Shots Across The Bow

The first rose of spring

Sometimes, you just have to stop and smell the roses.

I can't believe this bush came back. It died back to the ground last year after a disastrous attempt at pruning. Nature is certainly resilient.

Knoxville Radio

You know, we have it pretty good here, despite a lot of complaints. Yes, we have our generic syndicated stations, playing all the latest crap pouring out of Hollywood, prepackaged for mind-numbing hours of drool-inducing listening, interspersed with adds for the latest sugar infested treat or designer tampons and what-not. Star 102.1 and B97.5 spring to mind

We have our university station, carrying NPR and classical music, where all the DJ's sound like they're on tranqs and decaf, unable to get excited about anything.

We also have the "Classic Rock" stations who've kept the same play list for the last 30 years, although the DJ's have changed, the music hasn't.

Before I joined the Navy in 1984, I used to listen to WIMZ. They played the best mix of rock, carrying all the latest cuts. When I came back to Knoxville in 1995, they were still playing the exact same songs.

The word pathetic springs to mind.

Then there's 104.5 The Bone where you can practically hear the mullets growing.

So that's the downside of Knoxville radio. But there is an upside.

We'll start with WDVX, a very small, independent station that plays just about any music under the sun, with a strong leaning towards roots music, Americana, blues, bluegrass, alternative country, and anything else that feels right. You can count on hearing something different there. They are publicly supported, and are setting up a fundraising music festival in my neck of the woods at the Dumplin Valley festival Grounds. A quick look at the acts they have lined up will give you a good idea of what this station is all about.

Next is a long time Knoxville radio station that's recently gone in a new direction. WOKI has become 100.3 The River, and abandoned the classic rock format to bring an eclectic mix of new and old, blues and rock, Americana and reggae to the Knoxville radio scene. Longtime Knoxville DJ Phil Williams returned to radio at the River with new partner Frank Murphy. It's nice to listen to a local morning show, rather than some syndicated zoo that has nothing to do with Knoxville. WOKI brings local programming together with some of the best syndicated programming available. Locally, they produce the Americana Cafe, a weekly tour of the bet and latest offerings in Americana music. Syndicated offereings include Acoustic Cafe, House of Blues Radio Hour, and E-town, all featuring music heard only on the River.

One of the things I like about the station is that they play new music from old artists. For example, Tom Petty's latest album, The Last DJ has gotten extensive airplay.

But the strength of the station is in new music from new artists. Jack Johnson, Norah Jones, Susan Tedeschi, Lucinda Williams, and John Mayer have all been introduced to Knoxville listeners by WOKI. Even better, The River has sponsored concerts by most, if not all of these artists, many of them free.

It doesn't get much better than that.

WDVX and WOKI both support local musicians, providing venues for acts that otherwise would have to rely on word of mouth to get their music out. Both stations have studios that they use for live performances, and sponsor events around town.

Glancing at the AM side of the dial, we have WNOX, Newstalk99. The format is tried and true; news, weather, and sports, with a heavy accent on the sports, please. What's different is that while many talk radio stations have cut down on original programming in favor of syndicated stuff, WNOX has moved in the other direction. Mornings are run by Hallerin Hilton Hill, followed by Frank Cagle for a 6 hour block of local programming. After three hours for Rush Limbaugh, local programming resumes with Sports Talk with John Wilkerson and Jimmy Hyams, then a variety of local shows until 9PM, when syndicated shows take over, including the bizarre but entertaining Coast to Coast AM. If you want to know what is going on in Knoxville, this is the station to turn to.

There may be some other good radio stations out there that I'm not listening to. If so, let me know and I'll give them a chance.

Anything to avoid Britney and Christina, n'sync, and all their clones...

More on SARS

I was listening to NPR on my way into work and they had an update on the SARS epidemic in China. According to the report, Biejing is averaging 100+ new reported cases per day, and that is not counting the cases in rural areas where tracking is scarce. She reported that the mass exodus from Beijing has exported the disease to those rural areas, and new infections are appearing there.

She also brought up an interesting point that the seriousness of the epidemic is in no small part due to the attempts of the Chinese gov't to cover it up.

Also, Fox is reporting that some patients in Hong Kong have suffered relapses after being pronounced recovered.

Here are the latest figures from WHO on the SARS outbreak While the disease appears to have peaked in most areas, it's still roaring through China. I expect that when the full extent of the rural cases is known, the total number of cases will explode upwards. Given that care in rural areas will be significantly less than that in Beijing, we can also expect the death toll to rise.

Living glass

I first learned of Dale Chihuly through Ben, an artist friend of my ex wife. He had taped a special on the artist, and we watched it one night over at his house.

Chihuly turns glass into living, breathing sculptures of light and fantasy.

Entry to one of his studios.

Another ceiling installation.

I'm not much of a fan of most modern art; it leaves me cold. I don't know the vocabulary, and too many of today's artists feel insulted if you expect them to provide a glossary. Chihuly makes pieces that grab your eye, and bring you inside the art; he stil,subscribes to the old school, that art is about beauty.

I can get into that.

Take a stroll through his site, and see just how soft and warm cold, hard, glass can be when shaped by a master.

Todays post...

... is over at HobbsOnlineAM. Here's a taste:

A newspaper is supposed to report the news, not distort the news. In a move worthy of the worst of the tabloids, the News-Sentinel took Sen. Burchett's comment out of context, stating that he was calling for the deportation of all who voice their dissent, which simply was not the case. When a journalist slants his coverage so baldly, he sacrifices his credibility, his stock in trade. He causes the paper he works for to lose credibility as well, and once a paper has lost it's credibility, what is it good for?

I write a blog. I am not neutral or unbiased, nor have I ever claimed to be.

But I am honest, a claim which seems to me the News-Sentinel cannot make.

A puzzle

There are 9 people in the picture below. How many can you find?




from Grand Illusions

UPDATE: I've added a potential solution in the comments. If you want to solve it on your own, don't read them. If you find something different, let me know...

I'm convinced...

To prove they were sincere in their apologies to President Bush, the Dixie Chicks posed naked on the cover of Entertainment Weekly.

I know I always take women more seriously when they're naked.

More on SARS

Yesterday, I posted a piece making fun of Michael Fumento, who downplayed the significance of SARS. Also yesterday, as part of the Volunteer Tailgate Party, I linked a piece by manish of Damn Foreigner, who argued that SARS is not a significant threat.

Diversity is a wonderful thing, but even more wonderful is the fact that we both are correct.

How?

Well, it's a matter of perspective. My problem with Fumento is he was arguing that the reaction to the SARS outbreak was driven by greed, not any genuine concern, and that SARS was a minor problem. Manish argued that the individual has relatively litle to fear from SARS, at least right now. The two arguments don't conflict, because they are from different perspectives.

Manish argues from the individual point of view. 140 cases out of a population of 4.7 million means that the average person has little to fear. The risk is negligible.

However, from an epidemiological stand point, a virus with a mortality rate of 15% is quite serious indeed. Particularly when the virus mutates as frequently as this one does. While the variants today appear to be diffcult to transmit, that could change quickly, leading to devastation equal to the pandemic of 1918. Therefore SARS is a quite legitimate concern for the WHO and CDC.

It's all in the perspective.

Volunteer Tailgate Party

Welcome all to the Volunteer Tailgate Party. We hold it every two weeks, rotating among the members of the Rocky Top Brigade, a group of bloggers from Tennessee. We cover the spectrum from political commentary to fine arts, and everything in between. We count lawyers, homemakers, programmers, students, and artists among our members, and while we all share a Tennessee connection, our far flung membership extends from Canada to California, and from East Tennessee to Australia. But enough of my blather; follow the links below and enjoy some of the best of the Rocky Top Brigade. I'll meet you again when you're done.

• First up is Andrew from Pathetic Earthlings, who shares his thoughts the day after the Columbia broke up.

  For fifty years, engineers could tell us how to get to Mars. But people need to tell the politicians and the contractors why. If one good thing is coming out of Columbia and the loss of her crew, it’s that we're ready to tell our politicians: because we can, because it’s there, because we’re Americans.

• Next we have a Southern Belle by the name of deb at Sugarfused. Deb shares her dietary downfall, then cruelly tempts the rest of us to join her.
• Now we turn to sayuncle, who shares two entries. First, he condenses the conundrum of abortion, then has a brief discussion of The Agonist and plagiarism
• Next up is Barry, from Inn of the Last Home, who writes a nice piece about overly zealous Christians, who drive people away from the church with their high pressure recruitment.

  [O]ne's decision to become a Christian is always an internal one - you can't be baptized and become a Christian, anymore than taking communion or just attending church - it's a deliberate, personal decision. It can't be coerced, it can't be bargained for, it can't be threatened and it can't be bartered.

  Barry's links may not work (thank you blogspot) If the link fails, go here, then scroll down to April 14.
• Now we come to Rex Mundi of Damn Art Diary, an artist and teacher to be, who poses a biblical puzzle . Again, if blogspot misbehaves, go here and scroll down to Mysteries of the New Testament
• Next up is Troy, from Jaded Journal and Troy Sounds Off. Troy shares his feelings immediately after Sept 11, 2001, feelings that are relavent today, as we work towards building a new Iraq
• Our next contributor is manish from Damn Foreigner, who posts about SARS, and the near panic reaction
• Next we have the founder of the Rocky Top Brigade, an anonymous gentleman who goes by the name of South Knox Bubba. He favors us with a parody of the newly updated and expanded Patriot Act. At least, I think it's a parody. These days, who can be sure?
• And last is me, your friend and humble narrator, I'll leave you with this remembrance of Easters past, affectionately called Easter Eggs and Pump Organs

And that's all for this edition, folks. See you again in two weeks.

Fumento strikes again!

Remember Michael Fumento? He's the guy who says the Atkins diet doesn't work.

Well, he's at it again. He now claims that SARS isn't really a threat, that it's a scam to scare up more dollars for biotech companies.

But there's fame, fortune, and big budgets in sounding the "emerging infection" alarm and warning of our terrible folly in being unprepared. The classic example is Ebola virus, which is terribly hard to catch, remains in Africa where it's always been, is now usually non-fatal, and – despite what reporters love to relate – does not turn the victims' internal organs "into mush."

Yet you'd almost swear that every outbreak of Ebola in Africa is actually taking place in Chicago. Laurie Garrett rode Ebola onto the bestseller list and talk show circuit with her book The Coming Plague: Newly Emerging Diseases in a World out of Balance.
Since then, the U.S. government and various universities have also seen these faux plagues as budget boosters. The CDC publishes a journal called Emerging Infectious Diseases, though in any given issue it's hard to find an illness that actually fits the definition.

Apparently, the WHO is jumping on the scam bandwagon.

As a result of ongoing assessments as to the nature of outbreaks of severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS) in Beijing and Shanxi Province, China, and in Toronto, Canada, WHO is now recommending, as a measure of precaution, that persons planning to travel to these destinations consider postponing all but essential travel. This temporary advice, which is an extension of travel advice previously issued for Guangdong Province and Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, China will be reassessed in three weeks time.

As is the Chinese government:

It said all primary and secondary schools in the capital would be closed for two weeks from Thursday, a move which will affect an estimated 1.7 million children.

Armies of disinfection squads in masks and rubber gloves and armed with spray guns spritzed down airports and planes, buses and terminals, trains and stations across the nation.

Earlier, the government shortened its Golden Week holiday in early May to discourage travel and prevent the further spread of SARS. But that will mean far less expenditure during one of the country's most popular vacation times.

Who knew the WHO was in league with the pharmas and biotech companies? To say nothing of the Chinese government which will lose billions in revenues over the SARS flap.

Current WHO estimates assign a mortality rate of 6% to SARS, while Fumento prefers a more conservative 4%. Others put the number much higher, as high as 15-20%, which is comparable to the flu epidemic which killed 20 million in 1918. For the sake of argument,let's use Fumento's number. He implies that 4% isn't all that bad, and that seems reasonable until you look at the the mortality rate in the US for all flu/pneumonia cases, which is .024%. Suddenly, 4% looks a lot bigger.

Fumento passes this off as due to poor healthcare availability, yet Canada is facing a greater than 10% mortality rate, with 15 deaths out of 140 reported cases.

To be fair, Fumento wrote his article before the Chinese gov't came clean and admitted the true extent of the problem, but I haven't seen or heard him issuing any retractions or clarifications.

I'm beginning to think that Fumento takes up a contrarian position reflexively, rather than from conviction. After all, you don't get headlines by agreeing with everybody. I think his credibility ranks right up there with The Center for Science in the Public Interest. They're the geniuses who figured out that fast food is bad for you. On second thought, they were right about that. Fumento slips further down the credibility ladder. Next stop, used car salesmen.

Slow posting today

I'm getting the Volunteer Tailgate Party together. If you haven't sent me an entry yet, hurry!

You don't want to miss it...

Get those criminals out of my living room!

Bill Hobbs has a story on a Tennessee version of the Digital Millenium Copyright Act. Apparently, the MPAA isn't satisfied with ramming federal legislation through, they want to hit the states as well.

If you use a firewall, if you archive music, if you listen to CD's on your computer, if you time shift shows off cable or satellite, if you think you have the right to wtch what you want, when you want, and that it is nobody's business what you watch, then you have a stake in stopping this legislation.

I have about 10 gigs of music files on my computer. They come from my CD collection (somewhere north of 300) and my cassette collection (also north of 300, although with some duplicates). Once I get my turntable repaired, I'll archive my albums as well. (Albums were round vinyl discs used to play prerecorded music before CD's took over the market. Ask you dad; he'll tell you all about them. Ask about 8 track tapes too.) These archives are perfectly legitimate under the fair use doctrine. It would also be legit for me to generate new CD mixes using these archives for my personal use.

However, this new legislation will require manufacturers to put security measures in place that would make it impossible. Bill has the links; contact your congress reps and senators and tell them to kill the state DMCA.

Get those criminals off the streets!

Yep, our police force has taken steps to make the streets of Knoxville safer for all of us. They are arresting and jailing parents whose kids skip school.

From KnoxNews.com:

Garren warned the children that they could be charged with truancy if they're 14, 15 or 16 years of age. She also warned parents that they could be summoned to court and put on probation to assure that their children attend school. About two dozen parents have violated that probation and have had to serve five or 10 days in jail, most on the weekends, she said.

The fact that our police spend any time on this, not to mention jail space for the parents, is ludicrous.

With jail space at a premium, shouldn't it be reserved for the ones who need it, you know, murderers, rapists, robbers, investment bankers, and other scum? Why waste a cell on some poor schmuck working two jobs to make ends meet whose kid sneaks out of class?

Yes, parents need to be accountable for the actions of their children, but is jail really the answer?

Shots from the home place

Just thought it was time for something a little different.

"Life moves pretty fast. If you don't stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it."

There's an easy one for ya Bubba!

A sad day on Rocky Top

Felice Bryant, the lyricist who wrote Rocky Top with her husband Boudleaux, died today.

She and her husband wrote songs for everybody from Buddy Holly to the Grateful Dead. Their music formed the soundtrack of a lot of lives over the years.

She was 77.

Arafat and Abbas

Arafat has rejected the reformist cabinet proposed by his Prime Minister, Mahmoud Abbas, leading to speculation that the Road Map to Peace is stillborn.

I have a solution that will prevent this problem.

The US, EU and UN should recognize Abbas' cabinet as the legitimate cabinet of Palestine, pending elections to be held once Arafat is out of power. Further, the US should use their influence to 'encourage' (force) Israel to recognize the new Cabinet.

Problem solved. In one stroke, Arafat is removed from power, joining OSama and Saddam in irrelevance, the Palestinians have a reformist government, and there will be a legitimate basis to begin peace talks.

Sure, it's bold, but these times require bold measures. Arafat will object, but he'll do so no matter what we do. Why keep him on the stage? A political assassination like this one is much cleaner than an actual one, and this way, he doesn't even get to claim matyrdom. He's just shoved to the side while the big boys get to work.

Bush has the stones to pull it off, but I doubt Kofi does.

Too bad. It really could work.

More vacillation from NOW

Mavra Stark claimed she was "thinking out loud" when she said she opposed charging Scott Peterson with double homicide in the murder of his wife and unborn son.

I doubt that.

"Thought" is obviously a foreign concept to this woman.

NOW responds to every issue with a knee-jerk pattern that's all too predictable, and Stark's comments were right in line with that pattern. A woman's right to choose is inviolate, trumping all other concerns, and must be vigorously defended whenever challenged. Only after assessing public opinion should that position be modified. The firestorm of criticism is what lead to Ms. Stark's rather anemic clarification, and the national organization's silence on the matter, not some deeply held conviction.

NOW is damaged goods, particularly after their unqualified support for Bill Clinton during the Lewinski affair. If feminists want to be taken seriously, it's time for NOW to be replaced by a more rational organization, one without the baggage of yesterday's battles.

Another win for Bush

Here's a surprise. Just yesterday, france and Russia were opposed to lifting sanctions on Iraq. Today, there's a different story:

In a surprise move, France on Tuesday proposed immediately suspending U.N. sanctions targeting Iraq civilians, an important step toward the U.S. goal of ending trade embargoes that have crippled the country's economy.

Imagine that; the french abandoned their allies in the Axis of Weasels, the Russians, in a transparent attempt to join the winning side.

Will anybody trust the french when this is all done?

Free speech only applies to those we agree with...

otherwise it's repression, oppression, and horrible.

While I've seen this from both sides, the left have raised it to an art form. Robin Williams is perfectly free to calim Bush is a dictator, but should somebody dare to question the wisdom of accepting political commentary from a comedian, and they are labelled as a Nazi out to stamp out the rights of ll good Americans.

Why is that, I wonder? Why can't the left tolerate a little dissent and why are they so threatened by the idea that unpopular opinions may carry consequences? The paranoia is real, just check out the hate mail received by a site which criticizes the hollywood activists and their lame pronouncements.

Let's try to nail this one down once and for all. A public boycott does not equal governmental suppression of free speech. Nowhere in the Constitution does it say you have a right to voice your opinion without any consequences from other citizens. This is a fabrication of the left, who like to play victim whenever possible.

The most ironic part of this whole thing is that the boycott has been the weapon of choice of the extreme left. The NAACP boycotted South Carolina in an attempt to force them to change their state flag. I don't recall anybody on the left crying about the crushing of dissent then. Lefties threatened boycotts of advertisers on Dr Laura's TV show, and succeeded in getting it cancelled. Did anybody cry about the repression of her opinion?

Obviously not.

You want free speech, you got it. Speak your mind, shout it from the mountaintop, get yourself a blog, preach it on the street corner.

Just be prepared to accept the consequences, particularly if your opinion is controversial or unpopular. If you are an entertainer, be aware that if you use your job as a soapbox, the views you express will become associated to your performance, and you just may alienate your audience.

Hypocrisy, thy name is UNSC

Specifically France and Russia. The two countries which pressed hardest to ease sanctions before the war are now pushing to maintain sanctions now that Hussein is gone.

Why?

It's called blackmail:

The council alone can determine whether those conditions are met and members like Russia and France have already signaled they would oppose lifting the sanctions without a broader role for the UN in Iraq than has so far been suggested by the United States.

But bluntly, unless the US allows France and Russia to profit off the sacrifice of Coalition soldiers, they'll allow the Iraqi's to starve.

Do we need allies such as this?

France and Russia profited for decades off Husseins regime. Lest we forget, even though America has been accused of arming Iraq, during the war we faced Kalishnikov rifles, not M16's. We found French missiles and rockets, not American. The Iraqi Air Force flew MiGs and Mirages, not F-15s and F-16s.

There is credible evidence that both Russian and French countries continued to support Husseins regime in violation of UN sanctions. And now they want to maintain the sanctions in a naked attempt to blackmail the US, holding the people of Iraq hostage.

Nope, not gonna happen, Pierre. The solution to this dilemma is simple, achievable, and benefits all concerned parties.

Except for France and Russia, that is.

The US should begin open trade with the interim Iraqi gov't as soon as possible. The sanctions were against the gov't of Saddam Hussein; he's gone, so are the sanctions. The UN can recognize this, or continue their quick march into the footnotes of history.

The NYT or Rummy...

...who's telling the truth? Time will tell.

According to the Times, The US wants to establish 4 military bases in Iraq:

The United States is planning a long-term military relationship with the emerging government of Iraq, one that would grant the Pentagon access to military bases and project American influence into the heart of the unsettled region, senior Bush administration officials say.

American military officials, in interviews this week, spoke of maintaining perhaps four bases in Iraq that could be used in the future: one at the international airport just outside Baghdad; another at Tallil, near Nasiriya in the south; the third at an isolated airstrip called H-1 in the western desert, along the old oil pipeline that runs to Jordan; and the last at the Bashur air field in the Kurdish north.

Now Rumsfeld has denied that there are any plans for such action. From the Times

Mr. Rumsfeld said no such discussions had reached his level at the Pentagon.

"The impression that's left around the world is that we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over the longer period of time, and it's flat false," Mr. Rumsfeld said at a Pentagon news briefing.

Mr. Rumsfeld said neither he nor Gen. Richard B. Myers, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, nor any other Pentagon official at what he considers a senior level had been involved in any discussions about a future military relationship with Iraq, or about using bases there.

"There has been zero discussion among senior Bush administration officials, the way I define senior, on that subject," Mr. Rumsfeld said.

Rumsfeld was a little more outspoken, as quoted by WorldNet Daily:

"Let me just get this off my chest," Rumsfeld said in response to a question about the article. "I have no idea who these people talked to. But I'll tell you, if I were a journalist, I would ... remember who they are, and I'd write their name down, and I would rank them right at the bottom in terms of reliability, credibility, judgment [and] knowledge."

"The people peddling that stuff are wrong, and the people writing it should check things out better," he added later.

and

"The impression that's left around the world is that we plan to occupy the country, we plan to use their bases over the long period of time, and it's flat false," said Rumsfeld. "Now, what is going on? There are four bases that the U.S. is using in that country to help bring in humanitarian assistance, to help provide for stability operations. And are they doing that? Sure. But does that have anything to do with the long term footprint? Not a whit."

This one will be easy to follow up on. We'll see who's telling the truth and who's falls to the bottom of the credibility gap. Politicians rarely speak so definitively, so I'm giving the nod to Rummy for now.

Bush diplomacy in action

Syria looks like they are going to work with us instead of against us.

The Bush administration underscored its newly positive stance on Syria Monday with praise for Syria's closing its border with Iraq and stopping Iraqi diplomats from boarding flights to Damascus.

Are they our friend and ally? Not hardly. But neither are they allied with Hussein. Saddam's son-in-law by some accounts was hiding in Syria before returning to Iraq and turning himself in. Why the change of heart? Perhaps the changing climate in Syria was not to his liking.

In any event, Syria is growing more cooperative, choosing the carrot over the stick. Now it is up to the Bush administration to ensure that the carrot remains the more attractive inducement by including Syria in the Middle East peace process.

Terrorism is like a disease, and has to be fought with a dual appraoch. You have to treat the symptoms as well as the root cause. It will do no good to take out Hussein if we allow the conditions which breed terror to continue. We've eliminated a present terrorist threat in Iraq, treating the symptom; now we have some breathing room to try and address some of the root causes: poverty, ignorance, and repression.

And the problem with that would be...?

Rick Santorum accidently got it right the other day:

"If the Supreme Court says that you have the right to consensual (gay) sex within your home, then you have the right to bigamy, you have the right to polygamy, you have the right to incest, you have the right to adultery. You have the right to anything," Santorum, R-Pa., said in the interview, published Monday.

What happens in the bedroom of two consenting adults is nobodies business but theirs. I'll even take it a step further and say that the gov't has no right to restrict marriage based on gender or number. Civil Marriage is a binding contract between two or more adults. As long as all parties are part of the contract, why shold the gov't have an interest in the details of the agreement?

Now, religious marriage is another beast entirely, but once again, the gov't has no business interfering there either. If a church wants to recognize same sex marriages, great. If they don't, also great.

Loaded words

I was listening to NPR All Things Considered on my way home last night, and I kept hearing them use the phrase, "Iraqi reconstruction."

Maybe it's just because I'm a Southerner, but "reconstruction' has a specific meaning to me, and some fairly unpleasant connotations, and it started me wondering.

We didn't talk about 'reconstruction in Kosovo, or Afghanistan, or anywhere else we've dropped bombs. I don't recall any talk of 'reconstructing' romania when Ceausescu was deposed. But now every third word out of CNN/ABC and the rest is "reconstruction." Heck, even Fox has used the word. You'd think that a news agency conceived and headquartered out of Atlanta would be a little more aware of the emotional loading of the word, and choose a more neutral word like "rebuilding," or even a positive word like "restoring."

Then again, maybe there was a reason for the choice. To a large number of people, "reconstruction" carries the same subconscious reactions as "occupation", without being overtly antagonistic. After all, Republicans did oversee the rape of the South known as reconstruction, and with elections right around the corner, it couldn't hurt to play on those old resentments.

Or am I just being paranoid?

Just out of curiousity...

How is the EU fixed to handle members who wish to withdraw? Will they have to fight a Civil War, or can they leave the Union as freely as they entered it?

Anybody have the answer to this one?

UPDATE Answered my own question. A quick google search found this:

Radek Khol is an analyst at the Czech Institute of International Relations. He agrees with Vahl that there are no current legal mechanisms to allow members to leave the EU. "Within the current treaty on the European Union, [leaving the EU] would be effectively impossible. Nevertheless, the new constitutional treaty, which is prepared by the Convention on the Future of Europe, is already putting such a clause into the relevant chapters [of the text]," Khol said.

However:

Khol said, however, that withdrawing from the EU will not be easy. Candidate countries will be receiving substantial EU financial support, and their economies will be closely integrated into EU structures. Divorce, he said, would be a complicated matter. "If any of the future EU states decides at some point that it wants to leave the union, it would be, indeed, fairly complicated, in political, economic, legal, and financial aspects. And I think that most of the states would probably try to avoid such a prospect," Khol said.

Khol said the EU, from the beginning, was created as a one-way street and counts on close political and economic integration.

"Yes, you can leave, although there's no rules on it just yet (we'll get right on drafting those rules and get back to you) but be assured, if you want to leave, we'll work something out, although we will make it as painful and expensive as we possibly can."

Hmmm. A quick history lesson might be in order. It's generally better if these things are worked out beforehand...

A prediction

France will reveal herself over the next couple of years not only as a false ally, but as an active enemy. The double cross of Colin Powell, and the obstruction of the war on Iraq were symptomatic of a shift in global alliances. France has never been satisfied with playing a secondary role in world politics, and is willing to do just about anything to regain her past glory. Quite correctly, she sees the US as her main obstacle to achieving this goal, so her foreign policy is bent on weakening US influence while strengthening her own.

Until recently, france has taken a subtle approach, working behind the scenes at the UN and EU, working to lessen US influence in the former, while shifting the latter to oppose America not only economically, but politically as well. Now france is taking a more active role, wanting to be seen as the leader in the battle against the cowboy American imperialists.

In the future, look for france to move ever closer to anti-American powers, particularly in the Middle East. France already has close ties to syria, and we find out more every day how close she was to Saddam Hussein. Despite all the lefty claims that we armed Iraq, almost all of their most modern weaponry was either french or Russian.

That wasn't an accident.

France wants to dominate Europe at the very least, and the Western Hemisphere if possible, and she sees the Middle East as the means to achieve that dominance. Every move france has made makes sense in this light, from her covert support of Saddam Hussein, to her overt antagonism to the US, to her willingness to weaken NATO and the UN itself.

If you're looking for imperialists, check the french. It's in their blood.

Easter Eggs and Pump Organs

Easter was always a big deal around the Hailey home as I was growing up. The night before, we'd dye eggs for the Easter Bunny to hide the next morning. I always wondered about that bunny. What does a rabbit have to do with Easter?

I asked my priest about that one day.

"My son," he said, "Jesus was scourged, crucified, died, and buried. If rising from the dead three days later ain't pulling a rabbit out of a hat, I don't know what is!"

Those Jesuits always had an answer for everything.

Anyway, we would spend the night before Easter waiting for the eggs to cool enough to dye. Now, there's a special property about eggs you have to understand; they hold heat.

Forever.

Second degree burns from grabbing a too-hot egg can really slow down your hunting technique the next day. Just a friendly tip from me to you.

Dying the eggs is always a lot of fun. But you have to throw out those little wire hoops they pack in those kits. Those things are worse than useless. You put the egg on it, bring it over to the cup where your dye is, begin to lower the egg gently, when it rolls off the wire, drops into the cup, splashing dye all over the table, your shirt, the floor, and the dog. We had a miniature poodle called Choo-Choo, because he used to tear around the yard in circles, and after two or three drops, he looked like a LeRoy Neiman painting.

Dying eggs requires a strong spoon, preferably slotted, to allow the dye to run out, and a steady wrist. Oh sure, you can just dump the egg into the dye and let it be one color, but where's the fun in that? You have to dip the egg halfway into one color, then halfway into another color to get that lovely two tone effect. The more daring go for the tricolored eggs, but that does require some knowledge of the colorwheel to avoid the dreaded brown band, which results from adding two many colors. After all, eggs come in brown naturally, why dye them that color?

Along with a strong spoon, the right cup for the dye is important. It has to have a wide mouth, otherwise the egg won't fit. A bowl is too big because the egg can't be covered by the dye. A coffee cup is perfect, but a word of caution: The dye can seep in and stain the cup, so you might want to stay out of the fine china cabinet.

True artists will use the little crayon that comes with the dye kit to make intricate designs and drawings on the egg, transforming a simple egg into an amazing work of art. The rest of us are lucky to be able to scrawl our initials legibly on the egg.

Once the eggs were dyed and stacked in their cartons, we'd go to bed, and Mom would hide the eggs, usually in the house so they wouldn't be eaten by the neighborhood dogs. The next morning, we'd get up and rush to the kitchen to find our Easter baskets, filled with candy and chocolate rabbits. A solid chocolate rabbit makes for an excellent breakfast, by the way.

Once Mom and Dad were up, we began the search for the eggs. We'd scour the house to find the eggs, having a great time. Eventually all the eggs were found, and then an ugly reality would set in.

What do you do with 3 dozen hardboiled eggs? Even CoolHand Luke would have trouble with 3 dozen hard-boiled eggs. Mom would peel all the eggs and make egg salad with them.

I can't stand egg salad, and neither could my brother and sister. It would sit in the fridge for a week or two, then Mom would throw it out. Eventually, she saved herself the aggravation and threw the eggs out immediately without going through the intermediate egg salad phase. It seemed to work out better for all concerned.

I think I started this to tell you about my last Easter Egg hunt.

I was about 10 or 11, and this was before Mom gave up on the egg salad maneuver, so the eggs were still there after church. Mom and Dad went to take a nap, and my brother, sister, andI decided to hold our own Easter Egg hunt. We took turns hiding the eggs for the other two, and passed a happy afternoon.

What none of us noticed was that, after several games of "hide the eggs", we finished with fewer eggs than we'd started. When Mom made the egg salad, she assumed we'd eaten a couple eggs, so she made the egg salad and life went on.

For several months.

Now, in this house where we used to live, we had an old pump organ. For those of you who haven't seen one, a pump organ is a small pipe organ that you play by pumping two pedals with your feet. It was pretty cool, and we would play on it every now and then, but keeping the air flowing was pretty hard work. My mom wanted to play it though and came up with a creative way to avoid the work. She looked all over the organ until she found the vent for the air, and she hooked up a vacuum cleaner to the vent. The vacuum pulled air though the pipes so she didn't have to pump the pedals.

Anyway, one July afternoon, Mom decided to play the organ, and didn't go to the trouble of riggin the vacuum cleaner. She started pumping the pedals and playing the organ, and noticed a foul smell coming from the organ. Apparently one of us kids had hidden an egg under one of the pedals, where it sat and fermented, just waiting to release one of the foulest odors it has ever been my misfortune to experience.

Dad was out of town on business when this happened, but the sulfurous stench still clung to the drapes when he got home. Mom explained about the egg in the organ, and Dad decreed that there would be no more Easter egg hunts in the Hailey house. I do have to give him credit though; despite what must have been a terrible temptation, he didn't make any jokes about how Mom's music stunk.

Volunteer Tailgate Party

OK, friends and neighbors, I'm hosting the 2nd Volunteer Taigate Party, scheduled to go to press next Thursday, April 24. Please have your submissions in by Tuesday, April 22, and I'll have them all posted by Thursday Morning. Be bold! Be bright! Be brilliant!

But then, you always are!

Once again, we see that we don't need embryonic stem cells.

Adult stem cells have been used in more successfull therapies than embryonic. The latest from New Scientist:

Treatment with adult stem cells has cured mice suffering with a form of multiple sclerosis, say Italian researchers. Almost a third of the mice recovered completely from paralysis of their back legs, and the rest all showed substantial improvement.

"It was amazing," says Angelo Vescovi, of the San Raffaele Hospital in Milan. He has now begun experiments giving human adult stem cells to monkeys with the nerve and brain damage seen in MS. But he warns that success in mice does not guarantee success in humans: "I wouldn't want to raise expectations."

With success after success for adult stem cell therapies, and setback upon setback for embryonic stem cell therapies, why is there such a push to do such ethically troubling work? Could there be a political agenda?

Naah. I'll leave the dark conspiracies to Bubba. He's better at them than I am.

Time to outlaw PVC and Hairspray

Here's a true idiot.

A teenager has lost his sight after being struck in the face with a frog, shot from a so-called "potato gun."

Daniel Benjamin Berry, 17, received the injury after he looked down the barrel of the gun's PVC pipe barrel and was hit in the face by the frog. His mother, Lisa Berry, said he's now blind in both eyes. She hopes her family's tragedy serves as a warning to other parents.

First, what the hell was he doing putting a frog in a potato gun. That alone tells me he deserves waht he got.?
Second, why would you look down the barrel of a loaded gun that misfired? This indicates terminal stupidity.

Cruel and stupid?

He got off easy.

Morons in action

A bookstore owner hung an upside down US flag outside his shop as a protest to the war. Hanging a flag upside down is the standard symbol for distress, and he used that to proclaim his anti-war feelings.

While I disagre with his stance, I have to say that I love the way he shose to express it. It is clear, without being disrespectful to the flag, the nation, or the troops supporting it.

Then, the cops showed up.

They threatened to arrest him for "contempt of the flag" if he continued to fly the flag upside down. Apparently, none of them were Boy Scouts, since it's expplained there that an upside down flag is a distress signal and does not desecrate the flag.

Fortunately, in a rare instance of actually doing the right thing, the ACLU stepped in and educated the police, and the flag is back, flying proudly upside down.

I like this idea.

The governor of Arizona wants to rename Squaw Peak after Pfc Lori Anne Piestewa, one of the US soldiers killed in the ambush at Nasiriyah. Private Piestewa was a member of the Hopi tribe, who greeted the governor's announcement with cheers. nfortunately, some boneheaded Republican is standing in the way:

"I think it sets the tone for what her governorship is going to be like," GOP state Rep. John Allen said. "It's going to be a very Clintonesque style in the sense where you take advantage (of the situation), no matter whose grief it is."

That's pathetic. We've got a name which can best be characterized as racially insensitive, and a wonderful oppotunity to replace that name with one which honors not only Native Americans, but the military. What's not to like?

Mr. Allen, lay off the grandstanding and back this plan.

Idiot!

There is another prblem, though.

Even before legislators weighed in, the chairman of the Arizona Geographic and Historic Names Board threatened to block Napolitano's plan. He cited a requirement that people must be dead five years before their names can be used on geographic features.

Napolitano asked the board to waive the waiting period, arguing federal policies prohibit the use of derogatory racial terms on landmarks. Although some linguists disagree, critics say "squaw" is derived from an Indian word for female genitalia.

But Richard Pinkerton, a board member for 19 years, said he has never seen the panel grant a waiver. And it is unclear whether the board's national counterpart, which makes the final call on name changes, ever approves waivers.

It's time to set a precedent folks. This needs to happen. I'll get the names and e-mail addresses of the folks involved and post them in an update. Let's let Allen, Pinkerton, and any other obstructionists that this is a good idea, and should happen now, not in 5 years.
UPDATE: Here are the e-mail addresses I promised. Y'all know what to do. remember, be polite, no rants, just express your support for Gov Napolitano and Pfc Piestewa.

Gov Janet Napolitano Snail Mail and Telephone
The Honorable Janet Napolitano
Governor of Arizona
1700 West Washington
Phoenix, Arizona 85007

Telephone 602-542-4331
Fax 602-542-1381

Rep John Allen jallen@azleg.state.az.us
Snail Mail
Rep. John M. Allen
House of Representatives
1700 W. Washington Room 127
Phoenix, AZ 85007

Tim J. Norton
Chair, Arizona State Board on Geographic and Historic Names
Arizona State Capitol
1700 W. Washington, Suite 200
Phoenix, Arizona 85007
Phone: 602-542-4035
Statewide: 1-800-255-5841
Fax: 602-542-4972
Email: aznames@dlapr.lib.az.us

Why am I not surprised?

Could this be why france is so cozy with dictators, thugs, and murderers?

The French government and banks owe at least $94.7 million (U.S.) in reparations to Jews whose assets were seized by France's pro-Nazi regime during World War II, a commission said today.

However, the finding by the Commission for the Indemnity of Victims of Despoliation, or CIVS, is not binding. It will be submitted to the government — which created the commission in 1999 — for a final review.

I guess it just makes good business sense.

I'm betting france tries to to get the EU to pay this...

Signs of the Collapse

Airline sued for nursery rhyme. From CNS news:

A Southwest Airlines flight attendant's use of a popular children's rhyme - "Eenie, meenie, minie, moe" - has resulted in a federal racial discrimination lawsuit against the airline filed by two African American women asking for unspecified financial damages.

One of the two women suing over the allegedly offensive nursery rhyme claims hearing the rhyme caused her to be bedridden for three days and suffer from "unexplained memory gaps," according to court documents.

I think I can explain those memory gaps. It's a sypmtom of recto-cranial insertion.

Bush wins again

So much for those who say the President is incompetent or inflexible. North Korea has proposed talks with the US and China.

The United States and North Korea will try to resolve their six-month standoff over Pyongyang's suspected nuclear weapons program in talks arranged by China, the communist North's closest ally, U.S. and South Korean officials said Wednesday.

The Beijing talks could happen as early as next week, officials said. Japanese media, citing unnamed sources, said they would start April 23.

Earlier, NK had insisted on one-on-one talks with the US, refusing any multilateral talks with other powers in the region, a US prereq for talks. The US wanted China to take the lead in reigning in NK. There was no movement on either front until recently. China suspended oil shipments to NK for three days, blaming it on 'technical matters." NK got the message, and the pressure from China, along with the results of the War on Iraq, helped convince NK to soften their stance, and accept China as host of the talks. Bush compromised by aggreeing to the talks, even though other regional powers, like Japan, are not involved.

As I said earlier, our action in Iraq will yield diplomatic benefits far beyond the Middle East. As Teddy Roosevelt said, "Speak softly and carry a big stick." America dropped the stick over the last 12 years or so. President Bush picked it back up.

I'll bet they will oppose this one as well

President Bush called for an end to UN sanctions on Iraq.

The lifting of sanctions will require the agreement of the Security Council, a body that foiled a U.S. effort last month to win U.N. support for its military mission in Iraq.
But despite the U.S. demand for quick action, diplomats say the debate at the Security Council over lifting the sanctions is likely to be long and difficult.
Lifting the sanctions is linked to U.N. certification that Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction have been destroyed — and that issue is part of a broader debate on what the U.N. role will be in postwar Iraq. The sanctions question also hinges on the sensitive issue of the return of U.N. weapons inspectors.

President Bush is now treading the dangerous ground that led to the assassination of one president and the impeachment of his successor: reconstruction of a defeated foe. Iraq has assets that a lot of people want. There's all that oil, and the contracts for rebuilding the infrastructure, not to mention new trade agreements as the Iraqi people begin to share in the wealth created from their oil. Everybody wants a piece of that pie, and the more ruthless among them will do whatever it takes to get it.

You can count on sanctions continuing while the UN (read france, Russia and Germany) struggles to get some major role in the rebuilding of Iraq.

More evidence of the UN's irrelevance

Remember how Libya took over the Chair for the Human Rights Commission? Well, we've now seen that our concern was warranted.

African nations lined up behind Sudan to help defeat a U.N. Human Rights Commission resolution today that would have kept the militant Islamic Khartoum regime under special scrutiny.

snip

The outcome could have been worse, however, Shea maintained.

She and her colleagues had feared that Libya, aided by France, would succeed in a procedural move that essentially would have moved Sudan from the status of a country with "special problems" to a nation eligible for new U.N. funding. In the end, the resolution was introduced under Item 9, "human rights violations," rather than Item 19, "advisory services and technical cooperation in the field of human rights."

Once again, France champions the rights of thugs and murderers. Do we really want them as allies?

Posted by Rich at 10:45 AM | TrackBack

Twisting the Knife

As if France hadn't been tortured enough over the last month for their obstructionism in the UN and EU, now we hear this:

TONY Blair yesterday increased speculation that he wants to become the president of Europe when he claimed that the European Union must speak with a single voice on foreign policy.

The call was the clearest sign yet that Mr Blair could pitch to become the future president of Europe after stepping down as Prime Minister.

While I have reservations about a string, unified Europe, particularly since their agenda appears to have coalsced around blind opposition to the US, having the EU under the control of Blair could change all that. I don't want a Europe that is subservient to the US; I'd much prefere a Europe that is capable of handling their own continent, which would leave us free to pursue our own interests. However, rather than competing with each other, we should be able to cooperate with each other. A US/EU cooperative would be a juggernaut in the world economy, able to compete with the rising Pacific Rim nations.

And as a bonus, just think of how it would piss of Chirac and his stooges!

Baghdad Bob is gone...

...or he could be lying again. It's hard to tell.

It could just be more of Iraqi Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf's trademark disinformation, but there were reports this week that he committed suicide.

Two Iranian newspapers reported that Saddam's notorious spinmeister, whose outlandish briefings on the state of the Iraq war earned him the nickname "Comical Ali," hanged himself shortly after the fall of Baghdad last week.

The newspapers Al Wifaq and Mardomsalari said the story of al-Sahhaf's "suicide" came from unnamed Iraqi war refuges in the town of Dehlorn.

Like every other word we heard from this idiot, it's probabaly a lie. WE'll have to wait and see.

Actually, I hope the story is false. With his ability to lie so sincerely on international TV, he'd be a fine addition to the Democratic Presidential slate.

Why do I blog?

Like I said below, I don't expect to change any minds, so why do I do it?

Another war, one much more vital to the future of America than the one in Iraq is being fought right now, and it's being fought here, in this country. It's being fought to determine the future of America. Will we be a nation of free men, or nation of vassals to an overweening federal government, controlling what we do, what we say, and even what we think?

This war transcends politics, as their are bad guys on each side, left and right, and it is a war which ultimately, we will lose. The odds are stacked against us, both by history and biology, but if I can in some way help stave off the inevitable, I'll do it. (Dang, this is getting melodramatic! Where's my cape? After a line like that, I need a cape to flourish dramatically.)

Melodrama aside, let's look at the facts, shall we?

The left seeks to restrict our thoughts, speech, and actions. Hate crime legislation, hate speech legislation, diversity legislation, affirmative action legislation, anti-discrimination legislation, and on and on, all restrict our freedoms an enumerated in the Constitution. Don't get me wrong, many of these laws were enacted with the best of intentions, but you know what they say about the road to Hell. Oops, religious speech might offend somebody. Good thing I'm not a federal employee. (Although a federal employee did leave money in my tip jar. Once. I don't think that counts. Maybe I should consult my lawyer.)

Assault and battary is already a crime, and I have to think that some degree of hate is present in all assaults. You sure as heck don't go upside somebody's skull because you're in love with them. Why should it be a worse crime if the reason you hate is because of the victim's skin color, accent, sexual preference etc? What we're actually doing is criminalizing thought. The thought may be reprehensible, or morally repugnant, but should it be criminal? Apply the same logic to art. Should art which is reprehensible or morally repugnant be illegal?

Obviously not. You can't legislate thought. Even more importantly, you can't change people's minds through legislation. The abyssmal failure of forced bussing has proven that. Neighborhoods are not much more integrated now than they were 60 years ago. What progress has been made has come in spite of bussing, not because of it.

The left also attacks property rights, usually in the name of the environment. Again noble intentions, but poor practice. Ownership has become less real over the last few decades, as agencies of the federal government tell property owners what they can and can't do on land they own, often to the point of rendering valuable property worthless. The pwner receives no compensation for this loss, mind you; he's left holding the bag.

Before my buddies on the right get too comfortable, the record there is hardly a shining one. The right also seeks to limit our freedoms, based usually on their notions of morality.

Blue laws anyone?

Why should there be ANY law concerning the activities of two consenting partners? If the right to privacy covers a woman's ability to kill her unborn child, then surely it covers what two (or more) people do in their bedroom.

Let's talk about obscenity for a minute. Forget the fact that the definition is vague, subjective, and flat out worthless; why should we worry about it in the first place? Certainly, obscenity should be regulated, to protect the rights of people who don't want to see it, but it shouldn't be illegal in itself.

Now we have the war on terror, which is being used as an excuse to gut many of our freedoms. Here's a fine example:

WASHINGTON — DNA profiles from juvenile offenders and from adults who have been arrested but not convicted would be added to the FBI's national DNA database under a Bush administration proposal.

Under current law, only DNA from adults convicted of crimes can be placed in the national database, which is used to compare those samples with biological evidence from the scenes of unsolved crimes. As of January, there were about 1.3 million DNA samples in the database, U.S. officials say.

Adding profiles from thousands of adult arrestees and juvenile offenders would greatly expand the DNA system's worth by increasing the number of potential matches, administration officials say. Justice Department officials have discussed potential changes in federal DNA law with key members of Congress and are pushing for legislation this year.

In other words, if you are arrested, then later acquitted, your DNA will be maintained on file. This mirrors the current practice with fingerprints, which is also an intolerable breach of privacy, but has been allowed to slide by. Now the government says that the DNA will only be used in their database, and that nobody else will have access to it. Of course, they also said that the Social Security Number could not be used as an ID number.

Try to get a credit card without giving yout SSN. Good luck.

How about the drug laws? Why should drug use be illegal? If some stoner wants to waste his brain cells on drugs, have at it. Just don't expect me to pay the tab for the inevitable crash.

Which brings me to the reason I and those like me will lose this war.

Both parties subscribe to the 'nanny state' theory. In their minds, government exists to take care of us, the little sheep who can't manage to take care of themselves. Speed limits, seatbelt laws, helmet laws, smoking laws, gun laws, drug laws, drinking age limits, social security, welfare; the list goes on and on. All of these are aimed at 'protecting us' from ourselves.

And we buy into it every damn day. Like the punk kid during the Clinton/Dole Debate, who asked how the government, "our father" was going to take care of us, we look to Washington to make everything all right, like Mommy kissing a boo-boo. We refuse to take responsibility for ourselves, because that involves hard work and the risk of failure. We refuse to accept that responsibility, and look for somebody else to bear it. We refuse to accept accountability for our actions. We have people filing lawsuits when they burn themselves with hot coffee, criminals sueing homewners for injuries received while breaking and entering, felons sueing the police for arresting them. And they're winning those lawsuits.

We're acting like children, so our government is treating us like children. It's insulting and offensive to adults, but too many of our citizens welcome that treatment. Like the man said, we get the government we deserve.

Democracy works only as long as those who vote are able to put the best interests of the country ahead of their own interests. Once the plebes start voting for their own interests over the interests of the nation, the long slide to oblivion is inevitable.

And it's already started. Special interest groups now dominate national politics. They lobby for themselves and they're interests, with no concern for the best interests of the nation. Instead of choosing the best course for our country, politicians are choosing which special interests to appease to further their own re-election bid. And it seems that each special nterest group wants a pice of my freedom. The gay lobby wants to force me to rent to them; the Christian lobby wants to prevent me from seeing a Playboy centerfold; the atheists want to keep me from praying at a football game; the NAACP wants me to throw out my Confederate past; the Italian lobby wants me to stop watching the Sopranos; the PETA folks want me to eat tofu and sit on naugahyde couches; and on and on and on.

Like Jefferson Davis before me (oh god, he's quoting a Confederate. He must be a real red-neck racist hillbilly.), all I want is to be left alone to live my life as I see fit, without impacting my neighbor's right to do that same thing. If I stumble, I'll learn from my mistake, pick up the pieces, and carry on. I'll accept help when it's offered, but if the price of that help is my freedom, I'll do without. If I see a fellow traveller who needs help, I'll lend what assistance I can, but not if I'm compelled to do so by the gov't. In short, I'm an individualist.

I post here because I hope I'm wrong. I hope that people like me are the majority, and that we all, left and right, still believe in self reliance and individualism. Through this blog, I've met people on both sides of the political fence who believe as I do. We may disagree on how to get there, but we have the same destination in mind. Maybe there are enough of us left to make a difference. The only way to find out is to keep posting, keep putting the word out there, and hope that the message find fertile ground.

That's why I blog.

It certainly isn't for the chicks and money...

More Iraqi violations...

found here.

Before the war, Syria was said to be receiving as much as 200,000 b/d of oil through the pipeline, paying as much as $1 billion/year to Iraq, making it the single largest source of revenue for Baghdad outside the UN's oil-for-aid program.

But the US action put an end to that arrangement, ending Washington's formerly benign policy towards Syria's illicit imports of Iraqi oil.

Not that anyone will care. I've realized that those who are against the war are against it, period. It won't matter if we find NBC weapons or pro