One more country which seized bank accounts and such of Jews killed in the Holocaust: Israel.

The British police are trying to create a national DNA database but are finding some serious resistance from...the British police, who really of all people need to be typed so that they can be eliminated as possible contaminants of crime scenes, but the coppers are afraid their saliva will be tested for drugs or that the results might be turned over to the Child Support Agency.

Speaking of DNA, Bush sets another execution date for the guy he gave a stay so that he could have his DNA tested. So we now know that Texas has great safeguards and never executes innocent people. I still say the whole thing was a set-up.

Caught most of Jesse Jackson's speech yesterday. He referred to Lieberman as "one of the good hymies." All right, he didn't, but it would have been less creepy than his introduction of the slogan "Stay Out the Bushes."

Caroline Kennedy (Insert name of lesser mortal she married here) invoked her father, and informed us that her daughter slept with a teddy bear which she called Uncle Teddy. Only a Kennedy would fail to realize how utterly creepy that was.

Today Joe Lieberman gave a rousing speech. Well, it didn't rouse me: I woke up after it had started, but I fell back asleep. He didn't invoke God five million times in this speech, but he did attack Hollywood, saying something about how parents shouldn't have to compete with the culture in raising their children.

I suppose it would be a really cheap shot to insert at this juncture that Israeli Orthodox Jews, continuing a program of arson against sex shops and such in Tel Aviv, burned down a brothel today, killing four people.

I was awake for Tommy Lee Jones's speech, which I actually enjoyed. What is it in this election about good ol' boys in the Ivy League? Tommy Lee talked about huntin' with coon dogs (fortunately, Jesse Jackson was not speaking afterwards. Sorry.) in the context of trying to humanize his old Harvard roomie. Al Gore was also a Star Trek fan, but then so was Alan Keyes. And George "W" used chewing tobaccy while attending Yale Business School.

The Democrats have a trans-gendered delegate, from Minnesota. And no, not the governor.

The Russian Orthodox Church has canonized Tsar Nicholas II and all his awful family. Not, of course, their servants who were also executed--they were just doing their duty, according to the church.

Headline in NY Times: "West Nile Found in Brooklyn". Now that's lost.

Clinton gave another of his Alzheimer's-inducing speeches: four hours later and I can't remember a word of it.

I do like the theme, Are you better off now than you were 8 years ago. Personally, I'm not, but it's still a pretty good theme. With all the sound-bite theft of these two conventions, I can't wait to see who gets to use "There you go again" first.

Hillary said something, and I believe I'm paraphrasing here, about Gore being able not just to talk the stiff robotic talk, but walk the stiff robotic walk.

As I write, it is ladies' night at the Democratic convention. Barbara Mikulsi has said that such women are changing the face of the US Senate. A national tv audience of 3 looked at Mikulski's face on their screens and shuddered.

Don't blame me, she's the one that brought it up.

Fun fact of the day: it is illegal to get a vasectomy in France.

Japan has been influencing small nations to vote to allow Japan to kill endangered whale species by threatening to withhold foreign aid.

Some Japanese want to go to Australia for the Olympics, but being Japanese don't want to take more than one day off work. The result: "banzai tours."

Barbara Boxer spoke a little while ago. Who knew she was still alive, much less one of my Senators?

Shrub wants Gore to distance himself still further from Clinton's sex life, because I don't think any of us have heard nearly enough about what everyone thinks about that. "If he's got a problem with what on in the past, he ought to explain what it is." Shrub has a problem with what on in the past: twenty years of his past is just a blur in his memory. This is the Bush who executed one retarded guy this week, of whom the prosecutor said that he should be executed because he was retarded, and therefore more dangerous, and another guy from whose jury all minorities had been systematically excluded, in accordance with the handbook prosecutors used in Houston until they were caught at it.

Pat Buchanan managed to find a black woman who supports the Confederate flag. Buy that woman and put her on the ticket!

A Wal-Mart in Pennsylvania had Back to School Sale signs over its ammo.

An article in the New Statesman on the British obsession with class, from a South African Oxford don who used to be at Magdalen College, Oxford, which is pronounced just as it is spelled, if it were spelled Maudley. Magdalen was the place that turned down Laura Spence, who had to settle for Harvard, as I mentioned once before. The article talks about the college's old master, Sir Herbert Warren, a great snob. He liked to greet every incoming freshman. One year one of those was the Imperial Prince of Japan. Warren asked him what his name, Prince Chichibou, actually meant. "The Son of God," Chichi said. Warren replied, "Of course you'll find we have the sons of many famous men here at Magdalen." But there was also the labor historian R H Tawney, who once pulled out a chair for a visitor, a guest called Sir Arthur Cholmondley-Withers, saying "Have a seat Mr. Withers." Sir A C-W insisted, "Cholmondley-Withers, if you please!" Tawney pulled up another chair: "Have two seats then."

Dick Cheney, who does not plan to sell off his company's stocks until after he is elected, just as Leiberman plans to run for his Senate seat, was allowed by his oil company to retire 3 years early and still keep all his benefits. This is in essence a $10 million favor, which some might call a bribe, but not me, so sirree bob.

Last year, one Michael Forbes, Congresscritter for NY, switched from the R's to the D's. Yeah, I don't remember it either. This means that the R's, who would really like to defeat the turn-coat, have in their possession outtakes from campaign commercials he shot when he was with them, in which he made farting sounds with his armpits. They are considering whether they might wish to make some use of that footage in this election.

Iran may raise its minimum marriage age for females from 9.

Texas now has more prisoners than California, despite having a population not two-thirds the size (although Walker is doing his best to kill them off, one retarded guy at a time. Didja read the story about the retarded guy who was so eager to please that after confessing to a Texas Ranger, he climbed into his lap? Heartwarming.) 163,000 prisoners each. But Texas has a lot more people than that with concealed weapon permits. Including all those priests. Don't mess with Texas.

Britain has been having one of its little panics over paedophilia, thank to the News of the World publishing the names and addresses of registered sex offenders. Today the 3-year old child of one of the leaders of the vigilantes was found in the street 3 blocks away from home and naked, while his mother was off giving a tv interview.

Two favorite headlines of the day: "Firemen Act as Anteater's Gynaecologist" and "State Outlaws Farmyard Noises."

The rabbi leader of the Shas Party in Israel says that all the Jews killed in the Holocaust were reincarnated sinners. Well, that's ok then. To quote Arnold Schwarzenegger when asked in True Lies if he'd killed people, "Ya, but they were all bad." I've said it before and I'll said it again, that Shas is one bad mother...

In his speech at the Convention, Bush made fun of Gore's use of the word "risky," painting him as a man too timid to take a spin of the wheel and "risk" wrecking Social Security, the big weenie. Now Gore has returned the favor by picking Lieberman, pulling the teeth of Junior's Christian rhetoric.

I'm curious about why this was announced when it was, very early in the morning, one day before it was scheduled, and not one day after Gore said that he still hadn't made up his mind. It doesn't say a lot for his conviction that the prig from Connecticut is the best man for the job.

Nothing I've heard of Lieberman's record today suggests that he is anything other than a Republican, but with a sense of humor. And to answer my first question about a sabbath observant Jew, yes he can push the button and annihilate the world on the sabbath, but he might have to walk five miles through the snow first to do it.

Last comments on the Republican Convention, really

Molly Ivins suggests to Bush's speechwriters that the comment on restoring civility to Washington should have come at least two paragraphs away from his last attempt to shiv the Dems.

And she reminds me that whoever spoke for Utah began "Utah, the only state that begins with U". And ends with "tah". Personally, I preferred Wyoming, "the land of high altitudes, low multitudes and good attitudes."

Dennis Miller points out that the "Leave No Child Behind" night was capped by a speech by Laura Bush, who gave up a teaching job to help her husband's political career.

Miller also says that Al Gore couldn't be more phony if he were a professional Al Gore impersonator.

The Washington Post finally breaks the news that Mary Cheney is gay. Remember, you heard it here first. Incessantly.

The Queen Mum is 100 years old today, and doesn't look a day over dead.

The Republican Convention has inspired me. Later in this month I will have my opportunity to participate in the sacred duty of every citizen to weasel their way out of jury duty.

Convention

In the big news of the day, the skull of anti-Pope Benedict XIII (14th century) has been stolen in Spain and is being held hostage. It has magical powers.

The Republican Convention continues to put all of its blacks (none of whom besides Julius Caesar Watts have been nominated by the party for elective office, you'll notice) right up there on the podium, so that the delegates can feel secure that their wallets won't be lifted.

The Post comments that having it in historic Philadelphia just reminds everyone how far leadership in this country has fallen in 200 years. And Gerald Ford (whose presidency almost looks good in comparison, huh? I mean, he did restore the nation's self-respect with the Mayaguez incident) nearly fulfilled the W. C. Fields nightmare of dying in Philadelphia.

No, Mary Cheney's girlfriend did not show up.

In the primaries, McCain referred to Bush's soft-money-financed machine as the Death Star. At the convention, he was brought on to the tune of John Williams's theme from Star Wars.

Colin Powell said that there was no room in the Republican Party for racists. Evidently all those slots are already filled. (Will Durst joke)

George Bush Senior threatened that if Clinton kept attacking his boy, he would say what he really thinks about him. Am I the only one reminded of the episode of The Simpsons where the Bushes moved in across the street?

Cheney delivered the attack speech. Who would have thought? I especially liked the bit when he said that Clinton, the man from Hope, would be going home to (and here he gave a little shake of his head, evidently hopelessly confused by the thought of someone moving) New York. "It's time for them to go", he reiterated, reminding us that Gore gave the same line 8 years ago in a far more dynamic speech.

Cheney is finally going around defending his Congressional voting record, repeatedly saying that we must remember the context of the times, an excuse last trotted out at the Nuremberg trials, if I'm not mistaken. Next he'll be saying it was peer pressure. Just say no!

He explained the vote against releasing Nelson Mandela by saying that back then we thought that all those black people were communists. He then explained his vote against Head Start by saying that back in the '80s we thought that all children were communists. "My bad!" he added. He defended voting against cop-killer bullets by saying that it was his job to represent the views of the people of Wyoming, and that there were more people in Wyoming who wanted to shoot cops than there were cops. And they vote!

Al Franken points out that while Cheney attacked the Clintons for moving to NY, Cheney himself changed his voter registration from Texas to Wyoming just a few weeks ago.

I was pleased to see Bush claim that he could turn part of Social Security into a stock market lotto without reducing benefits, the equivalent of the Laffer curve but more to the point also the equivalent of the Read My Lips speech, since sooner or later he has to produce this proposal with the blanks actually filled in.

convention

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

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

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

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

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

Convention

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

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

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

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

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

Convention

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

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

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

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

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

Obviously I wasn't in the pocket of the NRA

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

You heard it here first?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Ya gotta have heart

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

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

Think big

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

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

That's a lot of potatoes.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Putting education somewhere in the top 3, or so

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

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

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

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

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

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

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