Duck Season

Conservative (yes, I'm biased) writer David Horowitz has this to say about Ann's new book:

By failing to draw a clear line between satirical exaggeration and historical analysis, by refusing to credit the laudable role played by patriotic, anti- Communist liberals like Truman, Kennedy and Humphrey, Coulter has compromised her case and undermined her attempt to correct a record that desperately needs correction.

Satirical exaggeration? Isn't that exactly how Michael Moore defended all of the factual errors in "Stupid White Men"? I believe he said something like "It's not meant to be serious, it's a parody. Why would anyone take it (the book) seriously?"

David does go on to make some good points, which you can read here. Link via 'The Corner'.

CNN Presents: War in Iraq documentary on DVD or VHS. "Get a first-hand look at the grit and glory as told by journalists embedded deep in the action." It would be a useful scholastic tool; but war as a consumer product doesn't sit well with me. Hopefully this won't make this weeks BestBuy flyer.

Remember those rubber duckies that had come ashore in New England? Well they're valuable, and they're headed for England:

Most of the remnants of the fading flotilla are now heading down the eastern seaboard of the United States, although a breakaway group has been spotted heading for Britain, the company that made the ducks said on Friday.

"We hope people will have fun looking for them and look forward to tracking them when they finally come ashore," Clive Wooster of The First Years company said.

"These amazing little ducks are becoming much sought after. In parts of the world they have actually become cult collectors' items," he added.

The U.S-based company is offering a reward of $100 in savings bonds to anyone who finds a duck in New England -- with the monetary equivalent in Canada and Iceland -- but only a signed certificate to the finders of the first 250 in Britain.

The full story can be found on CNN.

ESPN.com's Tom Farrey has an informative column on the condition of Iraqi national sports in post-war Iraq and the legacy of its former master Uday Hussein:

So now, as Haydar says, we move forward -- and fast, in some ways. Eberly expects to let the sports federations hold elections in September to create a new Iraqi National Olympic Committee. The IOC has identified about 25 Iraqi athletes who could compete in the Athens Games, as well as the soccer team, if it qualifies, Filliau said. Many national Olympic committees, from the United States and elsewhere, are stepping up to help train those athletes. Eberly is beginning to succeed in his goal of getting thousands of soccer balls into the country, giving kids something to do. The U.S. Army recently started a large youth soccer league in Mosul, recovering some of the goodwill that has been lost by the military occupying the national soccer stadium.

Here's the link.

And here I thought you needed to be intelligent to be a computer programmer:

Threat rating: zero. Excellent work - you
demonstrate all the qualities of patriotism
that will make America even greater under Bush.
USA no.1!!!


What threat to the Bush administration are you?
brought to you by Quizilla

And what a coincidence; it was a Democrat!

Last Friday, a fight almost broke out in the House Ways and Means library between Democrat Pete Stark and the Chairman, Republican Bill Thomas, after Stark called Thomas a "fruitcake" and a "cocksucker" and challenged him to a fight during a meeting. The Republicans then called the police to evict the Democrats from the library.

A search of CNN.com returns four stories relating to the event: two news stories, one follow-up news story, and one column. Both the follow-up and the column focus not on Stark's slurs but on the Republicans' calling of the police. In both stories, the word "fruitcake" does not appear until the 13th paragraph, and in neither does the word "cocksucker" show up.

A search of the New York Times returns one story, again on the Republicans' calling of the police.

A search of the Washington Post returns four stories, but none focuses on Stark's remarks.

Gay rights groups don't seem to care either. This is the response from Human Rights Campaign political director Winnie Stachelberg:

I think Congressman Stark's use of the word, he probably regrets having used it. I think he meant nothing by it, but I think in the 2003 context, it's probably a poor choice of words. But it's also important to note that Congressman Stark is one of the gay community's staunchest allies."

And the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Discrimination had nothing about this on their website.

This, of course, is perfectly consistent with the norm where only Republicans are criticized for anti-gay remarks. Last election, for example, not much was made of two Democrats who implied that their opponents were gay.

Study shows that Reuters consistently favor the Palestinians over the Israelis in their headlines:

In the world of Reuters headlines, when Israel acts, Israel is always perpetrating an active assault, and the Palestinian victim is consistently identified. But when Palestinian terrorists act, their Israeli victims are faceless, and the Palestinian perpetrators are rarely named nor described in active terms. Moreover, Palestinian diplomats pursue peace, but are frustrated by their obstinate Israeli counterparts.

Reuters' obvious message? Israel is the aggressor, and Palestinians are the victims.

Their evidence:

During this time frame, Reuters issued headlines describing six acts of violence by Palestinians against Israelis, and twelve acts of violence by Israel against Palestinians. Among these, HonestReporting found the following patterns of bias:

1) Named subject

In violent acts against Israelis, the Palestinian agent is named in 33% of the headlines.

In violent acts against Palestinians, the Israeli agent is named in 100% of the headlines. Moreover, Israel is always emphasized by appearing as the first word in the headline.

2) Named object

In violent acts against Israelis, casualties are labeled "Israeli" in 11% of the headlines.

In violent acts against Palestinians, casualties are labeled "Palestinian" or "Hamas" in 50% of the headlines. Considering "militant" as a Palestinian-specific term raises this figure to 71% of headlines.

3) Verb selection

Violent acts by Palestinians are described with "active voice" verbs in 33% of the headlines.

Violent acts by Israelis are described with "active voice" verbs in 100% of the headlines.

The article also have side-by-side examples of how their headlines differ depending on who the attacker was.

A complete list of headlines appears here.

Did you attend the Celebrity Baseball Game at the All-Star Game again? I saw Jimmy Kimmel belly-flop while going for a pop-up in front of home plate. He must have been distracted by the Bachelorette in center field. Were you there? --Jackson P., Tampa

Actually, I was. The circumstances were slightly different -- because Jimmy and Adam Carolla were playing in the game, we sent a crew down to Chicago to film something for Jimmy's show -- but I still managed to jot down some notes. Here were my Top 10 most memorable behind-the-scene moments:

1. Sharing a bus ride to the stadium with the Bachelorette (Trista) and her fiancee Ryan (sadly, he didn't bring any of his poems). As if that wasn't enough, our bus stopped at the Ritz and picked up Andrew Firestone and his fiancee. That's right ... we had the Bachelor and the Bachelorette on the same bus. Let the record show that Mrs. Bachelor was considerably cuter than the Bachelorette. It was no contest. This was like Roddy Piper versus Frank Williams. That had to be the upset of the day.

(Also on the bus: Shannon Elizabeth. She was adorable. It's always weird to see a celebrity in real-life after you've seen them naked in a movie. You almost feel like you've hooked up with them or something.)

link.

OpinionJournal's "Best of the Web Today July 25, 2003" daily e-mail has this to say about the Reuters headline:

"Marshall" adds that "despite the earlier photographs, published Thursday, many Iraqis, brought up on the official lies of the Saddam decades and mistrustful of their American occupiers, were unconvinced." This may be true, but why are the guys at Reuters unconvinced? Perhaps because they too are accustomed to official lies, like "one man's terrorist is another's freedom-fighter."

It also contained this comedic moment:

Careful, Saddam, This Sounds Like a Trap
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A44422-2003Jul25.html

"U.S. officials said the bodies would be stored in a refrigerated tent at Baghdad International Airport until a family member came forward to claim them."--Associated Press, July 25

ABC's 'The View' (a truely despicable show) is going to stage rotation of co-hosts as competitors attempt to replace the permantently departed Lisa Ling. I mention this only because it gives me the opportunity to recall the absolute funniest thing Dale Arnold has ever said. Wednesday's edition of 'Dale & Neumy' ended with Dale giving his his co-host some friendly ribbing over Bob's upcoming Nantucket vacation. The weather was truely terrible that day, and Bob was to fly out of Logan to Nantucket presumably on some rinky-dink plane. Dale was macking cracks about the weather to wit Neumy was retorting "don't you try and scare me. Don't say these things, don't you realize the guilt you'd come under if something actually did happen?"

Said Dale: "The worst part about it is we'd have Buckley and McAdam fighting over your chair on Monday for an audition."

Geez Reuters, is there any particular reason why you doubt that they actually *are* the bodies of Uday and Qusay?

Reuters: US Displays Bodies That Look Like Saddam's Sons

But unlike grisly, blood spattered photographs published by the U.S. military earlier, the faces had been touched up and shaved to make them more closely resemble the brothers in life -- a U.S. official insisted the aim was not to deceive.

About 15 journalists saw two corpses laid out in a tented military morgue. They did look like the two brothers, whom U.S. troops said they killed in a raid in Mosul Tuesday.

The face of Uday, 39, had been repaired. The U.S. pictures showed wounds that officers said were sustained in the siege of a villa in the northern city, where he and his younger brother went down fighting an overwhelming force firing rockets.

"The two bodies have undergone facial reconstruction with morticians putty to make them resemble as closely as possible the faces of the brothers when they were alive," a U.S. military official said. He called it standard practice, although such post-mortem work is frowned on by most Muslims

Just an FYI: Blizzard Entertainment, makers of Warcraft, Starcraft and Diablo, are owned by the French TNC Vivendi. They make pretty decent games.

Helen, Sweetheart of the Internet

James Lileks is an every day must-read first thing in the morning anyway, but today's is especially good:

My favorite article today concerned the French computer game industry, and yes there is such a thing. Turns out that it’s in the pissoir for all the usual reasons - the companies can’t fire anyone when business heads sud, the taxes are onerous, and, uh, the games suq. But the French PM believes that the industry deserves to be subsidized, because French computer games reflect European values.

Well, yes, if they’re subsidized, bought by no one. It got me to thinking about French versions of some popular games:

Half-Life. An interdimensional gateway opens up, and thousands of murderous creatures from another world spill through. Your mission: help them establish their own parallel society in your country.

Doom: An interdimensional gateway opens up, and the minions of Hell itself enter a Martian moonbase. Your mission: nothing! Lucky you, they invaded in August, and that’s your month at the beach.

Grand Theft Auto: You steal Deux Cheveaux and attempt to escape from the police at speeds up to 30 MPH

Medal of Honor: WW2. This was a massively multiplayer online role-playing game based on the Resistance. At its peak it had 400,000 members who logged on and did nothing. Then someone named “Yank44” signed on, and the system crashed when all 400,000 members attempted to remove the picture of Marshal Petain from the wall of their cottage.

Just another area of our lives being ruined by greedy corporations and their under-handed funding of congress. Read about the 'League of Extraordinary Gentleman' and what it means for the public domain over at msnbc.com. Link from the Lawrence Lessig blog.

Lots of good stuff at Viking Pundit today:

--The story about rich men paying ten grand to shoot naked women with paintballs in Las vegas is apparently false.

--Ugly moment in Congress when another anti-voucher Senator had to admit that she sends her children to private school:

But now, at the moment of truth, with a president in the White House who has made clear his eagerness to make such a bill a reality, Sens. Specter and Landrieu upset a critical Appropriations Committee vote by switching from yea to nay. What makes their flip-flop especially nasty is that this move to undercut choice to the overwhelmingly black and Latino students of the district comes from two white senators who each chose private schools for their own children.

Even a child can spot the contradiction. Outside the committee's meeting room last week, nine-year-old Mosiyah Hall, a D.C. public school student himself, politely asked Sen. Landrieu where she sent her own children to school. "Georgetown Day," came the response, a reference to one of Washington's most exclusive private schools. Mosiyah's mother says an obviously agitated Sen. Landrieu then came over to a group of local mothers to explain that a voucher would be no help for them here, because even with the $7,500 voucher this bill offers, they still couldn't afford Georgetown Day.

***

In the intervening years since the Senate last considered--and passed--a D.C. voucher measure, many of the old excuses for opposition are no longer valid. The Supreme Court has upheld their constitutionality. Congress is even allocating new money for this program, so it doesn't take away from the public schools. And this time around too the D.C. voucher bill has strong local support from key figures including the mayor and head of the school board. Even Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D., Calif.), who says she's never voted for a school choice bill in her life, wrote an op-ed in the Washington Post saying it's time to try one in D.C.

--And snide remarks can't do justice to this letter to the editor in the New York Times:

To the Editor:
To my knowledge, Saddam Hussein's sons had not been found guilty of any offense by an international court of law. Their killing by United States troops (front page, July 23) is therefore extrajudicial.

ANDY COX
San Francisco, July 23, 2003

June 22: "We don't know whether in the long run the Iraqi people are better off."

(From Winds of Change.NET)

In the latest edition of the "last" post about a certain female conservative nutjob writer ...

Many conservatives have criticized her both for her columns and her recent book. But apparently, this somehow means that conservatives are bad people, according to Sam Tanenhaus, writing in Slate. Eugene Volokh put it this way:

Slate has a quite remarkable column about Ann Coulter's Treason. Conservatives have been lambasting Coulter -- and, while I haven't read her book, people (including conservatives) whom I trust on this have said the lambasting is well-earned. But, according to the Slate piece (whose subtitle, remarkably, is "In her new book, Ann Coulter tells the unvarnished truth -- and makes the conservatives mad"), all this just shows how scummy conservatives are! The logic is perplexing, and I doubt that I can do it justice through the excerpts.

The gist of the Slate piece is that while she wanted to forcibly convert Muslims to Christianity, evangelicals wanted them to voluntarily convert; she defended McCarthy, while someone ran an attack ad against a Democrat; she called liberals "traitors", while William Safire wrote that criticisms on the administration may aide the Baathists as a side effect; in all three cases, the author argues that they're equally bad. What differentiates her from other conservatives is not their views but how they make their arguments. I agree with all of Volokh's criticisms of this article, including his conclusion:

To me and my friends on "the 'responsible' right," distinctions between voluntary and forcible conversion, and between accusations of inadvertent and unintended harm and intentional betrayal, are not just matters of "tact," "tactics," or "good taste." And when a writer implicitly admits that to him such distinctions are just ultimately "semantic," then it's hard to give much credit to the rest of his moral -- or logical -- judgment.

In the comments of a Matthew Yglesias post on the Federal Marriage Amentment:

ChrisL: let 'em pass it.... and watch it get struck down the next day.

Matt: Chris, it's a constitutional amendment you can't strike it down.

Why Californians hate governor Gray Davis (from the comments of Calpundit):

This is a man who took away Bustamante's parking spots when they disagreed on something.

Cruz Bustamente is the lieutenant governor.

The New York congressman who called the deaths of the sons of Saddam "illegal" ought to check with Slate's Explainer before he opens his mouth.

Rachel and I can sit and watch this Simpsons nugget from season 3:

At the plant, the ceiling collapses, and the repairs to bring it up to code will cost $100 million. Burns pays the owners a visit...

Burns: [begging] Please sell me my plant back. I'll pay anything.
Horst: Isn't this a happy coincidence! You are desperate to buy, and we are desperate to sell.
Burns: [calculatingly] Desperate, eh? ... Advantage: Burns!
-- Reversal of fortune, ``Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk''

Burns plays hardball, managing to repurchase the plant for only $50 million. The Germans reluctantly agree...

Horst: [threatingly] We Germans aren't all smiles und sunshine.
Burns: [recoils in mock horror]
Oooh, the Germans are mad at me. I'm so scared! Oooh, the Germans!
[hiding behind Smithers] Uh oh, the Germans are going to get me!
Horst: Stop it!
Man 2: Stop, sir.
Burns: Don't let the Germans come after me.
Oh no, the Germans are coming after me.
Man 2: Please stop the `pretending you are scared' game, please.
Horst: Stop it! Stop it!
Burns: [brief pause, then resumes]
No! They're so big and strong!
Man 2: Stop it.
Horst: Stop it, Mr. Burns.
Man 2: Please stop pretending you are scared of us, please, now.
Burns: Oh, protect me from the Germans! The Germans...
Horst: Burns, STOP IT!
-- ``Burns Verkaufen der Kraftwerk''

link.

Joey Tribiani gets his own show.

Rachel Lucas on the story about a significant proportion of Germans believing that the US staged the 9-11 attacks:

... it reminds me of something that's always pissed me off - you know how Europeans like to be really arrogant and pretentious, and to accuse Americans of not knowing enough about other nations or the world in general? How they like to say that we don't travel enough and aren't considerate enough of other cultures?

Well, ya know what? BITE ME. How many of those asshatted Germans who think the U.S. government sponsored the 9/11 attacks have ever been to America? Seriously, how many? How many Germans under the age of 30 have ever been anywhere other than their little corner of Europe, maybe including France and the Netherlands et al, which are inconsequentially different from Germany itself?

***

I'm sick of being told that until I travel the world, I won't know anything, but it doesn't even occur to Europeans to apply the same standard to themselves. My East German professor actually told us last semester that most young Germans have never even been to Britain, let alone America, and that they get their impression of American culture from goddamn "Baywatch." And they have the balls to accuse us of having a limited worldview?

And I'm sick of hearing about how the whole world "hates" America, how Europeans think we're "cowboys", how whoever thinks whatever and it always involves us being wrong and them being right - and all the while, there's this ridiculous taboo against someone like me saying something shitty about them.

Screw that. Let's start doing polls about how Americans feel about other nations and other people. Ask me what I think about Europeans and their crappy sissy attitude about self-defense. Ask me if I fear another fascist empire on the European continent that my children or grandchildren will be asked to fight against. Ask me if I'm pissed off and resentful that for generations, American taxpayers have been funding the defense of European nations who've now turned against us in a fit of pretentious pique and jealous hatred.

I'll wait with baited breath for anyone outside of America to give a flying rat's ass about what Americans think of them. Until then, I'll continue to not give a damn what Hans F. Schtuffenschitter thinks.

More from Jonah Goldberg:

... this study is classic scientific poppycock because it is confirmed by contradictory facts. When Stalin or Castro kill people it is because they are crypto-rightwingers when Hitler kills people, he's being consistent. In other words, conservatives are always the bad guys.

Would you say that any of the following is an indication of media bias to the left?

1. A poll in 1992 of media people showed that 90% voted for Clinton.

2. Using words like "ultra-conservatives" or "hard-right conservatives" or "hard liner" to describe those on the right while rarely describing those on the left as "liberal".

3. Whenever describing organizations, classifiying left-wing organizations like People for the American Way as simply "activist groups" while always denoting similar organizations from the right as "conservative".

4. The classic homeless issue conservatives always complain about whereby stories about this problem is prominent during Republican administrations and disappear during Democratic ones, despite no evidence that homelessness was down during those years.

5. Hundreds of stories of the "illegal" things Key Lay did; one story buried in page 22 of the New York Times that showed he did nothing illegal or unethical at all.

6. In news stories, quoting three or more sources that support the liberal view before acknowleging that some hold the conservative view, and not even describing what the conservative view actually is.

7. Taking pictures of John Ashcroft in such an angle so that the naked breast of a statue is always right next to Ashcroft's mouth, and when Ashcroft ordered the statue to be draped, calling him a prude and a censor and not reporting why Ashcroft had ordered such an action.

8. Describing left-wing dictators as "president" and terrorist organizations as "rebels" or "activists".

9. Reporting press releases from left-wing groups as news while not doing the same of press releases from right-wing groups.

10. NPR sharing their donor lists with the Democratic Party.

11. Michael Savage gets fired for wishing someone get AIDS and die; Nina Totenberg does not for wishing Clarence Thomas's wife to feed him fat foods so he'd die of heart disease like other black people.

12. Then there's this classic from Dan Rather: "The new Republican majority in Congress took a big step today on its legislative agenda to demolish or damage government aid programs, many of them designed to help children and the poor."

13. Misreporting polls, examples:
1) headline "Public Supports Bush, Not Tax Cuts" for a poll where 51% support the tax cuts,
2) poll question where every possible answer reflects badly on Bush: "Which concerns you more: that the Bush administration (might move too quickly) to take military action against Iraq, or the Bush Administration (might not move quickly enough)?"
3) Mixing "majority" and "plurality" in a way that !coincidentally! makes the Republicans look worse off.

(To be fair, most media people are math idiots and i've seen some examples of misreporting polls in favor of conservatives too.)

I could go on and on, but if one is not convinced by now one never will.

As for Amy, let me quote Jonah Goldberg on this:

Look, it's hardly surprising that Noam Chomsky, Cornel West, Susan Sontag, Stanley Fish, and the rest of that crowd think the liberal media is too conservative. After all, they think avowed liberals are too conservative. If you consider Arthur Schlesinger Jr., Doris Kearns Goodwin, Daniel Patrick Moynihan, The New Republic, or any other liberal icons to be too conservative (or racist, misogynist, whatever), why wouldn't you think the journalists who worship these people to be too conservative too?

OpinionJournal has the real reason we're in Iraq:

In fact, the real reason we went into Iraq was precisely to "nation build": to create a secularized, liberated, cosmopolitan society in a core Arab nation. To create a place where Arabs were free and safe and unafraid and happy and successful and not ruled by corrupt monarchs or brutal dictators. This would demonstrate to the other people in the Arab and Muslim worlds that they can succeed, but only if they abandon those political, cultural and religious chains that are holding them back.

We are not doing this out of altruism. We are not trying to give them a liberalized Western democracy because we're evangelistic liberal democrats (with both liberal and democrat taking historical meanings). We are bringing reform to Iraq out of narrow self-interest. We have to foster reform in the Arab/Muslim world because it's the only real way in the long run to make them stop trying to kill us.

The right certainly has come a long way, hasn't it? Stop me if you've heard this before (maybe here or here), but why is the left letting these people get away with this? We're are the true liberal-hawks and why are they waffling so much? I'm not neccessarily saying Joe Lieberman needs to cry foul because conservatives are now playing ball in his park, but couldn't he rightly make the argument that the right has only come back to the humanitarian argument because we haven't yet found the weapons? Am I alone in remembering that, before the war, the right was scoffing at the humanitarian argument while entirely trumpeting the cause of national interest and of our self-defense? Is Joe Lieberman really that afraid of the democratic base that he can't question the consistency of the message of the right on this issue, for fear of highlighting the fact that he was for the war?

From the piece Hei Lun linked to yesterday:

Perhaps everyone does do this to a certain degree. I do believe that, to some degree, “facts” and even sensory perception are “theory”-laden. The brain is such that you rarely see the theory working in the background, but sometimes it can be glimpsed. Everyone has had the experience of seeing an object on the horizon, in one’s peripheral vision, or across the room that looks like just shapes and colors, or looks like an object you know it cannot possibly be. Then you get closer or view it from a slightly different angle and what it ”really” is suddenly snaps into place. This is your brain “recognizing” the shapes and colors and then defining or redefining it.

Assuming we all do it to some degree — that no one is totally and completely objectively realistic about the facts — is what I am now perceiving on the Left simply a more extreme version of the phenomena, both as measured against how I think the world really is and perhaps also against how even the Left was even a few years ago?

He's got a nice big whole that he's backed himself into. I find the whole concept of bias a bit disturbing because it is so hard to refute, and because in a lot of situation I think it's just picking a lot of nits.

Is CNN biased? Amy told me last night that she thought CNN was biased towards the right, most people in 'The Corner' will tell you it's biased left. So FNC isn't biased? Many people, myself included, will tell you that Bill O'Reilly is the devil, and that the FNC nighttime interview shows are definitely slanted.

So where does this leave us? It leaves us with an ineffective conception of the word 'bias'. If everyone in the world has a bias then the word becomes irrelevant because the word no longer differentiates between those who know "the truth" and those who ignore "the truth." All this word bias would do is aide you to differentiate how one spins the truth, we would be forced to categorically accept that either you're spinning left or right (these labels being entirely dependant upon where the person speaking stands). The would bias would become entirely dependant upon the adjective before it for meaning, making it essentially useless.

This potential reality makes me incredibly leary of the overuse of the word "bias" in our society. Is CNN biased? On some issues it can be said that their presentation of the news is done differently than the BBC or FNC. I'm hard-pressed to call this bias. Just like FNC (in the daytime), so long as CNN presents news which is entirely composed of actual verifiable facts, it's ridiculous to call it biased. Like Joe Friday said "just the facts, ma'am." To contest actual verifiable facts as biased is to deflate the meaning of the word bias.

Of course i'm not sure i've reasoned away the idea that we're all biased as much as i've decided "hey, why don't we agree that we're not biased and leave that awful word for the Ann's and the Michael Moore's of the world" - but the latter point is certainly more verifiable through our devotion to facts than the first. This is also not to say that I disagree with Randy at all about the current state of much of the Left, but that within the context of centrist politics where the two parties meet, far too much hot air is let go due to the constant assaulting of the other side everytime they open their mouths.

I'm feeling fatalist tonight, and i'm not sure that we're ever going to overcome this sins of our fathers in the worlds' eye. Of course, I also don't believe they're ever going to give us a chance to repent for stuff like "Operation Northwoods":

Code named Operation Northwoods, the plans reportedly included the possible assassination of Cuban émigrés, sinking boats of Cuban refugees on the high seas, hijacking planes, blowing up a U.S. ship, and even orchestrating violent terrorism in U.S. cities.

The plans were developed as ways to trick the American public and the international community into supporting a war to oust Cuba's then new leader, communist Fidel Castro.

America's top military brass even contemplated causing U.S. military casualties, writing: "We could blow up a U.S. ship in Guantanamo Bay and blame Cuba," and, "casualty lists in U.S. newspapers would cause a helpful wave of national indignation."

link.

Do you remember this poll from April showing that one-third of Frenchmen rooted for Saddam to win? Much more serious than Freedom Fries, isn't it?

The headline says it all: Poll: One-third of Germans believe US may have staged Sept. 11 attacks.

The headline is a tad misleading, the article reports that it is only 30% of germans under the age of 30 who believe the United States may have staged the September 11 attacks, but the fact that a mere plurality of any segment of any free peoples could believe such a thing is unbelievably disgusting. Sometimes i'm really saddened by the direction the world is headed in.

Every bookie should have friends like these:

The schools claim the subpoenas are unlawful, citing a federal law called the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act, which requires schools to notify students before releasing personal information. A Boston College spokesperson estimated a reasonable amount of time for doing so to be a week, maybe longer, given that most students aren't on campus in the summer.

Plus, according to the privacy act, subpoenas need to be filed in a court within 100 miles of the person or institution being subpoenaed, so that someone contesting a subpoena doesn't have to travel far to do so. The RIAA's subpoenas were filed in Washington, D.C.

Guest blogging at Glennreynolds.com, Randy Barnett takes on leftists out of touch with reality:

I did not think very many people could possibly believe it, or at least believe that, if true, it had any practical implications. Hey, even if the world is socially constructed, if we cannot willfully reconstruct it as we prefer, then it’s pretty much as irrelevant as the old speculations that we are just a brain in a vat or that the universe exists in a drop on some cosmic chemist’s workbench.

Since the 2000 election, however, I have begun to realize for the first time that the Left really and truly lives in a socially constructed world — a world where “truth” is their own construction. In their world:

Al Gore was elected president. Bush was selected. The Supreme Court “decided the election” (rather than reversed a rogue Southern state Supreme Court and restore the rulings of local, mainly democratic, election officials). Bush is in the pocket of the oil companies. Dick Cheney really runs the country. Bush’s energy plan would destroy the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

I could go on and on. These are not disagreements about “values” or ends, but disagreements about facts. Once you notice this phenomenon, you see it everywhere. Now the Left is lying about Bush to make him appear to be a liar because they cannot catch him in any actual lies. The question is whether they believe what they are saying. Some do, some may not, but millions certainly believe what they are hearing.

***

This socially constructed reality changes all the time to fit current ideological needs. One day, Bush is a moron; the next he is Machiavelli reborn; the next he is a moron again. Flip-flops don’t seem to faze them in the slightest. They just “move on.”

I could go on and on with more examples, but you get the point. I disagree with conservative Republicans about a lot, but I just have not noticed them making up stories wholesale to bolster their world view.

The whole piece is excellent, so you should read the rest.

It used to be:

Q. Why do homosexuals love the New York Jets?
A. Because they have two tight-ends and fifty-two guys who suck.

Now it ought to be:

Q. Why do homosexuals love the New York Jets?
A. Because they have two tight-ends, fifty-two guys who suck, and a trailer filled with Britney Spears' wardrobe.

Britney to appear at the New York Jets training camp, and will potentially perform on Kick-off Weekend ala Bon Jovi last year.

Ministers from Norway, Sweeden, Finland, Iceland, Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania come to the defense of all those hairy-greek girls who can't otherwise get employment, as the Greeks are planning to increase the number of brothel permits issued in the city of Athens just in time for the Summer Olympics in 2004. More on this duhspute over at ESPN.com.

Cal Berkeley releases a "scientific" study that basically concludes that conservatives are bad people. The study finds that conseratives tend to have the following qualities:

--Fear and aggression
--Dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity
--Uncertainty avoidance
--Need for cognitive closure
--Terror management

How did they come to these conclusions? The researchers decided that conservatives have these qualities, and when they went looking for them, lo and behold, they found them! Not exactly scientific, is it?

(Yes, I know that all scientists do this, hypothesis testing, blah, blah, blah, but all these people did was examine conservative material, without any non-conservative ones, so no control group exists to compare whether conservatives are more likely to have those traits than non-conservatives.)

The best part of this story is this line:

This intolerance of ambiguity can lead people to cling to the familiar, to arrive at premature conclusions, and to impose simplistic cliches and stereotypes, the researchers advised. (emphasis added)

Oh, gee, I wonder what the researchers were doing ...

Also: Bryon Scott fisks this story most excellently.

One more note: did I mention that the idiots categorized Stalin, Khrushchev and Castro as conservatives?

Andrew Sullivan on the BBC:

Here's how they headlined yesterday's news about the killing of Saddam's sons: "US celebrates 'good' Iraq news." Yes, that "good" again. The Beebers must be truly sad to see two mass murderers brought to justice. One BBC journalist even pronounced that the deaths might cause an intensification of anti-American violence.

Steve den Beste has more leftists who are not happy that Uday and Qusay Hussein are dead. Quoting a post from the Democratic Underground:

Doesn't a part of you wish that Queasy and Duh-day were alive?

I'll admit they're scum and rightfully so, but anything that lands as even more humiliation on W's grotesque shrivelled face is that much the better.

It's sad, really, that as despicable as they are, Saddam's family seems to be the lesser of two evils when you compare them to the wretched little bastard occupying the White House and destroying America in the process...

Leftists like to complain that after 9-11 conservatives have had a "with-us-or-against-us" attitude. But doesn't these people sound very much like they're not with us?

Lots of famous people were born on 7/23: Nomar Garciaparra, Monica Lewinsky, Charisma Carpenter, Marlon Wayans, Don Imus, Woody Harrelson, Don Drysdale, Terry Glenn, Pee Wee Reese, Daniel Radcliffe, Anthony Kennedy, and Allison Krauss.

That's what New York Democratic Congressman Charles Rangel calls the killing of Uday and Qusay Hussein:

The U.S. acted illegally when its soldiers attacked and killed Uday and Qusay Hussein, a leading Democratic congressman complained on Tuesday, before mocking the military maneuver that succeeded in eliminating the brutal duo.

"We have a law on the books that the United States should not be assassinating anybody," Rep. Charlie Rangel, D-N.Y., told Fox News Channel's "Hannity & Colmes."

"We tried to assassinate Castro and we paid dearly for it," Rangel contended. "And when you personalize the war and you say you're killing someone's kids, then they, in turn, think they can kill somebody."

When an incredulous Sean Hannity expressed dismay at Rangel's comments, the Harlem Democrat shot back: "How can you get so much satisfaction that two bums have been killed? We got bums all over the world and some in the United States."

Then Rangel mocked the U.S. military's success in killing the two Hussein heirs, saying, "I personally don't get any satisfaction that it takes 200,000 troops, 250,000 troops, to knock off two bums."

A post at Winds of Change.NET asks its readers to send them any links to liberal bloggers who celebrated the deaths of Saddam's sons yesterday. Apparently they have been hard to find. Not hard to find are lefties who don't seem too thrilled or who are conjuring conspiracy theories about this.

Michael Totten has a great collection of quotes from moderate Democrats who wondered what happened to their party. This one from Roger L. Simon is representative:

The Democrats should start looking for some more interesting candidates than the pack of low-rent losers they are presently proffering…. Or this lifetime Democrat is going to sit this one out. (And I'm certain I won't be the only one.)

You may remember that Dean said this of Saddam Hussein: "We've gotten rid of him, and I suppose that's a good thing, but there's going to be a long period where the United States is going to need to be maintained in Iraq, and that's going to cost American taxpayers a lot of money that could be spent on schools and kids." (emphasis added)

I don't expect Dean to lose any support from Democratic primary voters because of what he said yesterday. This, to me, says a lot about the state of the Democratic Party these days.

What are the odds that Saudi funding plays a role in the fact an "upcoming conference of the Middle East Studies Association has 25 scheduled papers on the Palestinians, yet not a single paper on Saudi Arabia." Is this loyalty purchased by Saudi Arabia? Stanley Kurtz examines the facts.

"Number of 'Grateful Dead' concerts attended by Ann Coulter: 67
— Harper's Index, July 2003 "

link.

America has a kind of fascination with plastic surgery, as ABC's new "Extreme Makeover" proves. Teenagers are getting some kinds of plastic surgery, including breast implants, as early as 18. But most high-tech beauty treatments, from botox to silicone to microdermabrasion, are just science's best stab at the ageless obsession with youth and sex appeal. A boob job is certainly safer than eating arsenic or removing ribs, things earlier generations of women did for beauty.

Activist Hollywood, being one of the industry's biggest customers, probably won't be standing by their friends at NOW on this one. Jane Fonda and Demi Moore may play tough girls on the screen, and they have plenty to say about reproductive rights and the evils of big industry, but the activists got themselves pumped up full of silicone or saline too. Thanks to a pushup bra, Angelina Jolie can be a fierce Lara Croft with her breasts padded to videogame dimensions.

Feminists always wanted women to control their own bodies. Doesn't this count?

This argument completely stupifies me. Due to the existence of ABC's "Extreme Makeover" (my rant against can be found here) we should conclude that plastic surgery is a healthy thing for society? Yet can't we all agree that "Extreme Makeover" is an entirely bad thing, and therefore any society which builds from its example is on the wrong track?

Here's hoping that feminism pulls itself together to counter the totally asinine logic found on Opinionjournal.com.

Mighty satisfying music video. No nudity, but still probably not work safe.

Dean in Manchester, New Hampshire:

Presidential candidate Howard Dean, a staunch opponent of the U.S.-led war against Iraq, shrugged off the deaths of Saddam Hussein's two sons Tuesday, saying "the ends do not justify the means."

link.

Maybe Dean should try and give this speech in Iraq to these people:

A chef at Baghdad's exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. "The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn't let anybody out," the chef remembers. "Women were yelling and crying, 'What happened to her?'" The groom knew. "He took a pistol and shot himself," says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin.

Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday's properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman's white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday's mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, "Don't say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished."

Story via 'The Corner'.

I've offically gotten off the 'Howard Dean can be elected' bandwagon, again. If only he would stop making such a complete ass of himself on the foreign policy front. He has the right things to say on so many issues, but he won't allow the Iraq war to be a scar he shields and runs from, he continues to beat his drum on this issue as if he believes his stance will actually win him the election.

From 'The Corner':

"Dear Derb, While it is true that nobody can mobilize the far left like Hillary, nobody can mobilize the right like Hillary. She barely won in NY (probably the second or third most liberal state) with a rookie opponent and the entire party and white house behind her, plus the sympathy factor. As a presidential candidate, despite what all the wise minds say, she is raw meat for the dogs of war. In the words of our glorious leader... 'bring it on'."

Derb, I couldn't agree more.

Kathryn Hooks reports that "according to the RIAA, 41 percent of people downloading files through P2P networks are between the ages of 12 and 18..."

When can we expect the juvenile courts to be filled with criminal procedures against these children?

Paul Gigot on the Marsh Arabs:

AL TURABAH, Iraq--To reach the ninth level of Saddam's Inferno, you take a plane from Baghdad south to Basra, then hop an open-air 40-minute helicopter ride in 118-degree heat to what was once the world's closest approximation to the Garden of Eden.

For centuries this region was among the world's lushest fresh-water marshlands, a cradle of ancient civilization and home to the Marsh Arabs of Iraq. Today this particular marsh village looks like the surface of the moon, only bleaker. There is nothing here but dirt and rock, straw huts and destitute Shiite Muslims. Saddam Hussein drained most of the marshland in revenge for the Arab uprising against him in 1991 after the first Gulf War, and after President George H.W. Bush had asked Iraqis to rise up against him. So the fall of Saddam, at last on April 9, was salvation day for the Marsh Arabs, and also a redemption day for one dreadful U.S. blunder.

More on the story of the Marsh Arabs can be found here.

Looks like it's the french:

PRESIDENT CHIRAC'S campaign for re-election was hit yesterday by embarrassing new allegations of corruption and personal greed.

He allegedly spent £1.5 million on supplies for his personal kitchen between 1987 and 1995 while he was the mayor of Paris, according to an internal town hall report.

In one period of 18 months he is said to have spent almost £60,000 on spring vegetables.

****

Although M Chirac is well-known for an appetite that has had a periodic effect on his girth, it is not considered possible that he could have consumed the vast quantities of food that he paid for while he was mayor.

Maybe he sent the extra food to all of the Iraqis suffering under the trade embargo at that time?

Andrew Stuttaford has far more on the characters who run the EU and their scandalous histories here.

And they wonder why no one agrees with them on anything:

I'M SHOCKED...SHOCKED: Gee. What a coincidence. Bush is getting hammered in the press, his poll numbers have taken a nosedive, there are calls for multiple independent investigations into his handling of pre-war intelligence on Iraq, people are calling for everyone from Dick Cheney's to Condi Rice's resignation, the stock market is coming off a big drop, the economy is still stagnant....and miracle of miracles....


...out of the blue, we get a "tip" that Uday and Qusay Hussein are holed up in Mosul somewhere.

Sure enough..."Uranium-gate" gets knocked off the front pages, the stock market rallies, and the dollar goes up!

Here's what I believe.

I believe we have been tracking the two brothers for some time, and were waiting for an opportune moment to take them out.

You know...like when Bush's approval ratings started to get uncomfortably close to the South side of 50%.

Here's some comments from the same post:

"and what exactly did aWol sell to the devil this time?"

"I don't care about WMD or lying Appointed Frauds anymore. Killing two pointless goofs is what this war was all about! Damn it, I feel great!" (emphasis added)

"Not that I think Saddam supporters are behind the guerilla stuff (life should be so simple that they are)-- but I bet the attacks on our troops will increase."

Man may have fucked up the banana:

The banana is about to disappear from store shelves around the globe. Experts say the world's favourite fruit will pass into oblivion within a decade. No more fresh bananas. No more banana bread. No more banana muffins or banana cream pie.

Why? Because the banana is the victim of centuries of genetic tampering. Scientists say they will be unable to prevent the extirpation of the banana as an edible commercial crop. And its demise may be one more powerful argument in the hands of those who are concerned about genetic modification of foods.

The banana's main problem is that it has become sterile and seedless as a result of 10,000 years of selective breeding. It has, over time, become a plant with unvarying genetic sameness. The genetic diversity needed to cope with environmental stresses, such as diseases and crop pests, has long ago been bred out of the banana. Consequently, the banana plantations of the world are completely vulnerable to devastating environmental pressures.

Of course Mr. Alison's editorial seems like less than a certainty according to a report from the CBC:

Dr. Emile Frison says edible bananas may disappear within a decade if action isn't taken immediately to develop new, more disease- resistant varieties.

Frison heads the International Network for the Improvement of Banana and Plantain (INIBP). The organization says the banana is an essential part of the daily diet for more than 400 million people.

Frison is considered a world expert and researcher on the banana and says the bananas we eat are a seedless, sterile variety that could easily be wiped out.

The Cavendish banana lacks genetic diversity argues Frison in an article in New Scientist magazine.

But we've done all right by the dog:

The researchers then trained the wolves and various breeds of dogs to get a piece of meat by pulling on a string. After the animals learned how to get the meat, the researchers attached the string so that no matter how hard the animals pulled they could not get the meat.

The wolves just continued to pull on the string in frustration. But the dogs quickly stopped pulling when the string did not move and turned to look at the faces of the humans, the researchers reported in the April 29 issue of the journal Current Biology.

"The dogs gave up much earlier. They were, very quickly, looking at the humans, the owners, looking at their faces," Miklosi said. "That is what is interesting. That never happened with the wolves. They just kept pulling. But the dogs, what they did was basically look at the owners. If you observe this as a human, you would describe it as an asking-for-help gesture."

***

Brian Hare of Harvard University, who previously conducted a similar experiment that showed dogs were superior to chimps and wolves at reading human gestures, said the results show that "dogs really understand that humans are their partners in life. They can elicit their help and use them as a kind of tool."

"Wolves don't know that. They keep trying to solve it on their own. It's something that's programmed into their genes," Hare said. Hare is planning a follow-up experiment to try to determine why dogs are so much better at reading human cues.

"It could be that because there was selection for dogs that are smart -- dogs that can read human cues and figure out what they want," Hare said. "Those were the ones that survived and passed their genes on."

Dog link via 'The Corner'.

Kevin Drum on Iceland:

The background here is murky, and it could be that the Bushies really did screw up the diplomatic spadework on this. It would hardly be a surprise.

But surely I can't be the only one who thinks that if Iceland feels like (a) they are the weakest link in NATO, and (b) they need military protection, then maybe they ought to have a military of their own? I mean, I'm happy that they've pledged $4 million in reconstruction assistance to Iraq, but I'm sure we'd also be willing to sell them a few F-15s of their own if they really think they need them.

Icelandics to Bush - Don't leave us defenseless:

Since the end of the Cold War, the Air Force has been pressing to pull its jets out of Iceland. In 1994, the Clinton administration withdrew eight fighters but agreed to keep four permanently at the Keflavik Naval Air Station, near Reykjavik. The two sides were to renegotiate the deal in 2001, but talks were postponed in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and a U.S. strategic review. Now the Bush administration wants to withdraw the remaining four F-15 fighter jets, along with five rescue helicopters and two refueling planes.

While U.S. officials argue that the threat in the North Atlantic is no longer what it was during the Cold War, Icelandic officials warn of leaving their country without any air defense.

"September 11th wasn't supposed to happen, either," Agustsson said. "An enemy always looks for the weakest link."

Mindful that the Bush administration already is suffering badly strained relations with such major NATO allies as France and Germany over the invasion of Iraq, officials in Reykjavik have emphasized the supportive role played in recent years by Oddsson's government. Iceland has contributed to peacekeeping operations in the Balkans and Afghanistan and, most recently, pledged nearly $4 million in humanitarian and reconstruction assistance to Iraq.

But the flap over the planes "has created the most serious crisis in U.S.-Icelandic relations since the early 1970s, when a left-center government sought to abrogate the defense treaty and oust the Americans," said Valur Ingimundarson, a foreign relations expert at the University of Iceland.

Isn't this another insanely relevant example of the Bush team shooting itself in the foot? Granted Iceland isn't by far a key strategic ally, but aren't projects like Iraq more easily done when we can line up all of these little allies to pitch in? Exactly how vital are these five planes to the US global strategy? Did we try and negotiate the base down to three planes?

On the other hand, let's see what actual european has to say about Bush. From a Time Magazine interview with Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi:

The U.S. has taken a lot of criticism in Europe lately. What are the important things about America that some Europeans do not understand? Some Europeans don't understand that the world changed radically after Sept. 11. On Nov. 10, 2001, in the most beautiful piazza in Rome, we organized a rally in solidarity with an attacked and offended nation and flew the U.S. flag. We were the only ones to do it, and we are proud. I think we are making some headway, though, with the idea that anti- Americanism and anti-globalization are not progressive politics but are pure ideological trash.

I think the Icelandics would rightly agree with Silvio on that last point.

Both links via 'The Corner'.

Quoting the Boston Globe:

Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts opened a new front in his attack on President Bush's credibility yesterday, accusing the president of breaking his prewar pledge to exhaust all diplomatic options before invading Iraq.

Didn't Kerry vote for the war? Did I miss something here? And can somebody tell me what Kerry's position on this is, because it seems to change every 5 minutes. Anybody?

Howard Kurtz in the Washington Post today:

The 19-year-old accuser is coming under intense scrutiny. Although news organizations are withholding her name, there's now a Web site (we won't provide the link) featuring her name, address, e-mail and some photos. This can't be much fun.

On the other hand, the woman had one of her friends, Rachel Yandle, defending her on the "Today" show, talking about how "really disgusted" her pal is at Kobe Bryant's denials and how the woman wants him "behind bars." Everyone in the small Colorado town knows who she is. So at some point is it unfair for her to hide behind the shield of anonymity while sending out her friends to trash Kobe? Just a thought.

Hei Lun said: Not whining about how unfair it is, or appealing to, of all doctrines, original intent.

How's about we consider the punishment cruel and unusual, not befitting the crime?

He also said: And when did the profits of cable companies become a legitimate argument against enforcing a law?

I don't remember saying the government would cease to enforce this law against the cable companies, only that cable companies are going to fight tooth and nail to not be liable under these regulations. Not only do anti P2P laws hurt business, they're also a pain to administer.

On the drive home from a movie Saturday night a friend of mine openly scorned the fact that "only 20% of Americans have passports."

My response? Isn't this partly attributable to the fact that the United States is so huge, and therefore there is more to travel to and see domestically?

As it turns out my theory was on target, at least as far as the square miles go. I'm standing by my theory that Europeans travel "internationally" more because Europe is just a lot smaller than the United States, seeing as how France is only 210,026 sq. miles (including Corsica) to Texas' 267,277 sq. miles. My parents may have never taken me to see the pretzel factories of Germany or siesta time on the Spanish coast, but i've trekked up and down these United States. I've been from the White Mountains of New Hampshire, through the Appalachains in Virginia, and west to Colorado where the continental divide guaranteed that my waste products might someday end up in the Pacific Ocean. Americans can visit the Everglades, see the prairie, and giggle at the Amish all in their backyard.

Why spend extra cash on that inter-continental airfaire (ands lets just forget about kids on an airplane - eek) when you can visit the places above and still experience the three essential Vacation Questions ("Why is it so hot?" "Why won't these bugs stop biting me?" and "Why does this place stink like that?") as if you were in Paris?

I'd be real curious to see some statistics on continental travel habits. Do more Europeans make the big trek out of their tiny backyards to see the USA? Or do American tourists leap more ponds and frogs for the pleasure of riding that sweet, sweet European public transportation?

Give me a moment so I can find the world's second smallest violin.

Maybe it's my political prejudices but when the government is going after people who commit a certain crime, my instinct would be, stop commiting the crime. Not whining about how unfair it is, or appealing to, of all doctrines, original intent.

And when did the profits of cable companies become a legitimate argument against enforcing a law?

K.Lo blasts the dems on their opposition to Bush judicial nominee Bill Pryor:

They [the democrats] can't get around he has been completely forthright with the committee. He could have backtracked on so many of his previous public statements re abortion, among other things, but didn't. When it comes down to it, the Democrats oppose him because he is a believing practicing Catholic, who views abortion and an abomination, and doesn't see prenumbras and emanations in the Constitution. As much as they will fish for other excuses, that's what it comes down to.

My reponse? Isn't that a sufficient enough reason? I know less than nothing about Bill Pryor, but it seems to me that someone who refuses to believe the Constitution says what we've decided it says (and here i'm assuming that, when she referenced Pryor's opposition to prenumbras and emanations she meant more than what was decided in Roe v. Wade) partly because his God has told him otherwise isn't doing his homework.

I'm not saying that you can't be a judge and still remain very spiritual and religious, but I wouldn't accept any judicial nominee who would consider the will of God sufficient basis for the law. If that is Bill Pryor then i'm glad the dems are in revolt over his nomination.

RIAA Goes After File Traders With Hundreds Of Subpoenas:

Thought the music industry was bluffing when it threatened to sue Internet pirates? Then maybe you're one of the 871 file traders hit with a federal subpoena this month.

And with 75 new subpoenas being approved each day, according to a U.S. District Court spokesperson, the figure is expected to crack four digits any day now. The court orders, levied on Internet service providers and colleges, are one of the first steps in the Recording Industry Association of America's promise last month to sue the most fruitful file swappers (see "No More Warnings: If You're File-Sharing Illegally, Expect A Lawsuit").

"This should not surprise anyone," an RIAA spokesperson said. "Filing information subpoenas is part of the evidence-gathering process that we announced a few weeks ago in anticipation of the lawsuits that we will be filing against people who illegally make copyrighted music available on P2P networks. We're doing exactly what we said we'd do."

A few comments:

1) The penalties proscribed by Federal Copyright law are excessive and ridiculous when applied against a single individual. Downloading Chrisinta Aguilera is going to potentially cost me $150,000.00, but doing 35 m.p.h. in a school zone is only worth a $150 fine?

2) I can't believe these copyright laws were originally written to be applied to someone committing petty theft of a few songs. More likely they were targetted at organized crime and those who seek to distribute copyrighted material for profit illegally.

3) In response to an earlier MTV News report on the stiffening of copyright law, John McCain comes out against this bill. McCain does not support "criminal penalties for the person who just shares music files." My favorite senator agrees with the need to fight organized crime, not the home user. "If there's some kind of organized and orchestrated organization that does this as a profession to make a profit, then that probably would be appropriate. Look, these artists deserve a return for their talents and their abilities; we've got to try and make that happen. But to throw people in jail because they file-share, in my view, is a terrible overreach" says McCain.

4) Cable companies are deeply opposed to these lawsuits. This whole mess reminds me of an anecdote I heard on TV around the time of the AOL/Time Warner merger. Supposedly AOL made some music files available on their network for download, shortly after which they received an angry phonecall from Warner Music.

"What're you doing?" They asked. "Why would you give our content away? How do you think we make money over here?"

To which the AOL person replied "Well, how do *you* think *we* make money?"

Authentic or not, the anecdote rings true to the nature of high-speed internet companies. If they can't sell their customers on all the great content available to be downloaded over the internet, what are they going to sell them? No one is lining up to spend $49/month to send e-mail without delay.

5) It's because of this I believe home users will not fear banishment from the ISP for file-sharing in the near future, but you better believe that any university that hasn't already blocked these services will be shutting them down in the fall. Unfortunately, most universities not only shut down P2P networks but they over-reach and prevent access to most internet ports, making several extremely popular CD-ROM game's multiplayer functions totally unuseable.

From a poll of a bunch of right-wing bloggers. Tied for first were Thomas Jefferson and Ronald Reagan.

Rumor mill has it that the execs over at Rockefeller Center are screaming "give Joey his own show, dammit!"

Which begs this question, is Matthew LeBlanc french? If he is french, should I dislike him more for that, or for the fact his last name means "The White" in french? Does this explain the whole Friends' "the only good black people are the hot ones, like Aisha Tyler" thing?

Profiled in the New Yorker.

Scientists accidentally discover a gene that accelerates wounds healing when the holes the researchers punched into the ears of mice as identification closed faster than expected.

From the Washington Post:

The Green Party emerged from a national meeting over the weekend increasingly certain that it will run a presidential candidate in next year's election, all but settling a debate within the group over how it should approach the 2004 contest.

***

Most, however, said the party should join the race. Many said they believe there is still little difference between the major parties -- one activist tagging them "Republicrats and Demopublicans."

Others complained the Democratic Party is too weak-willed to adequately oppose Bush's agenda. Others said Rep. Dennis J. Kucinich (Ohio), the only Democratic presidential candidate who has much support among the Greens, is unlikely to win his party's nomination.

***

Nader recently told reporters he is still considering the race and will announce his decision by the end of this year.

On the one hand, I guess it's good that these people are standing by their principles. But don't any of these people care about winning? Despite their rhetoric, they can't really believe that the two major parites are the same, can they?

I volunteered for Carla Howell, the Libertarian candidate in the Massachusetts gubernatorial race, last fall, and to hear it from the Libertarians, Republican Mitt Romney is just another big spender who wants to raise your taxes. I understand that this kind of rhetoric keeps the party base loyal, but do they really think that they're adding anything to the table? And don't they realize that all they're doing is making the major party closer to their positions less likely will win?

Does John Kerry even show up for work anymore?

Are those the 12 million kids whose parents didn't pay federal income taxes before the tax cut?

Matthew Yglesias thinks that the Democratic presidential candidate doesn't need to win any states in the South to win the election:

Consider the case of the 2000 election. Gore would've won if he'd won just one more state. Clearly, this could have been a southern state, especially seeing as how he won exactly zero states in the south, but it could just as well have been a northern state like, say, New Hampshire, where the combined Gore-Nader vote was higher than the Bush-Buchanan vote.

This means that if a New Englander like Howard Dean or John Kerry could compensate for a sub-Gore performance in the South with a better performance in New England (or just by bringing the Nader voters around) that the Democrats would've made a good trade. Non-southern Nevada could also be a chance for a 2004 pickup if the nominee is willing to engage in a little Yucca Mountain-related pandering.

Some points in response:

1. This is possible only by assuming that the Democrat wins every state that Gore won in 2000. Bush was within 5% or so of Gore in Iowa, Michigan, Minnesota, Pennsylvania, Washington, and Wisconsin in 2000.

2. The Democrat might not need to win, but he still must be competitve. Otherwise, Bush would be able to shift most of his resources away from the South and to competitive states.

3. Bush will have a much bigger money advantage this time, both because he is an incumbent and because he, unlike the Democratic candidate, will not have to spend any money in the primaries.

4. Bush has an outside chance of winning New York. If he does then the election is pretty much over, but the Democrat still need to cover his bases with the Southern states.

5. Reapportionment gives Bush a few more electoral votes if everything stays the same, which means that the Democrat will need to win another state.

Joe feels their pain:

12 Million Kids Are Waiting; 12 Millions Kids Will Be Left Behind on Friday

...Tell President Bush That's Not Fair

President Bush,

When Congress increased the child tax credit earlier this year, it left out the 12 million children most in need.

The Republican Congress has failed to solve this problem---and the checks are about to go into the mail.

I join Joe Lieberman in demanding that you give these American kids the help they deserve---now.

President Bush: tell the Republican leadership in Congress to adopt the bipartisan Senate bill, which passed the Senate 94-2, and include those 12 million children when the checks go out on Friday.

Don't treat low-income families like second-class citizens. Don't leave 12 million children behind.

Please fill out the on-line petition at http://www.joe2004.com/kids, or download a printable version of the petition at http://www.joe2004.com/site/DocServer/Help_the_Children.doc?docID=341&AddInterest=1027

Please forward this e-mail on to your friends and relatives and ask the to help Joe Lieberman stop George Bush.

But can he actually relate to the problems of child-raising in this country?

It's not quite all doom and gloom for the 2000 Democratic vice-presidential candidate. From April to June, Lieberman's campaign raised a respectable $5.1 million, after raising only $3 million in the preceding three months — a total that many campaign watchers thought was disappointing for a national figure with high name recognition.

But Lieberman fell from his party's fourth-highest fundraiser in April to fifth today, surpassed by the surging tide of Dean, who raised about $7.5 million

Also this week, reports emerged that the belt tightening on Lieberman's campaign will affect two of the senator's own children.

Matt and Rebecca Lieberman were being paid combined annual salaries of $100,000 each as fundraisers, and the campaign confirmed to CNN that the siblings will take pay cuts, reportedly 20 percent each.

I beg of you potential democratic contributors, won't you please think of the children?

"[P]eople should be free to enter into any kind of relationship they want to enter into... [Marriage] is regulated by the states. I think different states are likely to come to different conclusions, and that's appropriate. I don't think there should necessarily be a federal policy in this area." - vice president, Dick Cheney, in the 2000 Vice-Presidential debate.

(From Andrew Sullivan.)

I spent most of the afternoon assembling data for my 2003-04 fantasy football draft, and I just noticed something odd about the draft magazine. At the end of the magazine is a section dedicated to reviewing the off-season moves of each NFL franchise. These 2 page spreads come with the title of each NFL franchise in a large font. Every team has their location and nickname listed on their team page except one, Washington. This must be a sign from the football gods, who surely will reward me for chosing such a virtuous and respectable publication.

The sunday New York Times reports that, lo and behold, the rest of the western world is as obese as the Americans:

The world economy may be slumping, but there is conspicuous growth in at least one area: waistlines.

Been to Germany lately? Every third child under age 12 and every fifth teenager there is overweight. How about Greece, land of the much-ballyhooed Mediterranean diet? More than 70 percent of adult men and women in that nation are above their ideal size. The Middle East? About 60 percent of the women in Egypt are overweight.

Indeed, the problem of excess consumption has spread to every corner of the globe, except for pockets of Africa. The United States, in other words, no longer enjoys a competitive advantage when it comes to corpulence.

But let's not blame the European consumer for eating this stuff, since what we're dealing with is clearly a dastardly american plot:

The message to consume less is hardly a capitalist notion. Food companies grow by selling to more people, or convincing existing customers to eat more. "They don't have a lot of potential for expansion left in the United States," said Marion Nestle, chairwoman of the nutrition and food studies department at New York University and author of "Food Politics: How the Food Industry Influences Nutrition and Health" (University of California Press, 2002). Because of that, she said, American companies have been exporting the salty, sugary foods they are known for and undermining the generally healthier eating habits of other countries.

link.

Question: How many feminists does it take to change a light bulb?

Answer: None. Feminists can't change anything.

From this morning's Mile High Comics 2003 San Diego Convention Report #4 e-mail penned by Chuck Rozanski, President - Mile High Comics, Inc:

I now need to take a moment to get political. All all of you should realize by now, I am fervently in favor of free speech rights within the comics industry. I am also totally opposed to the elements of the new "Patriot Act" law which requires booksellers and librarians to provide personal reading data about their patrons to agents of the government. Here at the show I met Jeffrey Weaver, the Chief of Staff for Vermont Representative Bernard Sanders. Representative Sanders has an amendment pending in Congress next week that would act to blunt some of the particularly onerous elements of the new law. Here is what Mr. Weaver had to say:

In the wake of the September 11th attacks, Congress hastily passed a law called the USA Patriot Act which included roll backs of civil liberties protections in a number of areas. One of the most important for comic fans were changes made by Section 215 of the Patriot Act. With the new powers granted by Section 215, federal agents can go to a secret court and get a warrant to seize library circulation and bookseller sales records even where the federal agents have no proof of criminal wrongdoing on the part of the subjects of the search. Worse yet, Section 215 makes it a crime for the library or bookseller to alert their patrons that records about them have been seized. To remedy this problem, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, the American Library Association, the book sellers, and other civil libertarians are supporting a bill in Congress called the Freedom to Read Protection Act, which is sponsored by Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. The bill number is H.R. 1157. This week in Congress, Rep. Sanders and a coalition of other members of the U.S. House are expected to try to add an amendment to one of the Congressional spending bills that would restore protections for libraries, booksellers, and their patrons. Comic fans need to let their voices be heard. Even a few emails to your member of Congress could make a big difference. To send your Congressperson an email, go to www.house.gov and click on the Write Your Representative in the left hand column. The program will ask your zip code and direct your email to the right member. In your email let your member know that you want them to support the amendment by Rep. Sanders to the Commerce, Justice, State appropriations bill to restore civil liberties protections for libraries, booksellers, and their patrons. For more information on Rep. Sanders' legislation, you can visit bernie.house.gov.

At this point the decision is up to you as to whether or not to take the effort to call or write your congressman on this issue. I certainly don't feel that I have any kind of right to do anything but provide you with the opportunity to act if you feel so inclined. I will say, however, that I personally don't believe (as some would have you think...) that it is in any way disloyal to our government to dissent when laws are passed that have the effect of diminishing our personal rights and freedoms. Many of our forbearers fought and died to originally establish these freedoms for us, and I think that it is completely patriotic to object to any dimishment of those rights. During these times of increasing repression we may not win this one battle, but at least some of us will know that we took one small step in the right direction. 'nuff said.

Joe Biden for president:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A top Senate Democrat said on Sunday that the Bush administration did not have a coherent policy on North Korea (news - web sites) amid reports that the Asian nation might have built a second secret facility for producing weapons-grade plutonium.

"There is no policy," said Sen. Joseph Biden of Delaware, the top Democrat on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, on NBC's "Meet the Press."

"I am at a loss to understand why this administration insists that we have the situation in North Korea under control," Biden added.

North Korea has told Washington that it has reprocessed 8,000 spent nuclear fuel rods, enough to produce about a half dozen nuclear weapons. In addition, U.S. officials confirmed late Saturday a New York Times report that Pyongyang may have built a second, secret facility to produce weapons-grade plutonium.

Asked if the United States should launch a pre-emptive strike in North Korea as it did in Iraq (news - web sites), Biden said, "We launch a pre-emptive diplomatic effort now, which we have not done."

He said a multilateral approach, which President Bush (news - web sites) has called for, is desirable but Washington should hold direct talks with the North.

"We (should) sit down and talk and privately, unabashedly, lay out to them what it's going to require for them to be brought into the international community, and what's going to happen if, in fact, they do not cease and desist," he said.

The Los Angeles Clippers make a $60 million offer to Gilbert Arenas after keeping Elton Brand by matching a $82 million offer from the Miami Heat. Now that the Jazz are done, can anyone say 'playoffs' for the Clippers?