A Couple More Videos

A few more videos I watched today:

• Incredible Light Saber Battle
• Will Ferrel - President Bush & Global Warming
• Amazing Guitar Player If I could have ever played like this, I might not be doing what I am doing today. I was never a big Malmsteen fan, but he sure had technique.
• It's for You Another slightly risqué video.
• Bush bloopers Just a few, we don't have time for all of them.
  

Enjoy.

Video Bomb - Sexual Harassment and You

This video is a bit risqué, but funny and has Tom Brady.

Democracy - Internet TV Platform

No idea if this is really any good, but I just came across the Democracy - Internet TV Platform application. This is an open source, XUL (meaning it's built on the same foundation as the Firebox browser; no idea why it's not just an extension to Firefox) application to organize and view online videos. Basically, it seems to read RSS feeds from video podcast sites and allows easy access to the content. I added Michelle Malkin's Hot Air to the list quite easily. It can automatically download new video content to your computer. There's not a lot of good stuff in their channel guide that I saw (OK, the French Maids are funny), but as video podcasting gets more popular, it could be a useful application.

Reason: Peak Oil Panic

Ronald Bailey has a long piece on the fears that oil production is about to peak.

The Party of Limited Government

In the latest demonstration of the Republican Party's commitment to being the party of limited government, a bill in the South Carolina legislature

would make it a felony to sell devices used primarily for sexual stimulation and allow law enforcement to seize sex toys from raided businesses.

Regulating the sale of sex toys is an example of small, limited government. Hmmm....

Two TV Shows To Check Out

Let me recommend two TV shows that you may not have heard of or seen.

The first is actually two related series: Yes, Minister and Yes, Prime Minister. These are British comedies from the 1980's that provided very sharp political satire. The main character, Jim Hacker, is a minister in the British cabinet in the first series, and then Prime Minister in the second. Oscar nominee Nigel Hawthorne is his principal private secretary, i.e. primary civil servant aide, and main foil. A very funny show that you might be able to find on PBS, if they aren't running that totally unfunny Are You Being Served that for some reason clutters the airwaves on PBS everywhere I go. And the satire is so good I often think of events in the show when I watch real politics, and Andrew Sullivan has more than once recently quoted passages in relation to real events. Maggie Thatcher was apparently a big fan, so much so that she wrote a sketch, with her prinicpal private secretary, and participated in the performance of it when the show won some award in Britain.

The second show is Babylon 5, an American sci-fi show from the 90's. This was a show that was ahead of its time and was probably too ambitious. Unlike most shows, then and now, which go from episode to episode with little to connect it, the show was conceived as a 5 year story arc from the beginning. This is more in line with modern shows like 24 or Lost, but was well before those shows. The cast did not feature many big-names actors, though one, Mira Furlan, is now on Lost. But the acting was pretty good. In particular, Peter Jurasik and the late Andreas Katsulas (the one armed man from The Fugitive) were spectacular, especially as their characters--Londo and G'Kar--were developed. The story was a pretty strong one, with an obvious influence from Lord of the Rings, but the show ends up going in a very different direction.

The best part of the show was the writing. Nearly all the characters are well developed, rare for a TV show or movie. They all evolve over the course of the show. As one character says very early in the first season, no one is who they appear. Londo goes from being a joke to helping unleash the great terror on the galaxy, to paying for his mistakes for the rest of his life. G'Kar goes from being a hot-head, almost a terrorist, to being a religious and moral leader of his people. And so on. Watching the show again, knowing what's coming, one gains an ever greater appreciation of the little touches that no one noticed the first time, but which later are recognized to have significance.

Why do I say it was ahead of its time? As I noted above, the show came out before the idea of having a single story arc be the core of the show for a very extended period of time had become fashionable, at least outside of soaps. That makes the show a trailblazer, but it was not well-suited for that. The structure of the series was such that it had to grab its audience pretty much in the first season, maybe the second, and then hold them for the rest of the show. If you came in in seasons 3 or later, you would be totally confused because you've missed half the story. Nowadays, that's not a problem because a similar show would release all the episodes on DVD or the internet as soon as each season was complete. So if you came in in season 3 and were sufficiently intrigued, a trip to Blockbuster would fill in all the gaps. But this was the mid-90's. DVD's hadn't come out yet. The closest the B5 world had was the Lurker's Guide website which, while it provided a lot of information, was hardly the same as watching the show.

What about too ambitious? Well, a five year story arc is pretty ambitious, even if the DVDs are coming out every summer. You have to keep your audience glued to the show for that long. And as the show goes on, each episode becomes more important so missing just one can cause a lot of confusion.

More importantly, B5 came out at the height of the Star Trek renaissance. Next Generation was still going strong and Deep Space 9 came out at the same time as Babylon 5, and shared some superficial similarities. While those shows had a major franchise behind them, Babylon 5 had nothing. Instead of being on a network, it was on PTen, the precursor to the WB network. (Not that the WB was ever a real network.) Without the backing of a big-time brand like Star Trek or a network, the show was constantly in danger of being canceled and no one was sure the full story could be told.

That point led to the most disappointing aspect to the show: season 5. It looked like the show would be canceled after the fourth season. So JMS, the show's creator, accelerated the story during season 4 so that the end of the season could provide a clean ending to the show. They even filmed the series finale. But at the last minute, season 5 was given a green light. But now the story was pretty much told so the last season, rather than being a climax to the show, ends up a very slow and extended epilogue. There are still some very good episodes, and Londo's story certainly remains strong, but overall a real disappointment. Not enough of one to overshadow the first four, but disappointing all the same.

Being a Warner-produced show, AOL provides the pilot and some season 1 episodes online for Windows users. You can also watch Scarecrow and Mrs. King episodes to see a pre-Sheridan Bruce Boxleitner, though I can't say I recommend it. Very much 80's camp.

Freedom of Speech, Unless It's Offensive to Someone

Eugene Volokh comments at length on a decision by the Ninth Circuit Court that appears to be a big hit to freedom of speech.

Harper's speech [expressing an anti-homosexual view on a T-shirt] is constitutionally unprotected, the Ninth Circuit just ruled today, in an opinion written by Judge Reinhardt and joined by Judge Thomas; Judge Kozinski dissented. According to the majority, "derogatory and injurious remarks directed at students' minority status such as race, religion, and sexual orientation" -- which essentially means expressions of viewpoints that are hostile to certain races, religions, and sexual orientations -- are simply unprotected by the First Amendment in K-12 schools. Such speech, Judge Reinhardt said, violates "the rights of other students" by constituting a "verbal assault[] that may destroy the self-esteem of our most vulnerable teenagers and interfere with their educational development."

One's agreement or disagreement with Harper's view doesn't really matter. The court says he is not free to express that view because it might hurt the self-esteem of someone else. Isn't the whole point of freedom of speech is that it applies particularly to speech that we don't like? If it only protected speech we like, why would we specifically need a right to it. No one will ever take away the right to say nice things. The Constitution specifically enumerates speech as a freedom to protect that which would be offensive.

This ruling, should it stand, would have a dramatic cascade affect on speech everywhere if the standard is that only speech that offends no one is free. In an age of the professionally offended, someone will always be offended by something. Young Mr. Harper was apparently offended by a pro-gay-rights event at his school, which prompted the T-shirt. I guess, then, that event should not have been protected. As Volokh points out, this ruling would ban things like displays of the Confederate battle flag, because those may be offensive to black Americans.

Again, agreeing or disagreeing with a viewpoint is not the point. I certainly do not agree with the KKK or some neo-Nazi movement. But that does mean the government should have the authority to clamp down on those groups and prevent them from expressing their views. As soon as we decide the government has that authority, where does it stop? What other views do we start squeezing out of the public arena because the powers that be find them offensive?

Volokh's summary:

This is a very bad ruling, I think. It's a dangerous retreat from our tradition that the First Amendment is viewpoint-neutral. It's an opening to a First Amendment limited by rights to be free from offensive viewpoints. It's a tool for suppression of one side of public debates (about same-sex marriage, about Islam, quite likely about illegal immigration, and more) while the other side remains constitutionally protected and even encouraged by the government.

robbbbbb writes

Harper was responding to a school-sponsored event. He disagreed with the viewpoint being expressed. So he expressed a contrary viewpoint. The government, in the person of his public school system principal, shuts down that viewpoint. There is only one viewpoint allowed, and it is the one the school system is preaching. Your viewpoint is wrong, kid, and we're going to make you think right. On an issue of some contention the school is only allowing one viewpoint, because the other side is "offensive."

Invert the political sides on this particular decision, if you will. A student comes to my wife's class wearing a t-shirt that says, "The Catholic Church is Wrong about Birth Control." My wife objects, and tells the student (based on Circuit Court precedent!) to get rid of the t-shirt or get out of her class. Is that an abuse of power by the teacher?

This is the kind of thing you get when you give the government the authority to control the views that people can express.

Frank Jude Rally in Milwaukee

I spent a few minutes at the Frank Jude rally this afternoon here in Milwaukee at the federal building. The rally was held to call for federal charges to be brought against the cops who were acquitted for Jude's beating.

It was a pretty good sized crowd. I would estimate a couple thousand, but that's hard to tell. The anarchists even got involved with a big sign right next to the speakers "Anarchists Against Police Brutality." Jude's mother was one of the speakers.

It was a peaceful rally, but there was definitely a disconcerting undercurrent to it. This is definitely a racial issue here in the city. Most of the crowd was black, as were all the speakers I saw. (Ironically, Jude himself is not, at least I don't think he is.) Someone from the Nation of Islam must have there to speak because I saw a young who at least looked the part of a NoI bodyguard. There were people holding signs proclaiming "No Justice, No Peace" and that there is no justice for blacks in Milwaukee. The last speaker I heard before going back to work promised that if the federal government doesn't clean up the city police, they would tear the city up. He then led the crowd in a chant, "We are ready for war."

Hyping the NFL Draft

Peter King:

I've long been of the belief that we kill too many trees writing about the draft. It's a fun exercise, but let's be honest: Of the 255 players picked last April, how many made a major impact? I'd say 10 to 15 (Odell Thurman, Darrent Williams, Cadillac Williams, Logan Mankins, Jammal Brown, Heath Miller, Lofa Tatupu, Leroy Hill, Shawne Merriman, Luis Castillo), and, if you want to get cute about it, maybe some combo platter of the young Cowboys (Demarcus Ware, Chris Canty, Marion Barber, Rob Petitti). Some more will turn into great players, but the thing I've always disliked about the draft is making definitive judgments about the kind of NFL players these 22-year-old guys will become.

Speak it! So much attention goes to the NFL draft, mainly because there's nothing actually interesting to write about other than the Favre soap opera, when draft day is the last time you will ever hear the vast majority of the names called. Most draftees won't even make it out of camp. Most of those that do actually make the roster will be backups, at least for a while. Chances are a guy nobody paid much attention to in the pre-draft hype will end up being the jewel of the draft and one or more of the guys being obsessed over will flame out quickly.

Tall Women, Short Women

Interesting study:

Scots academics questioned 1,220 women from the UK, United States, Canada and Australia and found the taller ones were less broody, had fewer children and were more ambitious. They were also likely to have their first child at a later age.

Shorter women tended to be more maternal and homely, according to research carried out by psychologists Denis Deady, of Stirling University, and Miriam Law Smith, from St Andrews University.

(HT Michelle, subbing at the Daily Dish, who is of average height with both kids and career) This research was a response to previous work that "claimed taller women had fewer children because they struggled to find a mate." With this study, the researchers claim taller women have more testosterone than their vertically impaired counterparts, giving them more male traits. This is because height is an indicator of masculinity, which seems rather dubious.

Boot Camp Will Start Exodus to Windows

Andrew Kantor writes in USA Today about the new software, Boot Camp, that will allow Windows XP to be installed and run natively on Intel-based Macs. Wall Street apparently thinks this move will help Apple, and maybe even get people to use Macs instead of PCs. This kind of reminds of the early 80's when IBM stupidly decided to license DOS from Microsoft rather than buy it, on the thinking that only the hardware mattered. Even if some people buy Mac hardware, does that mean they are using a Mac? It's the OS that makes a Mac a Mac, not the CPU. Besides, the CPU in question is an Intel chip, not the traditional Power PC CPU. So the hardware is already more PC than Mac, so it's not even clear that these users would be running a Mac machine.

But without the OS, how does this really benefit Apple? I see two audiences for this software. One group are those who are already Mac users but who need to, on occasion, run Windows software because there is no Mac version available. This group is already fans of the Mac and consumers of Apple software, so no real gain in that group. The other audience is the group that wants a Windows PC. The Apple machines don't compete well head-to-head with Dells and other PC makers because of cost, as Kantor says. So, to this group, Apple is essentially offering a more expensive PC, which most consumers won't buy.

So, really the only people likely to make use of this new software are in that first group: Mac enthusiasts who need to run Windows software at times. I don't know if it's still around, but Virtual PC used to provide that capability, though the Windows OS and software weren't running natively on the machine, but rather through an interpreter. (Does that only run on Power PC Macs?) So obviously, this has been a need in the Mac world for a long time, and Boot Camp is Apple's latest attempt to provide that.

With that in mind, will Boot Camp cause any exodus or change in the marketplace? I can't see how. The target audience is comprised of Mac users, and they're not likely to abandon their machine of choice. Those Mac users have probably been using software to enable Windows applications to run already, so for them this is essentially a new version of that. So PC buyers aren't going to suddenly start buying Macs, and Mac users are going to suddenly abandon their beloved Mac machines to run Windows.

On the other side of the fence, the Xbox 360 has a Power PC at its heart. I have to believe the OS for the Xbox 360 is some variant of Windows. So, some version of the Windows operating system has been ported to a Power PC chip. If Microsoft wanted, could a full version of Windows XP running on more traditional Mac hardware be far behind? That might have some small impact because the Power PC is, or at least used to be, considered a better and faster CPU, and high end PC users might embrace the opportunity to use better hardware. But even that would be a small impact.

(Check out Kantor's blog . Mac aficionados do not take well to any comment that might suggest users might abandon their precious Macs. Religious fervor is not restricted to religion.)

The Iran Plans

Seymour Hersh writes on the administration planning for dealing with Iran militarily. One paragraph stood out to me:

One former defense official, who still deals with sensitive issues for the Bush Administration, told me that the military planning was premised on a belief that “a sustained bombing campaign in Iran will humiliate the religious leadership and lead the public to rise up and overthrow the government.” He added, “I was shocked when I heard it, and asked myself, ‘What are they smoking?’ ”

That's an old one. We attack a country and the people rise up and overthrow the regime. I imagine we would be greeted as liberators, too. As they say, those who fail to learn from history are doomed to repeat it. Scary.

(HT: Brewtown Politico)

Lessons from `South Park'

So, what did we learn from South Park recently? The following images are offensive and should not be put on the air:

• Mohammed handing a football helmet to someone,
• Anything mocking of Scientology

The following images are inoffensive and perfectly fine for the air:

• Jesus defecating on an American flag and the president of the US.

Interesting.

Renaming Auschwitz

Poland is trying to get the Auschwitz extermination camp renamed to "the Former Nazi German Concentration Camp of Auschwitz." I don't have a particular view on that. The Poles want to emphasize that Auschwitz was a German operation, not a Polish one, and that seems sensible. I don't really understand why Jewish groups would oppose such a thing.

But it is kind of funny that an article on a story to add clarity to words confuses other words. First of all, Auschwitz was not a concentration camp, but an extermination camp, a Vernichtungslager. Therefore, the new name is not "completely accurate" as Jan Kasprzyk is quoted as saying.

A second one is a long-time pet peeve of mine. The article quotes Marek Edelman, described as "the last living leader of the wartime uprising by Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto against the occupying Nazis." Um, Germany occupied Poland, not the Nazi party. Few of the men who fought against Edelman in putting down the Warsaw Uprising were members of the Party. Most Germans in general were not. Therefore referring to a Nazi occupation of Poland or a Nazi invasion of Poland is misleading and inaccurate. It serves to effectively exonerate Germany as a whole.

When I lived in Germany, this was something I noticed a lot. Even in a small city like Bonn, there were many Holocaust related memorials. The exoneration implicit in a phrase like "Nazi occupation" was prevalent in these memorials. I remember coming across a plaque on a building on the Venusberg, noting that the building had served as a Sammellager, a collection camp where Jews from the region were temporarily housed while they were rounded up and whence they where shipped eastward. The plaque text was in German and the one word I remember very clearly was Mitbürger, fellow citizen, which was how the Jewish victims were described. Whoever wrote the plaque was placing the German people on the side of the Jews, though the truth was that the Party was very popular, and its anti-semitism quite prevalent throughout Germany long before Hitler came along.

Another memorial was part of the wall of a burned out synagogue, which was placed across the street from where the synagogue had actually stood. (The site of the synagogue is now a Holiday Inn.) The synagogue was burned down on Kristallnacht. I don't remember the exact words on the memorial, though it was mostly a quote from the book of Lamentations written in several languages, but I do remember the sense was that the Jews were the victims of of Nazi terror, again against fellow citizens. Well, Kristallnacht was not carried out by the Nazis, but rather regular citizens. Perhaps it was instigated and coordinated by the Party, and certainly local authorities did nothing to hamper the destruction, unless it threatened non-Jewish owned buildings and businesses. But still it was carried out by ordinary Germans, not by the Nazis.

This is, I think, one of the main reasons Germans really don't like to talk about the Nazi era. To talk about it is to ask what grandma and grandpa did back then. Did they help round up Jews and other targets of the government? Did they throw rocks on Kristallnacht? Did they vote for the Nazi lists in 1932 and 1933? These are uncomfortable questions to ask about family members. So they mostly just avoid the topic altogether.

More Republicans Seeing the Light

George Conway:

I voted for President Bush twice, and contributed to his campaign twice, but held my nose when I did it the second time. I don't consider myself a Republican any longer. Thanks to this Administration and the Republicans in Congress, the Republican Party today is the party of pork-barrel spending, Congressional corruption — and, I know folks on this web site don't want to hear it, but deep down they know it's true — foreign and military policy incompetence. Frankly, speaking of incompetence, I think this Administration is the most politically and substantively inept that the nation has had in over a quarter of a century. The good news about it, as far as I'm concerned, is that it's almost over.

While it's almost over, the guy still has a few years to screw things up even more. We will be cleaning up the excrement of this administration for years to come.

Milwaukee Bloggers: Immigration Press Conference

There's going to be an immigration press conference of religious leaders today at 2 PM at Cathedral of St. John the Evangelist (812 N. Jackson St.) here in Milwaukee, part of the big national campaign. Are any local bloggers going to cover it? I wanted to (it's right down the street) but (a) I was in a rush to get out the door this morning and forgot to pick up my camera, and (b) I have a meeting at 2.

Few Parts of Iraq Are Stable

The New York Times (my link is by way of the Seattle Times) has published an internal embassy staff document which assesses each province in Iraq. The key image of the document is this:



which paints a bleak picture. Only three provinces are described as stable, with several described as serious.

I imagine many anti-war bloggers will pick on this as proof that Iraq is a failure. Well, to be fair, I think this analysis is somewhat misleading. How are the four status values defined? According to the article,

1. Critical means "a government that is not functioning" or "represented by a single strong leader; an economy that does not have the infrastructure or government leadership to develop and is a significant contributor to instability; and a security situation marked by high levels of AIF [anti-Iraq forces] activity, assassinations and extremism.",
2. Serious means "a government that is not fully formed or cannot serve the needs of its residents; economic development that is stagnant with high unemployment; and a security situation marked by routine violence, assassinations, and extremism.",
3. Moderate and stable are not defined.

Note that this single status represents three independent pieces of information at the same time: development status of local government, economic development, and the security situation.

The Times wants to interpret these statuses as reflecting the security situation, but the definitions they provide show that this is not an appropriate interpretation. Frankly, there is no obvious interpretation. It is a poor approach to define a single quantity to measure multiple things at the same time. How is each province's score determined? If the economic situation is not all that good, but the security situation is very good, what's the score? One province with a well-developed local government but poor security would probably get the same score as a very peaceful province with a poorly developed local government, though we would hardly view the overall situation in the two as similar.

The Times notes the anomaly of Basra, which is listed as "serious" but which the Times also describes as "relative[ly] calm." The Times does not explain why Basra is listed as "serious", being content to simply describe the situation there as such. This is a prime example of how this ambiguous analysis can be quite misleading.

A better approach would be to analyze each province along the three metrics independently. In other words, show the provinces according to only security in one map, according to economics in another, and according to governmental maturity in yet another. With that, the reader could truly compare apples to apples.

Another Person Speaks for Me

Excerpts from comments directed to the president (transcript provided by Think Progress):

You never stop talking about freedom, and I appreciate that. But while I listen to you talk about freedom, I see you assert your right to tap my telephone, to arrest me and hold me without charges, to try to preclude me from breathing clean air and drinking clean water and eating safe food.

...

What I wanted to say to you is that I — in my lifetime, I have never felt more ashamed of, nor more frightened by my leadership in Washington, including the presidency

...

I feel like despite your rhetoric, that compassion and common sense have been left far behind during your administration, and I would hope from time to time that you have the humility and the grace to be ashamed of yourself inside yourself.

More on More Administrative Incompetence

Earlier this week I linked to the story of Elliot Voge. Since then, the school district stepped in and put a stop to the disciplinary process. In a rebuke of the clueless principal (so clueless maybe he has a future working for the president), the board wrote, "we can all learn from this incident and in the future apply some common sense when interpreting rules."

Michelle Malkin: THE MESS AT DHS

Michelle Malkin lets loose on the Department of Homeland Security and the stream of incompetents the Bush administration has put in positions of authority. (Bush putting incompetent people in charge of something? Say it ain't so.) Her focus is on immigration posts, but the pattern she documents there we've already seen at FEMA, also part of DHS, and she links to other of her posts that document the "disasters at the Federal Air Marshals Service."

Putting incompetents in charge results in incompetent policy, such as rewarding immigration service workers according to how many applications they process per day. The faster they shove paperwork through, the more time off they get. Call me stupid, but doesn't that encourage the people to not do their jobs? The less seriously they do their jobs, the more reward they get. In the Bush administration, this is considered good management, I guess.

It makes me feel warm and fuzzy all over that this is the group of bureaucrats charged with coordinating homeland security.

Professionally Offended

This whole thing with Rep. McKinney is so ridiculous. The woman bypassed a security checkpoint at the US Capitol and then ignored police commands to stop and identify herself. When finally accosted, she was unable to present her identification. So, obviously the security team is totally at fault here. They should not be stopping an unidentified black woman trying to get into the Capitol building without going through security. What do they think she's going to do, bomb the place?

Of course, lots of people are taking the opportunity to be offended and get their faces on TV again. There are people I call the professionally offended. They take any chance to be offended at anything that will get them publicity, attention, or money. I've actually read of two women who were offended and suffered emotional distress because some flight attendant uttered the words, "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe." Needless to say they took advantage of the phrase, and a knowledge of its fairly obscure history (an older version of the nursery rhyme contained a racial slur), to try to cash in on their offense and "distress." (One woman, this is hilarious, "claims hearing the rhyme caused her to be bedridden for three days and suffer from 'unexplained memory gaps.'")

Now many will use McKinney's failure to present identification as an opportunity to pontificate about racial profiling. I guess the view is that obviously a white person trying to sneak past security to get into the Capitol would be allowed to go through. (Get that al Qaeda?) Whatever gets you on TV, I guess.

More Administrative Incompetence

Andrew Kantor tells the story of Elliot Voge, an 8th grader in Indianapolis. The kid, an AP student who has never been in trouble in his school, accidentally brought a knife to school one day. On realizing it, he immediately went to the office to turn it in. And got suspended and possibly expelled for it.

So here we have this kid who did exactly the right thing (his only alternative was to not go to school and walk home, however far that was), and was not only disciplined but faces expulsion for doing it.

Message to kids at Stonybrook: If you accidently bring in a weapon, you might as well keep it and use it to threaten someone. The punishment is the same.

Can't people in positions of authority use that thing God gave us called a brain for something of value? When someone does the right thing, that should be encouraged! Kantor has the principal's email address and phone number.

C-5 Cargo Plane Crashes at Dover Air Base - Yahoo! News

This is a story I'll be following, primarily because I grew up at Dover AFB and because a friend lives near the crash site which appears to be Magnolia, DE though the reports haven't said so. If so, the crash would have been just off the highway (113) that runs next to the base.

PSAs From The Office

Check out these PSA videos from The Office. Beer and Bears are the two best. (Hat Tip: folkbum)

Talk About Using Your Assets

How's this for a personal description. "She works as an international diplomat bringing understanding between countries, political parties, governments and the people." Sounds good and admirable. Oh I forgot the first part. "Gabrielle is a Australian/American swimsuit model." Yes, dear Gabrielle enjoys half naked photo shoots on the beach and helping bringing peace to the world. I can definitely see how the half naked bit would help the other. As she says, "As a swimsuit model she is greeted in market segments that most Statesmen would not be greeted." Ya think? She later writes, "Why swimsuits and politics? Pictures of women break down national borders, race, religion and creed and draw the largest amount of traffic on the World Wide Web...This has allowed for a very successful, cost effective exchange of ideas." That's what I call using all your assets to achieve your goals.

I'm not trying to make fun of Gabrielle. Just for some reason the juxtaposition of swimsuit/bikini model and international diplomat struck me as unusual.

Quayle Quotes

Google Groups has newsgroup postings archived from way, way back. In looking through some of my own postings from back in 1992, I came across this gem, obviously dated but funny nonetheless. Just a collection of Dan Quayle quotes.

This list is somewhat old but still good.

Republicans understand the importance of bondage between a mother and child.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

I believe we are on an irreversible trend toward more freedom and democracy - but that could change.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

and that one word is 'to be prepared'.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

If we do not succeed, then we run the risk of failure.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, to the Phoenix Republican Forum, March 1990

The US has a vital interest in that area of the country.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle Referring to Latin America.

May our nation continue to be the beakon of hope to the world.
-- The Quayle's 1989 Christmas card. [Not a beacon of literacy, though.]

Certainly, I know what to do, and when I am Vice President -- and I will be -- there will be contingency plans under different sets of situations and I tell you what, I'm not going to go out and hold a news conference about it. I'm going to put it in a safe and keep it there! Does that answer your question?
-- Vice President Dan Quayle when asked what he would do if he assumed the Presidency,1988

Verbosity leads to unclear, inarticulate things.
-- Vice President Dan Quayle

This election is about who's going to be the next President of the United States!
-- Vice President Dan Quayle, 1988

Side note: I was just scanning down the posts on that thread for a chuckle. Two down from mine was one from Marc Andreessen. If the name's not familiar, at or near the time he posted to this thread, he was working on developing the very first web browser, Mosaic. A few years later, he would found Netscape and help usher in the internet revolution. Amazing who you could bump into on the internet back then, in the days when the it was the domain of academia.

The Dems Have a Plan

Folkbum insists the Democrats have a plan and posts a link to it. Well, I have a plan for myself, too. My plan is to make $20 million (take home) this year, buy a yacht, a Ferrari, and a house on the beach in the Bahamas, and then hook up with a supermodel. Now, I have no idea how I'm going to make $20 million (take home) this year. Without that money, how will I buy the yacht, car, and house? I don't really know. If I don't buy those things, how will I get a supermodel? My good looks and svelte figure? I don't think so. But, still, it's a plan.