Category: News

Those of you who didn’t start watching the debates at 6:30 on CSPAN missed their interview with the University of Miami president and her remarks from the lowered microphone that she’d arranged classes, other acadaemic stuff, and a voter registration drive to get students more involved in the carnival that took place at University of Miami yesterday.

Donna “I Am Not Bowzer” Shalala.

Former Secretary of Health and Human services under William J. Clinton.

Former head of University of Wisconsin (Mad).

Organizing voter registration drives.

Thanks, Shalalala.

Thomas Eagleton opines in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a piece entitled IRAQ: One word says it all: disaster:

We do not need to recount yet again the history of the war in Iraq. It will go down as one of the most ill-conceived military undertakings in our history.

It doesn’t really get better from there. Instead, the former senator and even more former vice presidential candidate to George McGovern (for crying out loud) pontificates on how history will judge Iraq because Eagleton’s got the long range vision. Which he demonstrates by savaging George W. Bush politically and talking about the short term impact of the war.

Beg your pardon, Senator, but I disagree. I see differences between this war and the telewars of this century held up for cheap political points by forgotten (and hopefully, soon-to-be-forgotten) senators.

I expect that history will judge the Iraq war much like it judges the Spanish-American War, The Mexican-American War of 1848, the Mexican incursions in 1910, or more recently the invasion of Panama; a small war remembered by a few historians and unfortunately not many citizens. Or history will judge the Iraq war like the reckless Iwo Jima incursion: a small battle with its own costs in service of a greater war. But history will not, no matter how hard some self-appointed men of history try, judge Iraq as a carbon-copy of Viet Nam.

From Richard Roeper’s column in today’s Chicago Sun-Times, entitled Young, untalented celebs coming out of woodwork:

They’re young and they’re cute, and they’re amazingly unaware of the outside world. They spend their days shopping and lunching and sunbathing topless, and they spend their nights at clubs and private parties. They’re always, always talking on their cell phones. And they wear red-string Kabbalah bracelets, because, like, it shows how, like, spiritual they are.

There’s Lindsay Lohan, who just a few short years ago was starring in “The Parent Trap.” Now Lohan’s a freshly minted 18, and she’s busy clubbing, chain-smoking, feuding with Hilary Duff, hooking up with her boyfriend — Wilmer Valderrama, the 24-year-old fifth banana on “That 70s Show” — and denying rumors that her breasts have been surgically enhanced. It’s a wonder the girl has time to make movies!

There’s Christina Aguilera, a pretty good singer who often looks like she’s posing for Skank Monthly. Aguilera, who’s been pierced more frequently than a porn star at a biker rally, now says she’s going minimalist — keeping just one special piercing.

There’s the little Hilton knockoff sister, Nicky, 20, who married her 33-year-old boyfriend in Vegas. Big sister Paris and fellow party girl Bijou Phillips were in attendance at the classy affair.

There’s Nicole Richie, she of the pierced nippled ring that triggers metal detectors everywhere.

Why, there’s even Barbara and Jenna Bush — fine and decent young women, to be sure, but also way more into the party scene than, say, Chelsea Clinton.

There’s Jessica Simpson, with her giant blond head and her giant bronze chest and her giant capacity for playing the ditz.

There’s the rapidly aging Tara Reid, who looks like the third runner-up in the 1997 Miss Hawaiian Tropic Pageant.

There’s Ally Hilfiger and Jaime Gleicher, the spoiled-brat princesses featured on MTV’s “Rich Girls.”

There’s Mischa Barton. Seems like only yesterday she was the little ghost girl under the bed in “The Sixth Sense.” Now she’s all about string bikinis and the oil heir boyfriend and Fashion Week.

I call foul. Speaking of evil, there’s Ed Gein, Jeffrey Dahmer, Pol Pot, Richard Roeper, Adolf Hitler, Ghengis Khan….

I hereby deem Roeper a Juxtaposeur.

Funny, he fails to mention any Kerry children who are prone to showing up at film premieres with see-through dresses and whatnot. I guess they slipped Roeper’s one track mind, or maybe he doesn’t want to blow his chances with them the next time he sees all of them at a film premiere.

Regarding the new, more-counterfeit looking fifty dollar bill, MSNBC reports:

The new $50s soon will be showing up at banks, cash registers and wallets.

I’m watching my wallet carefully, awaiting that spontaneous fiftication.

On the other hand, I’m slightly disturbed the government can just beam them right in, but on the other hand, it’s fifty bucks (as long as you can convince the cashier it’s fifty bucks).

On still another hand, I’m going to use this excuse the next time a scrip of paper that says Brian, Call Me Back, Love Your Bod, Candi falls from my wallet, I’m going to use the excuse that it just showed up at my wallet. Because That’s my business contact at xxxxx just won’t work when she mentions my bod.

I think I’m out of hands now.

In today’s Washington Post, E. J. Dionne writes a column entitled How To Win The Heartland. As a proponent and resident of the heartland, I was rather interested in hearing how a coastal intellectual would have his type of candidate play in drive around, but not out of unless it’s necessary country (which is how I characterize it, but I don’t care to fly).

But then I realized he’s talking about a senatorial candidate in Colorado. Colorado, home to Vail, Aspen, Boulder, and Denver. Sorry, Stephen, but I don’t consider Colorardo to be part of the heartland.

But that aside, let me distill Dionne’s wisdom in how a Democrat can win even in the “heartland” into the two most salient nuggets:

• Wear black jeans and cowboy boots, and remember to take your cowboy hat off indoors.
• Work to extend government benefits to people who aren’t currently accepting government benefits, like Republicans.

That just might work in a heart of rich people snow resortland.

Why do you see so many black Republicans these days? Dave Berkmann of the Shepherd Express sees right through us:

Why all the showcasing of blacks by the GOP? “The goal,” according to University of Chicago political science professor Melissa Harris-Lacewell, “is not to increase the [Republicans’] share of African-American votes, but to signal moderate voters that the party is not racist. … Individuals such as Alan Keyes, Colin Powell and [education secretary] Ron Paige have the effect of reassuring ‘soccer moms’ and ‘NASCAR dads’ that they can support the Republican Party without signaling they are racially biased.” In other words, another GOP scam.

Hey, he’s a former professor who taught the “science” of mass communications. Pardon me while I have someone with a better pedigree do my thinking for me.

Pack a large number of disparate people in an enclosed area, moving slowly, and what do you have? A tempting target:

Stepped-up screening procedures at Los Angeles International Airport that were designed to make flying safer have created another potential vulnerability: long lines that are a “tempting target for terrorists,” security experts said Friday.

The answer, obviously: Spend more money:

Rand Corp. researchers recommended in a 47-page report that airlines and federal officials spend $4 million a year to add skycaps, ticket agents and screeners to speed travelers through lines in terminal lobbies and on sidewalks and into the secure gate area — where they would be less vulnerable to attack.

Spend more money ($4 million a year to start), add more procedures, and then herd the people into a more “secure” enclosed space where they’ll still be a target.

Man, how can I get paid for bad ideas? I have a million of them! At $10 each, I would be rich!

Here’s his potshot from today’s column:

George W. Bush’s claim that our goal is to install democracy in Iraq is a recipe for quagmire. Iraq is a Frankenstein’s monster of sects cobbled together by the British, a non-nation that flies apart without a tyrant holding it together. America can’t be the new tyrant.

The United States is also a Frankenstein’s monster of sects, races, and lifestyles cobbled together which seems to hold together without a tyrant.

Which isn’t to say that certain leaders aren’t in favor of a tyranny of our betters in Washington.

Because Federal law enforcement is running out of things to do, our legislators are now going to make video voyeurism a Federal crime. Here’s a wonderful quote from Wisconsin representative James Senselessbrainer:

“With the development of smaller cameras and the instantaneous distribution capability of the Internet, the issue of video voyeurism is a huge privacy concern,” House Judiciary chairman F. James Sensenbrenner, R-Wisc., said after the vote on the second bill.

Also newly illegal on the Federal level: selling “counterfeit labels” attached to copyrighted material including DVDs, CDs or computer programs.

Keep this in mind the next time you gather pitchforks and torches and stakes to march on John Ashcroft’s castle or raise your voice into the harmonized kennel whine bemoaning how George W. Bush is crushing civil liberties and implementing a police state, remember who’s really giving the executive branch the powers it uses.

In testimony why he suspected Scott Peterson in Laci Peterson’s death, detective Craig Grogan unloads his litany of probable cause:

Grogan, the lead investigator on the case, told jurors Monday that there was a lot about Scott Peterson that made him suspicious. Peterson was the last person to see his wife alive, the first person to find her gone, he had an odd alibi and it looked as though the former fertilizer salesman had been making concrete anchors in his warehouse.

There you have it. If you’re married to a murdered housespouse and you work outside the home, obviously you kill him or her because you’re the last to see him or her and the first to notice him or her gone.

Definitely another argument against marriage and cohabitation, or perhaps against interpersonal relationships at all. Never see anyone! It’s the only way to be safe.

(Public service note: don’t blog hungry; lack of blood sugar makes on note something silly and leap to spurious assertions. It’s the only excuse I can think of.)

UPDATE: Noun/pronoun agreement now corrected, dear.

Ann Althouse reviews John Kerry’s appearance on The Late Show last night, and she knocks it:

Kerry cranked out a dismal performance on David Letterman’s show last night. He alternated between rerunning lines from his stump speech and plodding through scripted jokes. Unlike Nixon on “Laugh-In” and other candidates who’ve used pop culture shows successfully, Kerry did not use self-deprecating jokes. He attacked Bush and Cheney and used “Halliburton” as a punchline.

Compare and contrast Kerry and Bush’s campaign speeches. Bush cracked jokes at his own expense, Kerry, not so much.

When you’re wound tightly into defending your gravitas and authenticity and nuanced intelligence, you have to fear that any crack you put in that image with your self-deprecating humor will cause a complete collapse of the public’s understanding of your qualification to lead the country, which is your own sense of worth.

After putting a 3 inch nail into his finger, a Scottish man went to his state-run hospital’s ER — and waited 22 hours before leaving with the nail still in his finger.

Keep that in mind: when every American has health care provided by the government, those who accept that level of help will get care on par with the level of service doled out by the tenured functionaries that serve in departments of social services throughout the country. Meanwhile, those who can afford it, and that will include everyone who makes the mandates, will go to private caretakers. Unless they ban private practice, mandaters exempted, of course.

Not so with someone to politicize the dead–especially her son:

Seth, 24, was in debt after he graduated from Rutgers University in 2002. He joined the army for money and skills that, he was told, would help land him a job with the CIA or FBI — his dream jobs. “Not for patriotism,” said his mother, Sue Niederer, who is now an anti-war activist.

Congratulations, mudder, you have just called your son a calculating mercenary who went into the military only for money and job experience.

Sheesh, I hope my mother doesn’t affront me when eulogizing me. But she’s a Marine, so (aside from that) she’s got some sense.

Headline: U.S. Weapons Inspector: Iraq Had No WMD.

Lead paragraph:

Fallen Iraqi President Saddam Hussein did not have stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but left signs that he had idle programs he someday hoped to revive, the top U.S. weapons inspector in Iraq concludes in a draft report due out soon.

Considering that actual shells with chemical weapons have been found, that logically refutes the “no,” but I suspect logic remains outside the grasp of some AP reporters.