Me: Frank Lynch
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These are my mundane daily ramblings.
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Samuel
Johnson Sound Bite Page (over 1,700 Johnson quotes), with a
weekly essay springing from one of
Johnson's quotations.
Bio:
Born 1957, raised in Florida, moved to New York
area in 1982; now live in Brooklyn.
Married, with one kid
unit.
Former marketing research professional. Now drawing no
salary, but working on a book.
Email:
frank
dot
lynch2
at
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dot
net
Did he have to use the word "imminent"? While trying to find something to write about, I ran across a column from Christopher Hitchens from early December. In it, he complained about complaints from liberals that Iraqi popular reaction to the regime change hasn't followed exactly as foretold:
The truly annoying thing that I find when I am arguing with opponents of the regime-change policy in Iraq is their dogged literal-mindedness. "Your side said that coalition troops would be greeted with 'sweets and flowers!' " Well, I have seen them with my own eyes being ecstatically welcomed in several places. "But were there actual sweets and flowers?"
Hitchens then proceeds to say that a similar problem manifests itself in expectations that actual WMDs would be found, that the Administration was being taken too literally.
Now, aside from this putting an end to the entire Hawk defense that Bush never described the threat as imminent, have you ever read anything so ridiculous? Perhaps Hitchens feels that America would have supported the war whether or not it had the bejesus scared out of it? If so, why the heck didn't the Bush administration sell the war on humanitarian reasons, instead of falling back on those reasons after the fact?
I'd like Hitchens' job.
Link 4:57 PM
A disappointment in the bedroom
renovation... You may have read in other posts that we just
had our bedroom renovated; for two weeks my wife and I were
sleeping on a mattress in the living room while the bedroom was
pretty completely re-plastered and painted. My wife had chosen
out some nice colors, too, which complement the furniture and the
carpet. We also picked out a ceiling fan that goes great, a fan
which Hunter makes exclusively for Home Depot, the 1912 Mission
Style. 
Unfortunately, a lot of the light from the two 60
watt bulbs gets absorbed by the shade, and the resulting lumens
aren't enough for the room. So we have to run side lamps when
there's no natural light at night. Also, the colors which Ab
picked out aren't really as visible as we'd like them. But having
paid $100 to get the fixture installed, who'd go through the
expense and hassle of returning it and getting another? (And how
come effective lumens aren't provided to buyers?)
Link 10:38 AM
Henry V is kaput in politics, for
sure. Read this hilarious bit on his St. Crispin's Day speech, from
the folks at Ishbadiddle. (I
sent this link to many in an email last night when I saw it
— it's really quite good.)
Link 10:18 AM
It really wasn't easy, writing like
Instapundit yesterday — boiling practically everything down
to "he said she said" in a hyperlink. Today we go back to normal.
Posting like Instapundit today. Blame it all on an intelligence failure. So, who's missing intelligence? Heh.
The Q train has a
mascot.
Found the remote. Seems to be a pretty common
problem. We used to tease our Dutch au pair that she was
throwing them out the window, but they always turned up.
I think we wimped out, says Carol
Peligian. I agree.
Taxes are taxes, but they don't make
modern Americans worse off than 19th century slaves. How could anybody be so
myopic as to make such a comparison?
You can't be a fly on EVERY wall, but
some walls are more interesting than others. An article in the Washington Post describes a discussion
regarding what went wrong with Iraqi weapons estimates: How I wish...
Senator Carl Levin really put it to the
Administration in a blistering statement during a Senate
Intelligence Committee [Mistake: it was the Senate Armed
Services Committee] hearing today. The purpose of the meeting
was to hear open testimony from David Kay, newly-resigned head of
the Iraq Survey Group, responsible for finding WMDs and
concluding what their status is and was. Levin's full statement
can be found at his web site; briefly, he reminded us of the certainty with
which the Administration spoke about Iraq's possession (present
tense) of WMDs (weapons, not programs or intentions) in the
months prior to the invasion. He quoted numerous statements from
President Bush and VP Cheney, as well as Secretaries Rumsfeld and
Powell. There was no ambiguity in their statements about the
nature of the threat. Naturally, he contrasted that with where we
are now, with Kay having said he doubted the weapons were there.
And, in anticipation of any rationalizations that WMDs were not
why we invaded Iraq, Levin referred to a statement from
then-spokesperson Ari Fleischer: (Fleischer's statement can be found on the White House web
site, in a transcript of his April 10 press briefing.) This was not the only target of Levin's ire: he also
complained about the limited scope of the committee's efforts.
Focused entirely on intelligence agency performance, it was not
allowed to look at how the White House used the
intelligence it received. Surely we should find out what is the basis for Vice President
Cheney's recent statement as well as the basis for the
unqualified statements made before the war I have just
quoted. Unfortunately, as of now, the leadership of the Senate will
not allow an inquiry into how the Administration characterized
the intelligence about Iraq's weapons of mass destruction. The
Intelligence Committee's inquiry is limited to the question of
the production of the intelligence. That Committee is not looking
into how that intelligence was used and characterized by policy
makers. We will continue to press for an inquiry looking to get
the whole story, the full picture. If the only way to obtain that
is to have an outside, independent and nonpartisan commission to
conduct a comprehensive and objective review of this entire
matter so be it. Perhaps it's merely party loyalty during an election year
which limits the scope of the investigation [perhaps? - Editor],
but it is sad that no Republicans on the committee are
sufficiently non-partisan to allow that to go forward. I think
there's room to question patriotism here.
Peals of joy throughout the block. In
light of the snow coming through tonight, NYC has decided to close
schools for tomorrow. The Kid Unit is ecstatic, of course.
I'm glad they were able to make the decision in advance, thereby
eliminating questions early, and allowing kids to stay up late
tonight should they choose. (We are supposed to get 4-8 inches
here, by the way).
The causes of the deficit, Paul
Krugman said (see this post below) have been
traced by the Center on Budget and
Policy Priorities as being mostly due to the change in the
amount of taxes collected, not spending (reported here). Their
analysis looks at the dollars as a percentage of GDP (gross
domestic product), and shows that in 2000 we had a surplus which
was 2.4% as large as GDP, but we've shifted to a deficit that is
4.2% the size of GDP. The net effect, going from a surplus of
2.4% to a deficit of 4.2% represents a shift of 6.6%; and that of
this 6.6%, 75% comes from a reduction in taxes. Federal expenditures (as a percentage of GDP) have increased,
but not as much as taxes have decreased. So, Krugman is reporting
their data correctly. I don't know how the analysis works out if
you put it all in terms of dollars, rather than a percentage of
GDP.
There isn't enough political
division, so some pundits try to be even more divisive,
demonizing those they don't agree with. Today, Andrew Sullivan
wrote about a Paul Krugman column as follows:
And what did Krugman really write?
So Krugman identifies tax reductions as "the real culprit,"
but certainly not "the entire reason," for he goes on to
mention... Again, taxes are clearly not "the entire reason" in Krugman's
view, although he feels they are the "real culprit." Sullivan, in
twisting Krugman's words, makes Krugman seem more of an
extremist. But doing so is unconscionable, and since I've
pointed this mistake out to Sullivan (and he's replied to my
email, defending himself on other grounds but not addressing this
twisting), he's opened himself up to being labeled as
mendacious. Why would he want to do that? How to tell Bush isn't serious about the
war on terror. A number of ways, actually: read a great post
by
Calpundit.
Today is Robert Burns' birthday, and
if you haven't read this post, by all means
do. No haggis here, though, just too tough to get it together on
a weekend when we've been putting the house back into shape after
the exit of renovators. We will, however, be having steamed
mussels and braised leeks, along with shortbread and berries for
dessert. (I was happy to get the mussels in China Town: a friend
had warned the fish markets might be closed due to their New
Year's parade. But they were open.)
In a nice acknowledgment to neighborhood
history, the new restaurant which opened up at the corner of
Flatbush Avenue and Prospect Place (Brooklyn) — in the old
space formerly occupied by City Lighting Fixtures — is
retaining the name City Lighting as well as the old plastic
letters on the facade. I don't even know what you call these
kinds of letters: they're plastic, three dimensional, and like
the front half of tubes (but each letter is a single piece);
they're white, about a foot and a half tall, against a terra
cotta background. The building has been a landmark for many
years, and it's where we always went for electrical hardware
(we've been in the neighborhood 13 years now). It's just nice to
see it carry over. (The Daily News had a little write up recently about growth in the area. I'm sure the new
proprietors couldn't be more pleased about the prospect of the
Nets moving in about six blocks away.)
Is THAT all it was? Today I finally
saw a clip of Howard Dean's speech following the Iowa caucuses
— not a long clip, mind you, one just long enough to see
the famous growl. I have to say, it doesn't live up to its
billing. For all the times which it's been played, for all the
attention it's received (a defining moment, and so on), I really
expected something like the lion's roar at the beginning of an
MGM movie, or Roger Daltrey's "Yeaaaaaaaahhhhhh" in the Who's
"Won't Get Fooled Again." And from the questions which Diane
Sawyer asked of Dean the other night, I might have thought the
yell sounded like it was something threatening. But it wasn't at
all: it sounded like something someone might let out after
rolling two strikes in a row while bowling with friends, or a
variant on a college cheer. Certainly nothing to give all
this attention to. Doesn't America have anything better to pay
attention to, like the candidates' sweaters?
Cheney's job sure isn't easy. Read this: WASHINGTON - Vice President Dick Cheney said Wednesday that
the administration has not given up on the so far fruitless
search for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. The "jury is
still out," he said. "It's going to take some additional, considerable period of
time in order to look in all the cubby holes and the ammo dumps
and all the places in Iraq where you might expect to find
something like that," Cheney said in an interview at the White
House with National Public Radio. "It doesn't take a large
storage space to store deadly toxins, or even just the capacity
to produce it." I guess this is another case of the pumped up pre-war language
from the Administration turning out as puffery. It represents
considerable back-pedaling from this statement from Rumsfeld: Can't anyone in this administration tell it straight?
Continual denial. The New York Times
reports: David Kay, who led the American effort to find banned weapons
in Iraq, said Friday after stepping down from his post that he
has concluded that Iraq had no stockpiles of chemical and
biological weapons at the start of the war last year. In an interview with Reuters, Dr. Kay said he now thought that
Iraq had illicit weapons at the end of the 1991 Persian Gulf war,
but that the subsequent combination of United Nations inspections
and Iraq's own decisions "got rid of them." Asked directly if he was saying that Iraq did not have any
large stockpiles of chemical and biological weapons in the
country, Dr. Kay replied, according to a transcript of the taped
interview made public by Reuters, "That is correct." The Bush administration comment? Scott McClellan, the White House spokesman, said
the administration stood by its previous assessments that Mr.
Hussein had both weapons programs and stores of banned
weapons. "Yes, we believe he had them, and yes we believe they will be
found," Mr. McClellan said. "We believe the truth will come
out." What do they take us for? The workman is finally gone from our
bedroom, and Ab and I will be able to move back into it this
weekend. The master bedroom was never properly taken care of when
we moved in here 13 years ago (I still remember us painting while
the shortwave radio was cranking out news that we were bombing
Baghdad), and while we did some spackling and painting, it really
needed more than that. And over the years, stains in a corner of
the ceiling from a leak (we finally learned it was the radiator
upstairs) slowly expanded. In general, plaster (or our
spackling?) was starting to fall, and the whole room needed to be
addressed. It took a guy nine days to do the room. Obviously, it
looks a whole lot better, and if we had any intention of selling
the place, it would certainly help the price. Ab also picked out
some great colors. The room looks alive! (I just can't wait for
us to finish the clean up and get everything back in: we've been
sleeping on a mattress in the living room for nearly two weeks.)
Some of the most interesting news comes
out late on Fridays. Why? I've heard it has to do with the
news cycles. For one thing, fewer people read Saturday's papers,
and it's easier to bury intrigue. Secondly, I've heard that late
on Friday reporters have greater difficulty tracking down their
usual contacts in order to get adequate background for a better
story. With that in mind, there's now a story on the New York Times site indicating that
the replacement for David Kay (head of the US team looking for
WMDs in Iraq) is a former UN weapons inspector (that team's
number two person) who has already expressed skepticism that any
weapons will be found. George Tenet (head of the CIA) says he's
the right man for the job, and we all have to remember how the
White House ran trick plays around the CIA in order to get the
intelligence interpretations it wanted.
I -DO- hope you know what Sunday is...
If you're put off by the idea of lamb parts, try and overcome
your repulsion, because it really is a delicious dish. When we
visited Scotland in 2002, even the Kid Unit tried it, and we all
agreed it was very good, ultimately eating it three times on the
visit. (One restaurant served it in pastry pockets, with some
kind of raspberry vinaigrette, perhaps for those who wanted to
say they had haggis but didn't really want to try it.) And if you still can't bring yourself to eat it (or
can't get one), there's other ways to celebrate. I wouldn't count
watching "Shrek" as one of them, though, even though Mike Myers
does put on a nice Scot accent. You might try listening to some
Silly Wizard (a Scot folk group) or reading some Sir Walter
Scott. Don't forget a visit to Utilikilts.com. Or:
here's a novel idea: read some Robert Burns! (The cartoon of Porky the Porcupine playing the bagpipes is by
Walt Kelly, and it comes from the May 22 1951 "Pogo." Copyright
Selby Kelly. Available through Fantagraphics Books, in Pogo
Volume 6. I think it's wonderful that Porky didn't limit playing
his pipes to Jan 25: a true Scot.) I obviously am not the only person who knows about the
approaching date: lots of visitors to my Johnson site are
visiting the page with his quotations about Scotland.
The impact of 'forcing' Google
results. The NY Times has a write-up on the whole "miserable failure" thing.
Having a lovely time. Verizon's email
is out — a planned maintenance was supposed to have been
completed five hours ago. At least I don't have spam.
Bush can't morph into you-know-who, but
WMDs can do their own morphing. In the State of the Union address, Bush mentioned that... Not weapons of mass destruction; not weapons of mass
destruction programs; but "weapons of mass destruction-related
program activities." Put that phrase in the 2002 Cincinnati speech, and see if you care so much
about invading Iraq. Back then, he said things like: If you put last night's soft expression in those terms,
you come away with much less justification for invasion, don't
you? Now, I'm not saying Bush lied, but some serious mistakes
must have been made with the way the intelligence was handled.
And it might not even have been the CIA: it might well have been
that special Pentagon office run by Doug Fieth, designed to take
a "fresh perspective" at the raw data. Someone has to lose
their job.
I try not to watch the State of the Union
address because I always find it intolerably full of puffery.
Watching it also takes much longer than reading a transcript, thanks largely to the many pauses for
applause — frequently the applause makes no sense (does
this make me want to watch, in order to understand if different
groups are applauding?). Take this example: Perhaps it was Democrats applauding over the idea of
expiration and Republicans applauding the latter times? Whatever,
the applause to speech ratio in that paragraph makes for a long
night! Others are providing better analyses (the newspapers and media
get paid to, by the way, and can devote more time) but I also
want to point out another instance of a false dilemma. This is a
rhetorical trick I wrote about last week, and
it involves framing an argument in terms of two alternatives, one
obviously superior, when there are really more options. Last
night, the President said, The missing option, of course, would have been giving the
inspectors more time to work. Not 'forever,' as some hawks
preferred to characterize it as, but the time that they said they
needed, a mere two or three months. Bush continued with another point that is worth
addressing: Now, I think the US did do the world a favor by toppling
Saddam Hussein. But I also feel that it's disingenuous to use
that as justification after the fact. Anyone who looks at the
language of the Administration prior to the invasion would know
that concerns for humanity represented only about 20% of what was
being said (if that). It was always the WMDs which were being
pushed to the American people, and while WMDs were discussed in
the Town Square, humanity concerns were not. I really feel as if
the American people were authorizing war against a different
enemy, one who was characterized as being a threat to the US, not
one who was doing horrible things to his country.
Free money is widely available, or,
at least a lot of people are over-paid. In a column about Howard
Dean, William Safire repeats a charge that General Wesley Clark
is a
stalking-horse for the Clintons. And of course, he provides
no evidence for the claim, just repeats it as a throw-away line,
as if it's so widely accepted that it needs no support. If it
were a news article, perhaps he couldn't get away with it; but
like many newspapers, the Times has lower standards for truth
when it comes to columnists.
Proof positive that not everything
can be found on the Internet.
I've already heard from plenty of people
out there who cannot tie their shoes without reading a
blog — asking me what my take is on the Iowa caucuses.
Since it would be a shame to let these people go out facing a new
day completely without guidance from me (God forbid some office
crisis would require that they operate the fire extinguisher near
their cubicle), I'd better put my ha'penny in before the fire
rages too high. Is anyone really surprised about Gephardt? I mean, this is a
guy who, when he announced, pointed to his record as a leader in
the House of Representatives. Just take a quick look at all that
excitement, and get back to me after your 13-hour nap. And Dean? Well, you know, the Governor and I were playing
"Pig" this afternoon with our families (as you well know, it
works better with a much larger group — it's really fun to
put your finger on your nose and watch around the table while
others do or don't notice), and he was talking about the branding
issue. He's had difficulty in what to call himself. First,
have we ever had a President named "Howard"? Can't remember one?
(Neither could he, but I assured him I could have if I hadn't had
so much to drink.) So he was always in this big quandary about whether he
should call himself "Governor" Dean or "Doctor" Dean. He'd
naturally turned to me, because I am familiar with Samuel
Johnson's branding opportunities (some would have called them
'problems,' but everyone in marketing knows that 'problems' are
'unrealized opportunities'). See, Johnson's consultants told him
that he could create better word-of-mouth if he had one claque
calling him "Dr. Johnson," another claque calling him "Dictionary
Johnson," a third claque calling him "the Rambler," and a fourth
which was so confused that it thought it was a clique
instead of a claque. Unfortunately, I told him, all that
disarray led to unsolidified public opinion: nobody knew who he
was, and although he was the smartest man of his age (read my
book when it comes out), awareness dissipated when they no longer
had his writings in front of him. How that related to Dean was
this: the rap he was getting from the press was that he was "too
angry." Rather than working with that, he ran from
that. Howzabout a candidate who says "You'd better believe
I'm angry. Here's why..." That was like Dukakis avoiding the
liberal tag. Why avoid it, I said? But by that time of the
conversation, Dean already had a P, an I, and was too busy trying
to avoid a G. So it went to John Kerry, who's every bit as "angry" as Dean,
only, because he wears pleated slacks, you don't notice the
anger. Democrats will be no worse served by Kerry than by Dean,
and so there you are.
There is a cancer on the co-op. I sit
on the board, along with my wife, of a ten unit co-op. Last month
we spent about $3,000 in oil for heat and hot water, and are
struggling to understand how to deliver what the law requires to
everyone, while not roasting some residents. According to
everything I've read, upper floors are supposed to be colder, but
even I wear shorts in winter, and I'm only on the second
floor. The cost of the oil works out to about $350 for us: we're
one-eighth of the building, with 1300 square feet. So, in the
board's interest of grappling with the costs, I distributed
thermometers to various residents, as well as making sure windows
kept closed (the thermostat is in the stairway, and some
residents felt that if stairway windows were shut, the heat would
never go on — but leaving them open means the heat never
goes off, and upper floor residents are getting temps in
the 80's, and resort to opening their windows for comfort). In addition to passing out thermometers, I posted signs saying
not to open stairway windows, assuring residents I would adjust
the thermostat if their temps were below the law's requirements.
But nooooo: not only are some neighbors opening the
stairway windows, someone has been futzing with the thermostat,
using a key to get into it: rather than being set for 68, someone
moved it up to over 80. Like I said, there is a cancer on the
co-op, and I am not pleased.
Oy vey? Fuhgeddaboudit!
From Martin Luther King's "Letter
from Birmingham Jail": MLK's birthday was actually the 15th, but we're observing it
today by reading his Letter from Birmingham Jail. President Bush
seems to prefer observing it differently. Last year, he came out
against affirmative action in the admission policies of the
University of Michigan. This year, he took advantage of a
congressional recess to appoint a judge to the federal bench who
many have seen as racist. Don't imagine for a second that he's
not conscious of the timing: it's a call out to the most racist
elements among his supporters.
The State of the Union Address is
tomorrow night, and one wonders (but not seriously) whether the
President will lead with corrections on last year's speech... You
know, reliances on British intelligence, yellowcake, and all the
weapons of mass destruction. Or, for that matter, whether there
will be any discussion of how little has actually been spent on
AIDS, contrary to last year's big promise. Well, rather than
wondering, you could just participate in the State of the Union Address
Drinking Game.
Ever wanted to own your own record
label? Grand Royal, the label of the Beastie Boys, is on the
auction block, for perhaps as little as $100,000.
You know you're reading too much Samuel
Johnson when, instead of typing the "blockquote" tag for html
(the one that offsets a quote, like in the post below) you find
yourself typing a non-existent "blockhead"
tag. Just happened, really.
Howard Dean sings Melissa Manchester.
Back on her first album (1973's Home to
Myself), Melissa Manchester had this song called "One More
Mountain to Climb." Howard Dean is singing a similar tune in this
morning's New York Times: "Time was rolling by early on, but now, it just
stands still," he said in an interview Friday night, near the
close of yet another 15-hour day in a week that could well be
considered the most difficult of his campaign. "It's like climbing Mount Everest," he said. "You go to this
pitch, you think you've done a lot of work, and then you look up
and there's another pitch. And you do more work, and then you
look up, and 29,000 feet. It's an enormous learning curve." The problem for Governor Dean, of course, that it's so early
in the campaign. He better start thinking in terms of mountain
ranges.
A change in the Atkins regimen? The
New York Times reports
that Atkins Nutritionals (the company started by the late
Dr. Robert Atkins, founder of the Atkins Diet) is trying to get
its legion of adherents to eat fewer saturated fats (meat,
cheese, butter, eggs, and so on). No more than 20% of your
calories, they now stress, should come from saturated fats. It's
not so much a change, they say, as a change in emphasis: Still, I wonder about the reasoning behind the change in
emphasis. Perhaps it's a credibility issue, perhaps it's
marketing. The article also says: All I can say is that my cholesterol and weight have both gone
down without attending to the quantity of saturated fats. In 6
months, I've dropped 25 pounds; and my cholesterol has dropped
far more under a combination of medicine and Atkins than it did
under medicine alone. Science should not generalize from a single
case like mine, but still... I guess I don't really mind
switching to margarine, egg beaters, and getting even more
fish.
A too-common rhetorical trick is to limit
the alternatives to two polar opposites. For instance, the
inspections of Iraq, prior to the invasion: hawks acted as if a
request for more time meant an infinite extension, and that the
choice was between invasion and letting Hussein go on forever.
Liberals (whom the right frequently accuses as always wanting to
nuance simple issues to the death) were never asking for
"forever," only for more time to let the inspections work. (Now,
I guess, we know that they would never have worked to the
satisfaction of the US government, because WMDs still
haven't been found, and the US won't say the obvious implication
of this result.) Another example is over the positioning of the US intelligence
on WMDs. The right (which liberals often accuse of trying to
oversimplify complex issues) positions it as an argument that
Bush didn't lie about their existence because a lie implies prior
knowledge of the truth, and that the Bush administration was
following in the same footsteps as the Clinton administration.
For example, this column from Jonah Goldberg points to the many other
governments which also thought there were WMDs, and says: "Both ways" — in essence, Goldberg has narrowed it down
to two choices. But what if the other governments were getting
their intelligence from the US? It's not unheard of: Bush cited
British intelligence in his 2003 State of the Union address, and
Colin Powell did the same when he presented to the UN. And does it have to be an outright lie to be bad faith? Last
June, John Judis and Spencer Ackerman wrote a stunning expose of the exaggerations and
biases which the Administration built into the discussion.
Apparently it was willful, if you read the article. So, no, maybe
it wasn't a lie, but they sure seemed to ignore "off message"
evidence all the time. And Goldberg's effort to split the
question into only two alternatives is disingenuous.
Marketing New Zealand as Middle
Earth. Tom Tomorrow's sometimes sub Bob Harris has an interesting
item about his trip to New Zealand post-LOTR. (I confess that
LOTR made me want to visit — the scenery is really
beautiful — but the people who live there look really
ugly.)
Trust 9th graders. The Washington
Post has a nice story on Marsha Albert, who, in the 9th grade
back in 1963, spurred her local radio station to be the first to
play the Beatles, which led to Capitol putting more behind their
US promotion. Via The
Morning News.
Ache. "Ache" seems unique in English.
So far as I know it's the only word in English (aside from those
that contain it, like 'headache') that ends in those letters and
that sound. All the others that end with the same spelling don't
have the same sound (like panache and moustache), and seem to
come from the French language. Are there others spelled like
'ache' that have the same sound? (These are the thoughts one has
when the world is covered in snow.)
What exactly WAS the Clinton policy about
regime change which Paul O'Neill's critics claim Bush was
merely continuing in those early months of the Bush
Administration? Over at Whiskey Bar,
Billmon says that the oft-cited 1998 law passed by Congress
explicitly forbade the involvement of US troops to accomplish the
regime change. This should be a withering retort to those who say that Bush
didn't step it up. Read Billmon's full post.
Update: Sloppy reading on my part. Billmon doesn't say US
troops were forbidden, and neither does the law. The law
expressly does not authorize, and remains silent on the issue.
Moveon.org's winning anti-Bush ad has
been chosen, and it's here. Called "Child's
Pay," it focuses on the financial burden our children will bear
due to the incredible deficits which Bush has whipped up. It's
nicely done, but at least one writer says it's
too slick, not harsh enough, and has a muddled message. My
favorite, again, was "What Are We Teaching Our Children?"
Anderson Cooper was a complete
bumblehead last night while subbing for Aaron Brown on CNN's
10 o'clock show "Newsnight." Not once, but at
least three times he was so intent on "providing balance"
(oddly conservative in each case) that he came across as an idiot
each time. The three occasions involved: Here's what happened... Regarding the Army War College report, here are the
opening lines of the videotaped report from Defense Department
correspondent Jamie McIntyre: Now, everyone who has followed politics knows that Nunn and
Bentsen were Democratic senators. Nunn was always a fairly
conservative one, hailing from Georgia (by no means a Ted
Kennedy), and Bentsen, while more liberal, was no Ted Kennedy
either. Yet Cooper felt the need to point out to viewers at the
end of McIntyre's segment that the visiting professor had worked
for Democratic senators, because McIntyre didn't use the word
Democratic. (McIntyre was sensitive to Cooper's efforts to
discount the report, using continual references to the report
being written by a visiting professor, and countered Cooper by
pointing out that the visiting professor, "One is, he's a
visiting professor, but he's normally a professor at the Air War
College in Maxwell Air Force Base." So his credentials are solid,
in spite of the best efforts of Anderson Cooper to discount
them. Regarding Paul O'Neill, Cooper interviewed a former
Clinton cabinet member who had also written a book about White
House experiences, Robert Reich. First, Cooper was so intent on
asking spurting out a quick question after greeting Reich that he
didn't listen for Reich to reply to the greeting, so much so that
he was oblivious to the fact that Reich's audio wasn't coming
through. Cooper didn't notice until he stopped to listen for an
answer to his first question. Later, once the audio connection
was restored, he kept peppering Reich with questions to the point
that it was unheard of for a cabinet member to write a book which
is critical of the president. Reich largely supported Cooper, but
said, The odd thing, I thought, was that Cooper (and Reich, I guess)
seemed to have forgotten Donald Regan's memoirs from his years in
the Reagan White House — it was in Regan's memoirs that we
learned of Nancy Reagan's micromanagement and her reliance on
astrology. Regan's book came out after the Reagan administration
had left, but it was every bit as much "kiss and tell" as Cooper
was trying to position the O'Neill book. Lastly, actors Rob Reiner and Martin Sheen. They were
the last segment, and I don't know if they had been watching
Cooper through the show, but Sheen was laughing as they came on.
After some initial questions on their effectiveness, there was
this exchange between Cooper and Reiner: [COOPER] But, seriously, how do you find people respond to
you? Do you come across any level of resentment, people saying --
there are those out there who say, look, it's like you're like
shiny objects dangled in front of people to kind of distract
them. REINER: How do you feel, Anderson? How do you feel about
that? (LAUGHTER) REINER: Are you getting excited right now? That is to say, of course, that Reiner knew Cooper was being a
buffoon and underestimating the American people...
Just so you know, Baghdad is not just as safe as New York City. (Link via This Modern World.)
For what it's worth, my take on the
movie The Return of the King (part three of The Lord of
the Rings) is that the series as a whole needed to be made in
order to demonstrate what can be done in movies, to expand our
understanding of what movies are capable of. The series truly
represents a feat, and I don't mean to slight that in any way
(and it's even clearer now that I'm going through the documentary
materials in the Extended Versions of the first two DVDs —
it's a tremendous combination of scenery, models, costumes,
props, puppets, computer generated animation, digital
colorization, and so on). But while it's a very exciting story, the acting is pretty
simple: very good actors are doing a very good job with what in
the end has to be considered a lot of quick scenes with little
character development. How many facial expressions does Frodo
have? If the number is too small, I don't think it's Elijah
Wood's fault so much as Tolkien's. Frodo basically has one job.
And Ian McKellan doesn't go through a very wide range of
emotions, either, and it's because of the limitations of the
character in the book. Contrast this with Jim Sheridan's In America, about the
New York immigrant family. Those characters go through a wide
range of experiences, and you can see more acting in that movie,
I think. And because 90% of what's in the movie is something
Sheridan really went through, this is also a movie that had to be
made. The only thing is, it had to be made for a completely
different reason. I guess I prefer a movie that has to be made
for the sake of human emotion over one that had to be made to
show that it could be made.
Only the Republicans are allowed to use
9/11 as a political issue. Don't get me wrong, I don't think
anyone should use 9/11 as a political issue. I'm all in
favor of learning from the mistakes that were made, and rooting
out incompetence, but I've never been in favor of the Republican
convention's location and timing (taking place in NYC, as close
to the anniversary of 9/11 as possible). According to the New York Times, this decision was made by the
President: The White House apparently sees, however, that as it whips the
country up with National Security feelings, it could become
vulnerable. And doesn't want us to know the truth. The
Administration has made the job of the US Commission
investigating 9/11 very difficult: stonewalling too long on key
documents, and then providing them only in secure locations where
nothing can leave (no originals, no copies, no notes, no tape
recorders...) The idea, presumably, is to minimize the amount of
work which can be completed before the commission's charter
expires in May. But Newsweek reports consideration
was given to giving an extension if the report were
delayed until after the election. Repeat after me: government by the people, for the people...
Perhaps focusing on Iraq early in the
Bush Administration wasn't really reprehensible, as has been
pointed
out. It was standing US policy, carried over from the Clinton
Administration, to change the Iraqi regime. But did they also
train their eyes on Al Qaeda at the same time, or not? That
doesn't seem to be getting any discussion, and I'm sorry I missed
the segment on CBS "60 Minutes." Well, as for whether or not Al
Qaeda was given adequate attention, the US 9/11 Fact-finding
Commission, headed by Thomas Kean, apparently
wants to talk to Presidents Clinton and G W Bush. Maybe some
day we'll know. Maybe even before November? Unfortunately, the reactions from the White House to O'Neill's
comments have not addressed the
substance: Scott McClellan is quoted as saying "It appears
that the world according to Mr. O'Neill is more about trying to
justify his own opinions than looking at the reality of the
results we are achieving on behalf of the American people."
I think I have it straight now... So
the departing
Clinton administration felt that Al Qaeda was a big threat, and
briefed
the incoming Bush administration to that effect. But the new
administration was otherwise engaged, and was after Iraq from the start, according to Paul
O'Neill (who sat on the National Security Council). Then, some
eight months later, these passenger planes crashed into the World
Trade Center, right? And Donald Rumsfeld, Secretary of Defense,
took notes that afternoon asking to have everything
conceivable dug up that would implicate Iraq. OK? And we knew
so well that Iraq was behind 9/11, that key resources in
Afghanistan were pulled from finding Osama Bin Laden to go to
Iraq, and find all those WMDs we all knew were there. And also
the stuff connecting Iraq to 9/11, of course. Only, according to
Colin Powell, the link is tenuous at best ("no smoking gun") and we all know the drill about
how many WMDs have been found. Got it.
Poffertjes! Tonight we ventured into
the land of small Dutch pancakes. This was our first effort at
making them, and truth be told, most were overcooked. Maybe Toobin won't be wrong. Jeffrey
Toobin's exact exchange on CNN (see the post just below this one)
went
like this: HEMMER: The point you made is that you don't think some of the
bigger names, Skilling and Ken Lay, would face indictments,
prosecution. TOOBIN: So are you asking me whether I'm eating crow
today? HEMMER: I don't -- does your mind change about it? Not,
because you're not necessarily wrong at this point. TOOBIN: No, I mean I'm not wrong yet, but I think it is --
this is a huge victory for prosecutors. This makes a big
difference. Let's put it this way, I don't know if Skilling and
Lay will be prosecuted, but the only way they could be prosecuted
is if they make a deal with Andy Fastow and it looks like they
are making a deal with Andy Fastow. And he is the crucial witness
against them. It's a tremendous victory for prosecutors. "Not yet" was the operative phrase, and turns out to be
relevant. Fastow's wife let the deadline for the plea agreement
pass, the judge has now ordered the trial to proceed per plan, and
it's now going to be more difficult to work out a plea agreement
with Fastow.
The refreshing sound of honesty. This
morning on CNN, their legal analyst Jeffrey Toobin admitted that
it looked like his earlier prediction — that Enron
executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling would not face jail time
— might well turn out wrong, now that a plea deal is in the
works for the wife of executive Andy Fastow (being used as
leverage to get Fastow to testify). Toobin was amicable about it,
too, speaking of "eating crow." Why can't the US government be
more honest about the WMD hunt in Iraq? Josh Marshall has more.
Far far too true. The New York Times
reports on a Bush visit to two states which are crucial
to his re-election: It rankles me because it reminds me of how Bush reacted to the
news about the onset of September 11. Sitting in a
classroom in Florida, and having been told of the second
plane crashing into the WTC, Our Man in the White House
decided to hang out with the kids for a little while longer
instead of moving into action. Here's a video of
his staying in the classroom a full five minutes after Andy Card
tells him. (Odd that: his whereabouts had been well-publicized,
and the school was at risk. More "bring 'em on," I guess.)
What will the ultimate reality show
be? If you've been watching the offerings, many of the
successful ones work out winnowing competitors down, be they
survivors, suitors, or interns. TLC's approach focuses on
lifestyle revision, and you can see it through programs like Trading Spaces, Date Patrol, and What Not to Wear. They've also got wedding shows,
and so on. But why no funeral planning show? Supposedly Carson
and the others from Queer Eye for the
Straight Guy (on Bravo) will be looking for work... Why not a
show called "You're Not Really Gonna Get Buried in THAT!" ?
Tonight's dinner was a wonderful
treat, pork tenderloins with fennel and cream sauce. The recipe
is here, via Epicurious. Made for a lot
of dishes, though, and I'm glad I'm doing something as simple as
burgers tomorrow night. (If you're reading this in the
Netherlands, and you know who you are, pass it on to
hubby.)
Is Jewish defensiveness replacing
patriotism as the last refuge of a scoundrel? Many who read US
op-ed columns frequently are up in arms about a column written
yesterday by New York Times' opinionator David Brooks. (Read
it, if you haven't: Brooks claims that criticisms of the war
in Iraq are unjustified for a number or reasons... Among the
reasons: what he sees as anti-Semitism on the part of the
critics, and an over-estimation of the importance of a few
players who are Jewish.) Here's a passage which has worked like
flash paper (he's being ironic, expressing the views he thinks
others hold for neoconservatives): This is not the first time I've seen the argument that
liberals' distaste for the war is suspect because there is
anti-Semitism among some on the left. But I usually see it in
fringe web sites like Horsefeathers, not an intelligent paper
like the Times, one with editors... Brooks' column basically
pursues a straw man argument in highlighting the views of
extremists and using that to discount the honest disagreement
that could exist about the war in Iraq. The implication is almost
that if you're against the war you're an anti-Semite. One of his other threads is that the people who promoted the
war, while Jews, are of too little influence for any reasonable
person to even point to them as having had any effect. About
Richard Perle, he writes: Surprisingly, Brooks has forgotten that Perle is capable of
writing memos, that Perle sits on a Department of Defense
committee for Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld (used to
chair it, by gum, until a scandal forced him to give up
the chair [but not membership]), and that Defense Secretary
Rumsfeld has had meetings with Bush — and probably
conveyed Perle's opinions. A third tactic Brooks used to discount criticisms has
to do with a 90's think tank: Brooks has conveniently forgotten that those involved were
more than a staff of five... A 1997 statement of principles on their web site was signed by 25
politicos... Take a look at the signers: among them are Rumsfeld,
current Vice President Dick Cheney, and the President's brother
Jeb. Naaaah, this group probably had no influence
whatsoever.
I'm a day late to comment on this, but the above were my
immediate reactions when I read the column yesterday.
Fortunately, other writers with far greater readership criticized
it immediately. I recommend Josh Marshall and the Daily
Howler. Also, for what it's worth, Brooks took a similar line
last February on a prior gig.
Moveon.org's 15 finalists for the 30-
second commercial can be found here. My personal
favorite was "What Are We Teaching Our Children?"
An autograph, please, while you're
dying? The Staten Island doctor who treated George Harrison
in his hospital bed is being
sued by Harrison's estate: privacy abuse and so on. He is
alleged to have brought his family in to visit Harrison, had his
son play and sing for Harrison, and coerced Harrison to sign the
son's guitar. Eccch.
If politicians can't help being
stupid, can't they hire people who will save them from
themselves? Hillary Clinton has apologized for her lame joke about Gandhi. It was offensive,
and should never have happened.
Amazing! This is what I call a
severance package: it includes Barbie dolls!
Happy Little Christmas to you. We
three kings of orient are strumming an acoustic guitar. We're
also taking down decorations today. A little more, belatedly, about the efforts to move the
New Jersey Nets to Brooklyn can be found here.
Fortunately, the developer understands the role of the
entertainment concept well enough to know that it wouldn't be
appropriate to use Liberty Bonds to fund the site.
And this item mentions that the eminent
domain will supposedly move 1,000 families out.
What do you call... a 59-year old man
in an unfamiliar city who tries to chase down a much younger
purse snatcher? A snatcher who might, shall we say, be armed, and
shoot you? A fool, I think. A lucky fool. Thank the Lord he's alright, Ray Davies is
one of my favorite songwriters.
The idyllic weather we've had of late
is ending, and a cold front is moving in. Like many cold fronts,
it's being preceded by rain, and I was surprised to see that some
ground is already so saturated that the dirt around a neighboring
tree was covered in water. A great time to listen to Bessie Smith's
"Standing in the Rain Blues":
Standing in the rain and ain't a drop fell on me It can rain all day, I ain't got no place to go If it rains five days, that won't give me no blues Rain, rain rain don't rain on me all day Even Bessie doesn't seem to be too badly off, though she wails
with a melancholy nonetheless. And yeah, I'm grateful for my
boots, too.
Mark Steyn bristles at the constant
use of
"alleged" when dealing with accused war criminals such as
Milosevic. Why does Steyn hate the ideals of justice so much that
he draws conclusions before the defense has even begun? Does he
hate the principles under which America was founded?
It's too, too common. Andrew Sullivan
goes a' Times bashing (see "Okrent Punts")
and again misses an opportunity to identify a newspaper which is
consistently better than the New York Times. I guess that would
take both too much work and a committed point of view, or
something, but Sullivan, like many others, would rather merely
harp. I'm sure he can't do without the New York Times since he
reads it so regularly, but you would never know that from the
rare praise.
January 3, You can't even trust "The Onion." This
week's Onion ran an article about a restaurant worker in
Gainesville FL who was pleased to get a
new mop head. The article said he works at "Hamilton's Bar &
Grill." Being an alum of the University of Florida, I was
naturally intrigued... But you know something? The place doesn't exist. That's right: they made
it up. They lied to us.
January 2, Belated Christmas round-up. It
shouldn't have surprised anyone that there were no posts here
between Christmas and New Year's — I'm not a blogger who
feels a responsibility to post daily, and well, there were other
things to do. But here's a belated rundown on our
Christmas... As usual, we didn't attend any church services, but we did go
through the nativity passage in Luke. The Kid Unit was pleased
with many of the gifts, most notably a contraption called AstroJax, three spheres on a cord which can be spun
around in a satellite fashion. There was also considerable
pleasure over two new Asterix comics, but unfortunately less pleasure over an
Asterix DVD
we picked up from a Canadian merchant. We knew it was all in
French and wouldn't have any English subtitles, but expected it
would have the same French subtitles (for the hearing impaired)
we'd seen on a copy in Belgium last summer; but it had no
subtitles at all. So, our intentions of
using the DVD to improve French language skills will be more
difficult to fulfill. Other hits included a camera that tints the
picture with colored filters and one of those
electric lightning globes. My wife was pleased with a couple Shakespearean DVDs, a new
robe, and a painting from our child. My loot included sundry
cooking items, the Two Towers extended DVD, and a pair of walkie
talkies. Beyond the loot, we served a brunch to several family members:
Ab's two siblings, her Mom, and a visiting brother of mine. I
think there were a half dozen different items served, none of
which was overly complex. But to make it special for the Kid
Unit, we included apple fritters on the menu, and while they are
not difficult, they do make a mess. (Serving brunch rather than a
dinner made it easier to fly out to Jacksonville the next
morning.)
There goes WHAT neighborhood?!? A
local developer is trying to woo
the New Jersey Nets into moving to Prospect Heights
(Brooklyn), which would mean condemning and demolishing
buildings in order to allow for a new arena to be built. I'm
usually against municipalities bending over backwards to attract
sports franchises, but some people may be overly upset
about the demolition. Here's a
post from another blogger showing the area which is likely to
be affected; if correct, this is not a big deal. Some of these
buildings are so poorly maintained, their sides
have obsolete
ads for a rotisserie chicken place which closed about ten
years ago...
I don't want you think I'm flippant
about the idea of self-improvement through New Year's
resolutions, an understandable interpretation of the post below.
I just happen to disagree with the idea of paying greater
attention to the process on December 31 than at other points in
the year (why wait to confront a problem?), and even if I did
make deep, valuable New Year's resolutions, I don't think I would
broadcast them in this space. Sorry.
I'm a little late in developing the New
Year's resolutions, but I think I have a reasonable excuse.
From Dec 26 to Dec 30 we were in Jacksonville, visiting
relatives, and I didn't have enough opportunity to think about
how I am in my normal environment to come up with relevant
resolutions. Sure, I could have resolved to be come better at
wiring my
father-in-law's home theater, but since that was a one-shot
behavior, what would be the use? But today, on our normal turf, I
came up with three biggies. One, work harder on the united front
thing with my wife when dealing with the Kid Unit; two, use the
library more often instead of buying new books (which we don't
have room for anyway); and three, when the Gators are being blown out, just turn the television off. (The weight
thing, by the way, continues to go okay. I've lost about 25
pounds on Atkins in five months, and though I lost little during
December, December is a tough month.)
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A chronology of how the Bush Administration repeatedly and
deliberately refused to listen to intelligence agencies that said
its case for war was weak.
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In a private meeting between Bush and congressional
leaders, Senate Minority Leader Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) told
Bush it is important to determine what went wrong to produce the
flawed prewar weapons charges. Democratic sources said that
prompted a testy exchange between Bush and Daschle.
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Just in case there was ever any doubt about the
reason given for why we went to war, the President's Press
Secretary restated the point this way on April 10th, 2003: "make
no mistake ... we have high confidence that they have weapons of
mass destruction. That is what this war was about and it is
about. And we have high confidence it will be found."
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KRUGMAN BLAMES TAX CUTS: That's the entire reason for
the deficit. Yeah, right. ...
According to cleverly misleading reports from the Heritage
Foundation and other like-minded sources, the deficit is growing
because Mr. Bush isn't sufficiently conservative: he's allowing
runaway growth in domestic spending. This myth is intended to
divert attention from the real culprit: sharply reduced tax
collections, mainly from corporations and the wealthy.
A recent study by the Center on Budget and Policy
Priorities does the math. While overall government spending has
risen rapidly since 2001, the great bulk of that increase can be
attributed either to outlays on defense and homeland security, or
to types of government spending, like unemployment insurance,
that automatically rise when the economy is depressed.
Update, Jan 28: Sullivan issued a correction early this
morning (about twelve hours after I pointed out his error to
him). To me, his "correction" sounds disingenuous, as he labels
it hyperbole
(scroll down to "correction"). In labeling it hyperbole (which
the dictionary
defines as "A figure of speech in which exaggeration is used
for emphasis or effect," Sullivan is saying his exaggeration was
deliberate. This, of course, is exactly the kind of
demonization I referred to at the start of the post. And yet,
Sullivan called it "an error of hyperbole." So, was it deliberate
or not? And when will he check his blood pressure before writing?
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We know where they are. They're in the area around
Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south and north somewhat.
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Update (11:35 AM): Calpundit has more,
including Kay's statement that he didn't think large scale WMD's
existed after the first Gulf War.
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It's January 25, the anniversary of Robert Burns'
birthday! Robert Burns, of course, is the national poet of Scotland,
and if on New Year's Eve you sang "Auld Lang Syne," you were
singing Robert Burns. On his birthday, people of Scottish
heritage (and their -philes) get together for "Burns Nights," and
have a wee dram, or haggis if they're lucky. The BBC has a page
with most of
the necessary info — although they don't provide a
recipe for haggis beyond preparing one that has already been
stuffed for you; for a complete recipe, here's another page from their site.
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But let us be candid about the consequences of
leaving Saddam Hussein in power. We're seeking all the facts.
Already, the Kay Report identified dozens of weapons of mass
destruction-related program activities and significant amounts of
equipment that Iraq concealed from the United Nations.
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Key provisions of the Patriot Act are set to expire
next year. (Applause.) The terrorist threat will not expire on
that schedule. (Applause.) Our law enforcement needs this vital
legislation to protect our citizens. You need to renew the
Patriot Act. (Applause.)
Had we failed to act, the dictatator's weapons of
mass destruction programs would continue to this day. Had we
failed to act, Security Council resolutions on Iraq would have
been revealed as empty threats.
Iraq's torture chambers would still be filled with
victims, terrified and innocent. The killing fields of Iraq --
where hundreds of thousands of men and women and children
vanished into the sands -- would still be known only to the
killers. For all who love freedom and peace, the world without
Saddam Hussein's regime is a better and safer place.
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I cannot sit idly by in Atlanta and not be concerned
about what happens in Birmingham. Injustice anywhere is a threat
to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of
mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects
one directly affects all indirectly. Never again can we afford to
live with the narrow, provincial "outside agitator" idea. Anyone
who lives inside the United States can never be considered an
outsider anywhere within its bounds.
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Atkins representatives say that Dr. Atkins, who died last year,
always maintained that people should eat other food besides red
meat, but had difficulty getting that message out. There has been
a revision in expressing how the diet should be followed, not in
the diet itself, they say.
The change comes as Atkins faces competition from
other popular low-carbohydrate diets that call for less saturated
fat. A book on one such plan, the South Beach Diet, came out in
April 2003 and has sold more than five million copies. Atkins
representatives made the revision, Ms. Heimowitz said, because
"we want physicians to feel comfortable with this diet, and we
want people who are going to their physicians with this diet to
feel comfortable."
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You can't have it both ways. You can't say Bush lied
while others who said the same thing were being honest. The White
House was operating with fundamentally identical information to
that of Clinton, Pollack and Einhorn. What was different was that
this White House needed to deal with the post-9/11 world.
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"Nothing in this Act shall be construed to authorize
or otherwise speak to the use of United States Armed Forces
(except as provided in section 4(a)(2)) in carrying out this
Act."
Section 4(a)(2) is the section of the act that authorized
military aid to the Iraqi opposition -- said aid to consist of:
"the drawndown of defense articles from the stocks of
the Department of Defense, defense services of the Department of
Defense, and military education and training for such
organizations."
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MCINTYRE (voice-over): The U.S. invasion of Iraq was
an unnecessary preventive war of choice that was not integral to
the war on terrorism, but rather a detour from it. That's the
conclusion of Jeffrey Record, a visiting professor at the Army
War College, and a former aide to Democratic senators Sam Nunn
and Lloyd Bentsen.
Update: What was I thinking? McIntyre clearly
referred to Nunn and Bentsen as Democratic senators. No need for
Cooper to have reinforced the point.
I think a Cabinet officer certainly has a loyalty to
a president, but has a greater loyalty to the country. And if
that Cabinet officer finds something that is factually amiss,
such as Secretary O'Neill did, in terms of the administration
aiming to get Saddam Hussein even before 9/11, I think there is a
responsibility to tell that to the country.
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The president personally made the decision to hold the Republican
National Convention in New York City, one adviser said. He talks
daily to Karl Rove, his chief political aide, about the ups and
downs of his Democratic competitors. He keeps a close eye on his
fund-raising totals, which now amount to more than $130 million.
But the prospect of unleashing the report in the
middle of the election season is creating anxiety inside the
White House. Some aides fear that the document will contain fresh
ammo for Democrats eager to prove Bush was inattentive to
terrorism warnings prior to 9/11. As a result, Bush officials
recently floated a surprise strategic switch: they might OK a
delay, but only if the report were put off until December,
thereby "taking it out of the election," said a commission
source. Late last week, though, the White House told the
commission it was sticking with its longstanding position of no
give on the May deadline.
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But we were very encouraged by the results, and plan to
try again. It's basically a pancake batter, but instead of using
baking powder you use yeast, and you have to give it time to
rise. We allowed too much time due to the dinner's schedule, and
so the texture of the batter wasn't what we expected, nor the
consistency of the cooked cakes. We also had too much heat under
the pan... The ones in the picture look fine, but most were far
darker. You top them with powdered sugar or a bit of syrup. And
we loved 'em, and will do it again.
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Mr. Bush visited an inner-city school in Knoxville
and became the center of attention in the kind of visit he seems
to enjoy: visiting with schoolchildren and their teachers.
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... neocons (con is short for "conservative" and neo
is short for "Jewish")
There have been hundreds of references, for example,
to Richard Perle's insidious power over administration policy,
but I've been told by senior administration officials that he has
had no significant meetings with Bush or Cheney since they
assumed office. If he's shaping their decisions, he must be
microwaving his ideas into their fillings.
The full-mooners fixated on a think tank called the
Project for the New American Century, which has a staff of five
and issues memos on foreign policy. To hear these people describe
it, PNAC is sort of a Yiddish Trilateral Commission, the nexus of
the sprawling neocon tentacles.
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Link 10:26 PM
Standing in the rain and ain't a drop fell on me
My clothes is all wet but my flesh is as dry as can be.
It can rain all day, I ain't got no place to go
Because it's cold outside in that ice and snow.
If it rains five days, that won't give me no blues
I've got my raincoat and hat, umbrella, boots and shoes.
Rain, rain rain don't rain on me all day
'Cos if I get too wet I've got to go into the house and stay.
Link 10:23 AM
Link 9:48 AM
Link 8:44 AM
2003
2004:
Link 7:21 PM
2003
2004:
Link 12:13 PM
Link 8:08 PM
Link 5:47 PM
Link 5:36 PM
