"Since the attack of 9-11, we've won two wars, liberated millions of people from monstrous regimes, presided over one election in Afghanistan and are about to see elections in Iraq and among the Palestinian people. Focusing like a laser beam on the big picture, liberals are upset that, during this period, the secretary of defense used an autopen." Ann Coulter, http://www.anncoulter.org/default.htm, December 22, 2004.

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You want Ann Ostrich on your side. She is loyal to a fault. If the Secretary of Defense were charged with murder AO would defend him at a friendly rate. Her first defense would be something about Gore, then Clinton, or maybe Clinton then Gore. In this case, the charge was not murder but mere insensitivity. You see when you die in a war, your family gets a form letter signed by the Secretary. Up until recently, the Secretary was using a machine to sign his name for him. Having been criticized, he will now sign the letters personally. That should have been the end of it, but not for AO.

AO thinks it was OK for the Secretary to use the machine in lieu of signing his name. I don't know why. How long could it take to sign such letters. Who would advise him not to sign such letters personally. There must be some letters that he signs personally, why not these?

Buckley and Illegal Immigrants

Conservative Nation has always wanted to do something dramatic about illegal aliens. Frankly, they don’t much like legal immigrants, either. With 9/11, they had their best argument; the terrorists were aliens, most of them having gotten into the country legally and then getting lost in the shuffle. So, Buckley has written about the issue again (http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=128&ncid=742&e=9&u=/ucwb/20041215/cm_ucwb/illegalizingillegals). He cites a Time Magazine article for the proposition that 2,000,000 illegal aliens are walking around the nation as we speak, so to speak.

Well, if that figure is true, then I’m not sure that it does not support the argument that the fear about illegal aliens is overblown, since only a tiny percentage of those people cause any problems at all in the nation, much less a terrorist attack. Of course, it takes only one person to cause lots of death and destruction, thanks to modern technology, especially if the person is a fanatic who does not mind dying in the process. Worse, it does not even take an alien, illegal or otherwise, to do the damage.

Maybe that is why most of the Congress and the President, who didn’t seem to interested in the new security law in the first place, did not want to hang the law up on issues such as issuing driver licenses to illegal aliens. In other words, it probably doesn’t matter much to the security of the nation whether we issue them or not. More important are issues such as intercepting messages, tracking down leads, etc. and generally being alert to head off attacks.

In a country in which we seem deficient in literally speaking the language of our enemies, not to mention understanding their cultures, you would think we would like to encourage immigration, from which we might find those willing to work for our side.

Ann Ostrich Comes Out of Her Hole

Ann Ostrich has emerged from her hole to write a very important column. She has used her considerable talents to point out the failures of a Democratic campaign manager and a couple of lawyers. Thank God for Ann. Of course, she could have added several Bush administration officials, whose failures have cost the nation thousands of casualties. The Bush Administration has chosen to give medals to three of them. But, why would Ann Ostrich want to criticize her lunch ticket?

Of course, the biggest failure of the year has been Ann Ostrich herself. It is time to go back into the hole, Ann.

To Force Them To Disclose or To Let Them Not Disclose, That Is the Question.

If you have ever been in a court, except for Judge Ito’s court, you understand that trial judges do not like to be messed with. Federal judges, who have life tenure, really don’t like to be messed with.

And, so we have seen several decisions recently holding reporters in contempt for not divulging the names of their sources for various stories. In short, they have decided not to name names. And so, we have a reporter under extended house arrest (he would have gone to jail, said the judge, except that the reporter had received a heart transplant and jail time might have killed him – besides the source of his story came forward on his own anyway), and two other reporters threatened with jail time for doing what good reporters do and that is to get information to the public.

I know nothing of the politics of the judges at hand, but I would imagine they are members of Conservative Nation. Conservative Nation believes in “law and order,” or to put it more accurately, in the power of the government to control information. It is the government that decides who gets into trouble for leaking information. It is the government that often anonymously leaks information when it suits its purposes. Only Conservative Nation judges see the good in that scheme of things.

Liberal Nation likes to give a wide berth to reporters to protect sources in order to get information. Little stories like the government cover-up in Watergate, for example, made it to the newspaper that way. Of course, in that case I wish someone would make the Washington Post guys cough up the identity of Deep Throat. I am just dying to know who he or she was.

Now, I know that 31 states have some sort of shield law to protect reporters and that a national law has been proposed. Also, there are sticky little issues, such as who is a “journalist,” that need to be considered (frankly, we are all potential journalists, aren’t we?); however, something like the Supreme Court should really settle this issue by firming up a privilege for reporters not to disclose the names of their sources. While I am sure this court would not like to revisit the penumbra of rights that surround our Bill of Rights, without the Supreme Court, those rights have few power brokers working in government on their behalf. There is no better place than the Supreme Court to make clear that the free flow of information, unfettered by the threatened use of government power, is essential to a free society.

New York Times, December 10, 2004
Cellphones Aloft: The Inevitable Is Closer By KEN BELSON and MICHELINE MAYNARD

"The day may finally be coming when you will be allowed to make calls on your own cellphone from an airliner. Trouble is, so will the passengers sitting on either side of you, and in front and in back of you, as well.
Federal regulators plan next week to begin considering rules that would end the official ban on cellphone use on commercial flights. Technical challenges and safety questions remain. But if the ban is lifted, one of the last cocoons of relative social silence would disappear, forcing strangers to work out the rough etiquette of involuntary eavesdropping in a confined space. "

That's pretty good because I can't get my damn cell phone to work on the ground.

Colgate Plans to Reduce Workforce by 4,400 Jobs
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Published: December 7, 2004
Filed at 7:26 p.m. ET
“NEW YORK (AP) -- Colgate-Palmolive Co., the consumer products giant behind brands like Ajax detergent and Irish Spring soap, plans to cut its worldwide work force by about 12 percent, or about 4,400 jobs, and close one-third of its factories as part of a four-year plan aimed at boosting its sales and profits. Its stock climbed nearly 8 percent.”
________________________________________________

View Financials
More from ReutersSignificant Developments - Highlights - Performance - Ratio Comparison

OFFICERS

Pay
Exercised
Reuben Mark, 65Chairman, Chief Exec. Officer
$ 10.40M
$ 131.00M
William Shanahan, 63Pres
$ 5.63M
$ 1.12M
Lois Juliber, 55Co-Vice Chairman
$ 2.39M
$ 42.00K
Javier Teruel, 53Co-Vice Chairman
$ 2.42M
$ 10.00K
Stephen Patrick, 54Chief Financial Officer
N/A
N/A


Dollar amounts are as of 31-Dec-03 and compensation values are for the last fiscal year ending on that date. "Pay" is salary, bonuses, etc. "Exercised" is the value of options exercised during the fiscal year.

___________________________________________

In order words, the CEO received $32,136 for each worker to be laid off. That sounds about right. Each laid off worker will get a fucking tube of toothpaste.

Coulter over Rice

“In light of their reaction to the nomination of Condoleezza Rice (news - web sites) as secretary of state, I gather liberals have gotten over their enthusiasm for multiculturalist milestones. It's interesting that they dropped their celebrations of the "first woman!" "first black!" "first Asian!" designations at the precise moment that we are about to get our first black female secretary of state.” (Coulter, http://www.uexpress.com/anncoulter/, December 2, 2004, COPYRIGHT 2004 UNIVERSAL PRESS SYNDICATE).
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First, I heard Ann Ostrich say that liberals have a problem with blacks (her description) (see my entry for December 2, 2004) and now A.O. charges that liberals are not sufficiently celebrating the nomination of Dr. Rice for Secretary of State. Get the point? Liberals are not the friends of African Americans and women that everyone thought they were.

A.O. is smart, nimble, fearless (in print), and nasty. That’s the real difference between Liberal Nation and Conservative Nation; Liberal Nation tries to convince the country that it is tough enough to deal with terrorists and Conservative Nation tries to convince the country that it really has a sense of compassion. Since it’s mostly impossible to show any evidence of the latter, A.O. has decided to push the idea that Liberal Nation is not compassionate either.

She has perceived, perhaps correctly, that liberals are allowing themselves to be described as not having the stomach to do the tough stuff. That would have been impossible in the 1960s, when the liberals were not only risking their lives and toughing it out in court for civil rights, but were also marching us to war in Vietnam. According to A.O., she was only three then and, therefore, can not comment, according to her.

The truth is that Liberal Nation today is not going to go along with a nominee because of sex or skin color. They fought for that option thirty-five years ago, as well the option of having such people to consider. Back then, the only choices were white men. That is no longer the issue. A.O. knows nothing of the toughness that it took to achieve that, nothing.

What Liberal Nation lacks is a clear voice to state its case. Until one comes along, punks, I mean pundits, like A.O. will continue unabated.

The NYC Education Issue

Note the following email exchange regarding Columbia University’s Professor Raymond Horton's letter to the New York Times regarding NYC education:

To the Editor:
Re "City Schools Need $5.6 Billion More, Court Panel Says" (front page, Dec. 1):
Now that a court-appointed panel has decided that annual public school spending in New York City needs to increase by $5.6 billion, in increments of $1.4 billion in each of the next four years, the city and the state are fighting over who should pick up what share of the tab.
These are big numbers, but it's worth remembering that the combined operating budgets of the city and the state are approximately $150 billion this year.
The mayor and the governor should be able to figure out how to trim nonessential spending by $1.4 billion in each of the next four years without raising additional revenues, cutting essential services or sticking the next generation with the bill by borrowing.
The more difficult issue is deciding how to spend the money in ways that better educate our public schoolchildren.
Raymond D. HortonNew York, Dec. 1, 2004The writer is a professor of business at Columbia Business School.

_____________________

I wrote to the Professor:

>Dear Professor:
>
>Your letter was right on target. I would have also focused on the
>point that the $5.6 billion represents only about $5,600 a year per
>student (if I can still divide properly). That figure should probably
>be increased by a couple of thousand dollars to create a school system
>that the city can really be proud of. What does it cost Columbia a
>year per student to provide a first class education?
>
>Bruce Neuman
>East Hampton, New York
>(former New Yorker, city that is)

_____________________

Answer from Professor Horton:


A lot more than it costs us to ill educate our public schoolchildren. Bye.

Ray Horton

_____________________

Reply from me:

Dear Professor,

I'm not sure what your answer means, but as long as you have your health.

Bye. Bye.

Neuman

Court Ordered Education in New York City

A court has decided that New York City has underfunded its schools by about $5.6 billion a year, which is not a lot of money when you consider the budgets of New York City and New York State, and when you consider that the figure represents about $5,600 per student. Shame on New York for leaving this to the courts.

The Mayor and Governor have been busy with other things, the Mayor with the Olympics and a new football stadium, and the Governor with whatever it is the Governor does. New York City is a tough place to govern; however, the priorities should be easy to set, and education is number one on the list. If any Mayor or Governor, or combination thereof, restored the New York City public schools to their heyday, now about 60 or 70 years ago, they would enshrined in the hearts and minds of all New Yorkers. Stadiums only last 25 or 30 years these days, and I doubt anyone can recite where the past three or four Summer Olympics were held.

Players like Bonds and Giambi Were Apparent Cheats and Baseball is Corrupt

The Commissioner of Baseball should resign. Under his watch, major league baseball has been guilty of the greatest scandal since the White Sox gambling scandal of 1919. Baseball ignored gambling then; it has ignored drugs now.

No fan should kid himself or herself. Players who relied upon drugs to enhance their performance should not be given a pass and neither should professional baseball.

If Barry Bonds breaks Hank Aaron’s homerun record, it should not stand, nor should his single season homerun record. Jason Giambi’s most valuable player award should be revoked. They cheated. Other players who took drugs should admit so and admit that they cheated. If they hold any records, those records should be expunged. Baseball should acknowledge the scandal and clean it up.

Why is it so important? It isn’t, unless baseball wants to be above reproach. You can’t talk about a hall of fame when your standards are so very low. What person of quality would want to be included in that list? Who would want to visit such a place? That is the situation professional baseball has created for itself.

Steroids and Home Runs

The only thing I have learned from the baseball scandal regarding steroids is that steroids help you hit home runs. No one is claiming that steroids help you hit more singles, doubles or triples. Now, why is that? After all, some track stars take steroids and run faster. So, why aren’t base stealers? Or are they?

On Leave to Write a Book

I have noticed that NY Times Op-Ed personalities get leave to write books. Why is that? Are they professors? I don’t get leave to do very much of anything. No, I am not a professor.

Who are these people to ask for a paycheck and then ask for time off to write a book? If they want to write a book, they should quit their jobs and write books. Write the book without the safety-net of a job after writing the book.

Sleeping With the Teacher

When did it happen? When did it become a bad thing for a young male to sleep with his teacher? That’s pretty much all I thought about until I stopped going to school, some 150 years ago. It didn’t matter what they looked like, although my Spanish teacher and guidance counselor in high school each looked pretty good in a tight skirt, especially the Spanish teacher. Why did they wear tight skirts and sweaters from November through April, anyway? Had either one of them given me a tumble, I have to admit that the devil would have gotten the better of me.

Now, I am not so depraved that I think that a teacher should have sex with her fourteen year old male student, despite that being the most fervent desire of the student. Rather I think the Spanish teacher should teach Spanish. Now, wouldn’t you be disappointed if I stopped right there?

The thing is that young males dream at least part of the day (up to 23 hours of the day) about sleeping with their teacher (I assume the same can be said about gay males, although I haven’t taken a poll). After all, many teachers are part of a union or tenured (what is that anyway?) or better yet work for a private school, and are in complete charge of Delaney cards (do they still use those?). To satisfy the teacher in bed or in the gym on a wrestling mat (my idea during most of tenth grade Spanish) just seems like it would be more satisfying than getting a B+ on a history paper (I wouldn’t know about A’s).

To be honest, I still dream about that. I wonder where my Spanish teacher is today.

From Spread the Word to Enforce the Word

The ayatollah Falwell was at it again last night on Hardball (that’s a cable TV show for those of you too smart to actually watch cable TV shows), preaching about the immoral choice that gays make in, well, being gay. Chris Matthews asked him when he might have made the choice to be a heterosexual, which I guess he professes to be. Ayatollah Falwell said that he started dating when he was 13 or so.

Ayatollah Falwell must be getting a little less nimble with age. In better days, he would probably have launched into a statement about gay sexual behavior being immoral because the bible says it’s so, so he wouldn't be caught looking completely ridiculous in trying the say that people actually decide to be gay or straight. Instead, he would have gone off on the idea that people need to behave morally despite the nature within them to behave other than the way the bible tells them to behave. So, being gay would be a matter of immoral behavior, a fight between the good and evil within us. That would have been the good old ayatollah Falwell. Instead, he now thinks you sort of choose being a heterosexual somewhere around your Bar Mitzvah or Bat Mitzvah, as the case may be.

A. Falwell makes for a great guest because he isn’t afraid to spread the word. You don’t have to coax him or trick him with Hardball questions being fired by machine gun Matthews. The ayatollah can’t wait to tell you, and that makes for great Hardball TV, if that’s possible.

Now, I like a good preacher as much as anyone. Fire and brimstone is a hell of a lot more entertaining than, say, Desperate Housewives. It’s when they actually expect us to enforce their rantings and ravings with the the law that they cross the barrier at the intersection of church and state. That’s when you have to start to pay attention. Spread it all you want, but don’t try to enforce it with armed police. Rely on the almighty instead.

Just for the record, I might well have checked off the homosexual box had it come with a being a bit taller. I have always wanted to be taller, but I just can’t remember wanting to be straight, not that there is anything wrong with that.

Coulter : a knife, sharp disc, or other cutting tool that is attached to the beam of a plow to cut the sward in advance of the plowshare and moldboard (Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged. Merriam-Webster, 2002. http://unabridged.merriam-webster.com (30 Nov. 2004).

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I know I said I wouldn’t watch Ann on TV anymore, but I didn’t say I wouldn’t read her column. I like reading her column because I am always amazed that a person with her intelligence and accomplishment can act like such a jackass, which she does with élan.

Ann Ostrich (I am trying out various nicknames – I like ostrich, because I think of an ostrich when I look at Ann), who refers to President Clinton as a buffoon, thinks the Republicans still haven’t got it. She thinks Republicans suffer from some sort of inferiority complex that prevents them from making the most of their dominance in elections over the past quarter century. I think Republicans just don’t know how to govern very well. They know better than Ann Ostrich what they know how to do.

Republicans get elected and then push as hard as they can and pray to God that the Democrats will stop them before they screw things up. For example, most Americans believe in the right to privacy and the right of a woman to choose whether to have an abortion. The last thing the Republicans want to do is to get on the wrong side of that issue; but, they also need to pacify Conservative Nation, so they talk the talk about the right to life and hope that the other side will stop them before they actually select a judge who agrees with them. Ever ask why the President isn’t pushing for that right to life amendment to the Constitution? He is stupid, but not stupid, you know what I mean?

That, Ann Ostrich, is why the Republicans act as though they didn’t win anything. Unless they are the perennial underdog, they probably wouldn’t win anything. They may be the party of ideas; they are just not the party of good ideas.