently dumped the father of Viviana Diaz, a woman who leads a group of surviving family members. It was the Pacific, not the Atlantic."--The New York Times, Feb. 3, 2001

From London Times, best topic sentence of the week: “A HOSPITAL apologised to patients yesterday for selling their skin for chemical warfare research.”

From the Daily Telegraph: “An American student sold his soul for $400 on an internet auction site yesterday.”

California primary

So I've been reading the election booklet, and here are my thoughts and recommendations.

First, the arguments are getting wackier each year. Something has to be done to make them at least honest. Where is Gary Wesley, attorney at law, when we need him?

1A Indian gambling. Yes, we just voted on this. Evidently this will allow the use of video slot machines, the crack cocaine of gambling. Well that's what it says here. Vote yes.

Bond measures, 12 through 16, no as always. No reason to go into debt during an economic boom.

12 is evidently to "buy more land for insects, rats and weeds that your family will never get to see or use."

13, say the people against, is not *that* Prop 13. They actually feel they have to say that. And don't wear platform shoes and mood rings to the polling places, people, it's not 1978. The people for say that "Without it, we all face a very uncertain water future." As long as it doesn't have Kevin Costner in it.

15, for crime labs, aka the O J Simpson Initiative. "If it were the opponents' father who was murdered, sister who was raped, or child killed by a drunken driver, we believe there would be no argument against Proposition 15."

16, for Veterans' homes: one statement beings "Pear Harbor, Iwo Jima, Omaha Beach...Khe Sanh, Kuwait, Bosnia..." Yup, the only mention of Vietnam is one designed not to be understood by anyone who wasn't there. We want to help veterans, but not *those* veterans.

17 to legalize raffles for charities. The opponents present it as a "professional gambling operator's dream" although the Prop specifically says that the money has to actually go to charity and the operator has to belong to the charity. Vote yes, or no, who cares.

18, the hand of George Deukmejian reaches out of the political grave on this one, which would make all sorts of things into "special circumstances" for the purposes of death penalty. Vote no, of course, but note that it would make kidnapping or arson or lying in wait in relation to murder a special circumstance, even if it was always intended to be a murder, rather than a real kidnapping or arson. In other words, it's really one crime, murder, but they're trying to treat it as two crimes for the purpose of inflicting a death penalty. Dishonest, but par for the course. Note one of the opponents was B.J. on MASH.

19 increases penalties for murder of BART police & Cal State police (but not UC, for some reason) to those for the murder of, ya know, real cops. Vote no, but note that the arguments against are entirely fictional, saying that the Prop does things like let BART impress people into a posse and fine people $1,000 who refuse, and that it covers bomb threats and falsely reporting crimes. The actual text of the prop is quite short and mentions none of that.

20. Allocation of the lottery to school districts, telling them how to spend it (a % on textbooks). First, who cares, second, let the districts make their own decisions. So vote who cares, I mean no.

21. Every election has an atrocity, and this is it. Especially after the figures on what LA does to juvenile criminals in the adult court system, this would require trying as adults a lot more 14 year olds, requires registration for gang members just like sex criminals, imprison juveniles before trial, bar sealing juvenile records and, here's my favorite part, allowing the cops to release the name of juveniles arrested, before any actual charges are even made. Oh, and more crimes count towards 3 strikes, although without trawling through the 13 pages of this initiative, I can't tell you which ones. Spitting on the sidewalk, no doubt. No no no no.

22. No gay marriages. The statement in favor was written by a 20-year old Hispanic woman, and is not the only personal statement on this ballot, the other being a thing by a recovering gambling addict against Prop 1A. This is a trend that should stop at once. Anyway, Ms. Santacruz says "Marriage is an important part of our lives, our families, and our future. Someday I hope to meet a wonderful man, marry and have children of my own. By voting Yes on 22, I'm doing my part to keep the dream alive. If it fails, I will have to marry a big bull dyke." I made up that last sentence. Lady, you're 20 and Hispanic; tick tock, that mustache isn't growing any smaller.

23. A None of the Above ballot option. If anyone knows how this got on the ballot, tell me. I suspect a dirty trick. It is non-binding, so Mr. Above can never win an election, so it is politically meaningless. But it would siphon votes away from the Greens, Libertarians and such, who might subsequently lose their ballot status like Peace and Freedom has, which is where the dirty trick comes in. The argument is written by 3 California citizens who usually don't vote, and think many more citizens will register and will vote in order to cast a pointless vote. I've cast more than my share of pointless votes, but this is too pointless. No.

All together in an Australian accent: Proposition 22: No pooftas! Proposition 24: there is no proposition 24.

Prop 25 campaign spending limits. I need more time on this one. There are voluntary aspects to it, including a fine on people who break a voluntary pledge, and there is something about millionaires being able to spend whatever they like, a reference which I think means that this is Ron Unz's initiative.

Prop 26 removes the requirement of a 2/3 majority for school districts to issue bonds, and gives money to charter schools. You know, I was going to say yes on the theory that 2/3 is undemocratic, but if it's just to issue bonds, which I don't believe in anyway, I think I will recommend a no vote. Both sides on this one have typewriters whose CAP key keeps sticking.

Prop 27, a voluntary declaration of adherence to term limits can be put on the ballot next to a candidate's name. Term limits are bad, politicizing the ballot form is bad, and I believe other states that tried this had it struck down in the courts. No.

Prop 28 to repeal to Prop 10's cigarette tax and anti-smoking programs, has an amusing statement by the sponsor, the president of Cigarettes Cheaper! That's his exclamation mark, not mine, so it's rather surprising he gets through a statement and a rebuttal with only 2 of them, 3 if you count the sentence that you can call them at 1-800-Cheaper! I didn't know my telephone even had punctuation marks. Evidently "The primary use for Prop 10 funds has been to publicize Rob Reiner." Although elsewhere he says none of the money has been spent. As the aliens told Woody Allen in Stardust Memories, if you want to benefit humanity, just make funnier movies, Meathead. Mr. Exclamation Point also says that Prop 10 money will be spent on a Brave New World approach to raising children wherein bureaucrats will take over from parents. Sounds like Epsilon thinking to me. Vote no.

Prop 29, the evil twin of 1A. No.

By the way, James Doohan, who played Scotty, just fathered a child at 80. I dinnae know how much more of this my testicles can stand, captain!

Jorg Haidar is threatening to use the Austrian veto on everything in the EU to *make* them talk to Austria. This is actually rather promising, I think. If he still doesn't get his way, he'll invade Poland.

Actually, that would probably be against the paper the Austrian president (who was actually lobbying other EU countries to protest events in his own country) made them sign, saying that democracy is good and fascism is bad. Now if only President von Hindenburg had thought of that in '33.

A by-election in Wales sends into Parliament its first earring-wearing male MP (Plaid Cymru party)(which is pronounced exactly like it's spelled, except not).

I actually know the perfect country for Haidar to rule. The water off Sicily is bubbling and they're expecting Graham Island to rise again. Last seen in 1831, when it was claimed, according to the London Times, by Britain, France, and Italy (which did not exist at the time, so that was remarkably prescient).

In my continuing search for alternative ways to render George Walker Bush's name, I am adding two more:

Governor Smirk.

Boy George (after the tendency of his mother and father to refer to him as "my boy").

I will continue using Dubya, Bush the Younger, Bush Lite, and
Shrub. Collect them all.

Web sites

Christian nudists.

alienresistance.org. Evidently you can stop aliens from anal-probing you by just saying the name of Jesus.

tencommandments.org. On why we need to make the 10 Commandments the basis of US government. Read the essay on how the US Constitution actually turns people into homosexuals.

All of these sites are serious, and are compiled on ship-of-fools.org (or com? I forget). Enjoy.

In case the sanctions on Iraq weren't beginning to look silly enough, a bunch of Jordanians (I believe) have brought a bunch of pencils to the border in violation of the sanctions (graphite can be used in military applications). Not Gandhi making salt, but a pretty effective stunt, I thought.

Don't remember if I followed up on the NY psychics thing: as soon as it was found out, they stopped it, of course.

A NY Times letter suggests Elian should stay in the US so that he can receive all the therapy he'll need for what's been inflicted on him by his Miami relatives.

Went into my bank the other day and noticed bottles of ketchup at various spots along the counter. I had to ask, even knowing that the answer was going to be stupid. I was told that it was to advertise loans so that one might "catch up" on one's bills. Even stupider feeling than me for asking: the guy who had to repeat that 30 times a day. Stupider still: the person who came up with the idea. Stupider still: the person who bought the ketchup, because they bought a brand that calls it catsup, ruining the whole pun.

A British MP is stabbed with a samurai sword.

The New York Times today broke, on page 1 yet, a story about the city putting welfare recipients to work as telephone psychics. If they're not already clairvoyant, they are given intensive training.

Speaking of stupid banking ideas, the state bank of Zimbabwe had an idea of having a lottery, every month, in which they'd give away money to owners of accounts, with extra tickets going for each, oh say $5,000, in those accounts. The first winner: President Mugabe, who no doubt owns half the money in the banks.

And no, I'm not making up the welfare psychic thing.

George Burns ran into Lilian Gish one day. "I thought we were dead," he said.

Dubya says he is humbled by the vote in Iowa. He said it with a smirk, although a smaller one than usual. In four years, we could really get sick of that smirk.

The Supreme Court, in one of the spectacularly idiotic rulings it has been making this month, 5-4, says that redistricting conducted with a discriminatory intent is ok, so long as the minority voters are not put in a worse position.

In Britain a private members' bill to guarantee the right of parents to smack their children failed by a majority of 70.

Evidently Gary Bauer had a fundraiser at the home of the McCaughey septuplets. Have yourself photographed with a sept, only $250. Weird weird weird. I suppose this is the Christian right's idea of the ideal American family, after we get rid of that pesky Roe v. Wade. What next? Alan Keyes holding a fundraiser at a freak show? For $500, get a picture of yourself standing next to the candidate as he bites the head off a live chicken.

Alan Keyes says his favorite movie is Star Trek: Insurrection. Trust him to like one of the odd-numbered movies (in-joke for Trekkies, you know who you are).

Every day brings in new evidence of Americans' inability to reason from the specific to the general (or induction, as we college-types call it). Some idiot legislator from somewhere was on McNeil-Lehrer (I was listening on the car radio, sorry for the lack of specificity) talking about the need to grant Elian Gonzales citizenship so as to remove his case from the jurisdiction of the INS into that of the courts. What do you want to bet she's one of those behind that awful immigration bill that removed to a large extent INS decisions from the oversight of the courts? Suddenly the INS are being portrayed by the right wing as the same jack-booted thugs as the ATF and the FBI. But only in the case of this one brown-skinned type.

Speaking of racists, there goes Austria again. Pay attention to that one it could get nasty.

Bushisms / finger shots

One of those creepy 107-year old Japanese twins died. Aren't they the ones who used to call Mothra?

Letter in the Sunday NY Times about Microsoft's market value now equaling Spain's GDP: "Hey, I've been to Spain. Windows 98 works better."

So the Chechens didn't really capture that general after all. What's the point of even making up an easily checkable lie? At least when the US military lied about the performance of Patriot missiles or Sudanese chemical plants or who they were killing in Kosovo, it usually took weeks or months to find out, by when it's evidently ancient history (god knows what you call the sort of history I work on).

I'd been dismayed by the German SPD's incompetence in office, its squabbling and its inability to win a single state election. I figured all those years out of power would take a lot of time in office to overcome, learning the job and so on, and they didn't look like having it. Thank god for financial scandals, huh? The Hesse elections might even have to be re-run since the CDU spent illegal money. And how about Kohl defying the law and his own party, which is threatening to sue him, by citing his "honor." His honor is a pretty small thing to hide behind, and he's such a great big fat thing. The worry, though, is that the CDU could break up or be too badly depressed in subsequent elections, to the benefit of the far-right racist parties.

In my continuing quest to bring you the latest news of Shrub's inability to speak the English language, here are excerpts from the London Times:

Ben Macintyre reports on the mangled messages from the Republican front-runner

GEORGE W. BUSH had the audience eating out of the palm of his hand until suddenly, in the middle of a riff about free trade, he appeared to launch an unprovoked attack on a species of small dog.

The world will be a better place, the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination said, when "all the terriers are torn down".


Mr Bush is also prey to what might be called the jammed compact-disc stutter, when he gets impaled on a single word. "We must all hear the universal call to like your neighbour just like you like to be liked yourself." Then there is the grand word glitch, triggered by his occasional forays into the deeper bits of the dictionary. Three times in two days, Mr Bush said that, if elected, he would never "obsfucate". It is a measure of the Bush charm that when the candidate finds himself up a blind verbal alley being assaulted by his own syntax, he is as amused anyone else.

"Bumble through OK?" he grins.

After more than seven years of syntactical precision by Bill Clinton, it is refreshing to have the Bush-isms back, and a candidate who does not obsfucate but say things how they are is.

The Supreme Court rules that it's ok for judges not to clarify their instructions when the jury asks. Why on earth don't these juries just refuse to come to a verdict rather than say, oh well, I guess we should vote for the death penalty just to be sure

The Chinese are holding Falun Gong members in psychiatric hospitals.

A doctor in NY is being sued by a woman for carving his initials on her stomach after a caesarian.

Dan Burton will hold hearings in LA on stuff the Soviet Union did during the Cold War. He says it's because some of the stuff happened in California so CA will want to hear about it. However, most of the hearings will of necessity be behind closed doors. And all those federal employees will have to be flown to the coast to testify. But at least Burton will get a free plane ride to California so he can play in the Bob Hope Classic at Palm Springs.

The Bush campaign is accusing the Forbes campaign of doctoring a photo of Shrub in an ad, to make his ears look funny.

Quote of the week: "These people [refugees from Russian bombing] used to live in a great country where no one asked them if they were Chechen or Ingush or Dagestani," Russia's Deputy Energy Minister, Khodzh-ahmed Arsanov, said. "Everything we're doing now for them is free - the gas, the electricity. The bombing is free too, but we have to find the money for that from other budgets."

There are now 1.2 billion under-nourished people in the world, and 1.2 billion fatties.

The Supreme Court upheld segregation of prisoners with HIV, including exclusion from religious services and educational and work programs that reduce prison time.

See article in Slate on the arguments in a case about the no-protest zones around abortion clinics.

Rumor has it that Chechen rebels are paying the Russian army not to bomb certain towns.

The D's have a Bush Stump Speech Search Engine, to show how scripted and repetitious he is. He's never once mentioned cocaine.

An op-ed piece in today's NY Times captures what is most obnoxious about the Elian Gonzales thing with an apt comparison to the wholesale removal of Amerind children from their parents earlier this century on the theory that the government could do a better job than dirty Injuns. Which may be the case with Elian's mother, who subjected her kid to the worst form of child endangerment, but you know what I mean.