Two quick news items for your Memorial Day dinner discussions:
Iraqis Chafe at U.S. Block on Choice of President: Yep, the occupation will soon be over, and the Iraqi's will have complete control over their own government. That means they get to choose their own leaders. But only if they guess right. Free to choose, as long they choose the guy that Washington has in mind.
Cheney Office 'Coordinated' Halliburton Deal -Time: No surprise, of course, but a leaked memo puts no doubt to the question of whether or not the Vice President is still working on behalf of Halliburton.
You may go back to your grills now.
Monday, May 31, 2004
Sunday, May 30, 2004
Word is that John Kerry has called in Big Bill Clinton to hit the campaign trail for the last few months of the contest. Many in the Kerry camp were against the idea. Not for the same reasons Al Gore separated himself from Clinton (Monica, Whitewater) but for the same reason that others in the Kerry camp want Clinton: He has a personality.
Which brings us to something I've been feeling for months now, and have just got to say. The presidential campaign that John Kerry most seems to be most emulating is that of Bob Dole in 1996.
So, will the addition of Big Bill prop the candidate up, or overshadow him completely?
The danger, they say, is in appealing only to the yellow-dog Democrats who will vote for Kerry whether or not he has a pulse, and turning off the swing voters. The thing to remember, in that case, is that it's the swing voters who helped Clinton defeat Bush Sr. and the afore-mentioned Senator Dole.
Will Willie's magic work again? I think it might. It sure as Hell can't hurt at this point.
Which brings us to something I've been feeling for months now, and have just got to say. The presidential campaign that John Kerry most seems to be most emulating is that of Bob Dole in 1996.
So, will the addition of Big Bill prop the candidate up, or overshadow him completely?
The danger, they say, is in appealing only to the yellow-dog Democrats who will vote for Kerry whether or not he has a pulse, and turning off the swing voters. The thing to remember, in that case, is that it's the swing voters who helped Clinton defeat Bush Sr. and the afore-mentioned Senator Dole.
Will Willie's magic work again? I think it might. It sure as Hell can't hurt at this point.
Wednesday, May 26, 2004
Sorry to be a little slow to post a reaction, but I'm still a bit under the effects of surgery. Anyway, did you happen to catch that presidential address the other night?
Somebody is getting desperate to have us believe he knows what he's doing, and I think it's the President. Unfortunately, the setting of the speech (the Army War College) didn't allow for any questions (not going to make that mistake again), but I have a few anyway:
1 - If major fighting supposedly ended a year ago, why has it taken until now to come up with a plan for a quick turnover?
2 - If we are hand-picking the new Iraqi government, keeping 138,000 troops in country, and their soldiers must do as our commanders say, how can we claim that the "occupation is over" on June 30?
3 - Are they (the Bush administration) so stupid, so off on their own planet, so out of touch with reality, that they really believe any of this will work?
I had others, but I took some pain pills and managed to forget them. I'll have to take some more pain pills to try to forget the speech.
Right now I'm more concerned with the big vote. Who will it be? And was the vote fixed? Some claim electronic voting eliminates fraud, others say it only makes it easier. I think this is far too important a choice to leave up to untested technology.
Of course, I'm talking about American Idol. Not that other meaningless election coming up in a few months. No, the important question is Fantasia or Diana... Who's our New American Idol?
Anyway. Yesterday I was back at the gastroenterologist, and I'm scheduled to have the ERCP next Tuesday. What the deal is is that they got the gall bladder out last Friday, but there's still a stone (or more) floating around the bile duct irritating my liver and causing all sorts of trouble.
The ERCP is an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography procedure (but you knew that); they stick a tube down my throat through the stomach and duodenum to the common bile duct opening, where it goes on a search and destroy mission to locate, photograph, and eliminate the rogue stone(s) before they hit the pancreas and cause real trouble. But I get to go home right after.
Somebody is getting desperate to have us believe he knows what he's doing, and I think it's the President. Unfortunately, the setting of the speech (the Army War College) didn't allow for any questions (not going to make that mistake again), but I have a few anyway:
1 - If major fighting supposedly ended a year ago, why has it taken until now to come up with a plan for a quick turnover?
2 - If we are hand-picking the new Iraqi government, keeping 138,000 troops in country, and their soldiers must do as our commanders say, how can we claim that the "occupation is over" on June 30?
3 - Are they (the Bush administration) so stupid, so off on their own planet, so out of touch with reality, that they really believe any of this will work?
I had others, but I took some pain pills and managed to forget them. I'll have to take some more pain pills to try to forget the speech.
Right now I'm more concerned with the big vote. Who will it be? And was the vote fixed? Some claim electronic voting eliminates fraud, others say it only makes it easier. I think this is far too important a choice to leave up to untested technology.
Of course, I'm talking about American Idol. Not that other meaningless election coming up in a few months. No, the important question is Fantasia or Diana... Who's our New American Idol?
Anyway. Yesterday I was back at the gastroenterologist, and I'm scheduled to have the ERCP next Tuesday. What the deal is is that they got the gall bladder out last Friday, but there's still a stone (or more) floating around the bile duct irritating my liver and causing all sorts of trouble.
The ERCP is an endoscopic retrograde cholangiopancreatography procedure (but you knew that); they stick a tube down my throat through the stomach and duodenum to the common bile duct opening, where it goes on a search and destroy mission to locate, photograph, and eliminate the rogue stone(s) before they hit the pancreas and cause real trouble. But I get to go home right after.
Monday, May 24, 2004
Well, I just had an interesting long weekend. Here's just the quick recap for the record, before I forget:
Thursday night I woke up at about 11:55 PM with severe abdominal pain. By 12:15 my vomiting had woken Leslie up, and she had the presence of mind to call the late night advice nurse from our doctor's office.
The advice she had was to take me to the emergency room immediately. Between 1:00 and 4:00 AM I had lots probes and tests, culminating with an ultrasound that identified several large gall stones, including one in the neck of the gall bladder, blocking the bile duct. Ouch.
Calls were made to find a surgeon associated with my medical group, and Friday morning at 10:00 AM, they removed my gall bladder. Which, they kept reminding me, is the third most popular surgery in America today. After awakening Friday afternoon, I wrote the following song:
They'll stone you when you're at the kitchen table
They'll stone you for having bacon with your bagel
They'll stone you for eating fatty foods
They'll stone you and you'll think that it is rude
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody gets gall stones...
Okay, it still needs a little work. But I was highly sedated at the time.
The sent me home Saturday evening, reluctantly. My enzyme levels are apparently still way off, so I'll be going back for more testing and an ERCP procedure over the next few days to a week or so.
Meanwhile, I lounge around the house like a geriatric rap star: I'm wearing sweats, but with the pants halfway down my butt, because I can't pull them up to the incision in my belly button.
Why I don't have my regular computer with my address book is another story - Let's just say my iBook went into the emergency room a couple of hours before I did.
Thursday night I woke up at about 11:55 PM with severe abdominal pain. By 12:15 my vomiting had woken Leslie up, and she had the presence of mind to call the late night advice nurse from our doctor's office.
The advice she had was to take me to the emergency room immediately. Between 1:00 and 4:00 AM I had lots probes and tests, culminating with an ultrasound that identified several large gall stones, including one in the neck of the gall bladder, blocking the bile duct. Ouch.
Calls were made to find a surgeon associated with my medical group, and Friday morning at 10:00 AM, they removed my gall bladder. Which, they kept reminding me, is the third most popular surgery in America today. After awakening Friday afternoon, I wrote the following song:
They'll stone you when you're at the kitchen table
They'll stone you for having bacon with your bagel
They'll stone you for eating fatty foods
They'll stone you and you'll think that it is rude
But I would not feel so all alone
Everybody gets gall stones...
Okay, it still needs a little work. But I was highly sedated at the time.
The sent me home Saturday evening, reluctantly. My enzyme levels are apparently still way off, so I'll be going back for more testing and an ERCP procedure over the next few days to a week or so.
Meanwhile, I lounge around the house like a geriatric rap star: I'm wearing sweats, but with the pants halfway down my butt, because I can't pull them up to the incision in my belly button.
Why I don't have my regular computer with my address book is another story - Let's just say my iBook went into the emergency room a couple of hours before I did.
Wednesday, May 19, 2004
The first of the US Military Police to be sentenced in the Iraqi abuse scandal just received a one-year prison term. This hardly seems enough, although he faced the least charges of the seven indicted. I'll wait to see what the others get before I call the whole thing a joke.
"But Ken," I hear some of you thinking, "they were just following orders!"
That's a familiar excuse. It's the same one used by the Nazi defense at the war crimes trials that followed the Second World War. The principals set forth at that time, and incorporated in international law, clearly stated that immoral or illegal orders should not be followed, and are no excuse or defense.
So, yes, even though I have a certain amount of sympathy for them and the position they were put in by their superiors, I still think these seven need to serve their prison terms. But that's not enough. It's barely a start.
New reports in Newsweek and elsewhere document that top administration officials knew exactly what they were doing when they argued that the Geneva Conventions do no apply in this war.
It's not enough for these seven to go to jail. It's not enough for Rumsfeld to resign. It's not enough for Bush to be defeated in November. There needs to be real war crimes trials before an international court, and the real price needs to be paid. And we need to enter it as a nation willingly and without reserve.
It's the only way to regain our position in the world. Without it, we have no credibility at all - and we have damn little of it now as it is.
"But Ken," I hear some of you thinking, "they were just following orders!"
That's a familiar excuse. It's the same one used by the Nazi defense at the war crimes trials that followed the Second World War. The principals set forth at that time, and incorporated in international law, clearly stated that immoral or illegal orders should not be followed, and are no excuse or defense.
So, yes, even though I have a certain amount of sympathy for them and the position they were put in by their superiors, I still think these seven need to serve their prison terms. But that's not enough. It's barely a start.
New reports in Newsweek and elsewhere document that top administration officials knew exactly what they were doing when they argued that the Geneva Conventions do no apply in this war.
It's not enough for these seven to go to jail. It's not enough for Rumsfeld to resign. It's not enough for Bush to be defeated in November. There needs to be real war crimes trials before an international court, and the real price needs to be paid. And we need to enter it as a nation willingly and without reserve.
It's the only way to regain our position in the world. Without it, we have no credibility at all - and we have damn little of it now as it is.
Monday, May 17, 2004
Civil Rights Landmarks Today: It's the 50th anniversary of the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education, which desegregated American schools, and the first fully-legal same-sex marriages are being held in Massachusetts.
Today's breakthroughs are likely to lead to legal challenges which may still end up before the Supreme Court. So, where was current Chief Justice Billy Rehnquist fifty years ago, when history was being made? He was a young law clerk writing a memo to his boss that said, “Plessy vs. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.”
You see, there are reasons why I'm not as optimistic about today's news as I should be.
Today's breakthroughs are likely to lead to legal challenges which may still end up before the Supreme Court. So, where was current Chief Justice Billy Rehnquist fifty years ago, when history was being made? He was a young law clerk writing a memo to his boss that said, “Plessy vs. Ferguson was right and should be reaffirmed.”
You see, there are reasons why I'm not as optimistic about today's news as I should be.
Sunday, May 16, 2004
Well, the book signing was pretty much of a bust; with three authors there we sold only a couple of books each. But, for those of you in the East Bay, I did leave six copies of Aaron's Intifada on consignment. The store is "A World of Books" at 137 Pelton Center Way in San Leandro. The rest of you can always order online, you know.
It was an interesting afternoon anyway, with some amusing characters stopping by to chat, and getting to know the author who organized the event, Jack Schroder, a bit better... maybe too much better...
Jack on the molestation of children by Catholic priests: "A survey shows that only 4% of priests are pedophiles. That's far lower than in the general population, so what's the big problem?" Questioned about how prevalent he thinks pedophilia is in society, Jack says, "about 80%," and points to a teenager in the immediate vicinity: "Take that girl there. You know she's being f***ed by an uncle or a brother..."
Later, pointing to another teenage girl who happens to be dressed provocatively: "Look at that. But if I tweaked her bottom, you know she'd be calling the cops in a second."
Jack, after selling one of his "children's books" to a very nice woman: "I just hope she doesn't flip out if her daughter starts asking questions about the prostitute." A prostitute in a "children's" book? "It's alright; she gets what she deserves in the end for her immorality."
Jack on immoral characters in general, in response to a question about one of his books that takes place in an AIDS hospice: "Four of the five men die for their immoral acts, but I let the one with a pure heart live."
Jack on his wife: "She thinks I'm a sociopath." Me to Jack: "She might be right."
It was an interesting afternoon anyway, with some amusing characters stopping by to chat, and getting to know the author who organized the event, Jack Schroder, a bit better... maybe too much better...
Jack on the molestation of children by Catholic priests: "A survey shows that only 4% of priests are pedophiles. That's far lower than in the general population, so what's the big problem?" Questioned about how prevalent he thinks pedophilia is in society, Jack says, "about 80%," and points to a teenager in the immediate vicinity: "Take that girl there. You know she's being f***ed by an uncle or a brother..."
Later, pointing to another teenage girl who happens to be dressed provocatively: "Look at that. But if I tweaked her bottom, you know she'd be calling the cops in a second."
Jack, after selling one of his "children's books" to a very nice woman: "I just hope she doesn't flip out if her daughter starts asking questions about the prostitute." A prostitute in a "children's" book? "It's alright; she gets what she deserves in the end for her immorality."
Jack on immoral characters in general, in response to a question about one of his books that takes place in an AIDS hospice: "Four of the five men die for their immoral acts, but I let the one with a pure heart live."
Jack on his wife: "She thinks I'm a sociopath." Me to Jack: "She might be right."
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