Forecast for Tehran: Partly cloudy today, with occasional showers of snakes…
A snake fell from the sky into a car in Iran, biting four passengers and killing two of them. It was apparently dropped by a passing eagle.
Is this a new terrorist weapon?
Keeping The Mindless Faith
Well, the people in Michigan have been allowed to exercise their Second-Amendment rights for a year now, and the handwringers are still waiting for blood to flow in the streets a la Dodge City.
But Michael Zagaroli, a Grand Rapids attorney who represented the state’s police chiefs in their fight against the law, said it’s too early to draw conclusions.
“I can’t sit here and say there’s been a huge problem that has cropped up, but it’s only been one year. What may happen over five years? I just have to believe that injecting so many tens of thousands of additional guns into the public realm is not going to lead to good things.”
“I have to believe, brother! Testify! Show us the power!”
To heck with rationality, or statistics, or empirical results, or…reality. He has to believe, thus demonstrating that anti-gun hysteria is irrational, and religious in nature (which we knew all along).
Here’s another man who remains true to his faith:
Kent County Prosecutor William Forsyth expected the worst. He envisioned an armed populace “overreacting” and pulling guns to shoot purse snatchers. He was among 17 prosecutors across the state to quit their county’s gun boards in protest of the new law.
“You just can’t convince me that allowing everybody and anybody to carry a gun concealed on their person is going to make it a safer place to live,” Forsyth said at the time. He did not return calls for this report.
I particularly like that last sentence. Rather than speaking in tongues, his fervent worship has apparently struck him recently dumb. Errrrr…mute. Based on the above, it sounds like the dumbness has been a longer-term problem.
Oh, but wait!
Maybe this is the reason that Michiganians haven’t been perforated and desanguinated in record numbers over the past twelve months–they’ve been keeping the guns out of the hands of vicious criminals:
“Looking at your application, it shows you have a life- preserver violation,” said Ottawa County Assistant Prosecutor Gregory Babbitt, who ran the meeting.
Vitunskas sank in his chair as he recalled fishing for catfish on the Grand River in June 2001 with two buddies on his 10-foot, flat-bottom boat. He said he didn’t know it was a misdemeanor when he signed the DNR ticket for having two life jackets instead of three.
Sharp eyes, there, Mr. Prosecutor! That’s right, we all know that it starts with life preservers, and from there it’s straight down the steep and slippery slope to bank robberies.
But not all of the potential evildoers were so obvious:
A Grand Haven man was denied because he pruned a tree while deer hunting in a federal forest — a misdemeanor…
…Forrest Brown figured he’d breeze through. The 45-year-old Grand Haven man expected to walk out of Ottawa County’s May gun board meeting with a permit. His record is clean, except for the ticket he got from the state DNR in October 2000.
Brown said he didn’t know he was committing a misdemeanor when he trimmed branches of scrub oak in a national forest to create a shooting lane for his father, who recently had hip surgery.
Yes, it would never have occurred to me, but the authorities know better–it starts with trimming branches, then it moves on to felling whole trees, and the next thing you know the perp’s walking down Grand River Avenue plinking at baby carriages.
But alas–they’re not perfect. Here’s the one that slipped through the cracks, and really has me wiping sweat from my brow, as I contemplate the potential mayhem now that this fiend has gotten hold of a gun:
“There are still some holes in the system, some substantial holes,” she said. “This is very much a self-reporting system. It’s likely that if somebody wanted to represent themselves as having a clean record and had knowledge of how to do it, they may get away with it over a period of time.”
A hole became apparent at a recent Kent County gun board meeting as members considered an applicant named Jason. The board didn’t know about his misdemeanor criminal conviction for illegal use of a telephone in Montcalm County until he told them. A background check had turned up nothing.
They gave a gun to a…a…telephone user. And not just any telephone user, either. They gave it to an illegal telephone user. And I’ll bet it was a concealed phone, too.
This is a man who shouldn’t even be walking the streets, free to call people at will, perhaps telemarketing to them. But no, they not only let him roam free, but these incompetent ninnies give him a gun.
There’s no telling what nefarious activities he’s carrying out even as I type this, because of their malingering insouciance. He’s probably using one hand to sell long-distance service for 4.8 cents a minute, and gunning down innocents with the other.
Well, at least, as we start to get the first news reports from the Great Lake State of the great telephone and gun massacre (I’m sure it will happen any day now, if not any year), some peoples’ faith will be justified and renewed, and we’ll finally be able to overturn this insane law that allows people to protect themselves.
Rall The News That’s Fit To Read
I hadn’t heard from Ted Rall, lately. It’s nice to know that some things never change, though–it provides a little rock of stability in an ocean of uncertainty.
Here’s his most recent raving advertisement of his apparently irredeemable imbecility.
Now it’s official. Bush is Ariel Sharon’s bitch.
Assuming that he means that in the family-web-site, female dog sense (usually a lousy assumption with Mr. Rall), which would make you what, Ted? An insignificant flea? Or a tick? Or some other parasite on the body politic?
George W. Bush dangled the possibility of American support for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank in exchange for Arafat’s ouster: “Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born,” he said on June 24. Presumably that “new leadership” would be friendly to both American and Israeli interests.
Well, actually, what we’d like to see is a government that is friendly to the Palestinians’ interests. The present one has done ’em wrong.
Fortunately, that would be congruent with the interests of Israel and America as well.
After decades of abstention, the United States is back in the coup d’
Rall The News That’s Fit To Read
I hadn’t heard from Ted Rall, lately. It’s nice to know that some things never change, though–it provides a little rock of stability in an ocean of uncertainty.
Here’s his most recent raving advertisement of his apparently irredeemable imbecility.
Now it’s official. Bush is Ariel Sharon’s bitch.
Assuming that he means that in the family-web-site, female dog sense (usually a lousy assumption with Mr. Rall), which would make you what, Ted? An insignificant flea? Or a tick? Or some other parasite on the body politic?
George W. Bush dangled the possibility of American support for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank in exchange for Arafat’s ouster: “Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born,” he said on June 24. Presumably that “new leadership” would be friendly to both American and Israeli interests.
Well, actually, what we’d like to see is a government that is friendly to the Palestinians’ interests. The present one has done ’em wrong.
Fortunately, that would be congruent with the interests of Israel and America as well.
After decades of abstention, the United States is back in the coup d’
Rall The News That’s Fit To Read
I hadn’t heard from Ted Rall, lately. It’s nice to know that some things never change, though–it provides a little rock of stability in an ocean of uncertainty.
Here’s his most recent raving advertisement of his apparently irredeemable imbecility.
Now it’s official. Bush is Ariel Sharon’s bitch.
Assuming that he means that in the family-web-site, female dog sense (usually a lousy assumption with Mr. Rall), which would make you what, Ted? An insignificant flea? Or a tick? Or some other parasite on the body politic?
George W. Bush dangled the possibility of American support for the creation of a Palestinian state on the West Bank in exchange for Arafat’s ouster: “Peace requires a new and different Palestinian leadership so that a Palestinian state can be born,” he said on June 24. Presumably that “new leadership” would be friendly to both American and Israeli interests.
Well, actually, what we’d like to see is a government that is friendly to the Palestinians’ interests. The present one has done ’em wrong.
Fortunately, that would be congruent with the interests of Israel and America as well.
After decades of abstention, the United States is back in the coup d’
Overreaction
Jay Manifold suggests (I assume tongue in cheek) that the President should be impeached because he pledges to put people on the bench who believe that our rights are endowed by our creator. This is on the basis of Article VI, which states in part:
…no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States…
Sorry, Jay, no cigar. All that means is that it can’t be made a law. A president can nominate anyone he wants for the bench, for whatever reason, and the Senate can advise and consent, or not, for whatever reason. Certainly there’s nothing impeachable here. Unless you can explain just what would be treasonous about his statement, or how it could constitute a high crime or misdemeanor.
If presidents could be impeached simply for misinterpreting the Constitution, then they all should be impeached.
The Pattern Continues
Here’s a third one–a federal employee (Bureau of Indian Affairs–an agency that has long outlived its usefulness) admitted starting the Rodeo Fire in Arizona. If you add the three this year to the screwup in Los Alamos a couple years ago, government employees have destroyed millions of acres in the west recently.
“Arrogant” Bush
Here’s the latest bit of rancid tripe from John Simpson at the BBC. Mr. Simpson is apparently trying to outfisk Bob Fisk.
In 32 years of reporting on international affairs, I have never seen Britain and the United States more separated from each other: not during the terrible last years of the Vietnam War, not during President Reagan’s Iran-Contra dealings or his espousal of the crackpot Star Wars system.
“…crackpot Star Wars system.”
Well, I guess we know where he’s coming from. I wonder if he’s feigning objectivity, or if, unlike his counterparts here, he’d be proud to proclaim his biases?
Just for your information, Mr. Simpson, but that “crackpot” idea played a major role in bringing down the Soviet Union. But then, that’s probably one of the reasons that you despise it, and us, so.
On two occasions last week I met senior civil servants from government departments in London who would normally be regarded as the natural bedrock of support for the Atlantic Alliance. In both cases I found open contempt for current American policy, especially towards the Middle East.
That’s good news. It means that we’re finally on the right track.
It’s easy enough to spot particular elements in this change of attitude. One is President Bush’s new line on Yasser Arafat and his support for the determination of Israel, under Ariel Sharon, to break up what little remains of the Oslo Accords.
Arafat himself killed Oslo, years ago. But I guess it’s easier to live in delusion, and blame the messenger (Bush) when he, unlike Whitehall, recognizes the reality, and declares the decaying carcass dead.
It took the Bush administration a good deal of internal negotiation to come up with its ringing endorsement of the Sharon line, but leading British civil servants I spoke to about last week’s speech by Mr Bush regarded it as – I quote – “puerile”, “absurdly ignorant” and “ludicrous”.
Yup, we’re definitely getting it right now. You can’t get a better endorsement than that, considering the source.
It is possible to spot some common elements here. There is, for instance, a rooted dislike of the “arrogance” – not my word, but that of a senior and much respected civil servant – that enables President Bush (“a bear of very little brain” – ditto) to announce to the Palestinians who should and shouldn’t be their leader.
And there is a parallel impatience at the “stupidity” (ditto) which will unquestionably ensure that Palestinians of all kinds will now feel obliged to support Yasser Arafat as their leader, for better or worse.
There’s this concept in psychology called “projection…”
Bush didn’t say who their leader should be. He just stated the conditions under which the US would work with the Palestinians to have their own state (and to continue to receive funding). They can choose whoever they want, and they can (finally) live with the consequences of their choices.
Next week we will have the latest round in the trade war that has blown up between America and Europe over issues such as steel, where Washington reserves the right to impose tariffs on some foreign imports and pay huge subsidies to sections of its own ailing industry, while lecturing the outside world about the duty to support free trade and allow US goods into their markets at preferential rates. The moralising is starting to grate: and it looks like hypocrisy.
Well, he does have him there. But even a blind squirrel will turn up an acorn now and then.
Take another, completely different example. The creation of an international criminal court is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Now, there’s a compelling argument. I guess that we’re supposed to ineluctably conclude from this that an international criminal court must therefore be an unalloyed Good Thing.
Of course, what he displays here is at least two (and possibly more) logical fallacies: “appeal to belief” and “bandwagon.”
Here, let me try a couple:
The destruction of the Jewish race is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Or, restoration of the Caliphate is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
See? It’s fun!
Suddenly, it exists and has the power to try suspected war criminals; but the US, nervous that its own citizens – from a private soldier who kills people on a peace mission to, shall we say, Henry Kissinger – might be dragged before the court, is demanding immunity from arrest or prosecution for any American troops involved in United Nations peace-keeping duties.
To be honest, I can’t quite work out whether this is because the Bush administration dislikes the UN and its peace-keeping role almost as much as it does the international court, and wants to undermine them; or whether it comes primarily from a sense that Americans are not as other people, and shouldn’t be subject to the same rules. For obvious reasons, other countries find this distinctly annoying.
Well, John, here’s what Americans find annoying. They find it annoying to be judged by a court composed of countries who believe: that Zionism is racism; that there’s nothing wrong with a terrorist state being head of the UN Security Council; that Arafat isn’t a terrorist, but that Sharon is; that Peres should hand back his peace prize, but that Arafat needn’t; that we should cripple the world economy, and particularly the US economy, to delay global warming for a year and a half a hundred years from now; that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to us or his neighbors; that defending ourselves against missiles is “crackpot”; and foremost, that we should be bound by treaties that we haven’t signed or ratified.
It’s the sovereignty, stupid.
And amid all this, poor old Tony Blair has to try to stay on friendly terms with a president whom even some of his own ministers and civil servants regard with contempt. It won’t be at all easy.
Well, it’s not that hard, John–ministers can certainly be replaced. As can Prime Ministers…
“Arrogant” Bush
Here’s the latest bit of rancid tripe from John Simpson at the BBC. Mr. Simpson is apparently trying to outfisk Bob Fisk.
In 32 years of reporting on international affairs, I have never seen Britain and the United States more separated from each other: not during the terrible last years of the Vietnam War, not during President Reagan’s Iran-Contra dealings or his espousal of the crackpot Star Wars system.
“…crackpot Star Wars system.”
Well, I guess we know where he’s coming from. I wonder if he’s feigning objectivity, or if, unlike his counterparts here, he’d be proud to proclaim his biases?
Just for your information, Mr. Simpson, but that “crackpot” idea played a major role in bringing down the Soviet Union. But then, that’s probably one of the reasons that you despise it, and us, so.
On two occasions last week I met senior civil servants from government departments in London who would normally be regarded as the natural bedrock of support for the Atlantic Alliance. In both cases I found open contempt for current American policy, especially towards the Middle East.
That’s good news. It means that we’re finally on the right track.
It’s easy enough to spot particular elements in this change of attitude. One is President Bush’s new line on Yasser Arafat and his support for the determination of Israel, under Ariel Sharon, to break up what little remains of the Oslo Accords.
Arafat himself killed Oslo, years ago. But I guess it’s easier to live in delusion, and blame the messenger (Bush) when he, unlike Whitehall, recognizes the reality, and declares the decaying carcass dead.
It took the Bush administration a good deal of internal negotiation to come up with its ringing endorsement of the Sharon line, but leading British civil servants I spoke to about last week’s speech by Mr Bush regarded it as – I quote – “puerile”, “absurdly ignorant” and “ludicrous”.
Yup, we’re definitely getting it right now. You can’t get a better endorsement than that, considering the source.
It is possible to spot some common elements here. There is, for instance, a rooted dislike of the “arrogance” – not my word, but that of a senior and much respected civil servant – that enables President Bush (“a bear of very little brain” – ditto) to announce to the Palestinians who should and shouldn’t be their leader.
And there is a parallel impatience at the “stupidity” (ditto) which will unquestionably ensure that Palestinians of all kinds will now feel obliged to support Yasser Arafat as their leader, for better or worse.
There’s this concept in psychology called “projection…”
Bush didn’t say who their leader should be. He just stated the conditions under which the US would work with the Palestinians to have their own state (and to continue to receive funding). They can choose whoever they want, and they can (finally) live with the consequences of their choices.
Next week we will have the latest round in the trade war that has blown up between America and Europe over issues such as steel, where Washington reserves the right to impose tariffs on some foreign imports and pay huge subsidies to sections of its own ailing industry, while lecturing the outside world about the duty to support free trade and allow US goods into their markets at preferential rates. The moralising is starting to grate: and it looks like hypocrisy.
Well, he does have him there. But even a blind squirrel will turn up an acorn now and then.
Take another, completely different example. The creation of an international criminal court is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Now, there’s a compelling argument. I guess that we’re supposed to ineluctably conclude from this that an international criminal court must therefore be an unalloyed Good Thing.
Of course, what he displays here is at least two (and possibly more) logical fallacies: “appeal to belief” and “bandwagon.”
Here, let me try a couple:
The destruction of the Jewish race is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Or, restoration of the Caliphate is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
See? It’s fun!
Suddenly, it exists and has the power to try suspected war criminals; but the US, nervous that its own citizens – from a private soldier who kills people on a peace mission to, shall we say, Henry Kissinger – might be dragged before the court, is demanding immunity from arrest or prosecution for any American troops involved in United Nations peace-keeping duties.
To be honest, I can’t quite work out whether this is because the Bush administration dislikes the UN and its peace-keeping role almost as much as it does the international court, and wants to undermine them; or whether it comes primarily from a sense that Americans are not as other people, and shouldn’t be subject to the same rules. For obvious reasons, other countries find this distinctly annoying.
Well, John, here’s what Americans find annoying. They find it annoying to be judged by a court composed of countries who believe: that Zionism is racism; that there’s nothing wrong with a terrorist state being head of the UN Security Council; that Arafat isn’t a terrorist, but that Sharon is; that Peres should hand back his peace prize, but that Arafat needn’t; that we should cripple the world economy, and particularly the US economy, to delay global warming for a year and a half a hundred years from now; that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to us or his neighbors; that defending ourselves against missiles is “crackpot”; and foremost, that we should be bound by treaties that we haven’t signed or ratified.
It’s the sovereignty, stupid.
And amid all this, poor old Tony Blair has to try to stay on friendly terms with a president whom even some of his own ministers and civil servants regard with contempt. It won’t be at all easy.
Well, it’s not that hard, John–ministers can certainly be replaced. As can Prime Ministers…
“Arrogant” Bush
Here’s the latest bit of rancid tripe from John Simpson at the BBC. Mr. Simpson is apparently trying to outfisk Bob Fisk.
In 32 years of reporting on international affairs, I have never seen Britain and the United States more separated from each other: not during the terrible last years of the Vietnam War, not during President Reagan’s Iran-Contra dealings or his espousal of the crackpot Star Wars system.
“…crackpot Star Wars system.”
Well, I guess we know where he’s coming from. I wonder if he’s feigning objectivity, or if, unlike his counterparts here, he’d be proud to proclaim his biases?
Just for your information, Mr. Simpson, but that “crackpot” idea played a major role in bringing down the Soviet Union. But then, that’s probably one of the reasons that you despise it, and us, so.
On two occasions last week I met senior civil servants from government departments in London who would normally be regarded as the natural bedrock of support for the Atlantic Alliance. In both cases I found open contempt for current American policy, especially towards the Middle East.
That’s good news. It means that we’re finally on the right track.
It’s easy enough to spot particular elements in this change of attitude. One is President Bush’s new line on Yasser Arafat and his support for the determination of Israel, under Ariel Sharon, to break up what little remains of the Oslo Accords.
Arafat himself killed Oslo, years ago. But I guess it’s easier to live in delusion, and blame the messenger (Bush) when he, unlike Whitehall, recognizes the reality, and declares the decaying carcass dead.
It took the Bush administration a good deal of internal negotiation to come up with its ringing endorsement of the Sharon line, but leading British civil servants I spoke to about last week’s speech by Mr Bush regarded it as – I quote – “puerile”, “absurdly ignorant” and “ludicrous”.
Yup, we’re definitely getting it right now. You can’t get a better endorsement than that, considering the source.
It is possible to spot some common elements here. There is, for instance, a rooted dislike of the “arrogance” – not my word, but that of a senior and much respected civil servant – that enables President Bush (“a bear of very little brain” – ditto) to announce to the Palestinians who should and shouldn’t be their leader.
And there is a parallel impatience at the “stupidity” (ditto) which will unquestionably ensure that Palestinians of all kinds will now feel obliged to support Yasser Arafat as their leader, for better or worse.
There’s this concept in psychology called “projection…”
Bush didn’t say who their leader should be. He just stated the conditions under which the US would work with the Palestinians to have their own state (and to continue to receive funding). They can choose whoever they want, and they can (finally) live with the consequences of their choices.
Next week we will have the latest round in the trade war that has blown up between America and Europe over issues such as steel, where Washington reserves the right to impose tariffs on some foreign imports and pay huge subsidies to sections of its own ailing industry, while lecturing the outside world about the duty to support free trade and allow US goods into their markets at preferential rates. The moralising is starting to grate: and it looks like hypocrisy.
Well, he does have him there. But even a blind squirrel will turn up an acorn now and then.
Take another, completely different example. The creation of an international criminal court is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Now, there’s a compelling argument. I guess that we’re supposed to ineluctably conclude from this that an international criminal court must therefore be an unalloyed Good Thing.
Of course, what he displays here is at least two (and possibly more) logical fallacies: “appeal to belief” and “bandwagon.”
Here, let me try a couple:
The destruction of the Jewish race is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
Or, restoration of the Caliphate is something that people across the world have worked towards for decades.
See? It’s fun!
Suddenly, it exists and has the power to try suspected war criminals; but the US, nervous that its own citizens – from a private soldier who kills people on a peace mission to, shall we say, Henry Kissinger – might be dragged before the court, is demanding immunity from arrest or prosecution for any American troops involved in United Nations peace-keeping duties.
To be honest, I can’t quite work out whether this is because the Bush administration dislikes the UN and its peace-keeping role almost as much as it does the international court, and wants to undermine them; or whether it comes primarily from a sense that Americans are not as other people, and shouldn’t be subject to the same rules. For obvious reasons, other countries find this distinctly annoying.
Well, John, here’s what Americans find annoying. They find it annoying to be judged by a court composed of countries who believe: that Zionism is racism; that there’s nothing wrong with a terrorist state being head of the UN Security Council; that Arafat isn’t a terrorist, but that Sharon is; that Peres should hand back his peace prize, but that Arafat needn’t; that we should cripple the world economy, and particularly the US economy, to delay global warming for a year and a half a hundred years from now; that Saddam Hussein is not a threat to us or his neighbors; that defending ourselves against missiles is “crackpot”; and foremost, that we should be bound by treaties that we haven’t signed or ratified.
It’s the sovereignty, stupid.
And amid all this, poor old Tony Blair has to try to stay on friendly terms with a president whom even some of his own ministers and civil servants regard with contempt. It won’t be at all easy.
Well, it’s not that hard, John–ministers can certainly be replaced. As can Prime Ministers…