Sep. 1st, 2002

sisyphusshrugged: (Claude Rains Memorial Gambling Awareness)
We have a Claude
RALEIGH, N.C Wal-Mart executives said it was a mistake to mail a company publication depicting Elizabeth Dole, a Republican candidate for Senate, on the cover less than two weeks before the primary.

The publication, which was sent to nearly 200,000 North Carolina residents and several million homes nationwide, was meant to promote literacy, not Mrs. Dole's candidacy, the company said.

"There was nothing remotely political in the intent," Jay Allen, a senior vice president of Wal-Mart, said on Friday.


30 states ban civil lawsuits against gun manufacturers
Suits filed before the state shield laws were in place are being dismissed retroactively.

Industry lawyers said that if they were doing anything bad, the ATF would be handling it.

Any questions?

Outside the tent, pissing in
Jake Tapper: Do you think that's a weakness of the Bush administration, that it doesn't consult with Congress enough?

Dick Armey: You have to remember, this whole debate on the question of whether we attack Vietnam did not originate in the Bush White House --

Jake Tapper: I'm sorry to interrupt, sir, but you said, ''Vietnam.'' I think you meant Iraq.

Dick Armey: Sorry, Iraq. Anyway, it didn't originate with the Bush White House.

Jake Tapper: Not to make too big a thing of it, but do you think there was anything Freudian just then when you referred to Iraq as Vietnam?

Dick Armey: I was wondering the same thing, but I don't think so. I was not a Vietnam War protester. But I don't know what to make of it.

I don't think it was a Freudian slip, but who knows?


Labor challenger polls 62-32 against current chairman (who's also Sharon's defense minister)
JERUSALEM -- A dovish former general, Amram Mitzna, has burst onto Israel's political stage seeking to lead the Labor Party out of its uneasy alliance with Prime Minister Ariel Sharon and back toward its traditional stand of flexibility toward the Palestinians.

Mitzna's swift emergence has become a threat for the previously unchallenged Labor Party chairman, Binyamin Ben-Eliezer, who as defense minister in Sharon's coalition government has played a key role in Israel's hard-line response to Palestinian violence. More broadly, the clash for the chairmanship has evolved into a battle for the soul of Labor -- the party of Israel's founding father, David Ben-Gurion, and its assassinated Nobel Peace laureate, Yitzhak Rabin, the party of the 1993 Oslo peace accords that still proclaims it is willing to trade land for peace.

- - - -

Mitzna, a former tank commander and mayor of the northern port city of Haifa, said in a recent interview that he wants to take over Labor to revive its image as the party that can bring peace to Israel at the negotiating table instead of on the battlefield.

"I am telling people to take the masks off of the politicians who are not telling them the truth," said Mitzna, 57, one of Israel's most decorated soldiers. "There is a connection between Israel's status today and our occupation of the West Bank and Gaza Strip. I'm telling people they are getting lies when they are told that the only way to solve the problem with the Palestinians is by using military power."


Another general heard from
CRAWFORD, Tex -- The Bush administration's argument that an attack on Iraq would make it easier to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict received a challenge from an unlikely source: retired Marine Corps Gen. Anthony C. Zinni, a senior adviser to Secretary of State Colin L. Powell.

In a speech to the Economic Club of Florida in Tallahassee, reported in the Tampa Tribune, Zinni said war against Iraq would alienate U.S. allies in the region. "We need to quit making enemies that we don't need to make enemies out of," Zinni said.

In Friday's speech, Zinni argued that the United States would be wiser to negotiate peace between Israelis and Palestinians and to pursue the al Qaeda network before going after Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein.

"It's pretty interesting that all the generals see it the same way," Zinni said, "and all the others who have never fired a shot and are hot to go to war see it another way," the newspaper reported.


How damn embarassing is this
Remember earlier in the week when Mr. Rumsfeld said that if we went to war, our allies would fall into place behind us?

Germany won't give us evidence against Moussaoui, because our legal system falls beneath the level of protection provided for in international law.

Which is damn ungrateful, considering all the Bush family did for them during the second world war.

Precedent Bush
A mind less guileless than my own might be drawn to wonder if the current president's stand on releasing Clinton pardon records might have something to do with his reluctance to see another former president's records - remember the Poppy's Iran-Contra pardons? - under scrutiny.

The Washington Post, where apparently they have very little remaining sense of shame, misrepresents the legal requirements of the presidential pardon process (none of the steps they claim Clinton bypassed are required steps) while failing to draw any conclusions about the fact that Bush is also withholding pardon-related papers from up to 75 years back and claiming presidential privilege on all papers and testimony of anyone who was consulted in the course of investigating a pardon.

This enormous increase in the parameters of presidential privilege, which at this point is only applied to people within the White House, would coincidentally provide a precedent for claiming privilege on, say, the energy task force.

Because we have way too much food and medical care and educational infrastructure for the babies we have now
How, oh how, to reconcile the president's morally engaged position on stem cell research and his careful silence on the massive embryo destruction of the fertility industry? I mean, those are babies, right?

WASHINGTON (AP) -- Pushed by Congress, the Bush administration is set to promote "embryo adoption," where one infertile couple donates leftover embryos to another. It's the latest move in the heated debate over the moral and legal status of an embryo.

The administration plans to distribute nearly $241 million for public awareness campaigns promoting donation of embryos, one of several options available to couples who create more than they need for invitro fertilization. Another option: donate them for stem cell research that has generated enormous controversy because the embryo must be destroyed to get the stem cells.

The Department of Health and Human Services says it has no political agenda and is simply following orders from Congress. The grant program was inserted into an HHS spending bill by Sen. Arlen Specter, who supports both abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

Specter, R-Pa., said the embryos should be available for research, but only if they are going to be thrown away otherwise.


Snakehead update
BALTIMORE Maryland officials applied chemicals to three ponds today in an effort to kill the northern snakehead fish, voracious predators from China that threaten native fish.

Officials said the applications of the herbicides diquat and glyphosate would rob the fish of oxygen by killing the plants that grow profusely in the ponds. Most of the fish are expected to die in the next couple of days. Any fish that survive will be killed in the next week with the poison rotenone.


See, this is a third party candidate I could get behind
She is wearing a short, tight white dress and a red-white-and-blue headwrap that barely manages to contain her curly ash-colored mane, headgear that somehow recalls Bob Dylan circa the mid-'70s Rolling Thunder Revue tour.

Her platform is arts saturation. If elected, she promises to establish an arts utopia modeled on FDR's Works Progress Administration. She says she'll be "an arts fascist."

"God planted me here as a nuclear suppository up the Devil's colon," she likes to say, adding: "D.C. -- get it? A sense of humor never hurt anyone."

Faith is Washington's jester. For a quarter-century, no ballot has been complete without her monosyllabic moniker. Few rallies -- for statehood, racial justice, decriminalization of marijuana -- have gone uninterrupted by brassy toots from her bugle. In her last two runs for mayor, she got 423 and 430 votes.

Rather than make stump speeches, she sings. When she lobbies local officials, she shows up with a promotional videotape and a white Sylvania television, in case they don't have one. At 73 she did a pseudo-strip act called "Stripping for Statehood." Drag queens do impressions of her. On an old calendar in her Adams Morgan apartment, a telephone number is scribbled next to the initials "M.B." Brando's number.

Yeah, right.

At the candidates forum, in the middle of a heated squabble, she picks up the bugle and honks a few piercing notes of reveille.

"Come on, Faith!" shouts someone in the sweaty crowd of 175. "Respect the order of the process."


You know, I'm pretty humorless about protest voting, but I have to say that I have a sneaking tendresse for the idea of just this once not pretending that there's an order to the process by which the District of Columbia is governed.

Parents don't want school choice?
Well, so says the Washington Post.

WASHINGTON, Aug. 27 The education act that President Bush championed during his campaign and signed into law last January gave 3.5 million children in failing public schools the right to choose a better school this September. But with few slots available and few parents applying, education officials say that only a small number of children will benefit from the law this year.

In Baltimore, of 30,000 children eligible to transfer to better schools, 347 have applied to fill 194 slots, school officials said. In Chicago, 145,000 students can theoretically leave struggling schools, but only 2,425 applied to transfer and fewer still, 1,170 students, will get to.

In Los Angeles, an overcrowded system with 223,000 children in 120 failing schools, officials say there is no room in better schools for any to transfer to.

The number of applicants is small, superintendents say, because parents seem to want their children close to home, in schools they already know. But also, parents have been given only a brief window in which to apply before classes begin, and because good schools draw the most applicants, they have the least slots available.


Let me tell you a little story. I live in New York. We've had school choice since forever. This is of some interest to me because after two years of being told, repeatedly, differently, I was told in June of my daughter's pre-K term that she was zoned for a kindergarten half a mile away, across a four lane road with five minute Don't Walks and twenty-second Walks, rather than the school literally across the street from my house. The zone apparently ends across the street as well.

I did my homework on schools in our area. The school report cards for all the public schools, and most of the private schools, are available on the web. Our local school has some of the highest test scores in the public school system and the highest for any school in our area, and we were going to put her in it. It's across the damn street. We told her she was going. All her friends were going. She was going too.

Asked the head of our PreK to help. She told us that she and the school secretary were in agreement that I should lie about my address like everyone else does (this is apparently true). I flat refused. Requested a variance. Got jerked around. Went down to the office of the Superintendent. Got jerked around. Went to the Borough President's office for our borough. Finally got through to the woman who works with the schools. Explained the problem - we were told on multiple occasions that she was already registered across the street, and were not given the opportunity to explore any other options. Got, finally, the variance. Got a letter. Went on the first day of school.

Sat in a ninety plus degree auditorium while every parent and student in the school was taken care of (and yes, the assistant pricipal knew we were there and told us to wait). After four hours, a woman with a clipboard came over and told us we had no variance, and we should go away.

Got a letter, we said. Don't care, she said. The superintendent doesn't say what goes on in this school. I do, and I say no. This only entitles you to go on the waiting list.

Cool, I said. We already gave up our slot in the other school. Write me a letter saying what you just told me. Nope, she says. I'm not writing anything down. Well then, I say, I guess we know where we stand.

We went to the Science Museum for the day, the kid and I. Mommy, she said, I don't want to go there. Those people don't like me.

Husband calls contact in borough president's office, contact calls superintendent, superintendent calls school, school calls superintendent, superintendent calls borough president's office contact, borough president's office contact calls husband, husband calls by now homicidally-inclined wife to tell me that we're enrolling her across the street the next day.

It turns out our helpful friend with the clipboard is a clerical aide.

At every step of the process, we were given information that the person speaking to us knew to be a lie.

It took a full year of volunteering for the PTA and spending enormous amounts of money at bake sales and book sales for the principal to acknowledge my existence. By May I'd earned eye contact.

Here's the kicker. My husband works for a city agency. He administers a popular perk program which Borough Presidents like to flex on behalf of their constituents. We didn't take any step that any parent couldn't have taken, but it would be wildly disingenuous to claim that we weren't privileged in our experience of the process. If we hadn't been, my child would not be going to school across the street from her house.

Parents aren't taking advantage of school choice programs? Go figure.
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
Ann Coulter loses an outlet

...Your Friday column, in which you declared that liberals are "no good," then trashed the entire Kennedy clan as a collection of "heroin addicts, convicted killers, cheaters, bottleggers and dissolute drunks," crossed that line. I'm not going to defend the Kennedy family or liberals; either group can argue with you if they'd like.

But, Ann, you're mean -- vicious, really -- which is why we do not believe that you in any way serve the public good.

On a late summer morning almost a year ago, all of us -- Republicans, Democrats and everyone else -- witnessed what hate is capable of.

Since that day, Americans have tried to remember that they are on the same side, regardless of differences in skin color, nation of origin, religion or political viewpoint. It has not always been easy because, more than ever, those who are different can seem more threatening. But we're trying because what we have in America is worth keeping.

And, Ann, you're not helping. You do nothing to elevate our spirits, to celebrate the great bond that holds us this unruly people together and makes us a nation.

Hate is easy; love is hard.

Our great nation gives you the freedom to hate all you want and even to make a buck off it if you can. But, even better, it gives us the right not to have to listen.

So, Ann, you're fired. I expect some of our readers are going to be mad at us over this, but we hope they'll understand that while we joyfully publish a wide spectrum of political and social viewpoints, we condemn hate where we find it.

You won't miss us much, Ann. Heck, you're rolling in money. And your fans can find your column on the Internet anyway.

We'll start looking for someone to replace you. It won't be easy because you sure are flashy and a lot of folks like flashy. But political conservatism has produced other columnists of merit whose ideas will provide subjects fit for public consumption and debate -- writers who do not believe those who disagree with them are traitors, or worse.

Sincerely,

Bob Unger, executive editor


via Eschaton
sisyphusshrugged: (Default)
Shatner leads paintball offensive against Borg and Klingons

Here is how the day will begin--or how it's supposed to begin, anyway: First, Shatner-as-Kirk, ever the spry starship stud, will paramotor onto the grounds. Allow him to explain.

"If the weather holds, I will set sail with this 70-pound lawn mower engine on my back, run like hell, float the parasail, gain flying speed and fly into the venue," he says of his gutsy grand entrance.

"It's small, but meaningful."

Shortly thereafter, if all goes smoothly, and even if it doesn't, he will rally the troops from a stage, then march off to his center of operations behind the sturdy log walls of an Old West outpost called Fort Courage, one of the park's seven paintball theme settings (others include Armageddon and The Jungle of Doom). From there, guarded by the "suicide prone" Red Shirt Brigade, he'll dispatch minions to crush the enemy, frequently tromping off with them into the heat of battle.

"Shatner the Actor believes that whatever he can dream up in a script, he can do in real life," smirks Wheeling-based Borg overlord Tom Kaye, a self-proclaimed "Star Trek" purist and president of Airgun Designs, one of the paintball industry's most revered marker manufacturers. "Well, I'm sorry to inform him, but real life is not the way it is in the movies. And if he tries to lead from the front, he will find out why nobody ever wants to do that."

Shatner, though, has seen the light.

"I suggested to the guys running the game that I wanted to lead like a leader, right up front," he says. "And then they did the mathematics for me. There are 2,000 people minimum, hopefully more, so that means approximately 1,400 people are all trying to shoot me. Because, like a prize elk, they want my antlers on their wall. Multiply 20 or 30 paintballs a second times 1,400, and that's how many are coming my way. You know, leading at front may not be the best idea."

Klingon ruler Mancow Muller, one of Chicago's top radio personalities, oozes considerably less bravado than Kaye. Shatner, he proclaims, is "the ultimate alpha male" and "the greatest single living human being on earth."


What the hell, it's for charity.


Alpha Male Shatner reconnoitres

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