Scott had emailed me that there were going to be the usual corny protestors outside, so I was expecting the small crowd gathered across the street from the place. I walked in and checked my coat and while I was doing that I heard someone say 'Karl is going to talk to them!' I walked over to the door and looked through the glass and indeed, Karl Rove was crossing the street to go talk to the protestors. Everybody watched and whispered 'what is he doing' as he walked over to them. The crowd shifted down the street as he approached them. I watched some of the protestors take his picture. It was stunning.

I don't really like the Bush Doctrine, okay?

After 9-11, I thought we should confine our efforts to the Al Qaeda organization. Instead, Bush decided to condemn half the Middle East with his Axis of Evil speech and roll tanks into Iraq.

It bothered me. It still bothers me. But dammit, if you look at the patterns, it seems to be working. The Middle East thinks Bush is batshit crazy, and their governments are afraid of us. Do you get that? The bad guys are afraid of us, because against all logic and common sense, we went into Iraq and we took Saddam down.

We ignored all the reasonable advice from Asia and Europe and people like me, and we went in with guns blazing. We've paid a terrible price in men and money, and we're still there.

What's the lesson? Fuck with America and we will intervene, flagrantly, in the Middle East. So, if you want us to go home, what should you do? What will happen if we get attacked again? What will happen to the governments of Syria, Iran, and Saudi Arabia if Al Qaeda sets off a nuke in Times Square?

You think we'll just pack up and go home? Or will we stick our meddling capitalist fingers in every Middle Eastern cesspool on the planet, hoping to turn up a needle in the haystack?

Middle Eastern governments want us to leave them alone. They'll snipe at us when they feel protected, funneling money to terrorist organizations when they think they won't be traced. But what happens when we follow that money home? What happens when their attempts to scare us backfire, and the crazy American president starts taking out dictators in Iraq and Afghanistan?

I'll tell you what happens. The money dries up, and governments that used to wink and nod at terrorism get on their secret satelite phones and tell their extremists to cool it, unless they want to see Marines taking showers in the palace.

Bush wants to be like Reagan, and he has succeeded. Everybody thought Reagan was crazy, when he went on TV and said, "We begin bombing in five minutes." His comments scared the shit out of people. It scared us in America, and more important, it scared our enemies.

In 2001, New York was burning and we were afraid. Today, there are American flags flying in Baghdad and our enemies are afraid.

I don't have access to all the documents, but I must entertain the possibility, the possibility that the Bush Doctrine is working. We have been relatively safe since 9-11. Iraq is a hot zone, but there have been no major attacks on U.S. soil. Why? Because the people who finance terrorism are afraid of us.

We will be hit again, okay? That fear has limits, and Bush is pissing a lot of people off. But tyrants around the world are making compromise noises because we have put the fear of God in them. And if Kerry wins this election, all of that progress will be rolled back.

Europe will love us. The UN will praise us. The Arab world will breathe a huge sigh of relief. And money will start trickling back into Al Qaeda's coffers. The bad guys will tighten their grip on their respective populations, and the price we have paid will have been paid for nothing.

However, Galloway’s abhorrence of tyranny is not as absolute as he likes to think. The noticeboard that covers one wall of his office bears portraits of Galloway’s personal idols, some surprising (Churchill, Bobby Moore), some not (Aziz, Arafat, Marx, Guevara, Castro). I make an idle reference to this as a “rogues’ gallery”; Galloway seizes on the phrase.

“I don’t – and I don’t think many readers of The Independent on Sunday – consider Castro or Guevara a rogue. These people are heroes.”

But Castro is a dictator, and you just said. . .

“He’s a hero. Fidel Castro is a hero.”

He’s a dict. . .

“I don’t believe that Fidel Castro is a dictator.”

I honestly can’t think of anything to say to this.

“Fidel Castro is a great revolutionary leader. But for 40 years or more of siege, undoubtedly Cuba would have developed, democratically speaking, differently. But when the enemy is at the gates, spending billions to destroy the revolution, you have to accept that there will be restrictions on political freedoms in a place like Cuba.”

You’ve met El Presidente, I take it.

“Yes. Magnificent. He’s the most magnificent human being I’ve ever met.”

At this, I laugh out loud – as much with delight at Galloway’s fabulous effrontery as with derision at the absurdity of the statement. Fortunately, if one thing can be said to have defined Galloway’s career, it’s fondness for an argument, and he presses on with a grin.

“You won’t get me to resile from this point. He is the greatest man I have ever met, by a country mile. You simply cannot compare Fidel Castro to Saddam Hussein or to any other dictator.”

While my take on the word freedom may be slightly different than those of the Duke Conservative Union (slavishly following the commands of Sauron--oops! I mean David Horowitz--does put a slightly different slant on the term) I do appreciate their efforts to call to our attention the lack of diversity in party affiliation among some Duke faculty.

While there are important differences, we must keep in mind that the Democrats and Republicans show negligible divergence on major domestic and foreign policy issues Clinton's government, after all, bombed Iraq repeatedly while George W. Bush just did it all at once. Neither has released data on the numbers of Iraqis killed; social services, welfare, support for education and the environment were gutted under both regimes and no high ranking member of either has been held responsible for personal benefits derived from ties to the military cybernetic complex, etc....

Given this, I also want to know, where is the diversity? Where are the Greens, Labour, the Christian Democrats, the Socialists, the Communists, the Workers Party, the Black Panthers, Puerto Rican independistas, etc...? Where is the truly wide range of partisan organizing that, across the globe, offers diversity in imagining options for the future?

The artist, who fears retaliation from former regime loyalists for his work with the Coalition, spent several months sculpting and casting the statue. Though he created the original statues of Saddam along with another artist, he created the 4th ID memorial through his own design, said Anderson.

     The sculpture is based on a scene many in Iraq have witnessed in one form or another. A soldier kneels before a memorial of boots, rifle and helmet – his forehead resting in the hollow of his hand. Behind and to his right stands a small Iraqi girl with her hand reaching out to touch his shoulder.

     The little girl portrays, in her eyes and presence, a sympathy mixed with gratitude. She was added to remind people of why the sacrifice was made, Fuss said.

     “It’s about freedom for this country, but it’s also about the children who will grow up in a free society,” he said.

Kerry, who has a commanding lead in the race to oppose Bush this fall, chided the president for taking time out Sunday to attend the Daytona 500, saying the country was bleeding jobs while he posed for a "photo opportunity." Bush had donned a racing jacket to officially open NASCAR's most prestigious event in front of some 180,000 fans.

"We don't need a president who just says, `Gentlemen start your engines,'" Kerry said. "We need a president who says, `America, let's start our economy and put people back to work.'"

UPDATE: George Will has a bunch of questions for Kerry, which are along the same lines as the famous "letter to Dr. Laura", and just as unanswerable.

Among the ugly rituals of the Romans on this day was the sacrifice of a dog and a goat, the daubing of their blood onto two youths then washing the blood off with milk, etc… This is something that would cause revulsion in anyone of a sound nature, and it is unacceptable to the sound mind. 

In November 1970, the commander of the Texas Air National Guard, Lt. Col. Jerry B. Killian, called Mr. Bush, then 24, "a dynamic outstanding young officer" who stood out as "a top-notch fighter interceptor pilot" mature beyond his age.

"Lt. Bush's skills far exceed his contemporaries," Colonel Killian wrote in recommending that Mr. Bush be promoted to first lieutenant. "He is a natural leader whom his contemporaries look to for leadership. Lt. Bush is also a good follower with outstanding disciplinary traits and an impeccable military bearing."

I really enjoyed listening to you on Boston's NPR tonight. After listening to the Christian Coalition spokesman tonight, I write in what I suppose is a defense of Evangelicals -- we're not all like that. I'm 20 years old, a senior at a large (liberal) public university, straight, female, an evangelical christian, a conservative, and a vehement supporter of civil gay marriage. I've been involved in theatre and the arts for most of my life, and have known and loved a number of gays, and seen the war waged on them by the religious right, which is what brings me to this fight anyway...

I was once walking across campus and found myself trying to navigate between a group of LGBT folks and the Fred Phelps psychos, and I thought "If I have to pick sides here, whose side do I stand on?" and it was without question with the LGBT folks. I'm willing to cede gay marriage because it's practical, and because I dream of the day that gay people don't automatically assume that Christians are out to get them. What Jesus has to offer is for everyone, not just heteros, and in any case, he never sought to change the laws of his culture, he set out to change people. And he hung out with the beautiful people that made the Pharisees uncomfortable. I still have issues with gay marriage in the church (if I thought I could rationalize it with the Bible, I'd support it in a heartbeat, but as much as it kills me, I can't) but as far as I'm concerned, if you want to marry the man you love at the courthouse (or wherever, really), that's fine by me. The amazing thing is that most of my conservative Christian friends agree with me on civil marriage for various reasons. We're not all the Christian Coalition.

UPDATE: Citizen Smash agrees:

Having said that, I fear that the gay activists are over-playing their hand. Public perceptions of homosexuality have been slowly shifting over the past few decades from fear and ignorance to greater inclusion and acceptance. But I don't think American society is quite ready to openly embrace the concept of legally recognized gay marriage.

By forcing the issue in the courts, the gay activists are inspiring the opposition to mobilize. This wouldn't be a problem, if the Gay Rights movement enjoyed the same level of popular support as the Civil Rights movement of the 1960s.

Unfortunately, it doesn't. It now appears likely that wherever gays win a victory in the courts, they will be overturned by legislative action and, when necessary, constitutional amendments. And that is truly a shame.

When I ask gay people what they expect to get out of this, their answer almost always includes "respect." But they don't seem to understand that respect cannot be won by a court decision or a legislative act.

Yep. Respect must be earned, never given, just like self-confidence. It's like "Sincerity is the key. If you can fake that, you've got it made!"

The Worknet is instrumentalist, goal-oriented and largely characterized by commercial and retail sites, but also news sites, information portals, and even political posting sites.

One senses that the inhabitants of the Worknet (as opposed to those who just drop by to shop) are typically older, less educated but more experienced, and politically centrist, liberal or conservative.

Most of all, the Worknet is thoughtful — it is about learning things, getting stuff done, staying on top of what’s happening. In the Internet landscape, the Worknet is suburbia and the city downtown by day.

The other Internet might be called the “Playnet,” because it is the Internet we largely use when are just having fun — and because it reflects a distinctly emotional view of cyberspace. The Playnet is experiential, self-directed and largely characterized by chat rooms, .alt sites, games of all kinds and the cult of celebrity.

One senses that the inhabitants of the Playnet (as opposed to those who just drop by to play) are typically younger, more educated but less experienced, and tend towards libertarianism, political extremism and anarchism.

The Playnet is emotional — it is about breaking the rules, experiencing the novel and taboo, becoming viscerally engaged, and even about killing time. It is about feeling. In the Internet landscape, the Playnet is rural districts, college towns, and the city downtown by night.

Okay, well, outtakes: went back to the microfilm today to February 1998, when the Clinton adminstration was making the case for attacking Iraq. How things change. Clinton was arguing that Saddam not only had WMD, but that one day he might want to make more WMD, and this wasn’t acceptable. Interesting to read between the lines - the Clinton administration seemed to be arguing that the potential for future production was itself a valid reason to strike. Military force is never "the first answer,' Clinton said, “but sometimes it’s the only answer.” “If Saddam isn’t stopped now,” the AP story said, quoting Clinton,“’He will conclude that the international community has lost its will. He will then conclude that he can go right on and do more to rebuild an arsenal of devastating destruction. And someday, someway, I guarantee you, he’ll use that arsenal.’” Thus spake Clinton in 1998. He went on to note that the strikes planned could not possibly destroy Saddam’s arsenal, because A) they didn’t know where everything was, and B) they didn’t want to kill Iraqis by unleashing clouds of toxins. And it gets better: a sidebar noted that this war plan – Desert Thunder – had been prepared weeks before, in case Saddam stiffed in the inspectors.

Bill Clinton had a plan to go to war before the crisis flared! What does that tell you? Obviously, he was looking for any excuse! Halliburton! We all know about the ties between Clinton and Halliburton – he gave them a sweet no-bid contract after his Balkans war, you know.

Anyway: it's deja vu all over again. You want to talk imminence? WMD? Democratic concern and conviction? Go back to the papers of 1998; it’s all there, right down to the terrorist links: Hezbollah, for example, swears it will strike Israel if the US attacks Iraq. (A poll of Palestinians showed that 94% supported Iraq, and 77% wanted Iraq to kill Jews if the US attacked Iraq.) Bob Dole was quoted as supporing the strikes but urging Clinton to seek Congressional Authorization. A story on Bush 41’s reaction said that the former president would completely support Clinton if he decided to attack, but noted that Bush 41 urged Clinton to get more international support - which was lacking at the time.

And indeed, Kofi struck a deal. Which fell apart by summertime. Which lead to cruise missile strikes. Which lead to boredom and disengagement. Which lead to half a decade of Saddam on the throne and the dissidents in the shredders and the tots in the gulag and dead people heaped in ditches and oil-for-palaces deals and Uday and Qusay pleasuring themselves in Rapeland Incorporated and Abu Nidal putting his feet up in a Baghdad apartment, pouring a nice cool glass of tea, and thinking: ah. This is the life.

UPDATE: Maybe Kerry can blame it all on typos. Good God, this is funny.

UPDATE: One source for anyone who wants to see more where the Clinton stuff came from is Snopes. A whole blinkin' page full of "Democrats in favor of taking out Saddam" quotations from 1998 on. It's as comprehensive a list as I've seen. (Thanks to Tim Blair.)

Wow. I just love it when libertarians can't find a right to privacy in the Constitution -- but they can find states' rights there.

Is everyone in the whole damned world a statist, and a lover of government power? Or do they all just really, really, really hate faggots?

Our people in uniform understand the high calling they have answered because they see the nation and the lives they are changing. A guardsman from Utah named Paul Holton has described seeing an Iraqi girl crying and decided then and there to help that child and others like her. By enlisting aid through the Internet, Chief Warrant Officer Holton had arranged the shipment of more than 1,600 aid packages from overseas. Here's how this man defines his own mission: "It is part of our heritage that the benefits of being free, enjoyed by all Americans, were set up by God, intended for all people. Bondage is not of God, and it is not right that any man should be in bondage at any time, in any way." Everyone one in this room can say amen to that.

Morgan Spurlock, director of "Super Size Me": My body just basically falls apart. I start to get tired; I start to get headaches; my liver fills up with fat because there's so much fat and sugar in this food. My blood sugar skyrockets, my cholesterol goes off the charts, my blood pressure becomes completely unmanageable.

How much weight did you put on?
About 25 pounds in a month.

How did you feel?
I felt terrible! I put on this weight so quickly my knees hurt. I would eat, and I would feel so good because I would get all that sugar and caffeine and fat and I would feel just great. And then an hour later I would just crash--I would hit the wall and be angry and depressed and upset. I was a disaster to live with.

Why McDonald's?
The chain has 30,000 restaurants in more than 100 countries on six continents. McDonald's could institute real change. If the company would launch healthier menu options, it would happen across the board.

Subject: why me?

You say in the www. that i'm a terrorist!!!

No way out for you. I REPORT YOU !

You've said THAT about me

Germany is seeking to distance itself from France's tight embrace and realign itself more closely to Britain and America, senior German officials signalled yesterday.

They said the row with Washington over Iraq had been "catastrophic" for Berlin and Chancellor Gerhard Schrφder had become "a prisoner" of President Jacques Chirac's campaign to oppose the war to topple Saddam Hussein last year.

"We were more dependent on the French in that situation. But this will not be a permanent situation," said one authoritative source.

Another official explained: "We have to be careful that we are not identified with every word that the French president utters. We must have our own identity and be a little more clever."

The latest indications of Berlin's quest for a rapprochement with London and Washington came two days after Joschka Fischer, Germany's foreign minister, abandoned Berlin's dream of creating a European federal state.

In an interview with The Telegraph, Mr Fischer said the Iraq crisis had exposed the divisions within Europe and brought home to him the need to accept diverse traditions and history.

He even adopted some of Tony Blair's language about the need for the European Union to rest "on strong member states" rather than becoming a "superstate".

Oh, and later, the same friend opined that the Walt Disney Company, in order to survive, ought to remove not just Michael Eisner, but also Senator Mitchell, from the board of directors. Why? "Like a Republican knows anything about being creative," he scoffed.

PEPSI IS ABOUT TO DUMP 100 million free iTunes songs into circulation. During the Super Bowl, they'll be launching a promotion that gives you a 1 in 3 chance of winning a free iTunes song under the bottlecap of a Pepsi. Those 100 million caps could theoretically mean 65 million dollars for record labels and musicians (that's what's left after Apple's cut).

But we have a hunch that most Pepsi drinkers won't bother to download and install iTunes just to get a single song. To help remedy the situation, we are announcing the Tune Recycler which lets people donate their unwanted iTunes codes, which we will redeem. Of course, we would never send Pepsi's money to the big five labels (that would be a little incestuous, don't you think?). We'll be using the codes to buy music from independent labels. We're going to pick single albums and buy them over and over-- each purchase sends a little cash to some cool people.

Good daytime, my name's Tavu and I am under severe circumstances claiming your assistance.

The Paris suburb of Evry, which has one of France’s largest Muslim populations, has decided to install video screens to enable the local faithful to watch some 3,300 sheep being slaughtered for Eid this year.

The televised ritual slaughter which will take place in a large mobile abattoir is the idea of a local meat wholesaler.

“If the idea succeeds this year then it’s likely to become a permanent fixture of Eids in future,” a local municipal spokesman said.

Meanwhile, at Le Mans, west of Paris, the local authorities have decided to build a “hard” structure in which the sheep belonging to local Muslims can be killed.

“If this works out,” says an official for the prefecture which is overseeing the development, “then it’s an idea that will probably be tried elsewhere in France.”

The new approach to the slaughter of the Eid sheep comes after years of difficulties for French Muslims who, having bought a sheep for Eid, thought it was their right to see them killed in a local slaughterhouse.

On Monday, January 26th, 2003, a debate about the Iraq War was held out in the hallways. While there was strong anti-war support, there were a few individuals, such as myself, who believed the war was justified. Those individuals, who believed that there was such justification, were badgered, and silenced by one person, because their opinions differed from her own. Even those who unsuccessfully tried to moderate the discussion were criticized viciously for having done so.

Because I was not allowed to openly say my piece, I expressed myself in an alternative form- writing. I put a three page paper on my door (largely derived from the online journal, “USS Clueless”) [Stephen denBeste -ed.] that for the most part, outlined, why I believed that there was a need to remove Saddam, and the Baathist party in Iraq; and also reform sects of the Arab culture (such as the Wahabi) that have long supported terrorism by all means. These three pages have caused quite a stir on the hall. So much so that:

· someone removed the three pages from my door

· I have been called (possibly by the same person who removed the paper from my door) a racist, a fascist

· those who stuck by me were repeatedly vilified for doing so.

I have reposted my opinion on my door, only to have it torn down again and again.

Oh: The woman on the front? I believe her name is Joanne Royalty Free.

It's not every day that I have an FBI agent who's also a computer security expert come speak to my class, so I invited other students and friends to come hear him speak. On the night of Dave's talk, we had a nice cross-section of students, friends, and associates in the desks of my room, several of them "computer people," most not.

Dave arrived and set his laptop up, an IBM ThinkPad A31. He didn't connect to the Internet - too dangerous, and against regulations, if I recall - but instead ran his presentation software using movies and videos where others would have actually gone online to demonstrate their points. While he was getting everything ready, I took a look at the first FBI agent I could remember meeting in person.

Dave is from Tennessee, and you can tell. He's got a southern twang to his voice that disarms his listeners. He talks slowly, slightly drawling his vowels, and it sort of takes you in, making you think he's not really paying attention, and then you realize that he knows exactly what he's doing, and that he's miles ahead of you. He wears a tie, but his suit is ready to wear and just a bit wrinkled. His dark hair is longer than you'd think, hanging below his collar, further accentuating the country-boy image, but remember, this country boy knows his stuff. All in all, he gives off the air of someone who's busy as heck, too busy to worry about appearances, and someone who's seen a lot of things in his time.

Dave had some surprises up his sleeve as well. You'll remember that I said he was using a ThinkPad (running Windows!). I asked him about that, and he told us that many of the computer security folks back at FBI HQ use Macs running OS X, since those machines can do just about anything: run software for Mac, Unix, or Windows, using either a GUI or the command line. And they're secure out of the box. In the field, however, they don't have as much money to spend, so they have to stretch their dollars by buying WinTel-based hardware. Are you listening, Apple? The FBI wants to buy your stuff. Talk to them!

Dave also had a great quotation for us: "If you're a bad guy and you want to frustrate law enforcement, use a Mac." Basically, police and government agencies know what to do with seized Windows machines. They can recover whatever information they want, with tools that they've used countless times. The same holds true, but to a lesser degree, for Unix-based machines. But Macs evidently stymie most law enforcement personnel. They just don't know how to recover data on them. So what do they do? By and large, law enforcement personnel in American end up sending impounded Macs needing data recovery to the acknowledged North American Mac experts: the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. Evidently the Mounties have built up a knowledge and technique for Mac forensics that is second to none.

(I hope I'm not helping increase the number of sales Apple has to drug trafficers.)

UPDATE: Oh, one more, thing, from an anonymous tipster.

Here's how Microsoft recommends you protect yourself from malicious URL-spoofing, phishing, and other spam-scam tricks:

The most effective step that you can take to help protect yourself from malicious hyperlinks is not to click them. Rather, type the URL of your intended destination in the address bar yourself. By manually typing the URL in the address bar, you can verify the information that Internet Explorer uses to access the destination Web site. To do so, type the URL in the Address bar, and then press ENTER.

Now that's the wave of the future right there. Good going, Microsoft.

I’m not going to comment about the rightness of the statement with more than saying that only a (blind) man would believe it and only a man blinded by his ambitions would dare to say it, but when you say such words, don’t you mean in other words that the sacrifices made by the American soldiers are all in vain? And that these soldiers are not doing a service to the world, nor to Iraqis and not to America. In fact you are saying that since they didn’t do the world, America or us a favour then they’re only doing a favour to GWB and his administration.

Don’t you agree that by saying those words you accuse the American soldiers of one of two charges each of which is worse than the other;
You are saying that, either they are stupid enough to sacrifice their lives for the sake of GWB political future, or they are evil people who love fighting and killing and they are doing this only for money, in other words they’re no more than mercenaries. Saying that you only disagree with the way this issue is handled will also not change the fact that you are only harming your men and women on the battlefield.

By statements like these you deny any honourable motives for the great job your people are doing here. How in your opinion will this affect the morale of your soldiers? Feeling that their people back at home don’t support them and that they’re abandoned to fight alone in the battlefield.

And all of this for what? For staying in the white house for 4 or 8 years? Is it worth it?
And this is not directed only to Mr. Dean, it’s for all the Americans who support such allegations without being aware of their consequences. What’s it that you fight so hard for, showing your soldiers as s occupiers and murderers, the soldiers who I had the honour of meeting many, and when talking to some of them, I didn’t see anything other than gentleness, honesty and good will and faith in what they’re doing.

Your words and those of others were insults to the Americans, Iraqis and moreover to yourself, and I’m certain you don’t represent the number of Americans you fanaticise about.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, Jan. 28 (UPI) -- Documents from Saddam Hussein's oil ministry reveal he used oil to bribe top French officials into opposing the imminent U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

The oil ministry papers, described by the independent Baghdad newspaper al-Mada, are apparently authentic and will become the basis of an official investigation by the new Iraqi Governing Council, the Independent reported Wednesday.

"I think the list is true," Naseer Chaderji, a governing council member, said. "I will demand an investigation. These people must be prosecuted."

Such evidence would undermine the French position before the war when President Jacques Chirac sought to couch his opposition to the invasion on a moral high ground.

UPDATE: Interestingly, though, this represents a rather less nuanced and more pedestrian (though more sensational) view of things than Steven Den Beste's thesis, which states that France (and friends) have been actively trying to thwart American power and influence in the world by creating a European political bloc to oppose us in our international endeavors, obstructing us in post-9/11 action, etc. This news suggests that they're simply motivated by money. Does it mean that if Saddam hadn't bribed Chirac, he would have supported us? How much oil did it really take to move France from a "token participant" to an outright diplomatic opponent? Or was it more like a "thank-you" note?

Neither interpretation is going to leave Chirac standing, if the right questions end up getting asked.

Oh, and now is it clear why our soldiers guarded the Oil Ministry building after April 9th, and not the Iraqi National Museum?

Jan. 27 - North Korean dictator Kim Jung-Il got his first glimpse of Democratic presidential hopeful Howard Dean on the evening of the Iowa caucuses last week and is now “terrified” by the former Vermont governor, associates of Kim revealed today.

According to those sources, the ruthless North Korean had spent a long, hard day reprocessing nuclear fuel rods and was looking for something relaxing to watch on TV when Dean first appeared on the screen, delivering his bizarre post-Iowa concession speech.

As Dean built to a crescendo...

...Kim appeared alarmed and agitated, the sources said. “Who is that madman?” the madman reportedly asked.

According to one of Kim’s aides, “There’s only one way to describe the look on Kim’s face when he was watching Dean: pure, unadulterated terror.”

Kim’s every waking moment is now haunted by his fear of Howard Dean, the aide revealed. “At night, Kim gets out of bed and wanders the hallways in his pajamas, muttering Dean’s name,” the aide said.  “Dean really gives him the willies.”

But according to Dr. Randolph Koestler, a professor of Far East Studies at the University of Minnesota, Kim’s all-consuming fear of Howard Dean could impel the brutal dictator to abandon his nuclear program if Dean is elected President.

I got an e-mail from a friend of mine in Florida who is trying to find a home for a cat. Hopefully someone can help.

I'm trying to find our cat a new home. It is a nice cat, even likes baths, as you can see from the picture. Trouble is, my husband says the cat stares at him, and it freaks him out. Even though it is all in his head, I have find the cat a new home. Interested?

Picture of the Kitty

UPDATE: Of course, for some people-- the ones whose skin burns at the mere mention of the word "preemption"-- the problem of terrorism is a self-solving one. Terrorists commit horrible acts, yes, but they kill themselves in the process. Justice is served! Problem solved! Everybody go back to discussing Ben and J-Lo!

Were I in command of the Vast Homosexual Conspiracy, I would order an immediate halt to give our troops, and the American public, time to regroup and assimilate what has already happened. I would stop pushing right now because the ground has gotten weak, and it would be best to wait for it to be shored up.

The problem is, I can't do this. I have to deal with the real terrain as it is.

One of the greatest battles of the civil war, Gettysburg, was basically an accident, and was kicked off by a small Confederate batallion that was foraging the countryside looking for shoes! Neither side wanted a major fight at that particular time or place. However, the confederates ran into a small Union detachment, the pieces were set in motion, things escalated, and all you had to fight on the given terrain with what you had, as there was no other option.

I don't want this fight now, it is a bad tactical situation for my side. But, the enemy is counter-attacking, and if we try to withdraw or pause the fight, we will get wiped, because now THEY have smelled blood.

Reasonableness is called for. Baby steps. Broad, sweeping generalizations about those who are opposed to SSM just makes folks more stubborn. It's forced many folks (like myself), who are supportive of 90% of other homosexual rights issues, to stand with the folks at the other extreme. And to be perfectly frank, I don't like it over here, but that seems to be the only group to stand with. (And, I should add, while I'm over here, I'm getting an earful on a whole bunch of other issues. My "resist, resist, resist" warning systems are pretty good, but I'm sure there are cracks in my armor. Do you want a significant majority of reasonable folks left out with this side? I don't).

UPDATE: Mike Silverman has a point-by-point response, from a viewpoint that's a bit less compromising than mine. And that's fine-- his circumstances are such, for instance, that marriage would be more meaningful to him than it would be to me. I don't think there's really any argument to be had, just an acknowledgment of different positions on the spectrum.

However, I should clarify one thing. Yes, I know that it's a flawed argument that "gays have a free ride because they don't have spouses and kids". I realize that lots of straight people are single, and plenty of high-achievers in history have been so with large families. And I know there's a statistically non-trivial number of gay families with kids. I'm not saying there's any kind of direct correlation between "swingin'" and "success". But that's a misunderstanding of my point. I'm not describing reality here; I'm describing perception. Isn't Middle America's collective "gut feeling" something along the lines of: Well, gays have it pretty darn good, it seems to me! The way the movies show it, it's an endless life of partying and sex for twenty years or more while the rest of us slave away in the mortgage mines. Who hasn't thought something like that once in their life?

If it becomes apparent that Dean won't get the nomination, he better not endorse Kerry. That guy's a bastard.

If Kerry's our nominee, we're f---ed.

kerry won so im all done i,=m not voting this years

Give a high grade for clearly focusing on the big picture. Watch out for "The Spin" and subtract for only talking about side issues that make him look good. Give a failing grade for using lies or misleading statements. Extra credit should be awarded for offering up real solutions to our nation's problems and facing up to our most difficult problems.

Economics
The Big Picture: During the President's term the number of jobs in this country has actually declined by over 2 million. The poor have gotten poorer. Record deficits have kick-started growth, but recent gains in jobs aren't even enough to cover the number of new workers looking for jobs due to natural population growth.
The Spin: Recent economic growth is a sign of better things to come.
The Lies: Everyone got a tax cut and the rich and poor benefited equally.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that the rebound in the economy is being fueled by record deficits that will eventually choke the economy if we don't change things soon.

Social Studies
The Big Picture: After 9/11 everyone wanted to help us, now almost nobody does. Osama is still on the loose and our bullying overseas adventures are fueling Al Qaeda recruiting.
The Spin: The President is taking strong and decisive action. We haven't had an attack on our soil since 9/11 and unnamed evildoers have been thwarted.
The Lies: Iraq was involved in 9/11.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that last year's State of the Union was all about Iraq's Weapons of Mass Destruction that did not exist.

Health
The Big Picture: We do have a new Medicare benefit for prescription drugs. Unfortunately it was done in such a way only drug companies could love. Heck, the new law actually makes it illegal for states to join together and negotiate lower drug prices. Meanwhile, 44 million Americans don't have any health insurance. That's an increase of about 4 million since President Bush took office. The rest of us are paying more for the coverage we do have.
The Spin: The Medicare drug benefit is great.
The Lies: We can't afford to give everyone health insurance.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he admits that we are the only wealthy nation in the world without universal health insurance.

Environmental Sciences
The Big Picture: Changes by the Bush administration are making the air dirtier, the forests shrink, and the globe warmer.
The Spin: These changes won't really hurt us but will help the economy.
The Lies: Letting power plants pollute more leads to "clear skies," letting lumber companies cut down forests saves them, we don't know why the earth is warming.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit is he simply admits the planet is warming and we share some of the responsibility.

The Three Rs
The Big Picture: The President gave the schools a whole bunch of expensive new requirements but didn't provide any way to pay for them.
The Spin: The President gave the schools a whole bunch of new requirements.
The Lies: Giving schools a whole bunch of expensive new requirements without any way to pay for them will make kids smarter.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he proposes money to pay for the new requirements.

Arts and Crafts
The Big Picture: So much of the State of the Union Address is about image. The President will be prepped by pros to read a speech written by a team of wordsmiths. All the while he'll try to come across as a regular guy, only smarter.
The Spin: No, really, he's just a regular guy, only smarter.
The Lies: He's a regular guy. He's smarter.
Extra Credit: Give the President extra credit if he doesn't cynically exploit someone who actually did something heroic by putting them in the visitor's gallery and pointing to them during the speech.

Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans:  

In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union.  Tonight, no such report is needed.  It has already been delivered by the American people.

We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground -- passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer.  And would you please help me to welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight.  (Applause.)

-- 9/20/01

Incidentally, here are transcripts of all the SotU speeches since Truman's in 1945. Fascinating... and very illuminating.

In the interview, Rhys-Davies, who plays heroic dwarf Gimli and recorded the voice of computer-animated character Treebeard in the Hollywood blockbuster, interprets Tolkien's story of good versus evil as a metaphor for modern race relations.

He said: "There is a demographic catastrophe happening in Europe that nobody wants to talk about, that we daren't bring up because we are so cagey about not offending people racially. And rightly we should be. But there is a cultural thing as well.

"By 2020, 50 per cent of the children in Holland under the age of 18 will be of Muslim descent.

"I think that Tolkien says that some generations will be challenged. And if they do not rise to meet that challenge, they will lose their civilisation. That does have a real resonance with me."

"I am for dead, (traditional) white male culture," said Rhys-Davies, who divides his time between his homes in Los Angeles and the Isle of Man.

"Many do not understand how precarious Western civilisation is and what a joy it is.

"From it, we get real democracy. From it, we get the sort of intellectual tolerance that allows me to propound something that may be completely alien to you.

"I'm burying my career so substantially in these interviews that it's painful. But I think there are some questions that demand honest answers."

And don’t forget, coupled with this there is this collapse of numbers. Western Europeans are not having any babies. The population of Germany at the end of the century is going to be 56% of what it is now. The populations of France, 52% of what it is now. The population of Italy is going to be down 7 million people.

There is a change happening in the very complexion of Western civilization in Europe that we should think about at least and argue about. If it just means the replacement of one genetic stock with another genetic stock, that doesn’t matter too much. But if it involves the replacement of Western civilization with a different civilization with different cultural values, then it is something we really ought to discuss — because, [hang it all], I am for dead-white-male culture!”

"I condemn these comments as being racist and ill-informed," said Adam Price, Plaid Cymru MP for Carmarthen East & Dinefwr.

"It is obvious that this man who now lives in the lap of luxury in Hollywood is out of touch with realities of the nature of present day European society.

"His attack on Muslims and comments about the threat that they pose to Western society shows his ignorance of world events and the true teachings of Islam.

"Ammanford people will feel very let down by a man with such close connections to the town."

Last night Mohammed Javed, chairman of the Muslim Society for Wales, said: "We want an apology. This could stir up racial hatred in society. It's ignorance, he should learn more about Islam and the religions before he makes these comments.

"They are based on his ignorance and nothing else."

Chief executive of the All Wales Ethnic Minority Association (Awema) Naz Malik agreed.

He said: "I do not know why he has said these things. If 50 per cent of people in Holland under 18 are Muslims in 16 years time, so what? In Britain the fastest growing race is mixed race, people of dual heritage. It is a cause for great celebration that our cultures are mixed.

"We live in a global society - we celebrate what is good in cultures and challenge what is bad in civilisations.

"Does he ever listen to any music other than European? Does he eat Indian food? Does he ever appreciate art other than that from Europe?

"I feel sorry for this actor because he must feel very insecure about his future. I feel sorry for his close mindedness."

UPDATE: Alan e-mails to point out that the portrayal of the BNP as a skinhead/KKK-like group is entirely accurate, and Rhys-Davies is well advised to keep from being associated with such a bunch of thugs. I suspected as much, but I had no context for knowing for sure what the story was. I stand clarified.

In any case, it sorta confirms my point: if a major cultural confrontation is coming, it'll be between the radicalized fringes of society. And if the BNP is having as much success handing out these leaflets as the article makes it sound, then that ugly day may not be too long in coming.

Guns are bad. All my life, it's been that simple. At my son's preschool, if a child pointed a banana and said "bang," he was admonished to "use the banana in a happier way." As far as I was concerned, the 2nd Amendment gave us the right to protect ourselves against invading armies, not the right to buy a gun and keep it under our beds.

So what would make someone like me change my mind? I met this gun enthusiast. As research for my new novel, I asked him many questions, all the while voicing my disgust. My character might use a gun, but I never would. "Come to the range," the gun guy said. "I'll teach you to shoot."

I expected a dungeon full of men missing teeth and wearing T-shirts decorated with Confederate flags. Instead, I found a sunny, wood-paneled lobby and guys who looked like lawyers on their lunch break.

The man behind the counter was as pleasant as a grandfather from Central Casting. "What would it take for me to buy a gun?" I asked him. He explained the California laws, some of the most stringent in the country. I would have to wait 10 days — the "cooling off" period. There would be federal and local background checks. I'd have to take a safety class. I'd have to buy a childproof lock. I couldn't purchase an assault weapon. I couldn't buy more than one handgun per month. Of course, he said, if I didn't want to wait, I could drive 10 minutes and buy an Uzi illegally out of someone's car.

Later, I was surprised to discover that some of my closest friends owned guns. People I never would have suspected confessed that their guns made them feel protected. Still, most of my friends thought handguns should be outlawed, completely, in every circumstance.

I no longer was so sure. I did some research — there are countless testimonials about guns saving someone's life. I looked into shooting as a sport. I spoke to a woman who had found a wounded deer and shot it, ending its agony. I changed my mind: Guns aren't bad.

Which leaves gun violence. At least in California, we don't need more laws — we just need to enforce the ones we have. What else?

The answer has to be education: teaching people to deal with anger, to solve problems, offering them brighter futures, but also Gun 101. Maybe if teenagers were given computer-generated pictures of their own bodies, post-gunshot wounds, it would help them understand the enormity of firing a weapon. Maybe if everyone spent an afternoon at the shooting range, forced to follow the rules, they would respect the power of a gun.

I confess, I don't know exactly how to solve the problem, but at least now I know I don't know. Firing guns as a sport is great fun. Having a gun because it makes you feel safer seems understandable. Changing the way people behave? If you thought gun control was a distant dream … it could take centuries.

We have always had sick people, poor people, bad people, and uneducated people. And when I say always, I mena for the last 100,000 years of so. Do you really think that closing up space to future exploration is going to change any of that? No! We have always had these problems and we are always going to have these problems. We spend hundreds of billions on education in this country every single year and yet there are still people out there who can't read. Want to know why? Because they are stupid or lazy or both. We spend further hundreds of billions on health care and yet people continue to get sick and die, the ungrateful bastards. Should we put on hold everything not health care related until we have conquered death and disease? Don't be a frigging maroon!

This country has proved that it can do more than one thing at the same time. we can fight terrorists (which are never really going to go away so you can quit holding your breath), protect the environment, try to make people's lives easier, educate the educateable and go to the moon and beyond. Will it be worth it? We can't know until we try it, can we? Will all the money spent on health care stop people from dying from a variety of horrible diseases? Probably not but we can still make life better while we try. Going to the moon is in the same category.

LET THE KIDS PAY FOR IT: I'm talking about this $170 billion foray into space. After all, the next generation will be paying for a collapsed social security system, a bankrupted Medicare program, soaring interest on the public debt, as well as coughing up far higher taxes to keep some semblance of a government in operation. But, hey, the president needed another major distraction the week before the Iowa caucuses, and since he won't be around to pick up the bill, why the hell not? Deficits don't matter, after all. And what's a few hundred billion dollars over the next few decades anyway? Chickenfeed for the big and bigger government now championed by the Republicans. This space initiative is, for me, the last fiscal straw. There comes a point at which the excuses for fiscal recklessness run out. The president campaigned in favor of the responsibility ethic. He has governed - in terms of guarding the nation's finances - according to the motto: "If it feels good, do it." I give up. Can't they even pretend to give a damn?

That said, though... I would very much like to be there during something as huge and exciting as the first moon landing. Lance has told me with some asperity that humans have not been to the moon during my lifetime, and I sure hope something as petty as whether the line-items all fit on the page doesn't stand in the way of whether that remains the case.

In Mecca, I found the same mixture of confusion, oppression and apathy I thought I had left behind in Egypt. But as in Egypt, nothing worked, even at the blessed hajj, for we were visitors not to an Islamic state but to yet another cynical Arab kleptocracy which only pretended to adhere to the true ideals of Islam.

The Saudis couldn’t even organize the hajj safely. Each day, as I performed the rituals of the hajj, I was part of massed crowds of Muslims from all over the world: Turks and Pakistanis, Nigerians, Malaysians, Arabs. We would shamble forward without order or seeming direction, endangering lives as we knocked over women, the lame and the elderly in our hurry to get from one ritual to the next. Once, in a street so filled with pilgrims that I could not take one step forward, I was forced to jump into the back of a truck to avoid being killed in a stampede.

At night, I would wander through the pilgrim camps, disgusted by the sight of the mud-faced pilgrims who were only too happy to sleep on the filthy streets. In the morning, the streets would be clogged again, and veiled women who had trouble walking because they’d so rarely been let out of their homes would waddle slowly before me. At the stoning ritual, I watched little girls fall under the crowds of pilgrims: Turks shoving Arabs, Africans shoving Indians until each day a few more pilgrims were trampled to death. The next day I would read of the incident in theSaudi Times (FOURTEEN PILGRIMS KILLED IN STAMPEDE) which would quote a hajj official who never took any responsibility for the deaths. He would only say that since the pilgrims had died on hajj they would ‘surely enter Paradise’. There was never any promise to cut the number of hajjis or control the outsized crowds to prevent these needless deaths.

The mutawan, the dreaded Saudi religious police who enforce the rigid observance of Wahhabi Islam, patrolled the streets, beating or arresting anyone they caught missing a prayer; it was impossible ever to know if the native Meccans prayed out of genuine piety or to avoid a whipping.

I returned from prayer in the Grand Mosque one morning to find my sandals stolen from the shoe racks.

I was riding a train home from a short trip with friends to Assuit in Upper Egypt when the war in Iraq began. Our Egyptian guide told us the bombing had started the night before and that we should no longer speak English on the shuddering train or venture out of our apartments when we got back to Cairo. I locked myself in my flat and waited for word from the American Embassy. The next Friday from my balcony I watched a quarter of a million Egyptians rioting in the streets below, men and young boys chanting, smashing windows, pelting soldiers with stones and carting banners. A giant tank rushed down my street, its water cannons hosing the crowds while the soldiers drove back the protesters with batons.

I fled home the next week, leaving all my illusions of the Arab world in my Cairo flat. I couldn’t wait to be in America again. On the long flight home, I promised myself I would never accept anything less than full democracy for my fellow Muslims in the Arab world or apologize for the tyranny that now masquerades as Islam.

Yet, for all the hypocrisy and suffering I witnessed during my time in Egypt, it was impossible to ignore the sincerity of the poor and righteous and the depth of the belief of Muslims and Copts alike. I studied Islam with a village sheikh from Giza; I watched shop owners feed strangers during the nights of Ramadan; the local beggars, men who should have lost all hope, prayed each day without fail on tattered sheets of cardboard. It is only because of these expressions of true spirituality that I never lost my faith.

Even now, I can remember the dread in the faces of my Egyptian friends at what would become of their lives. Could it be, that the fascism which once bubbled up in Europe has now invaded the Middle East and that in our time, all hope for the true Islamic values of freedom, modernity and equality in the Muslim world lies not in the East, but in the West?

According to De Volksrant, the Dutch government is having difficulty finding business sponsorship for their EU Presidency.

On Saturday, the newspaper quoted the foreign ministry as saying that "seemingly businesses would rather not advertise with the Dutch EU Presidency".

The government is hoping to save two to three million euro from the overall costs, which are predicted to be around 68 million euro, through business sponsorship.

Perhaps corporations don't think they get the bang-for-the-Euro from this that they would spending that money in other ways. The Dutch, always pragmatic anyway, might consider a more direct way to reward corporate sponsors, like those which are already used in the sports world.

The top contributor would get to have his name associated with the position during that six-month period in all news reporting, e.g. "The Mercedez-Benz/German presidency", "the "Guinness/British Presidency" etc. The executive would have a special jacket made which he would wear at all official appearances and especially at photo-ops which would display the corporate logos of the next five or ten contributing corporations, with placement and size being a function of the amount of money the offered.

LONDON - The world's largest cruise ship, Queen Mary 2, set sail for the United States on its maiden voyage Monday, carrying 2,600 passengers who paid up to $48,000 for the privilege.

The 150,000-ton Cunard Line vessel left the southern English port of Southampton on the 14-day journey to Fort Lauderdale, Fla., its first voyage with fare-paying passengers.

Although Cunard has denied reports of a terrorist threat against the vessel, security was tight and police maintained a high profile.

. . .

As a small flotilla of boats turned out to watch the giant liner pull away, passengers lining the ship's balconies waved Union Jack flags and threw streamers.

UPDATE: Reader Kenny puts on the finishing moves:

Clark: "There is no connection between the arctic icepack and icebergs. This was an unnecessary war."

Dean: "There's this theory floating around that the President was warned by the Eskimos that there were icebergs in the North Atlantic before the sinking..."

Kennedy: "This war was planned back in Texas between Bush and his Iced Tea industry buddies to take control of the ice from the polar bears."

No blood for ice! Peace Dude.

I've just got one question to ask each and every one of the Democratic candidates for the Presidency. I just want an honest answer: What would you do if the terrorists nuked New York?

I don't want to hear any tap-dancing; I don't want to hear any name-calling. Just give me a clear answer: If they hit us again, with bioweapons or nuclear weapons, which someday they will-- what will be your military response? When the chips are down, when the American people are counting on you to defend them... what will you do?

Speaking of moonbats, remember Kate Raphael of Berkeley? Arrested for protesting the "apartheid wall"?

Turns out she is an active member of QUIT. No, it's not an anti-smoking club, it stands for - wait for it - Queers Undermining Israeli Terrorism.

That's right, queers undermining the only state in the Middle East where they have equal rights, the state to which Palestinian queers flee so they don't get tortured and killed by fellow Palestinians.

Anyway, the QUIT site has a running account of Kate's travails (she was released on Thursday).

Meanwhile, gay activists prove that they can be just as self-hating as Jews:

Emmaia Gelman, a member of Queers for Palestine, a New York-based activist group that she said has some 20 to 30 members, said gays and lesbians are disproportionately represented in leadership roles in pro-Palestinian activist groups.

"Queer activism has traditionally fought to recognize the parallels between all kinds of oppression that are based on identity and on the wish of a government or society to repress a certain kind of people, or to erase people from the public dialogue or public space whose existence is inconvenient," Gelman said. "And so in that way there are enormous parallels between the queer liberation struggle and Palestinian struggle for human rights."

It is all, as you can see, just a little unwieldy, but it is the simplest model that can explain all that happens in the world of particles. Most particle physicists feel, as Leon Lederman remarked in a 1985 PBS documentary, that the Standard Model lacks elegance and simplicity. "It is too complicated. It has too many arbitrary parameters," Lederman said. "We don't really see the creator twiddling twenty knobs to set twenty parameters to create the universe as we know it." Physics is really nothing more than a search for ultimate simplicity, but so far all we have is a kind of elegant messiness-- or as Lederman put it: "There is a deep feeling that the picture is not beautiful."

Matters in physics have now reached such a pitch that, as Paul Davies noted in Nature, it is "almost impossible for the non-scientist to discriminate between the legitimately weird and the outright crackpot."

Scientific topics receiving prominent play in newspapers and magazines over the past several years include molecular biology, artificial intelligence, artificial life, chaos theory, massive parallelism, neural nets, the inflationary universe, fractals, complex adaptive systems, superstrings, biodiversity, nanotechnology, the human genome, expert systems, punctuated equilibrium, cellular automata, fuzzy logic, space biospheres, the Gaia hypothesis, virtual reality, cyberspace, and teraflop machines. Among others. There is no canon or accredited list of acceptable ideas. The strength of the third culture is precisely that it can tolerate disagreements about which ideas are to be taken seriously. Unlike previous intellectual pursuits, the achievements of the third culture are not the marginal disputes of a quarrelsome mandarin class: they will affect the lives of everybody on the planet.

UPDATE and random thought: Many people seem to be under the erroneous assumption that engineers love saying it depends, because we say it so much. Really, we don't. But we recognize that it's the only way to give a correct answer to most technical questions. We'd love it if we could explain things in simpler terms, but most often we just can't if we're trying to be accurate. Engineers vastly prefer correct answers over pleasing answers. It's when an answer is both correct and pleasing that we like it the best-- that's what elegance is.

I think the Left is having such a hard time because the right has co-opted idealism. And idealism is a big part of nice, so they've somewhat lost the nice, and they aren't happy about it. Mostly, they are confused. "But, *we're* the nice ones - how can those mean repugs be freeing people in Iraq? How can they be deposing evil people like Saddam Hussein when *we're* the nice ones???" It's a real problem for them, but they are so brilliant they can easily postmodernize their way through it and come up with some twisted, convoluted logic where they are still idealistic and nice. But, it must be convoluted because they really have lost idealism. Their only real idealism now - environmentalism - is based on junk science. Ouch.

The parties have essentially switched - not policies, but in spirit. I've always been an idealist, and I am right at home in the current internationalist policies - freeing the people of Afghanistan and Iraq. I am not secretly evil, trying to take over their lands - I am genuinely nice and want people to have good lives, even if they had the misfortune to be born in the Middle East. I believe you share some of the same sentiments. It's the same reason I offer drunk people rides home from parties (if I am safely able to drive myself) or offer to lend my tools to my neighbors or stop to give people a jump start.

On a personal level, the liberals I live near are very nice, just the type of people I like to hang around with. However their politics have been dictated from the national level, and no longer align with the good-hearted people they are. It must be quite upsetting to have it thrown in their face by such a cretin as Bush, yet there it is - smiling Iraqis, Saddam - not Karl Rove - being frog marched.

It's the "Stupid factor," the S factor: Some people -- sometimes through no fault of their own -- are just not very bright.

It's not merely that some people are insufficiently intelligent to grasp the nuances of foreign policy, of constitutional law, of macroeconomics or of the variegated interplay of humans and the environment. These aren't the people I'm referring to. The people I'm referring to cannot understand the phenomenon of cause and effect. They're perplexed by issues comprising more than two sides. They don't have the wherewithal to expand the sources of their information. And above all -- far above all -- they don't think.

You know these people; they're all around you (they're not you, else you would not be reading this article this far). They're the ones who keep the puerile shows on TV, who appear as regular recipients of the Darwin Awards, who raise our insurance rates by doing dumb things, who generally make life much more miserable for all of us than it ought to be. Sad to say, they comprise a substantial minority -- perhaps even a majority -- of the populace.

Can that many people be enamored of what he has accomplished in Iraq? Of how he has fortified our constitutional freedoms with the USA Patriot Act? Of how he has bolstered our economy? Of how he has protected our environment? Perhaps they've been impressed with the president's personal integrity and the articulation of his grand vision for America?

In response to a question testing his youth-culture awareness, Dean did a brief takeoff of a song by Outkast, the hot hip-hop group. "He knows the lyrics to Outkast songs and, man, can that dude dance," enthused a 16-year-old.

UPDATE: Steve at Enter Stage Right reminded me that I wrote about this phenomenon back in May. I knew this was all sounding too familiar...

We want to run ads that are of the people, for the people, and by the people. Joining us in this effort is a great panel of celebrity judges, including Jack Black, Michael Moore, Donna Brazile, Gus Van Sant, Michael Stipe, Margaret Cho, and Moby.

UPDATE: The baldfaced demonization of religion in this ad, by the way, further bolsters my belief that the Left thinks quite honestly that America has either out-evolved a need for religion, or deserves to be eclipsed by countries whose people have. Those who know me know I'm pretty much devoid of any religious conviction, but the principles of faith fascinate me, and I'm not so chauvinistic as to claim (as I did in high school) that to believe in a higher power is inherently irrational. The MoveOn.org-style Left, however, views religion with unmasked revulsion, and I somehow don't think that'll play very well in Middle America.

Brian i need your help really bad. i know it's not really ____ related. but could you please post something asking the members to help me? it seems as though Canada wants to allow the hunting of harp seals. and there are just WAY too many animals being killed because of us. like horses and dogs and cats and pigs and everything. just because we say there isn't enough room for them. yet we have enough room for new shopping malls and houses for ourselves. i for one and so hurt by what i read on some of the sites i went to. there are lots of sites, i've been going to www.peta.org, www.hsus.org, andwww.theanimalrescuesite.com. i'm very sorry for sending this letter. but i'm so hurt by what we're doing to these animals. even TV programs are against saving the animals. please Brian i need all the help i can get, would you please please please help me help them? i'm gunna send an attachment with this e-mail. if you can resist such a cute face then i don't know who would help me. i'm begging you Brian, please can you help me!!!!!

but you posted about Sept. 11. should not the death of innocent animals be equily as important as that of humans? and you posted about lots of other stuff before, Brian, i know that it may not be that much of a big deal, but what if there were no more animals, there'd have never been a ____ for you to make your site on. if you won't help me than no one will, you know this is the first dream/wish i've had in a long time, and i didn't wanna give it up. but now that i see that your not even conserned about the animals i think i'll have to. but just remember that without the animals we as the artists on the site would have nothing to draw, and you'd have no website and wouldn't know any of us artists on the site. i would say thank you but i'm not sure what it'd be for. but just so you know, if you're with the other people that want to allow the hunting, etc. then i refuse to draw on your site again.

The BBC recently gave its radio listeners a chance to express their will, but did not want to hear the result. The great unwashed mass, who cough-up the license fees which pay the Beeb’s freight, were asked to suggest a piece of legislation to improve life in Britain, with the promise that an MP would then attempt to get it onto the statute books.

Listeners to BBC 4’s Today program (the very same show which claimed that intelligence on Iraqi WMDs had been “sexed up”), reposnded with a suggestion that would allow homeowners to defend themselves against intruders, without facing legal liabilities. The winning proposal was denounced as a "ludicrous, brutal, unworkable blood-stained piece of legislation" - by Stephen Pound, the very MP whose job it is to try to push it through Parliament.

The Independent reports that Mr Pound's reaction was provoked by the news that the winner of Today's "Listeners' Law" poll was a plan to allow homeowners "to use any means to defend their home from intruders" - a prospect that could see householders free to kill burglars, without question.

"The people have spoken," the Labour MP replied to the programme, "... the bastards."

Having recovered his composure, Mr Pound told The Independent: "We are going to have to re-evaluate the listenership of Radio 4. I would have expected this result if there had been a poll in The Sun. Do we really want a law that says you can slaughter anyone who climbs in your window?"

UPDATE: Lest I be accused of Dowdification, I should point out that Pound's actual quote was this:

"My enthusiasm for direct democracy is slightly dampened," the MP told Today. "This is a difficult result. I can't remember who it was who said 'The people have spoken - the bastards'."

But I don't think this context changes the meaning as much as some people say it does. By couching the quip as an extant witticism that he's merely quoting, all Pound is doing is trying to deflect criticism from people alarmed at the directness of his language. He can say, "But I didn't actually mean that-- I was just echoing an aphorism I heard someone say once, as a way of exaggerating my own point!" But he's still saying the same thing. He'd have said the bare words himself if he weren't worried that the microphones were on.

Hopewell Junction attorney Aziz Ahsan and his family took on the task of seeking a patent for the symbol following the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. Patenting the symbol was Ahsan's attempt to create a positive Muslim identity.

''There was a feeling that Muslims had something to do with the attacks,'' said Ahsan, adding most Muslims are law abiding citizens.

Being an American trapped in a Canadian's body means always having to say, "You're stupid."

When my hometown of Toronto awakened to the news that Saddam Hussein was in custody, we reflexively switched on CNN in my house. Why? Because Fox News still isn't available up here (although, in the spirit of "multiculturalism," Al-Jazeera's broadcast application proceeds apace).

At our only other option, the state-owned Canadian Broadcasting Corp., commentators repeatedly hoped Saddam Hussein would receive "a fair trial" through "an international tribunal" that "reflected Canadian values" – presumably the same "Canadian values" former Prime Minister Jean Chrιtien invoked when refusing to send our troops (such as they are) to Iraq in the first place.

Such smug, pseudo-sophisticated "insights" would be only slightly less offensive if they weren't being paid for by my tax dollars.

I once was one of those smug sneerers at our southern neighbor, the product of a typical Canadian upbringing: my memorizing Trudeaupian doctrine about our superior "cultural mosaic" and the Yanks' inferior "melting pot."

The U.S. Bicentennial made a particularly indelible impression. I was 12 in 1976, the perfect age to be scandalized for life by red, white and blue toilet seats.

And like all Torontonians, I have my share of Stupid American Tourist Stories: loud, super-sized folks wearing what appear to be pajamas, asking if they can walk to Niagara Falls from here.

So, what happened?

Well, I am a recovering liberal, and Sept. 11 is my dry date.

This is a Cocoa OpenGL screensaver. It's modeled on the pretty falling snowflakes animation that Apple have been running on an iMac in the window of the local Apple store. (Theirs is actually a QuickTime movie, and not available to customers. People have asked.)

The Los Angeles-based Constitutional Rights Foundation was established in 1962 to “instill in our nation’s youth a deeper understanding of citizenship” and “values expressed in our Constitution and Bill of Rights.” Its $3 million annual budget creates and distributes teaching materials ostensibly to support the Bill of Rights. However, CRF’s Service Learning Network in 2002 issued online “diversity” teaching units featuring terrorism and Islam sections—plus a whitewashed history of Islamic law and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution. CRF created the Islamic Issues segments for the winter 1998 edition of its quarterly newsletter.

Its final Islamic study unit does ask students to consider Islamic views on the Salman Rushdie case—and a proposed blasphemy amendment to the U.S. Constitution stating, “The First Amendment shall not be interpreted to protect blasphemous speech. States shall be free to enact anti-blasphemy laws as long as they prohibit offensive speech against all religions.” Students are asked to define blasphemy, explain the “strong” Islamic reaction to Rushdie’s novel, and assume the role of a U.S. Senator considering the amendment. They are not asked to discuss the Sharia punishment for blasphemy, which traditionally has been death. Such condemnations occur to this day.

The regime's plainclothes men and security agents have arrested in several cities, such as in Tehran and Esfahan, Iranians who angered by the situation had shouted publicly unprecedented slogans considered almost as a blasphemy by the ruling theocracy.

These unprecedented slogans were nothing else than "Long Live Israel !" and "Long Live America !" shouted during tens of popular Blood collect gatherings by Iranians welcoming the Israeli and American support of the quake's victims.

The popular anger has been boosted as the Islamic regime has banned any Israeli support of the quake's victims by rejecting this country's offer of aid. Many Iranians consider such rejection as another prove that the regime's leaders are more willing to let Iranians die by sacrifying them in order to keep their backwarded anti-Semite ideology.

Many also are cheering the US President for his constant support of Iranians and are qualifying the landing of US Aid planes as another "slap in the face of the regime".

I heard a speech by a man that made me realise that my quest to discover how humankind - being so unsuited to the rigours of this world - had managed to survive and prosper, was pointless and irrelevant. That man was US Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld and what he said was this, in relation to his country's failing search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq: "There are known knowns. These are things we know that we know. There are known unknowns. That is to say, there are things we know we don't know. But, there are also unknown unknowns. These are things we don't know we don't know."

When exposed to a mind like Mr Rumsfeld's the question of how we survived loses all import. In its stead looms the much more important and ultimately more troubling question of why.

Fuck all your right wing nazi parroting. See youn assholes on the streets.

Saddam Hussein (news - web sites) has given his U.S. captors information on hidden weapons and as much as $40 billion he may have seized while he was Iraq (news - web sites)'s president, an Iraqi official was quoted as saying on Monday.

"Saddam has confessed the names of people he told to keep the money and he gave names of those who have information on equipment and weapons warehouses," Iyad Allawi, a member of the U.S.-appointed Iraqi Governing Council, told the London-based Asharq al-Awsat daily.

"The Governing Council is searching for $40 billion worth of funds seized by Saddam when he was in power and which has been deposited in Switzerland, Japan, Germany and other countries under the names of fictitious companies," Allawi said.

He said the council had asked international legal companies to track the money.

Allawi said interrogators were now focusing on whether Saddam -- arrested by U.S. forces this month and held at an undisclosed site -- had any links to militant groups.

"Interrogators are now focusing on the relationship between him and terrorist organizations and on funds paid to groups outside Iraq," Allawi told the newspaper.

UPDATE: Incidentally, when I tried to submit my vote, I got a server error. Hmm.

December 29, 2003: The War on Terror has had an unintended, and welcome, side effect; world peace. Since September 11, 2001, and the aggressive American operations against terrorist organizations, several long time wars have ended, or moved sharply in that direction. Many of these wars get little attention in American media, but have killed hundreds of thousands of people over the last decade. These include conflicts in Nepal, Sri Lanka, Colombia, Chad, Congo, Kashmir, Israel, Kurdistan, Philippines, Burundi, Somalia and Sudan. Some of these conflicts diminished because they had been going on for a while and, as is usually the case with wars, eventually the participants are worn down and make peace. But in all these sudden outbreaks of peace there was another factor; an American crackdown on terrorist activities around the world. The rebels in most of these wars depended on money raised outside their country to keep the fighting going, and on gun runners able to get weapons in. American anti-terrorism operations, energized by the shock of the September 11, 2001 attacks, now included cooperation from many nations, especially in Europe, that had tolerated, on their territory, fund raising, recruiting and public relations efforts by various rebel groups. No more. Most of these rebel organizations had already been declared "terrorist groups" (which they were, as most rebellions use terror, the American Revolution included). Once the U.S. and other nations began to crack down on the fund raising and other activities, it became difficult to keep many wars going. 

UPDATE: Whoah. Check out these older proposal diagrams of the Freedom Tower. It could have been way worse.

Christmas or Kuffmas
_____________________

Christmas or Kuffmas you decide,
placed on a plater your faith
is there to hide.
For at this time of the year eeman
can become an unwanted bride,
to those muslims that substitude
belief for dunya pride.

We must remember it's not our day,
it's not our time,
these pagan rituals that the Kufar define.
Be him a man in red,
or their Messiah now dead
they're still worshiping idols that
their Lord never said.

Did Jesus celebrate Christmas
can you answer me this?
can't answer, stuttering,
now you wonder why your religion
is so easy to diss.
For you make your children
believe in a man that
climbs down a chimley,
your faith is weak man,
refutable and flimsy.

Welcome to the real world
where nothing is make believe,
where we are tried and tested
before we leave.
Where no Christmas tree,
Elf or Red nosed Reindeer,
will help our souls on Yulma Qiyama
the day of much fear.
Where all Muslims, Christians
and those Yahoods I mean Jews,
will be asked
"Did you celebrate this day of
bidah and excessive booze"

So is it KUFFMAS or CHRISTMAS?
I'll let you choose.


By BLAX ©

And don't hijack any Air France planes.

(I didn't say equal, because while I do intend this in the sense of "equality" of status, prosperity, freedom, etc, we use the term "equal" to mean something specific: what Den Beste calls equality of opportunity, versus equality of result. Remember how Meg Murry confronted IT on Camazotz? No! like and equal aren't the same thing at all! That's stuck with me since third grade. So my meaning in this second philosophy is that everybody should be on a level playing field, whatever the best way of expressing that is.)

ME: Success is a good thing. When people succeed, wealth is created, and everybody benefits.

HIM: But it also means the people who don't succeed are poor. What about them? It's much better to give excess wealth to those who don't have any. Then everybody will be happy, and there'll be no need for greed or hunger, just like in Star Trek.

ME: Where does this supposed "excess wealth" come from, though?

HIM: Well, rich people, of course.

ME: People who succeeded, in other words. You're saying we should identify the people who have the gall to win in the game of life, and punish them by taking their winnings and giving them to the people who haven't won. Won't that just remove the incentive to win? Won't that just make sure there are no more winners?

HIM: Yes. Because, see, in my system, if there aren't any winners, at least there aren't any losers either.

ME: Really?

HIM: Yeah.

ME: Except for Soviet Russia and Cuba and North Korea. And France.

HIM: Exactly. We should give our wealth to those countries. We have lots, and they have none. And our military power and economic influence too. Why should America be so powerful?

ME: Um, because our way is better?

HIM: That's not the point. It's much more important for everybody to be on a level playing field, than for "better" or "worse" ideas to be the basis of judgment of countries that affects the well-being of their people.

ME: So you'd rather punish a wildly successful country, that's created more wealth and freedom and social and technological achievement than any other in history, where even the poor are richer than the richest people in some other parts of the world, to help make sure the countries that chose other paths-- wrong paths, I would venture to say-- don't have to bear the consequences?

HIM: Yeah. That way everything's equal.

ME: Except that without the incentive for individuals to succeed in entrepreneurship, or for countries to develop economies that reward the creation of wealth, or for proven just democratic nations to adopt international policies that champion their own systems of justice over those used by brutal third-world dictators with seats on international lawmaking bodies, there won't be any more wealth or freedom or justice created.

HIM: Oh, there will. You'll see.

ME: Will I now.

HIM: Yeah. You think "success" is such a noble concept, but it only creates a gulf between rich and poor, between powerful and powerless, between just and oppressed.

ME: Making sure that nobody has to work for wealth, power, or justice only means that nobody will.

HIM: Sure they wil. Just ask Gene Roddenberry.

There's a reason, after all, why we call it making money.

Based on my own recent work in Iraq, I know that Saddam Hussein’s last place of refuge was a septic tank.

During my tour in Iraq, I managed 75 reconstruction projects with the 4th Infantry Division in the “Sunni Triangle” near to where Saddam was captured. These projects included sewage disposal and sewage treatment systems, along with the refurbishment and construction of many septic tank systems. The cramped underground chamber next to the hut where Saddam had been hiding matches a common septic tank design found everywhere in Iraq.

...

The location of the hole near a hut only reinforces the idea that this was originally a locally-built septic tank. Most likely, the hole was emptied of sewage and the dirt bottom expanded horizontally to allow for better hiding.

This is supported by the reaction of news reporters who had crawled into the hiding hole. They all mention the terrible stench of the place. Also, a nearby ditch had recently been put to use as a latrine, which indicates that the septic tank for the hut was not available.

From everything seen, it is apparent that Saddam had converted the septic tank of the hut where he lived into a bolt-hole to hide in if coalition forces approached. It turns out to be an unbelievably fitting form of irony. Saddam was found cowering in a septic tank like the vermin he is.

But it wasn't about the £200. Not long afterwards my bank received a letter with a perfect copy of my signature, giving my bank account numbers, asking for £1,000 to be transferred at once to a bank in Osaka, Japan. Luckily, the bank thought to ring me up and query it. It turned out that a host of recent scams had asked for money to be transferred to Japan and the police had alerted all banks. It took me a little while to work out how they got my signature and my bank details, but then it clicked. Sure enough, when I reported it to the police, they laughed. They knew the Sandra letters very well and the real purpose was to sting the victim's bank account. It happened again last week when my bank got another request for a £1,000 transfer to Japan and I do feel a fool. Looking back at the letters now, I can see it all. For heaven's sake, she even said both her parents had died of the ebola flesh-eating virus.

The NCIS claims most of the scams orginate from Nigeria or the large global Nigerian diaspora. It began small-time in the 60s and mushroomed in the 90s, with large bundles of air-mails from Nigeria; two years ago it moved on to email. Why from there? "Clever, educated people with a long history as expert traders and dealers, they don't see it as criminal but as business. And they may think westerners deserve all they get."

The line between honest and dishonest business is easily blurred. We point fingers at Nigeria, this richest and best-educated country in Africa that should be a mighty power had it not been so catastrophically misgoverned, with legendary corruption. Yet what kind of global honesty is promoted, what model of good capitalism and good government? The US is about to hold another election that will be largely bought and sold by business and oil interests. Think of the corruption that US and UK conservatives carelessly unleashed upon the former Soviet Union in the name of extreme free market ideology.

The image of capitalism now being spread about the world is cowboy stuff: little gleaned from America extols the virtue of regulation, restraint and control. We reap from the third world what we sow: if some Nigerians learned lessons in capitalism from global oil companies that helped corrupt and despoil that land, it is hardly surpising they absorbed some of the Texan oil values that now rule the White House. Alas, the querulous, navel-gazing and increasingly non-internationalist EU seems in no mood at present to offer a different and better face of capitalism to the world.

My email to the rube "Ms. Toynbee"...who by the way is so dumb as to leave her email address in html "tag" format so that every spammer in the world can reach her.

I'm in the oil business in Texas where our values include honesty, business on a hand shake basis and loyalty. Like most self absorbed European journalists, repeating jingoistic blather, it is obvious that you know nothing of what you speak. And by the way, most European journalists worth anything more than a pence have learned by now that the "cowboy" reference to anyone in the U.S. is taken as a compliment.

And at least we're not dumb enough to fall for a basic con game.

Even those who hated Saddam feel saddened by his surrender. It makes sense when you think about it. He kept the whole country in a state of terrible fear for 30 years, but yet he was afraid to fight and die at the end. Wouldn't you also feel betrayed and sickened at your own cowardice for not standing up to him? Wouldn't you feel that such a weak man could have obviously been overthrown at any time, and that your people may have suffered for the last 30 years for nothing?

I suppose it's kind of like that feeling that you get in the NCAA tournament - when the team that beats your team gets crushed in the next round. You hated them for knocking your boys out, but then you cheered for them to legitimize your own team's failure. When they get spanked, you realize that your team sucked all along.

In a hole in the ground there lived a dictator.

Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing to sit down on or to eat: it was a spider-hole, and that means discomfort.

Many of you, including me, may not be too keen on the war in Iraq. Don't let petty politics stand in the way of your human empathy for your fellow goon and your fellow American. In case you still don't want to send in money, keep in mind we're going to repeatedly nag you about this like National Public Radio until our goal is met! Besides, buying armor plates for some guys who are going to get shot at it is so much cooler than a freaking tote bag!

Donate via paypal to armor-donation@somethingawful.com and keep watching this post throughout the day for updates on the amount of money we have raised.

Current Amount Donated: $8,278.04

From: support@supportwebsite.com
Subject: Fake ID for Muslims
Date: December 15, 2003 4:32:46 PM PST
To: ***
Reply-To: support@supportwebsite.com

Need a fake license to get into the nude bar and see some p***y?

Visit www.souvenirids.com

Travel and fly on planes under any name!

Get job at preschool if convicted molester!

www.photoidcards.com Do it now!

 CALL 24 HOURS 206-202-1672
Here my voice I am from Iraq. My Muslim brothers I am here to service you. Praise Ala!

This is not spam. You signed up as Arab decent person looking for new identity information for new mission.

Well, tha capture of Sadaam takes the ‘failure to capture’ issue off the table.

Now that the economy is picking up (mall was packed yesterday), Iraq is getting better, prescription drugs on the way, education spending at an all-time high, no further terrorist attacks—what is left?

Oh, yes, the capture of Bin Laden.

If that happens, we are completely sunk.

Hallelujah, praise the Lord. This is something that I have been advocating and praying for for more than twelve years, since the Gulf War of 1991. Saddam Hussein was a homicidal maniac, a brutal dictator, who wanted to dominate the Arab world and was supporting terrorists.

He caused the death of more than a million people, including 460 Americans who went to overthrow him. This is a day of glory for the American military, a day of rejoicing for the Iraqi people, and a day of triumph and joy for anyone in the world who cares about freedom, human rights, and peace. . . .

This news also makes clear the choice the Democrats face next year. If Howard Dean had his way, Saddam Hussein would still be in power today, not in prison, and the world would be a more dangerous place.

We have a message this afternoon for the Iraqi people:

You're welcome.

UPDATE: Lemme get this straight. The "car bomb" that blew up outside the Palestine Hotel was actually a police car full of jerry-cans of gasoline, which were ignited by a bullet that had been fired into the air in celebration and had fallen back down?

The BBC and Reuters are rapidly running out of things to be happy about.

And someone's really got to popularize a better method of celebrating things in the Arab world.

Likewise, in Iraq, both the violent resistance and the so far fence-sitting Shia clerics are learning that the U.S. only understands force. The White House decided to have "elections" in June, not because proconsul Bremer suddenly remembered that Iraq belonged to Iraqis, but because the tenacious armed resistance was beginning to threaten Bush's 2004 election.

The rising death toll of American soldiers finally got the White House to set a date for "elections" in Iraq. But the White House is still trying to get away with a sham process in which proconsul Bremer will get the final word about who gets elected to the new Iraqi National Assembly. (It's an American tradition -- sham elections -- and who better than Bush to know it.)

The Shia leadership's insistence, in the teeth of White House opposition, on real and free one-person-one-vote elections, is embarrassing to the U.S. It is exposing the hypocrisy of Washington's claim to "export democracy." But Washington's capacity to absorb embarrassment is infinite. The Shia clerics are likely to discover that only when their threats become dead serious will the U.S. cave in.

Given how much the Pentagon wants to maintain Iraq as a new vassal state and a strategic military base, threats probably won't be enough. The Shia leadership will have to demonstrate a capacity for organizing effective resistance.

Here, too, the lesson of the steel tariffs is not without merit. While Iraqis have every right to shoot and kill occupation soldiers, that isn't necessary the most effective way to influence George Bush. Quite a few of the people who fund Bush's election campaign are involved in the latest corporate gold rush ("reconstruction") in Iraq. Attacking their interests might be a quicker way to get the president into listening mode. The lives of American soldiers are dear, but four more years in the White House are priceless.

If violence will advance their cause, and Ash is clearly advocating that, have they not abandoned the democratic process, the rule of law, and the protection conferred by civilized discourse?
Josh is exactly right, these power-crazed rhetorical nihilists are hell-bent on forcing a violent showdown. That will be the end of them, and their leaders know it, but the evolution of their rhetoric and the script of their fantasy ideology both require a violent climax.

UPDATE: Hey, Reuters: Y'think maybe this looks like something you should think about covering?



Nah, I know-- the answer's in your slogan: No. Now.

Though France has gotten the most attention for its short week, it has company in Europe. Since the 1940s, Europeans have expanded their annual time off by about one week, said Lawrence Jeffrey Johnson, chief economist of employment trends for the International Labour Organization, a branch of the United Nations.

In the United States, a 40-hour workweek is standard and the government doesn't regulate vacation time.

"The U.S. labor market is much more flexible that way, to allow people to work out individual accommodations in how they want to organize their lives," said Paul Swaim, an economist specializing in labor market issues for the Paris-based Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.

Sylvain M'Boussa, 30, was recently leaving the "Big Sky" mall in Ivry, a gritty suburb on the outskirts of Paris, with his wife and small children in tow. They had shopped at Carrefours, the French answer to Wal-Mart. M'Boussa, who works as a dispatcher for a messenger service, said the short workweek is great for his family life but disastrous for his wallet.

"I can't save money. I'm thinking of leaving France" to seek better opportunities in Canada or elsewhere, he said. "There, maybe you wouldn't get good health care or pension benefits, but at least for those who want to succeed, there are real opportunities. Here, you're just blocked."

Those that fear American power in the future might stop to consider that if current trends continue, we will – again – have no need to go forth into the world, because what good ideas that do come from outside our borders – and they are legion – are cooked up by individuals who almost universally want to come to America because here we admire and respect innovation, here ingenuity is rewarded – in cash! – rather than strangled and buried under ever-thickening, Kudzu-like mats of bureaucracy.

It’s like oil loading itself on tankers and making their way to Galveston, or entire counties of prime farmland cutting themselves into sod and stowing away in container ships, to be opened and unfurled in Long Beach harbor complete with sheep and shepherds.

Sen. Kerry (Mass.) used the undeleted expletive to express his frustration and anger over how the Iraq issue has hurt him because he voted for the war resolution while Democratic front-runner Howard Dean has soared by opposing it.

"I voted for what I thought was best for the country. Did I expect Howard Dean to go off to the left and say, 'I'm against everything'? Sure. Did I expect George Bush to f - - - it up as badly as he did? I don't think anybody did," Kerry told the youth-oriented magazine.

Brookings Institution presidential scholar Stephen Hess said he can't recall another candidate attacking a president with X-rated language in a public interview.

"It's so unnecessary," Hess said. "In a way it's a kind of pandering [by Kerry] to a group he sees as hip . . . I think John Kerry is going to regret saying this."

As far as the entertainment industry and Wall Street would be concerned, the most welcome second-in-charge and nominal successor to Eisner could be none other than Steven Paul Jobs - head of Apple Computer and Pixar,and the guy who currently has Disney over one massive barrel.

"That one's been around for a while," says a Disney spokesperson.

Indeed. But sources out in the land of warmth say speculation that the Disney Co. would be forced to offer Jobs a position - if only a seat on the board - intensified this week, as soon as Roy Disney's keister had cleared the company parking lot.

But there are problems, naturally.

For one thing, Eisner apparently doesn't much like Jobs, either.

And the famously independent Jobs, who founded Apple Computer in his family's garage, apparently has been returning the dislike ever since Eisner accused Apple in Washington of abetting video piracy.

President Bush's Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.

In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a huge platter laden with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird is so perfect it looks as if it came from a food magazine, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 21/2-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving plate.

Officials said they did not know the turkey would be there or that Bush would pick it up. A contractor had roasted and primped the turkey to adorn the buffet line, while the 600 soldiers were served from cafeteria-style steam trays, the officials said. They said the bird was not placed there in anticipation of Bush's stealthy visit, and military sources said a trophy turkey is a standard feature of holiday chow lines.

Bush's standing rose in a poll conducted immediately after the trip. Administration officials said the presidential stop provided a morale boost that troops in Iraq are still talking about, and helped reassure Iraqis about U.S. intentions.

Nevertheless, the foray has opened new credibility questions for a White House that has dealt with issues as small as who placed the "Mission Accomplished" banner aboard the aircraft carrier Bush used to proclaim the end of major combat operations in Iraq, and as major as assertions about Saddam Hussein's arsenal of unconventional weapons and his ability to threaten the United States...

The trip was pulled off in total secrecy -- only a few Bush aides and reporters knew about it in advance, and they were allowed to discuss it only on secure phone lines. Reporters covering the Thanksgiving program in Baghdad were not allowed to report the event until after Air Force One had left.

Some of the reporters left behind at Crawford Middle School, where they work when Bush is staying at his Texas ranch, felt they had been deceived by White House accounts of what Bush would be doing on Thanksgiving.

President Bush (search) wants to send Americans back to the moon — and may leave a permanent presence there — in a bold new vision for space exploration, administration officials said yesterday.

The return to the moon would be for the purpose of technological advancements in technology, including energy exploration and testing a military rocket engine.

And a permanent presence likely will include robots and communication satellites.

But beyond the nuts and bolts, Bush's call for a to return to space would give Americans something new to hope for - amid a period of permanent anxiety about terrorism. It would also help move NASA beyond last February's space shuttle Columbia disaster.

Sources said the president may also give the go-ahead to pursue a manned trip to Mars - a long range goal.

Johansen posted his code on Friday a week ago, but the discussions were rumbling on well into Thanksgiving: the remarkable thing being how people who had happily bought iTunes music without realizing that they were guinea pigs for a much larger social engineering experiment were now cottoning on. What seemed like a friction-free source of happiness one day, looked like a noose the next.

How so?

Well, by observing the time honored BBC tradition - that there are only two, and never more than two sides to an argument - Apple's alliance with the RIAA has been welcomed in the public prints as an honest compromise. On one side, there are P2P file swappers, on the other, are the pigopolists who want to lock down your music forever.

It's an appealing, but absurd reduction, however; one that's flawed by the amount of ideology that's already baked-in to the argument. As Register readers pointed out, the issue is one of who owns, or has rights to use our common culture. That means stuff we created ourselves, and only we can decide is worth sharing. And as many of you pointed out, what we call the "entertainment industry" today is merely a distributor, much like the Victorian canal owners were in the last century, in Britain. The smarter Bridgewaters bought into the upcoming railways, while the dumber canal owners didn't, and died a natural death. Today's pigopolists don't "own" the culture simply by claiming that their exclusivity is based on technology - that's a social contract we don't buy, and history, in most cases, is on our side.

So for Apple to pop up and grant the dying RIAA members a $99c toll on each song - when the distribution costs are zero, and when the RIAA is so manifestly corrupt - is a pill many find hard to swallow.

"I'm glad to see the system is being challenged, not being a user of ITunes I didn't realize there were copying limitations on the files. For the life of me I can't figure out why on earth ANYONE would be willing to spend $1.00 per song and get nothing more than a file. This seems to me that the consumer is being screwed royally by the RIAA. It works like this: I end up paying $15-20 dollars for a CD and get no physical product. The record company gets to sell it for the same price but pays nothing for manufacturing and distribution. No middle men to speak of, the public gets hosed. But that's what they've been doing for years anyway. Just curious, does the artists cut increase with online distribution? Support the artists but boycott the RIAA and overpriced online music."

But thanks to the connivance of get-rich-quick computer companies, who have this year tried to market DRM, the dying industries have an opportunity: not only to control the distribution of popular culture, but of course its price, too. And remember, most of that $99c goes back to the pigopolists. Even seasoned music industry executives are championing models that allow music to be shared, and that give the artists their fair due. The Apple-RIAA pact closes such arguments, both parties argue, all in the sake of 'convenience'.

But at what cost does this convenience come?

For a Steve Jobs, relaxing in his Austin Powers Peninsular pad, downloading Fleetwood Mac from one expensive gadget to another expensive gadget must seem the very embodiment of friction-free futurism. Bully for him. But for readers such as Gene Mosher, enjoyment of our culture represents a very inconvenience. Let's hear it in full, once again -

. . .
I'll be damned in hell before I accept the notion that I and my ancestors who love to listen to the audio arts are in any sense guilty of anything that is illegal, wrong, evil, immoral or improper.

Billed as "The Wheels of Justice Bus Tour," a brightly decorated school bus will roll into Mendocino County on Thursday, Dec. 4, bringing speakers who have recently been to war zones in the Middle East. Having seen and lived with war, terror, and occupation in Iraq and Palestine, participants in the Wheels of Justice offer first-hand witness about the actual effects of war and occupation on people abroad and Americans at home.

"The bus is really a mobile classroom," says Ceylon Mooney, the tour's national coordinator. "It comes complete with teachers and a wide range of instructional materials: videos, photographs, essays, fact sheets, etc."

Several events are planned in Ukiah and Fort Bragg. The bus will spend Thursday afternoon at Ukiah High School. At lunchtime, in an event sponsored by the Ukiah High Progressive Club, bus tour speakers will talk with students and faculty. The bus will remain on campus throughout the afternoon.

At 7 p.m. on Thursday, Dec. 4, a presentation and discussion will be held at the Ukiah City Council Chambers, 300 Seminary Avenue. The following day, the bus will travel to Fort Bragg, for a presentation at the Town Hall, on the corner of Laurel and Main Streets. These two evening events are free and open to the public.

Commenting on the upcoming events, Gordon Miles, UUSD social studies teacher said, "From a teacher's perspective, any time we encounter an alternate perspective based on experience, it challenges our ways of thinking. At the same time, our students will challenge their assumptions. This can only lead to greater understanding."

Among the speakers traveling with the bus when it arrives in Mendocino County is John Farrell, 28, an organizer with Voices in the Wilderness in Chicago. Farrell recently spent a month in Iraq interviewing ordinary Iraqis on the street and in their homes, talking with U.S. soldiers about their experiences, and witnessing the violence and tensions in Iraqi neighborhoods.

Another speaker, Lauren Anzaldo, is a 24-year-old resident of Pensacola, Fla. She spent two months this summer living and working as an ESL teacher in Jenin, Palestine. A member of the International Solidarity Movement, her presentation will focus on the effects of the "Security Wall" under construction in Palestine, on the day-to-day life of families in Jenin, and on the possibility of peace between Israel and Palestine.