Month: October 2003

Like her boss, “Mad” Albright is campaigning against attacking Bush for his foreign policy. Because I give her point of view these days the same credibility I would give an Internet Troll, I am going to give her remarks the corrective treatment favored by Frank J. and my beautiful wife by rewriting “cleaning up” her remarks:

US President George W. Bush’s foreign policy “is what we should have been doing in the Clinton adminstration all along.”

“America is much stronger than a multilateral system, they better be on the our side, work with us. Or else it’s America versus the others.”

She said that UN chief Kofi Annan, who has come out against a US draft resolution on Iraq currently before the UN Security Council, was the “best secretary general since the creation, for what that’s worth” of the world body.

All right, that’s getting dull. What could she have said to characterize herself and her peers properly?

“It’s not difficult to be in France and criticise my government. But I’m doing so because I think I am a Dixie Chick because in the Clinton administration, we had the depth and breadth of pop stars.”

On Iraq, Albright said “I fear that there really is chaos there. We don’t know what’s going to happen. One or two Americans a day are killed. We should have sent our soldiers on costly-but-safe excursions that outlasted their exit date by a decade or more, like Bosnia.”

Even if ridding Iraq of its “terrible” leader had its merits, Albright added: “I don’t understand why the war happened now. I would have liked to see us concentrate on Afghanistan because this Karzai guy is a mad tyrant and needs to be overthrown.”

I have to do these things, you understand, to keep this vein in my forehead to keep from throbbing painfully.

Ron Simpson does:

“That is not a real gun,” Simpson told the robber. “This is a real gun,” he said, pulling a .25-caliber derringer from his front-right jeans pocket.

(Link seen on TheHighAndAlmightyPundit.)

Yesterday’s Opinion Journal feature story claimed that Democrats were in trouble because the economy was turning around, which means their operatives wouldn’t have the spoon with which to stir economic discontent in time for next year’s elections.

Man, it must put a burden on Democrats and their backers. Whatever could they do to make the economy look bad?

Knight Ridder headline: Killing of 3 in Gaza makes U.S. a target.

Those of us who think linearly, and try to express reality with words, might have phrased it Palestinian Irregulars Target U.S. Civilians, Kill 3 in Gaza, but that implies this act passes for Palestinian military action and that these Palestinians purposefully decided beforehand to attack and kill 3 U.S. civilians, the official storytellers want to describe a different narrative.

In spite of a liberal arts education, I avoid passive voice and write clearly, so I am not qualified to work at Knight Ridder.

In his Chicago Tribune column today (registration required), Steven Chapman identifies inconsistencies on a woman’s right to choose what’s right for her body and her life.

As Planned Parenthood Federation of America president Gloria Feldt puts it, “We stand for the principle that women–in consultation with their families and their physicians–should make their own reproductive and health decisions. Not politicians and not the government.”

But this week, they changed their minds.

Not about abortion. On that intimate issue of women’s physical autonomy, they still believe the government should get out and stay out. But when it comes to breast implants, they think women can’t be trusted to decide for themselves. On the former question, they sound like hard-core libertarians. On the latter, they are models of intrusive paternalism.

You get to free will, Citizen, whenever your betters tell you to choose.

Certainly you’ve heard the story about the jubilant Missouri football fan who rushed onto Faurot Field after the Missouri Tigers beat the Nebraska Cornhuskers last Saturday, wherein a Nebraska Cornhusker football player rung his bell. If you haven’t, go read the story and watch the video. I’ll wait right here for you.

Okay. So read what the police chief has to say. To sum up, via cut and paste:

COLUMBIA, Mo. — The man punched by a Nebraska football player after the game at Faurot Field last Saturday could face a first-degree trespassing charge, the University of Missouri-Columbia police chief said.

“That is part of the investigation,” Chief Jack Watring said Wednesday.

Fans were told by the public-address announcer to not go onto the field after the game.

Watring said the man who was hit, Matthew Scott of Lee’s Summit, Mo., has been told by investigators that he could be charged himself if he presses action against Nebraska place-kick holder Kellen Huston.

Sorry to make you work for a living, Chief. The investigation, huh? You mean popping the video into your videocassette player and enjoying a nice mocha while a loop shows Scott getting punched by a football player, a professional athlete for all intents and purposes.

If the victim decides maybe a one-game suspension and a forced apology is not enough and he wants just recourse through the legal system, you shall punish the victim for bothering you.

Does anyone else here suspect that the following tidbit, buried in the bottom of the story, might be germane to Watring’s threat?

Scott is not a student at the university, Watring said.

Mark Steyn, in the Chicago Sun-Times, says:

At Thursday’s Democratic Presidential debate, Jeff Greenfield asked the candidates why it was that only 34 percent of Americans identified themselves as Democrats — the lowest number since before the New Deal. ”You’re looking at the glass as half-empty, I look at it as half-full,” said former House Minority Leader Dick Gephardt, demonstrating the command of basic math that has made the federal budget what it is. The Democratic glass isn’t half-empty, it’s two-thirds empty.

Kinda proves Stingl’s Theorem, wot?