Coming up: An Iraqi-government-sanctioned U.S. airstrike against suspected insurgents in the Iraqi city of Fallujah has killed some fourteen people. Local hospitals, however, report that some civilians are among the dead. Also, in sports...

How stupid are Americans?

I think the answer is:

As dumb as we wanna be.

Kerry's voting record in the Senate says that he'd rather our military consisted of a sixty-man chorus dressed in camo and singing "Give Me Some Men Who Are Stout-Hearted Men."

And maybe, maybe, one bugler.

If it had been up to Kerry, we wouldn't have had enough of a military to take over downtown Dallas, let alone Iraq.

But, just like Clinton, Kerry has realized that you can say anything you want during the campaign. As long as you're the Democratic candidate, the liberal media will actually take your promises seriously; and when the Republicans start attacking your record, they'll accuse them of "negative campaigning."

Not only that, but Kerry's sudden "stronger defense" plans are not provoking howls of outrage from the anti-war wing of his own party.

Why is that? Don't you wonder?

I mean, they're still ripping into President Bush as if he were the anti-Christ -- no, as if he were Mel Gibson -- because they hate this war that has closed down two terrorist-sponsoring governments and liberated millions from tyranny.

But when Kerry promises to do exactly what President Bush has been doing, only "better," they don't attack him at all. Why is that?

For the same reason that the economic leftists of the Democratic Party didn't attack Clinton back in 1992.

They don't believe him.

It's as simple as that.

They know that Kerry, like Clinton, is merely saying whatever it takes to get elected. You paint yourself as the sober moderate so people will vote for you. Then, when you're in office, you behave exactly like the leftist you really are.

But the vast middle group, the people who get their news from Leno and Letterman and Saturday Night Live and The Daily Show, all they know is "Bush Is Dumb" and "Kerry's Going to Win the War." So guess which one they'll vote for.

Regardless of what Kerry promises during his campaign, a vote for him is a vote to end any serious effort to fight terrorism using our military abroad. And since he is also committed to dismantling the laws that make serious homeland security possible, just how do you think he's going to do against our sworn enemies?

There is a difference between the two candidates. A huge one.

In the past couple of weeks, people have been giving Reagan way too much credit for being an international tough guy. The collapse of the Soviet Union? I recall that Gorbachev and Yeltsin had something to do with bringing the idea of freedom to Russia. Reagan might have said, "Tear down this wall," but he also traded arms for hostages and pulled the Marines out of Beirut as a reward to the terrorists.

In other words, we revere Reagan for his toughness, but he had his non-tough moments, and he got lots of credit for things he only contributed to.

George W. Bush is the real thing. Despite unbelievable political hostility, at home and abroad, he has determinedly pursued the war that we had to fight, and still have to pursue until we win.

Reagan caved in on Beirut and on paying off hostage-takers. George W. Bush hasn't caved in on anything significant concerning this war.

But W isn't smooth on TV. He has Letterman ridiculing him viciously every night on NBC. He has a lot of liars calling him a liar. The media message is constantly being pounded home: Even though W has successfully governed our country through the first two campaigns of a war that was forced on us; even though he has presided over a recovery from the recession that began during Clinton's presidency, despite the huge economic setback caused by 9/11; even though he has a track record that would be the envy of any wartime or peacetime president ...

In other words, even though he has the job of President and has done it as well as anyone in recent years (and, I believe, better than Reagan by quite some) ...

He still might lose the election, because Americans are so dumb we actually believe it when political dimwits like Letterman call Bush stupid ...

In the remote mountains of northern Japan sits a strange little town with an even stranger story.

It’s a story of Jesus Christ, and it goes a little something like this: Jesus didn’t die up on his cross at Golgotha. That was his brother. Christ himself fled across Siberia and, after a brief detour through Alaska, landed in Japan — where he got married and raised a family.

The town, Shingo, calls itself Kirisuto no Sato: Hometown of Christ.

I googled the cartoonist, [Sam] Viviano, wondering if the kid had just stepped back into the smothering mists of history. There certainly wasn’t much promise in the illustrations, after all. Wouldn’t it be cool to find out that he was living in Arizona running a popular restaurant? I could call him up and ask if he remembered appearing in this book I’d saved for more than a quarter of a century. “You – you have a copy?” he’d say. “I don’t believe it. I lost my only copy in a flood, and never thought I’d see it again. Bless you!” Or so those stories go if the fates decide it’s a happy-ending day.

Well, imagine my surprise.

In the annals of Washington conspiracy theories, the latest one, about Vice President Dick Cheney's future on the Republican ticket, is as ingenious as it is far-fetched. But that has not stopped it from racing through Republican and Democratic circles like the latest low-carb diet.

The newest theory - advanced privately by prominent Democrats, including members of Congress - holds that Mr. Cheney recently dismissed his personal doctor so that he could see a new one, who will conveniently tell him in August that his heart problems make him unfit to run with Mr. Bush.

"The Bush administration may like to paint me as some kind of flip-flopper. But if Bush drops Cheney from the ticket, he will prove himself to be the flip-flopper of all time."

"The fact that I am no longer the spokesman for SlimFast makes me sad, but not as sad as someone trying to punish me for exercising my right as an American to speak my mind."

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.

Diversity promoter Asa Khalif, who has made headlines for accusing celebrities of insensitivity, cried foul in the Goldberg firing. "I smell racism from beginning to end," said Khalif, head of Racial Unity USA in Pennsylvania. "SlimFast must realize that black women have every right to voice their views."

Recognition of the obvious. The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend. He should know. His magazine this week sports a smiling Kerry and Edwards on its cover with the yearning headline, “The Sunshine Boys?” Inside, an article carrying Thomas’ byline contrasted how “Dick Cheney projects the bleakness of a Wyoming winter, while John Edwards always appears to be strolling in the Carolina sunshine.” The cover story touted how Kerry and Edwards “became a buddy-buddy act, hugging and whispering like Starsky and Hutch after consuming the evidence.”

Newsweek’s competitor, Time, also gushed about the Democratic ticket, dubbing them, in the headline over their story, “The Gleam Team.”

JOHN Kerry has finally spoken the words that make the November election an unambiguous choice. On "60 Minutes" on Sunday night, according to the official transcript released by CBS News, Kerry said: "I am against the — the war."

He tried to qualify them, to fudge them a bit, but no matter. The words are now out there and can't be taken back.

What I want to know is this: How, after Sunday night, could a President Kerry ask a single man or woman in the U.S. armed forces to risk his or her life in Iraq when he is "against the — the war"? Don't simple honesty and decency demand that Kerry immediately announce his plans for a complete withdrawal from Iraq?

Kerry has made no such announcement. In fact, he continues to proclaim his support for a huge American presence in Iraq on the grounds that "the world has a stake in . . . a stable Iraq."

He never speaks about the Iraq war in terms of protecting America from terrorism, or advancing democracy in the Muslim Middle East, or liberating a suffering people from more than 30 years of tyranny and chaos.

He offers no cause higher or nobler than "stability."

That cannot stand. Kerry cannot lead this country to a successful resolution of the hostilities in Iraq if the only positive value he sees in victory is "stability." The country won't stand for it.

Kerry may share JFK's initials, but right now, the president he most resembles is Richard Milhous Nixon — the very man he condemned in 1971 for not wanting to be "the first president to lose a war."

Nixon did become the first president to lose a war.

If John Kerry becomes president, he'll be the second.

CapLion: "It's amazing how hard it is to type when you're laughing your ass off."

DUBAI (Reuters) - The Philippines will withdraw its forces from Iraq “as soon as possible,” Philippine deputy foreign minister Rafael Seguis said on Monday in a statement he read out on al Jazeera television.

“In response to your request, the Philippines ... will withdraw its humanitarian forces as soon as possible,” Seguis said according to al Jazeera’s Arabic translation of his remarks.

His statement was addressed to a group calling itself the Islamic Army in Iraq, which is holding a Filipino driver hostage and has threatened to kill him unless Manila agrees to withdraw its troops by July 20.

“I hope the statement that I read will touch the heart of this group,” Seguis told the satellite television from Baghdad.

He declined to give an exact date for the 50 humanitarian troops’ withdrawal, which Manila had insisted would take place by August 20 as earlier scheduled.

Seguis appealed to the group to release their hostage, truck driver Angelo de la Cruz, and added: “We know that Islam is the religion of peace and mercy.”

The Phillipines and Spain are doing even more than rewarding the terrorists: they're VALIDATING them. They're saying, in effect: "You are right, and our governments are wrong. Your actions are reasonable, and ours are not. You are a religion of mercy and peace; we are savages and warmongers. You have a perfect right to behead our civilians, we filthy infidels have no right to protest, but we appeal to your mercy. You caught us red-handed. We're guilty. We deserve the beheadings. We'll do anything you say. But please bless us with your overflowing mercy. Allah hu-akbar."

All that talk about my lazy American colleagues shirking their responsibility to put the tough questions to Bush made me feel guilty by association. I wanted to prove I couldn't be pushed around like them. So I put a question to Moore, referencing David Denby's New Yorker review of Fahrenheit 9/11, asking something that had bothered me when I saw it.

I appreciated the j'accuse nature of the film, but I wanted to know why it didn't address the dangers of armed Islamic fundamentalism, obsessive anti-Westernism, suicide terrorists, and what Moore thinks would be the proper approach for the U.S. government to legitimately conduct itself in a fight against terrorism. After all, if you're going to criticize measures like the Patriot Act, wouldn't you want to offer an alternative?

Moore took a moment to compose his answer. "Night after night, we are hammered on our television networks and our cable news channels about the Islamic fundamentalists. We've seen it all, we've heard it all," he began, speaking unusually slowly and deliberately. "My job is to say: Maybe there's something else going on, maybe there's another piece of information you should have before making up your mind. Maybe you should see an opposing viewpoint once in a while in this country. The corporate media in this country, they've got control of it 24/7, 365 days of the year. My film is our humble plea: Can we have just two hours for our side?

"The second part of your question is: How do you fight a war against religious fundamentalists? Well, that's what we're doing in this country, and I hope we're successful on November 2."

I, David Blomstrom, a candidate for state office (Washington State Superintendent of Public Instruction), hereby declare my belief that President George W. Bush deserves and should receive the death penalty, after the appropriate legal or quasi-legal formalities. I urge other patriotic Americans and foreign nationals alike to openly call for Bush’s execution. Furthermore, I sent my first press release announcing my position to Al-Jazeera in symbolic gesture designed to call attention to the corruption that runs rampant in America’s media.

Let me first emphasize that this is not a death threat. Nor is it designed to encourage physical attacks. On the contrary, such an assault would probably accomplish nothing, for a number of reasons.

. . .

The stunning impact of Moore’s movie is a reminder that millions of Americans still care about truth, justice and democracy. Yet millions of Americans still rally behind George W. Bush, whether driven by stupidity, corruption or selfish fear.

In the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks, the French newspaper Le Monde recalled a Revolutionary War partnership when it declared, "We are all Americans." Ironically, the French, Germans, Chinese, Brazilians and residents of other nations are truer Americans than many U.S. citizens.

Rather than celebrate July 4, 2002 as a commercialized commemoration of our national birthday (sponsored by Washington Mutual at Seattle’s Gasworks Park), let’s designate it the beginning of a new revolution, a global class struggle that topples the arrogant and corrupt elite that are returning America to the days of King George, with the entire world his colony. We desperately need a new revolution, and all good revolutions focus heavily on two items that are sadly neglected in America today — accountability and education.

UPDATE: Know what this guy's premise reminds me of?

"Did you know they've reinstated the death penalty for lawyers?"
"Really? For what offense?"
"What do you mean, offense?"

The war that Mr. Kerry and Mr. Edwards once caricatured as a fiasco and amoral is now, for all its tragedies, emerging in some sort of historical perspective as a long-overdue liberation. At some point, one must choose: Saddam in chains or Saddam in power. And the former does not happen with rhetoric, but only through risk, occasional heartbreak, and the courage of the U.S. military. If Iyad Allawi and his brave government succeed — and they just may — the United States will have done more for world freedom and civilization than the fall of the Berlin Wall — and against far greater odds. Deanism is dead. Moorism is a fatal contagion that will ruin anyone it infects.

Kerry is only now starting to grasp that a year from now Iraq more likely will not be Vietnam, but maybe the most radical development of our time — and that all the Left's harping is becoming more and more irrelevant. Witness his talk of security and his newfound embrace of the post-9/11 effort as a war rather than a DA's indictment. It is not a good idea to plan on winning in November by expecting us to lose now in Iraq.

So John Kerry is starting to get it that the conventional ignorance of Michael Moore, the New York Times, and George Soros is already anachronistic. You can see that well enough when a grandee like Tom Brokaw, Christiane Amanpour, or a Nightline flunky starts in with the usual cheap, cynical hits against Iraq reformers — only to be stunned mid-sentence, like deer in the headlights, with the sense that they are berating noble and sincere men and women — far better folk than themselves — who at risk to their lives are crafting something entirely new in the Middle East.

It strikes me that for all the short-term hoopla and enthusiasm about Moore from the left, and trepidation about him from the non-left, that in fact he may turn out to be just the man the non-left needs, appearing exactly when and where the non-left needs him most. A non-left mole couldn't have done a better job framing the LL position to their disadvantage.

Moore has planted his flag smacko in the middle of the Holy City of anti-Americanism. To defend that position, the LL's will now vocally proclaim something many have long believed but avoided admitting: they hate America and everything it stands for. That is not a message that will sell well to the broad electorate. They will proclaim that they love this nation, but... and then make clear that they despise most of the people who live in it, and despise the very features of this nation that the majority of us see as its greatest virtues. And they will poison the leftist political position even for non-loonie leftists. (Since Moore's supporters constitute a significant base of support for the Democratic Party, they're going to represent an ongoing headache for the Kerry campaign by their antics. And that will force him to continue to equivocate about his position major issues, to avoid alienating them, and at the same time avoid alienating the broad electorate.)

"Don’t tell us disenfranchising a million African Americans and stealing their votes is the best we can do."

Um, what?

Let me rephrase that: WHAT?!?

Exactly why hasn't this little tidbit been noted by the national press? With a banner headline? That's not just rhetoric, it's the electoral equivalent of a blood-libel. For one thing, it's a flat-out lie, as reluctantly found by the partisan Democrat-dominated US Civil Rights Commission, which despite months of investigation, noted only 26 people with "disenfranchisement" complaints, most of which were found to be specious (link is to a .pdf file of the minority dissent, see page 32).

Not "a million disenfranchised," but 26 people with complaints, not all of which were valid.

Kerry isn't just lying, he's indulging in blatant, ugly race-baiting (it's noteworty he says nothing about the military personnel whose 2000 absentee ballots were voided at the demands of Gore lawyers--now they were disenfranchised, but since they didn't vote correctly, it's below French John's notice). Why isn't he being called on it by the press?

Scratch that--you already know the answer. The press is on his side.

My name is Gerard, a proud member of the "Right-wing attack machine" and yes, I'm Black. So, I have a unique perspective of the charges you raise in your e-mail.

Founded by abolitionists, the Republican Party has had a 150 year history of fighting for Civil Rights. In contrast, the Democratic Party's active opposition to Civil Rights gave rise to the Ku Klux Klan, Black Codes, Jim Crow Laws and other repressive legislation which resulted in the multitude of murders, lynchings, mutilations, and intimidations (of thousands of black and white Republicans). On the issue of slavery, Democrats gave their lives to expand it while the Republicans gave their lives to ban it.

While Democrats were busy passing laws to hurt blacks, Republicans devoted their time to passing laws to help blacks. Republicans were primarily responsible for the following Civil Rights legislation:

1. The Emancipation Proclamation
2. The 13th Amendment
3. The 14th Amendment
4. The 15th Amendment
5. The Reconstruction Act of 1867
6. The Civil Rights of 1866
7. The Enforcement Act of 1870
8. The Forced Act of 1871
9. The Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871
10. The Civil Rights Act of 1875
11. The Freeman Bureau
12. The Civil Rights Act of 1957
13. The Civil Rights Act of 1960
14. The United States Civil Rights Commission

They also gave strong bi-partisan support and sponsorship for the following legislation

15. The Civil Rights Act of 1964
17. The Voting Rights Act of 1965
18. The 1968 Civil Rights Acts
19. The Equal Opportunity Act of 1972
20. Goals and Timetables for Affirmative Action Programs
21. Comprehensive Employment Training Act of 1973
22. Voting Rights Act of Amendment of 1982
23. Civil Rights Act of 1983
24. Federal Contract Compliance and Workforce Development Act of 1988

The Democrats opposed all of the above and to this day refuse to acknowledge their shameful past. Your charges of racism against [our Editor] are unwarranted, unsupported, and downright foolish. History speaks for itself. Labels have changed, but Republican Party ideals have not. As noted writer Thomas Sowell once said, "If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 50 years ago, a liberal 25 years ago, and a racist today."

“In Darfur, it would be better to help the Sudanese get over the crisis so their country is pacified rather than sanctions which would push them back to their misdeeds of old,” junior Foreign Minister Renaud Muselier told French radio.

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, it also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

Mr Muselier also dismissed claims of “ethnic cleansing” or genocide in Darfur.

“I firmly believe it is a civil war and as they are little villages of 30, 40, 50, there is nothing easier than for a few armed horsemen to burn things down, to kill the men and drive out the women,” he said.

France led opposition to US moves at the UN over Iraq. As was the case in Iraq, it also has significant oil interests in Sudan.

The Dems laid down with the dogs years ago. All that’s left for them now, and for us, is to watch them scratch at the fleas and puzzle over how they got them. Bush will win in November, barring some incredible and unforeseeable catastrophe. When he does, watch for the now-desperate hard Left to get violent. It’s another battle they won’t and cannot win, but it’s the one that in the end they’ll have no choice but to fight. They’ve done it to themselves, and therefore my sympathy is limited at best.

The Left has been spoiling for a real fight for years now, and they’re most likely going to get it. It’s the awful truth, and I don’t see anything standing in the way of it but the Left’s own innate sneaky cowardice. When push comes to shove, perhaps the Left will be willing to put down their Bushitler signs and go home peacefully. But they’re not the majority, they never will be, and the only way they can win is through deceit, disinformation, intimidation, and, ultimately, violence. Scott’s fighting the good fight here, and we all ought to be out doing more of this sort of thing—speaking out before it’s too late to change the minds of the uninformed, and the dupes are standing shoulder to shoulder on the front lines with their manipulators. God help us if it should come to that at last.

JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) - South African lawyers are suing U.S. entertainment giant Walt Disney Co for infringement of copyright on "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," the most popular song to emerge from Africa, the lawyers said on Friday.

If Disney loses, South African proceeds from its trademarks -- including Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck -- could be seized by the courts, lawyers representing relatives of the song's composer said.

The lilting song, initially called "Mbube," earned an estimated $15 million in royalties since it was written by Zulu migrant worker Solomon Linda in 1939, and featured in Walt Disney's "Lion King" movies.

However, Linda's impoverished family have only received about $15,000, the lawyers said.

The time has come to let the Governor Swartenagger know that California would like ferrets to be legalized.  It’s easy.  Just call 916 445-2841.  Then press number 2 to respond to legislation issues, press 3 for Bill SB 89, the ferret bill, then press 1 to support it.  And you are done.

WASHINGTON, July 6 /U.S. Newswire/ — Energy Secretary Spencer Abraham announced today that the Department of Energy (DOE) and the Department of Defense (DOD) have completed a joint operation to secure and remove from Iraq radiological and nuclear materials that could potentially be used in a radiological dispersal device or diverted to support a nuclear weapons program.

“This operation was a major achievement for the Bush Administration’s goal to keep potentially dangerous nuclear materials out of the hands of terrorists,” Secretary Abraham said. “It also puts this material out of reach for countries that may seek to develop their own nuclear weapons.”

Twenty experts from DOE’s national laboratory complex packaged 1.77 metric tons of low-enriched uranium and roughly 1000 highly radioactive sources from the former Iraq nuclear research facility. The DOD airlifted the material to the United States on June 23 and provided security, coordination, planning, ground transportation, and funding for the mission.

When a reporter noted that Edwards was being described as "charming, engaging, a nimble campaigner, a populist and even sexy" and then asked "How does he stack up against Dick Cheney?" the president immediately responded, "Dick Cheney can be president. Next?"

people like you make me sick.

You now most obviouisly smack of DESPERATION.
Trying any way possible to tear apart Michael Moore.
Credit the public with some intelligence, please.

You are panicking because your greedy, corrupt,
controlling, manipulating regime is over.

enjoy your time in those hot fires of hell !!!

Reap as you shall sow.

Can West News Services, owners of several Canadian newspapers including the National Post as well as the Global Television Network commissioned a series of polls to determine how young people feel about the issues that were facing the country’s voters. Dubbed "Youth Vote 2004", the polls, sponsored by the Dominion Institute and Navigator Ltd. were taken with a view to getting more young people involved in the political process.

In one telephone poll of teens between the ages of 14 and 18, over 40 per cent of the respondents described the United States as being "evil". That number rose to 64 per cent for French Canadian youth.

This being Canada, the amount of anti-Americanism that was found is not surprising. What is significant is the high number of teens who used the word "evil" to describe our southern neighbour. As Misty Harris pointed out in her column in the Saskatoon Star Phoenix, evil is usually associated with serial killers and "kids who tear the legs off baby spiders." These teens appear to equate George W. Bush and Americans with Osama bin Laden and Hitler, although it is unknown if the teens polled would describe the latter two as being evil. Whether someone who orders planes to be flown into heavily populated buildings would fit that description would make a good subject for a future poll.

. . .

Anti-Americanism played a prominent role in the election strategy of the Liberals. Paul Martin portrayed himself as the saviour of Canadian medicare while saying that if Stephen Harper and the Conservative Party of Canada came to power they would introduce "American-style" health care. Martin was happy to take credit for cutting taxes and eliminating the deficit during the 1990s when he was Minister of Finance, but he referred to tax cuts included in the Conservative Party platform as being "American-style tax cuts". Canadians who favour lower taxes or the private delivery of health care services or smaller governments or anything similar to what is found in the United States were called "un-Canadian" by Paul Martin.

UPDATE: Yes, yes, I get it—this film is pap, it's feel-good fluff, it's propaganda every bit as much as F911 is, just in the other direction. It's the kind of thing Disney used to make back in the 50s, so loathsome the concept is to us now—for God's sake, it even ends with shots of fireworks against the Statue of Liberty. But there's a difference, you know. Moore's film aims to galvanize you, to make you mad, to convince you of something; whereas this one, while it clearly has a point it's trying to make, doesn't pretend to be anything it's not. It's a travelogue; it's a way to get out and meet a bunch of people who are worth meeting. Besides, you're not likely to get knocked down and spat on by the mobs coming out of this movie.

I resisted going, knowing that AH&S wasn't going to tell me anything I didn't know already. CapLion assured me, though, that even granting that, it was still worth watching. And you know, he's right. It's funny; it's beautifully shot; it's touching. I for one am glad Disney still has it in itself to produce documentaries like this, that the modern age's allergy to sincerity doesn't totally faze them. And at the very, very least I know it was eighty-four minutes of my life I can look back on and say I enjoyed.

Another adventure that Romijn-Stamos is unlikely to have made as a model was a recent trip she and De Niro made to visit US troops in Iraq.

Staunchly anti-war, Romijn-Stamos said the visit had been a real eye-opener and it seemed to have given her a slightly different perspective on life.

"It was unbelievable and I'll never forget it," she said. "I grew up in Berkeley, California, which is the most liberal, left-leaning place you could ever find and I had zero contact with our military.

"So I had a pre-conceived notion they would all be rednecks who were only there because their daddies had been in the army. But I was wrong and I met the most amazing people over there.

"It was 130 degrees [Fahrenheit] and they were walking around in full fatigues and we'd get there to find out they'd been waiting in that heat for three or four hours. And they had so much perspective on it, they were really deep and smart and had a lot of opinions."

Seriously, get a load of that commenter. The only redeeming feature of the series, to him, is the "great-looking female characters", whom he then proceeds to rank on the basis of lavish descriptions of their appearance. The male characters rate only sentences in passing (presumably because they don't have enough boobs), and the whole "Space Western" premise merits only snarling barbs from his scandalized European sensibility.

I'm liking this show more and more!

UPDATE: Also don't miss his observations on the (dare I say it) quagmire into which any state-funded medical care system will eventually stumble.

Recently, in a discussion over the perennial question of whether or not "most people are idiots", a friend argued for the affirmative thus: People [in Canada] want health care, welfare and so on to be there for them when they need them. They want roads to be in good repair and good public transit and a strong military. They also want lower taxes.

You know, there is a solution...

Joseph Crowley (D-NY-07)
Raul Grijalva (D-AZ-07)
Danny Davis (D-IL-07)
Corrine Brown (D-FL-03)
Carolyn Maloney (D-NY-14)
Jerrold Nadler (D-NY-08)
Michael Honda (D-CA-15)
Elijah Cummings (D-MD-07)
Julia Carson (D-IN-07)
Edolphus Towns (D-NY-10)

The bipartisan commission, they stressed, determined "that the 'disenfranchisement of Florida's voters fell most harshly on the shoulders of black voters' and in poor counties." Both groups vote predominantly Democratic in US elections.

1. The American people are sane and intelligent. We are not stupid or ignorant. Extremists on the left, and the right, as well as opinion leaders overseas seem to think Americans are fat, somnolent, and base. Anyone who actually lives in America, really lives in America, knows that isn't true. We have something to celebrate today.

Happy 4th of July!

DECORAH, Iowa - The president of a company that owns movie theaters in Iowa and Nebraska is refusing to show director Michael Moore's "Fahrenheit 9/11."

R.L. Fridley, owner of Des Moines-based Fridley Theatres, says the controversial documentary incites terrorism.

Fridley said in an e-mail message to company managers that the company does not "play political propaganda films from either the right or the left."

"Our country is in a war against an enemy who would destroy our way of life, our culture and kill our people," Fridley wrote. "These barbarians have shown through (the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001) and the recent beheadings that they will stop at nothing. I believe this film emboldens them and divides our country even more."

UPDATE: CapLion updates his post with a counterexample to Midwesterners being any more sensible than anyone else. His point is well taken, though—check it out.

What makes people refuse to see the scale of the conflict of our times, and to concentrate all their fury on one man who deserves so little ire by comparison? It's just tunnel vision, I guess... it's easier for people to lash out against the problem that's closest to home for them, that requires the smallest expansion of their attention span. It's way easier to believe that "the economy is in the toilet" or "Bush runs the USA based on his own personal religious beliefs" than to have to face up to the possibility that maybe Bush is in fact doing some things right, things for which he deserves to remain in office.

UPDATE: Via LGF, Michael Niewodowski (a chef at the Windows on the World restaurant in the WTC) has similar sentiments:

Moore’s film is the first major motion picture about Sept. 11, 2001. This bears repeating. When future generations look back on the Sept. 11 massacre, their first impression, through the medium of film, will be a work in which the president and the government are blamed for the attacks, and the soldiers who are protecting this country are defamed. Instead of a film version of Lisa Beamer’s book, “Let’s Roll,” or Richard Picciotto’s “Last Man Down,” we are presented with this fallacy. How could this happen?

It would be a colossal insult to insinuate that Franklin D. Roosevelt or the U.S. government were in any way responsible for the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Can you imagine the indignation of the men and women who lived during that period?

“Fahrenheit 9/11” is indicative of a nation that has become too apathetic, ignorant or deceived to face the enemy at the gate. America, where is your fury?

I'm drowning in it.

WASHINGTON (AFP) - Several members of the House of Representatives have requested the United Nations (news - web sites) to send observers to monitor the November 2 US presidential election to avoid a contentious vote like in 2000, when the outcome was decided by Florida.

Recalling the long, drawn out process in the southern state, nine lawmakers, including four blacks and one Hispanic, sent a letter Thursday to UN Secretary General Kofi Annan (news - web sites) asking that the international body "ensure free and fair elections in America," according to a statement issued by Florida representative Eddie Bernice Johnson, who spearheaded the effort.

"As lawmakers, we must assure the people of America that our nation will not experience the nightmare of the 2000 presidential election," she said in the letter.

"This is the first step in making sure that history does not repeat itself," she added after requesting that the UN "deploy election observers across the United States" to monitor the November, 2004 election.

How would you react to that little tidbit if you were an Iraqi? What would you say to a couple of governments who'd (a) armed and supported Saddam for decades, and (b) made every effort to prevent him from losing his grip on your country, your family, and your hide--and then presumed to tell you how you ought to deal with him?

Unless you were one of Saddam's former henchmen, I imagine you'd go find the nearest Frenchman or German, and start quoting Dick Cheney. Repeatedly.

One poem is "Dedicated 2 Me." Another is "Dedicated 2 My Heart." There's one "4 Nelson Mandela" and another "2 Marilyn Monroe," which laments: "They could never understand what u set out 2 do instead they chose 2 ridicule u." Another Shakur opus is titled "When Ure Hero Falls." Still another muses: "What Is It That I (insert pictograph of an eyeball) Search 4."

 A dictionary, perhaps?

 In riveting prose that presumably rivals Frost or Longfellow, Shakur brags that he is "more than u can handle" and "hotter than the wax from a candle." Edgar Allan Poe had Annabel Lee. Shakur had Renee ("u were the one 2 reach into my heart"), April ("I want 2 c u"), Elizabeth ("the seas of our friendship R calm"), Michelle ("u and I have perfect hearts"), Carmen ("I wanted u more than I wanted me"), Marquita ("u were pure woman 2 me"), Irene ("I knew from the First glance that u would be hard 2 4get"), and Jada.

 Proclaiming his love "4 Jada," Shakur pays gallant literary tribute to the object of his desire: "u bring me 2 climax without sex."

 Lord Byron, he wasn't.

Brokaw: As long as the United States military remains a conspicuous presence in your country working hand in glove with the new Iraqi government, won’t you always be seen really as an instrument of the U.S. military and therefore of America?

Allawi: Iraq, as everybody knows, is the front state now — as the main theater to oppose and fight terrorism.  And, with the help of international community and with the help of the region and with the help of the Iraqi people, we are going to win.  We are going to prevail.

Brokaw: I know that you and others like you are grateful for the liberation of Iraq.  But can’t you understand why many Americans feel that so many young men and women have died here for purposes other than protecting the United States?

Allawi: We know that this is an extension to what has happened in New York.  And — the war have been taken out to Iraq by the same terrorists.  Saddam was a potential friend and partner and natural ally of terrorism.

Brokaw: Prime minister, I’m surprised that you would make the connection between 9/11 and the war in Iraq.  The 9/11 commission in America says there is no evidence of a collaborative relationship between Saddam Hussein and those terrorists of al-Qaida.

Allawi: No.  I believe very strongly that Saddam had relations with al-Qaida.  And these relations started in Sudan.  We know Saddam had relationships with a lot of terrorists and international terrorism.  Now, whether he is directly connected to the September — atrocities or not,  I can’t — vouch for this.  But definitely I know he has connections with extremism and terrorists.

That this was, in fact, a crucial question was brought home to me when a travel piece I wrote for the New York Times about a weekend in rural Telemark received front-page coverage in Aftenposten, Norway’s newspaper of record. Not that my article’s contents were remotely newsworthy; its sole news value lay in the fact that Norway had been mentioned in the New York Times. It was astonishing. And even more astonishing was what happened next: the owner of the farm hotel at which I’d stayed, irked that I’d made a point of his want of hospitality, got his revenge by telling reporters that I’d demanded McDonald’s hamburgers for dinner instead of that most Norwegian of delicacies, reindeer steak. Though this was a transparent fabrication (his establishment was located atop a remote mountain, far from the nearest golden arches), the press lapped it up. The story received prominent coverage all over Norway and dragged on for days. My inhospitable host became a folk hero; my irksome weekend trip was transformed into a morality play about the threat posed by vulgar, fast-food-eating American urbanites to cherished native folk traditions. I was flabbergasted. But my erstwhile host obviously wasn’t: he knew his country; he knew its media; and he’d known, accordingly, that all he needed to do to spin events to his advantage was to breathe that talismanic word, McDonald’s.

For me, this startling episode raised a few questions. Why had the Norwegian press given such prominent attention in the first place to a mere travel article? Why had it then been so eager to repeat a cartoonish lie? Were these actions reflective of a society more serious, more thoughtful, than the one I’d left? Or did they reveal a culture, or at least a media class, that was so awed by America as to be flattered by even its slightest attentions but that was also reflexively, irrationally belligerent toward it?

UPDATE: Chris says:

I think it's something to do with fearing that some people will take Carlin's word as 'a funny truth' rather than 'funny ridiculous' .... Ie, things will be a lot funnier if you knew that NOONE actually believed it to be truth... but knowing, or suspecting, that some people out there will actually think that's is true takes a LOT of the humour out of it.

Good point. You know, there's something to be said for comedy that doesn't attempt to divide or exclude or define loyalties. That's why Lewis Black's recent show seemed so much less fun than his earlier material—everybody can enjoy the "candy corn" routine; but once he starts playing to a particular audience, even if you agree with what he's saying, you can feel the vibe having suddenly narrowed. It's now about furtively giggling behind other people's backs; and that's just not as fun and fancy free.

Which is why I enjoy the redneck comics of the Blue Collar Comedy Tour so much: Larry the Cable Guy, Bill Engvall, Jeff Foxworthy, Ron White. It's all so positive. It's all jokes about being unsophisticated, being fat, being ugly, being dumb, being poor, being drunk—but it's all tongue-in-cheek. It's not mean-spirited. It's not critical. It's just fun. When I see someone like Ron White come on-screen with his drunken-master-storyteller face, I heave a sigh of gratitude—because you know what? It feels like Cosby. And that's about the highest praise I can think of.

BAGHDAD, Iraq, June 28 — In a surprise, secret ceremony that was hastily convened to decrease the chances of more violence, United States officials today handed over sovereignty to Iraqi leaders, formally ending the American occupation two days earlier than scheduled.

In a tightly guarded room behind high walls, L. Paul Bremer III, the top United States administrator, presented a formal letter recognizing Iraq's sovereignty to Iraqi Prime Minister Iyad Allawi.

Just 30 or so people were present for what Dr. Allawi described as the "historic" handover.

A few hours later, Mr. Bremer flew off on a military plane, leaving behind a country stunned by the sudden transfer of authority. Shortly afterward, Dr. Allawi was formally sworn in as Prime Minister.

"This is a historic day," said the Iraqi interim president, Ghazi Ajil al-Yawar . "We want a free, democratic Iraq that will be a source of peace and stability for the region and the whole world. We would like to express our thanks to our friends in the Coalition for the efforts and dedication they have spent."

First Lt Omar is sworn to uphold the law and fight the insurgency that threatens Iraq’s evolution into a free and democratic state. Instead, he is exploiting his knowledge of US tactics to help the rebel cause in Fallujah.

“Resistance is stronger when you are working with the occupation forces,” he points out. “That way you can learn their weaknesses and attack at that point.”

What would it take to repeat Glidden's journey? Probably no amount of money could get you through Israel and into Syria today or over the Khyber Pass and into Afghanistan. Glidden's worries focused on logistics, securing gasoline and oil, contingencies for breakdowns. Today's road warrior must deal with politics, terrorism, poverty, and hate, tougher by far than worrying about when the needed valves would arrive or where you'd find your next can of gasoline.

UPDATE: Strangely enough, it sounds like the San Francisco Pride Parade was among the most sane such events.

Fahrenheit (Fah"ren*heit). adj:
The temperature in the atmosphere when it reaches the boiling point.

UPDATE: Nope, there it is again. That's exactly what it said.

UPDATE: Yeah, I know Michael Moore can't necessarily be blamed for this. It's probably some less-than-gifted hack working for the distributor.

But you know, I don't care who is behind this. I just have an objection to stupid crap on my TV. Especially in the middle of MXC.

(Ya hearrrd me.)

I've tried just about every character type and I'm settling on my favorites. Last night, for fun, I decided to make myself a Captain America type hero...you know, go the whole patriotic route.

So I logged onto the Guardian server and created myself a Science origin Tanker with Invulerability and Super Strength. I dressed him in red, white and blue, adorned him and named him FLAG WAVER.

Once I got to a populated area, other people in the game started reacting to my character, but not in the way I expected.

"Ugh. I hate our country."
"How can you wave a flag of a country that kills other countries for oil we already have."
"Bush is an idiot."

I inquired if these people were from another country that maybe didn't look too kindly on the US. They all stated that they were Americans, but they just didn't really like America.

I have to say that I was flabbergasted. No. I was disgusted. I really didn't know what to say back to these other players. I certainly didn't log into the game to get into a political debate. If anything, I logged in to escape that stuff.

UPDATE: Aargh! Now Comedy Central is blaring Michael Moore on The Daily Show! 11:00! across South Park.

Could someone please come get me when this is over?

A few days later I ended up in the Arab quarter of Brooklyn, where stories are plentiful about harassment of the Arab-Muslim community.

The talk is not only about Guantanamo Bay, but also about young men disappearing for weeks on end, forced deportations, being hauled in for questioning for speaking out of line.

They talk in detail about Section 215 - the bit which deals with personal records, and of the Metropolitan Corrections Facility on the corner of 29th Street and Third Avenue, where people are held without trial and access to lawyers.

"I don't know what's happening to this country," said Ihab Tabir, a Brooklyn immigration lawyer who is originally from Jordan.

"If you say anything against what is happening in Iraq for example, you can be arrested.

"You can't speak openly on the street anymore. I tell you, everyone is afraid."

The Army's powerful 1st Armored Division is proclaiming victory over Sheik Muqtada al-Sadr's marauding militia that just a month ago seemed on the verge of conquering southern Iraq.

The Germany-based division defeated the militia with a mix of American firepower and money paid to informants. Officers today say "Operation Iron Saber" will go down in military history books as one of the most important battles in post-Saddam Hussein Iraq.

"I've got to think this was a watershed operation in terms of how to do things as part of a counterinsurgency," said Brig. Gen. Mark Hertling, a West Point graduate and one of two 1st Armored assistant division commanders, in an interview last week as he moved around southern Iraq. "We happened to design a campaign that did very well against this militia."

When the division got word April 8 that Sheik al-Sadr's uprising meant most 1st Armored soldiers would stay and fight, rather than going home as scheduled, it touched off a series of remarkable military maneuvers.

Soldiers, tanks and helicopters at a port in Kuwait reversed course, rushing back inside Iraq to battle the Shi'ite cleric's 10,000-strong army.

Last week, Sheik al-Sadr surrendered. He called on what was left of his men to cease operations and said he may one day seek public office in a democratic Iraq.

Gen. Hertling said Mahdi's Army is defeated, according the Army's doctrinal definition of defeat. A few stragglers might be able to fire a rocket-propelled grenade, he said, but noted: "Do they have the capability of launching any kind of offensive operation? Absolutely not."

Yeah, I know, I'm just repeating what a lot of people in the blogosphere and elsewhere are complaining about, but I want is to do something about it. I tried before with the website Front Line Voices to get the story out of the heroism of our troops, but I know that isn't going to do it. The sad fact of the human condition is that people respond much more to pain than pleasure. Thus, the way to get people motivated, to keep people focused on the goal, is to show them the barbarism of our enemy. And I don't mean the horrible pictures of the beheading - that's just shocking people. Show the jubilation of the terrorists over their killing. Show the writings of the enemy in praise of death. Show everything we can about who these people are, because the fact is that all except the most morally forgone of our society will recognize evil when they see it staring in his or her face. Shades of gray won't hold up when people see just how black the depravity of the terrorists are.

If I had my way, the head story of every newscast would be about what these brutal thugs are up to, what they're thinking, what they're desires are. And not just focus on the terrorists, but also the brutality of all the government in the Middle East. No more root causes, no more blind tolerance, no more thinking that religious beliefs that involve violence and oppression should have any cultural respect. Every day the American people and the rest of the world would see how horrible the terrorists and the tyrants are, and everyday they would get madder and madder.

So why can't I have my way?

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein has offered asylum to bin Laden, who openly supports Iraq against the Western powers.

At the Cannes Film Festival,
only one film has ever received
a 20 minute standing ovation.

It must be evident to anyone, despite the rapid-fire way in which Moore's direction eases the audience hastily past the contradictions, that these discrepant scatter shots do not cohere at any point. Either the Saudis run U.S. policy (through family ties or overwhelming economic interest), or they do not. As allies and patrons of the Taliban regime, they either opposed Bush's removal of it, or they did not. (They opposed the removal, all right: They wouldn't even let Tony Blair land his own plane on their soil at the time of the operation.) Either we sent too many troops, or were wrong to send any at all—the latter was Moore's view as late as 2002—or we sent too few. If we were going to make sure no Taliban or al-Qaida forces survived or escaped, we would have had to be more ruthless than I suspect that Mr. Moore is really recommending. And these are simply observations on what is "in" the film. If we turn to the facts that are deliberately left out, we discover that there is an emerging Afghan army, that the country is now a joint NATO responsibility and thus under the protection of the broadest military alliance in history, that it has a new constitution and is preparing against hellish odds to hold a general election, and that at least a million and a half of its former refugees have opted to return. I don't think a pipeline is being constructed yet, not that Afghanistan couldn't do with a pipeline. But a highway from Kabul to Kandahar—an insurance against warlordism and a condition of nation-building—is nearing completion with infinite labor and risk. We also discover that the parties of the Afghan secular left—like the parties of the Iraqi secular left—are strongly in favor of the regime change. But this is not the sort of irony in which Moore chooses to deal.

He prefers leaden sarcasm to irony and, indeed, may not appreciate the distinction.

UPDATE: Spike TV is already running trailers for the movie, using the "Bush playing golf" clip Hitch describes thus:

The president is also captured in a well-worn TV news clip, on a golf course, making a boilerplate response to a question on terrorism and then asking the reporters to watch his drive. Well, that's what you get if you catch the president on a golf course. If Eisenhower had done this, as he often did, it would have been presented as calm statesmanship. If Clinton had done it, as he often did, it would have shown his charm.

UPDATE: Oh, lovely. Moore is now apologizing to Ray Bradbury:

The novel was a futuristic tale about a totalitarian society where books are burned to keep people from thinking independently. The temperature at which paper catches fire is 451 degrees. Moore says his film deals with the temperature at which freedom burns.

Bradbury is demanding an apology for not being asked permission to lift his book title and wants the film property renamed, something that is not likely to happen at this late stage.

"He suddenly realized he's let too much time go by," the author said.

"It has broken my heart," says Moore. "I've called to try and apologize and work it out and he's just ... oh, jeez I don't know what to say."

Moore says he tried to explain to the 83-year-old writer that the film could bring more young readers to his book but apparently no dice. He says if he had called the film The Diary of Michael Moore, surely people wouldn't confuse it with The Diary of Anne Frank.

"There's no confusion here, you know?"

Nope. Of course not.

Encouraging travellers to switch from cars and airlines to inter-city trains brings no benefits for the environment, new research has concluded.

Challenging assumptions about railways' green superiority, the study finds that the weight and fuel requirements of trains have increased to the point where rail could become the least energy-efficient form of transport.

Engineers at Lancaster University said trains had failed to keep up with the motor and aviation industries in reducing fuel needs.

They calculate that expresses between London and Edinburgh consume slightly more fuel per seat (the equivalent of 11.5 litres) than a modern diesel-powered car making the same journey.

The car's superiority rises dramatically when compared with trains travelling at up to 215mph.

South Australia's Court of Criminal Appeal has reduced a jail sentence given to a man who broke into an elderly couple's house because he is Aboriginal.

The Appeal Court ruled that Aborigines are at greater disadvantage in society that whites.

Darren Clarke, 29, broke into the Port Pirie house of a couple in their 70s in November 2002 by smashing the back door.

He ransacked two rooms and stole alcohol and money.

The couple was terrified and traumatised.

Clark was sentenced to three years with a non-parole period of 23 months.

He appealed against that sentence and one of his grounds was that he was Aboriginal.

The Court of Criminal Appeal agreed saying an offender's aboriginality could be relevant.

Is this the horror that will finally undo George Bush's presidency?

• The recent rise of the debate over gay marriage has sent Bush "around the bend"—in Lewis' presentation, Bush said, "Those pesky States think they can just rewrite the rules like this? Well, I'll fix their wagon—I'll write a Constsitutional Amendment!" —conveniently overlooking, it seems, that little thing about 3/4 of the States having to ratify said Amendment;
• Arnold Schwarzenegger being elected Governor is proof that Californians "governed ourselves better when we were all taking drugs" (regardless of the fact that Arnie has, among much else, restored California's good credit rating)—and that if we as a State had decided we wanted to live in a movie, rather than in reality, we ought to lose our statehood;
• The 9/11 Commission announced conclusively that there was no link whatsoever between 9/11 and Saddam (which, even if it were strictly true, which it isn't, is a hideous and wilful misinterpretation of why we fought the war—if people think putting an end to Saddam's regime was about revenge for 9/11, they're shallower thinkers than I've ever given them credit for);
• Condi Rice's testimony before the Commission made less sense than if a miniature Dachshund had gone up on the podium and yapped and crapped and run away;
• All the Administration officials have spent the past three years doing nothing but making hideous, hideous mistakes—and all one can fault the driven-snow-pure Democrats for is not doing a better job of calmly pointing them out;
• The "Osama bin Laden memo" contained actionable information about the upcoming 9/11 attacks, and there was something we realistically could have done (in this world of political correctness and racial-profiling paranoia) to prevent them even if we did have specific information about the plot;
• There weren't ever any Weapons of Mass Destruction—I mean, hey, Lewis knew himself that there weren't any! And all he was doing was sitting there on his couch! How is it that he knows more than the CIA? (Except that he evidently didn't know about the Kay report, except the headlines about it—or, say, the banned missiles showing up in Dutch and Jordanian scrapyards. Don't mention those—they ruin the joke!);
• Instilling democracy in Iraq is impossible—what are we gonna do, give 'em a bunch of Civics books and make 'em take a test? Stupid wogs!
• We never had a plan for how to rebuild Iraq. We just didn't. No, of course Lewis doesn't have any evidence backing up this claim; he just says it, and we all believe it. No plan! Imagine!
• Osama bin Laden is alive and well and, apparently, hiding inside Janet Jackson's right breast;
• We invaded Iraq for oil—not to steal it, mind you, but to create instability in the Middle East so that oil companies like Exxon and Shell and Mobil could have a pretext for jacking up gas prices and making a killing (which we all know has been the Bush/Cheney grand master plan all along). This is actually his most thoughtful and plausible theory of the night, which tells you something about the caliber of material he had to work with.

UPDATE: Then again... even more astonishing, I suppose, is that the FG episode in question aired before the relevant Simpsons episode. About five months before.

Not enough time for it not to be just a bizarre coincidence...

The United Nations has determined that Saddam Hussein shipped weapons of mass destruction components as well as medium-range ballistic missiles before, during and after the U.S.-led war against Iraq in 2003.

The UN Monitoring, Verification and Inspection Commission briefed the Security Council on new findings that could help trace the whereabouts of Saddam’s missile and WMD program.

The briefing contained satellite photographs that demonstrated the speed with which Saddam dismantled his missile and WMD sites before and during the war. Council members were shown photographs of a ballistic missile site outside Baghdad in May 2003, and then saw a satellite image of the same location in February 2004, in which facilities had disappeared.

UNMOVIC acting executive chairman Demetrius Perricos told the council on June 9 that “the only controls at the borders are for the weight of the scrap metal, and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials within the scrap,” Middle East Newsline reported.

“It’s being exported,” Perricos said after the briefing. “It’s being traded out. And there is a large variety of scrap metal from very new to very old, and slowly, it seems the country is depleted of metal.”

“The removal of these materials from Iraq raises concerns with regard to proliferation risks,” Perricos told the council. Perricos also reported that inspectors found Iraqi WMD and missile components shipped abroad that still contained UN inspection tags.

He said the Iraqi facilities were dismantled and sent both to Europe and around the Middle East. at the rate of about 1,000 tons of metal a month. Destionations included Jordan, the Netherlands and Turkey.

The UN plans to deal with another complaint against Israel as well, though this one is much older. It concerns Israel’s air raid on Iraq’s atomic reactor no fewer than 23 years ago. The issue had been pushed off from year to year, as had many other long-forgotten issues, and the current rotating president of the UN General Assembly - a Caribbean Islands diplomat - finally decided to place the issue on the table.

. . .

Armed Israeli aggression against the [Osirak] Iraqi nuclear installations and its grave consequences for the established international system concerning the peaceful uses of nuclear energy, the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons and international peace and security

At its forty-first session, the General Assembly called upon Israel urgently to place all its nuclear facilities under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards in accordance with Security Council resolution 487 (1981); considered that Israel had not yet committed itself not to attack or threaten to attack nuclear facilities in Iraq or elsewhere, including facilities under Agency safeguards; reaffirmed that Iraq was entitled to compensation for the damage it had suffered as a result of the Israeli armed attack on 7 June 1981; and requested the Conference on Disarmament to continue negotiations with a view to reaching an immediate conclusion of the agreement on the prohibition of military attacks on nuclear facilities as a contribution to promoting and ensuring the safe development of nuclear energy for peaceful purposes (resolution 41/12).

UPDATE: By the way—"A Caribbean Islands diplomat", huh? <cough>Cuba<cough> Right. Nice of these guys to be so clear about who's demanding what.

U.N.: WMD Equipment Found?
June 10, 2004 1501 GMT

Acting Chief U.N. Inspector Demetrius Perricos told the U.N. Security
Council on June 9 that equipment used for producing weapons of mass
destruction -- including 20 engines from banned Iraqi missiles -- were
found in a Jordanian scrap yard. A similar discovery was recently made in
the Netherlands. U.N. weapons inspectors believe the metal can be used
both for legitimate purposes and for creating banned weapons. Perricos
said, "The only controls at the borders are for the weight of the metal,
and to check whether there are any explosive or radioactive materials
within the scrap." Inspectors do not know whether the items were at the
sites during the Iraq war, or looters sold them as scrap.

Which brings me to my confession. Having grown up in the late '60s and early '70s, I carried some of my generation's prejudices along with me into the Army. While I realized that Jimmy Carter had been an inept president (if a good man), I didn't support Ronald Reagan in 1980. I believed that Carter remained the safer of two mediocrities. I bought into the bigotry of those who mocked Reagan as lacking the intelligence to be president.

And it's doubtless true that he didn't possess the highest IQ ever to enter the White House. That goes directly to what Reagan taught me: As we recently saw with another president, the greatest intelligence isn't a substitute for vision, courage and leadership. Above all, a president needs good instincts, guts and sound values. The world's overstocked with brilliant people who never get anything done.

References to Zarqawi and Abu Nadal are completely removed even though they are examples of a terrorist connection in Iraq. This is important information that needs to be repeated to the American people but is filtered right out of the President's message. Don't tell me that those two sentences were edited out for time constraints either, as they were very short.

BAGHDAD, Iraq - Iraqi officials declared Tuesday that the interim government has assumed full control of the country's oil industry ahead of the June 30 handover of sovereignty from the U.S.-led occupation administration.

"Today the most important natural resource has been returned to Iraqis to serve all Iraqis," Prime Minister Iyad Allawi said. "I'm pleased to announce that full sovereignty and full control on oil industry has been handed over to the oil ministry today and to the new Iraqi government as of today."

The announcement came as Allawi and Oil Minister Thamir Ghadbhan toured the al-Doura oil refinery in southern Baghdad.

After meeting and shaking hands with the refinery workers, the two ministers thanked oil sector workers.

"We are totally now in control, there are no more advisers," Ghadbhan said. "We are running the show, the oil policies will be implemented 100 percent by Iraqis."

No U.S. president, I expect, will ever appoint a Secretary of the Imagination. But if such a cabinet post ever were created, and Richard Foreman weren’t immediately appointed to it, you’d know that the Republicans were in power. Republicans don’t believe in the imagination, partly because so few of them have one, but mostly because it gets in the way of their chosen work, which is to destroy the human race and the planet. Human beings, who have imaginations, can see a recipe for disaster in the making; Republicans, whose goal in life is to profit from disaster and who don’t give a hoot about human beings, either can’t or won’t. Which is why I personally think they should be exterminated before they cause any more harm.

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Determined to remain elected representatives, House lawmakers on Wednesday rejected a proposed constitutional amendment that would have allowed governors to name replacements if half the 435-member chamber died in a terrorist attack or other disaster.

Opponents said the House should never abandon direct election. Lawmakers supporting the amendment said that without the succession plan, the House would expose itself to a lengthy period of powerlessness should hundreds of members die at the same time.

"We feel very, very passionately about the need to ensure that no one ever serves in the 'people's house' without having first being elected," said Republican Rep. David Dreier of California, chairman of the House Rules Committee and critic of the amendment.

Rep. Brian Baird wrote the amendment to keep the House functioning with appointees until special elections could be held to restore depleted numbers. `Elections are sacred, but so too is representation," said Baird, D-Washington

His proposal was defeated 353-63, well short of the two-thirds needed to approve a constitutional amendment.

Q Given the perception --

THE PRESIDENT: I'm converting this into a full-blown press conference; it's such a beautiful day. (Laughter.) Do I get credit for it? (Laughter.)

Q Absolutely.

Why, what's that stench?
Can it be one of those French?

Yes, yes, I was born in France;
But please, give me a chance.

. . .

The following things French can never be:
Fries, toast, and Mr. John Kerry.

Who, in 2004, can look at world where some madmen want to shove a crescent down our throats and decide that the most important thing they’re going to do is take the crosses off the city seal?

The crosses represent California’s history - but of course that’s no defense. History, alas, is full of inconvenient details. History can offend. The mere recognition of a historical truth can offend. Apparently that’s the worst thing you can do nowadays: offend. But it has to be a particular kind of offense. Lenny Bruce was celebrated for offending the right people, and this enshrined the act of offending as some sort of brave stance against The Man, The Grey-Flannel Suited Establishment, the whole Ike-Nixon Axis of Medieval, the straights. Gotta offend the straights or you’re not doing your job. The only function the bourgeouise have is to sit there with their mouths open, Shocked. If they’re having a good time, someone’s not doing his job.

"If anybody has a mortarboard, you can move your tassels from right to left, right to left, which is what I hope happened to your politics in the last four years." George Washington University president Stephen Trachtenberg,  at a graduation ceremony

At what point will the Looney Left figure out that insulting people, even when disguised as the "social cognitive theory of moral disengagement," is not a good way to pursuade people to support their views?

Great. It says I need to hang out with highschool students and undergraduates in order to elevate my conciousness about war and killing things. I'm just so manipulable.

Morons. When I was a highschool student my conciousness was elevated to their liking. Then I did something that adolescents all around the world are supposed to do. I grew the *&%^ up.

Israeli Channel Ten television broadcast video footage this week showing armed Palestinians using UNRWA (United Nations Relief and Work Agency) ambulances to flee Israeli forces operating in the Gaza Strip.

The television report, filmed in Gaza City's Zeitoun neighborhood on May 11, on the same night the first IDF armored personnel carrier was destroyed, killing six Israeli soldiers, clearly showed armed Palestinians boarding a UN-marked ambulance with a UN flag, and fleeing the scene.

The Channel Ten reporter stressed that this was not a Palestinian Red Crescent ambulance, known to have transported armed Palestinians in the past, but rather a supposedly neutral ambulance of the UN.

As matters now stand, Kerry has assured the DLC, "I am not a redistributionist Democrat." That's actually a good start. Using that promise as disinformation, he must now figure out a creative way to become a redistributionist Democrat.

So the aim is to deceive voters about what you want to do. This might be amusing coming from a Dick Morris or a Karl Rove. But didn't Raines spend a year and a half lacerating the Bush administration for, er, lying? And now he thinks it's an essential tool for governance? Not all Bush-haters are as dumb or as crude as Raines. But it's useful to see how decadent the left-liberal mind can be in one of its more prominent exemplars. The American people are stupid, craven greed-hounds; lying is good if you can get away with it; American capitalism is a rotten, hollow promise; and even the Democrats refuse to take the advice of the few enlightened people who can help them, like Howell Raines. Well, that makes one thing to be grateful about.

There was an historical moment in which the character and moral fiber of the French people was defined. After the defeat of the Germans and their retreat from France the American and British had the courtesy to allow General De Gaulle along with his meager troops to enter Paris at the head the triumphal Victory parade.

Nevertheless, very soon afterwards De Gaulle decided to extricate France from the military Pact of the North Atlantic Pact between Western Europe and the United States that secured the peace and freedom in that part of Europe, saving them from falling under the Soviet boot as it happened to the East Europeans countries.

De Gaulle, in a bout typical of French arrogance, or perhaps to appease the Soviet Union and the very powerful French communists in control of much the bureaucracy, demanded the immediate shut down of the American bases in France and the return of the troops to United States.

Eisenhower, with great dignity, responded: " General, it is going to take some time to exhume all our dead soldiers from the soil of France."

¿What is your opinion on France's scientific research crisis?

H.R.H. Caroline responded: "It is deplorable. There is veritable scarcity. We are witnessing an intelligence flight. That is impoverishing the scientific and intellectual life. Sometimes it is necessary for a scientist to wait three months in order to have access to a microscope in a research laboratory. Those instruments frequently cost near 450,000 euros; so, there is only one per university, or one for almost 1,000 researchers, who are forced to wait in order to proceed with their experiments."

This is the legacy of socialism. This is the famous European socialized medicine. This is France, a country that allowed their old citizens to die without family or government assistance during a heat wave last summer. It was vacation time and the old folks were left behind in their city apartments under searing heat, and their children, doctors and nurses went on vacation to enjoy and relax.

That sacred time could not be interrupted, not even to save the lives of their own parents or to claim the corpses of those who died and were placed in funeral homes and food storage buildings waiting for weeks to be claimed and buried.

A French couple might spend 200 euros for a dinner in a not very luxurious restaurant; but they will not spend 300 euros in an air conditioning unit for making their parents' life more comfortable.

UPDATE: Then again, there's always this (thanks to JMH for reminding me). You know, maybe there is something to this whole "impressionable youth" thing—if it comes down to "making patriotism hip through video games", well, I guess that's what worked for recycling and saving the whales and hating big corporations...

Ted Sampley, a former Green Beret who served two full tours in Vietnam, spotted Kerry and his Secret Service detail at about 9:00 a.m. Monday morning at the Wall. Sampley walked up to Kerry, extended his hand and said, "Senator, I am Ted Sampley, the head of Vietnam Veterans Against John Kerry, and I am here to escort you away from the Wall because you do not belong here."

At that point a Secret Service officer told Sampley to back away from Kerry. Sampley moved about 6 feet away and opened his jacket to reveal a HANOI JOHN T-shirt.

Kerry then began talking to a group of schoolchildren. Sampley then showed the T-shirt to the children and said, "Kerry does not belong at the Wall because he betrayed the brave soldiers who fought in Vietnam."

Just then Kerry - in front of the school children, other visitors and Secret Service agents - brazenly 'flashed the bird' at Sampley and then yelled out to everyone, "Sampley is a felon!"

As Congress returns from its Memorial Day recess, two senators may need to revise one of their harshest critiques about the Bush administration's actions in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, especially now that Bush critic Richard Clarke has contradicted one of his own key statements.

It turns out that President Bush and other top members of his administration had nothing to do with the decision to let members of Osama bin Laden's family depart the United States in the days immediately after 9/11, despite the suggestions of Democratic Senators Barbara Boxer of California and Charles Schumer of New York.

Clarke, the former White House counter-terrorism official and author of a recent book blasting the Bush administration's handling of intelligence leading up to the terrorist attacks, told The Hill newspaper last week that he gave the go-ahead for two members of the bin Laden family and other Saudi nationals to leave the U.S.

"It didn't get any higher than me," Clarke told The Hill. "I take responsibility for it. I don't think it was a mistake, and I'd do it again."

Has anyone noticed that, in the three years since the US homeland suffered its worst attack in history, Hollywood has not produced one single film that advocates the American side in the War On Islamic Fascism?

Samuel Mac, manager of the Denny's in Avon, isn't happy with the response he got from the FBI when he reported that two [al Qaeda suspects] ate at his restaurant Wednesday.

When he called the FBI in Washington, D.C., Mac said the man who answered the telephone said he had to call the Denver office and declined to take down any of the information.

When he called the Denver office, he was shuttled to voice mail because the agents were busy, Mac said. It was five hours before a seemingly uninterested agent called back.

Mac said two men - he subsequently identified them from their photographs as Adnan G. El Shukrijumah and Abderraouf Jdey - came into Denny's, which is just off Interstate 70, about 8 p.m.

One ordered a chicken sandwich and a salad, the other just a salad, Mac said. They were demanding, rude and obnoxious, he said.

They said they were from Iran and were driving from New York to the West Coast.

When the FBI agent called him back, she took a few notes and said she would pass the information along to the field agents, according to Mac.

"'(President Muhammad) Khatami speaks of the dialogue between civilizations, and I have grave doubts about this. It is a dubious idea. We do not want to take over the British Embassy, since they (the British) have already cleared the embassy of documents; we must take over Britain [itself].'

"After [H.A.] harshly attacked Khatami and the reformists, he said in his speech: 'The West sees us as terrorists, and depicts our strategy as terrorism and repression. Had our youth agreed to Khatami's teachings and interpretations, it would never have fought the arrogance, and would never have defended the holy places – because Khatami speaks always of being conciliatory, of patience, and of rejecting terrorism, while we defend [the line of] toughness and war against the enemies of revolutionary Islam. I take pride in my actions that cause anxiety and fear to the Americans.

"'Haven't the Jews and the Christians achieved their progress by means of toughness and repression? We have a strategy drawn up for the destruction of Anglo-Saxon civilizationand for the uprooting of the Americans and the English.

"'Our missiles are now ready to strike at their civilization, and as soon as the instructions arrive from Leader ['Ali Khamenei], we will launch our missiles at their cities and installations. Our motto during the war (in Iraq) was: Karbala, we are coming, Jerusalem, we are coming. And because of Khatami's policies and dialogue between the civilizations, we have been compelled to freeze our plan to liberate the Islamic cities. And now we are [again] about to carry out the program.'

"In his speech, he added: 'The global infidel front is a front against Allah and the Muslims, and we must make use of everything we have at hand to strike at this front, by means of our suicide operations or by means of our missiles. There are 29 sensitive sites in the U.S. and in the West. We have already spied on these sites and we know how we are going to attack them.'

"In another part of his speech, he emphasized, 'If Israel dares attack the [nuclear] installations at Bushehr, our losses will be very low, because [only] one structure will be destroyed – while we [i.e., Iran] have means of attacking Israel's nuclear facilities and arsenals such that no trace of Israel will remain.'"

Bad cartoons tend to make bad citizens. And my generation suffered from the worst cartoons of all. Pity the poor male children of Generation X: there we sat, on Saturday mornings in the '70s and early '80s, clutching our bowls of Count Chocula and enduring the soul-sucking monotony of ugly Filmation cartoons populated by heroes who fought without actually fighting. You could watch cartoons for hours and never see a superhero actually sock a supervillain in the gut, or a commando pump hot lead into a live non-robot terrorist, or a ranger thrust a pointy-sharp arrow into some dragon's malevolent guts. Preachy mini-sermons abounded, though; the Super Friends couldn't lay a gloved fist on Lex Luthor, but they could sure manhandle those sugary in-between-meals snacks. ("Super Friends," they called them, instead of the Justice League. The difference tells you everything you need to know about the seventies.)

Consequently, we Gen Xers grew up achingly bereft of simulated mayhem and destruction. We turned to cap guns, stick fights, and dodgeball to meet our aggressive needs, but it wasn't the same. We craved red meat, but our cartoons served up tofu.

I always assumed that the threat of litigation had driven violence from Saturday morning. After all, if you show Superman frying a supervillain with his heat vision on Saturday morning, then, sure enough, some idiot kid in Dubuque will fry his little brother with heat vision one fine Saturday afternoon, and then everyone loses except the lawyers. But I was wrong. Federal regulators, rather than nervous trial attorneys, wussified Saturday morning TV in the early seventies. Uncle Sam made our cartoons insipid, in the hope that a nice stiff dose of cultural chloroform would deaden our proto-male violent tendencies and transform us all into prissy poindexters who would eat our vegetables, sit still in our seats, and eventually vote for French-speaking politicians.

* Part of the reason Al Gore gave such an insane tirade yesterday is because a refrigerator magnet was stuck to his head.

UPDATE: This, via CapLion, is an interesting case in point.

UPDATE: Like, for instance, this. Which I saw in the local Safeway. No kidding.

UPDATE: Several people have commented that this could simply be the house of a local high school athletics coach, whose property gets TP'ed as part of the usual traditions around this time of year. Considering that the festooning was left intact all day, with nobody making any attempts to clean it up, I guess that's the more likely explanation. The TP is a flag, in its own way...

After the lecture, attendees filed out of the hall to discover that the protesters had massed so as to allow only a narrow passage between themselves and a retaining wall. In effect, all those leaving the lecture were forced to walk a gauntlet. Some ducked their heads, others set their jaws in anger, squeezing past the dozens of assembled faces chanting "Shame! Shame! Shame!" as fists pumped the air in unison.

A young woman in a kaffiyeh screamed up at a Jewish student significantly larger than herself. Her lips were wet with fury. "If I don't agree with you, then you call it anti-Semitism!" she shouted, as friends arrived to support her. The young man was surrounded. "You call it anti-Semitismmm!" she raged. "Why can't you tolerate anti-Semitismmm?"

"I can tolerate it," the student replied, his voice a low, tired rumble. "I have to. It exists. I just don't have to like it."

• Of the eight states (Alaska, Georgia, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Missouri, Oregon and Utah) that currently impose similar taxes, seven let the lawyers eat first (the state takes their share only after attorneys' fees are paid). California would join Indiana in taking its 75% share before the payment of attorneys' fees.

• The article predicts that Gov. Schwarzenegger's proposal may succeed if the tax is whittled down to 50% and the lawyers are allowed to eat first.

UPDATE: J Greely sends another example of "progressive architecture" run amok. Sweet merciful crap, I'm beginning to loathe the word progressive...

UPDATE: Keith & Fred send this previous Gehry concoction, which "hangs over the Mississippi, looking like a
derelict car stuck on the bank among the trees".

UPDATE: More thoughts from Sissy Willis, in response to this and Lileks' followup assessment. Yikes—I've never seen a groundswell of crosslinkage like this, around these parts. I guess Gehry wouldn't be too pleased to hear of it.

AFTERTHOUGHT: What do you suppose we'll think of these buildings in, say, twenty or fifty years?

UPDATE: Paul Denton appears willing. Deserves a blogroll link, too.

UPDATE: A response from Alisa in Wonderland.

OUTNUMBERED British soldiers killed 35 Iraqi attackers in the Army’s first bayonet charge since the Falklands War 22 years ago.

The fearless Argyll and Sutherland Highlanders stormed rebel positions after being ambushed and pinned down.

Despite being outnumbered five to one, they suffered only three minor wounds in the hand-to-hand fighting near the city of Amara.

The battle erupted after Land Rovers carrying 20 Argylls came under attack on a highway.

After radioing for back-up, they fixed bayonets and charged at 100 rebels using tactics learned in drills.

When the fighting ended bodies lay all over the highway — and more were floating in a nearby river. Nine rebels were captured.

An Army spokesman said: “This was an intense engagement.”

The last bayonet charge was by the Scots Guards and the Paras against Argentinian positions.

• "Daddy, wasn't Saddam in violation of 17 UN resolutions, and repeatedly violating the cease-fire agreement?"
• "Aren't chemical and biological weapons really easy to conceal, and just as easy to store as harmless components?"
• "What about that sarin bomb that blew up on a roadside? Doesn't that count?"
• "Remember Somalia? Isn't there something to be said for being extremely firm, and a little bit overeager, in response to 9/11—because the fact that we retreated whenever we got bloody noses like in Somalia is exactly why 9/11 occurred?"
• "What about Ansar Al-Islam? Haven't there been all kinds of links drawn between al Qaeda and Iraq?"
• "Even if Saddam didn't have any weapons of mass destruction, wasn't it worth getting rid of him for all the crimes he'd already committed, and just in case he decided that if 17 UN resolutions against him weren't going to be enforced, then there was no point in trying to avoid incurring an 18th?"
• "Isn't it a good idea, when the Middle East is exporting Islamic terrorism daily, to make sure that there aren't any avowedly anti-US dictatorships operating in the Middle East, whether they're sponsoring terrorism or not?"
• "How is one of our soldiers making fun of an Iraqi prisoner's wee-wee to get information about terrorists remotely the same thing as Saddam feeding people feet-first into shredders for failing to agree with him?"
• "Daddy, this is Iraq we're talking about! Saddam Hussein! The guy who gassed his own people and killed 300,000 of his citizens! The guy who's been the personification of evil in every sitcom and stand-up routine produced in the 90s! The guy that all America's been aching to get rid of ever since 1991! And now all of a sudden it's a bad thing, because we actually seem to be willing to do it?"

UPDATE: Greg Kihn is having similar thoughts; apparently he's taking all kinds of heat from listeners via e-mail regarding his opinions that he injects between the classic-rock tracks, and he's likening them to his second ex-wife who used to respond to things she didn't want to hear by sticking her fingers in her ears and going LA-LA-LA-LA-LA! "There's no money. We're going bankrupt!" "LA-LA-LA-LA! I can't hear you!"

It's like the airwaves are filled with Rage Addicts...

Barring a miracle, the family as it has been known for more than five millennia will crumble, presaging the fall of Western civilization itself. This is a time for concerted prayer, divine wisdom and greater courage than we have ever been called upon to exercise. For more than 40 years, the homosexual activist movement has sought to implement a master plan that has had as its centerpiece the utter destruction of the family. The institution of marriage, along with an often weakened and impotent Church, is all that stands in the way of its achievement of every coveted aspiration. Those goals include universal acceptance of the gay lifestyle, discrediting of Scriptures that condemn homosexuality, muzzling of the clergy and Christian media, granting of special privileges and rights in the law, overturning laws prohibiting pedophilia, indoctrinating children and future generations through public education, and securing all the legal benefits of marriage for any two or more people who claim to have homosexual tendencies.

UPDATE: Now this is an interesting point.

Kris points out, by the way, that if the scammer were smart and/or ballsy, he'd recognize the street value of the P-P-P-Powerbook!! and put it on Ebay. He'd probably make back the money he lost...

I watched with my partner, Michael, sitting next to me. Michael is a U.S. citizen now, but a native of Syria. He’s an Arab. An Arab-American, in the parlance of hyphenation. And his reaction to the video, described below, is telling.

Michael came to America as an adolescent and learned English with no help from the Los Angeles schools he attended. By the time he and I met, shortly before his graduation from Baylor University, a Baptist institution in Waco, Texas, he had become a fully acculturated American.

When the video ended, Michael and I sat here for awhile in silence. Then he turned to me and asked,

“Baby, are you mad at me?”

No, Habibi (Arabic for ‘my love’), I’m not mad at you. What makes you even ask that?

“I don’t know. Maybe you’ll associate me with that.”

Of course, I do not associate him with that. But Michael, now well-acquainted with the psychology of his fellow Americans, intuitively knows what Mr. Berg’s murderers evidently do not. An act of barbarism against one of our own will shock and hurt and repulse and horrify us. But it will also enrage us. If radical Islamists think this act will induce us to cower, they misjudge the American character. We aren’t the French, or even the Spanish.

Americans can't figure this one out, how to respond. In reality, the whole Moslem world is a tiny threat. Late 20th century media takes what goes on between them and the western world and blows it up a million fold. The video is an example. That's the best they can do. Stop and think about that for a minute. The germans quielty and calmly got the jews and others to queue up in an orderly manner before they gassed them and used their body parts to stuff pillows and make lampshades. Several million people. And the germans would have dominated the world eventually if they hadn't had the audacity to declare war on everyone except the japanese at the same time. The islamist snatch someone here, somewone there and make a video of their murder and put it out and its impact is way beyond the reality of what these people are capable of. 9/11 was their crowning glory.. probably. And even if they set of a nuke or dirty bomb, they won't come within a mile of doing the damage that was done to europe during the second world war or america during the civil war.

UPDATE: Here's a translation of the statement that was read.

"Have you not had your fill of the war of conferences and battle of words? Is it not time for you to take the path of jihad and carry the sword of the Prophet of prophets? We ask you not to condemn what we will do just to please the Americans.

So, I guess, never mind then.

Fallujah native Abdul-Qader Abdul-Rahman al-Ani, his left elbow wrapped in bandages, his right forearm bound in a cast, recounted how he was beaten by soldiers who picked him up last month. The soldiers tied him and two others arrested with him to a tree and sodomized them one after the other, he told journalists.

"I ask President Bush," he said. "Does he agree with this?"

As Ani, 47, repeated his story, he was interrupted by Jabber al-Okaili, a member of one of the human rights groups that organized the gathering. "He's lying," al-Okaili shouted. "He's a liar!"

Al-Ani was rushed to an office, where al-Okaili and others unwound the bandage on his left arm and found the elbow unscarred and healthy. They cut off half of the cast on his forearm, even as al-Ani insisted, "By God, it's true, everything I say is true."

SBS television just showed German news footage of Ani making his disputed claim -- and that's all. No mention of anybody calling him a liar.

UPDATE: What's even more fun is being in the middle of a news story when it happens. As we were passing San Francisco International Airport at about 4500 feet on our way up the peninsula, we happened to be being handled on the same Nor-Cal Approach control frequency that was also handling a minor emergency concerning a Northwest DC-10 jet that had taken off from SFO only minutes before. The pilot of the jet was reporting that he was circling over the ocean off the coast, dumping fuel; he was requesting a special landing clearance on runway 28R, the longest runway at SFO.

Turns out, the jet had blown two tires during takeoff. The runway he had used—28R—was closed at that moment as cleanup crews cleared away the debris from the blown tires, and the runway was still closed as the approach center cleared him into a pattern for a long, soft-field-style approach (using a loooong runway and floating down onto it ever so gently, to protect the remaining tires, after dumping fuel to reduce weight, and knuckling over onto the good landing gear as it comes to a stop) to that runway. He came barrelling in over the peninsula just as we, in our little Cessna, buzzed past; the tower had us descend a thousand feet and shuffle on out of the way while they took care of the near-emergency.

Finally, runway 28R was reopened, just as the jet turned to the base leg of the pattern; by that time, he had switched to the SFO tower frequency, and the airport was far enough behind us that we couldn't watch him land. But after we returned from our trip around Northern California and landed at Reid-Hillview, we turned on the radio and the first news item we heard was: "A Northwest Airlines jet out of SFO en route to Tokyo was forced to return to the airport after two of its tires blew out upon takeoff..."

How cool is that?

Yesterday a friend of mine, who’s also a doctor, visited us. After chatting about old memories, I asked him about his opinions on the current situations in Iraq. I’ve always known this friend to be apathetic when it comes to politics, even if it means what’s happening in Iraq. It was obvious that he hadn’t change and didn’t show any interest in going deep into this conversation. However when I asked him about his opinion on GWB response to the prisoners’ abuse issue, I was surprised to see him show anger and disgust as he said: