EARTH TO SPACESHIP PUTIN
The White House is becoming increasingly concerned about Pootie-Poot. He actually said point-blank to one of Bush’s key advisors: “Mr. Bush is in no position to criticize me on my actions towards the Russian press - look at how he fired Dan Rather.”
FIREFOX AND THUNDERBIRD – DID I SPEAK TOO SOON?
Now that I’m using Firefox and Thunderbird exclusively, I’ve become disappointed. Not surprisingly, I’ve read more about them, and a number of blemishes have been showing up in the Information Technology press. Some even question the integrity of Mozilla Organization. Furthermore, press reports indicate that Internet Explorer 7 will be released this year. It will have a tabbed interface, cut way down on resource use, and allow third party additions that will dig less deeply into the operating system itself. I’ve also heard this directly from two Microsoft contacts, both of whom are in positions to know.
CASTRO AND MRS. BLANCO
[Cuban-born writer Humberto Fontova has just published Fidel: Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant ] It gets old. It really, really gets old. I refer to all the moralizing and humbug by U.S. political and business hucksters when they visit Cuba. Take Louisiana's own Democratic governor, Kathleen Blanco, on her visit to Castroland last week. If the woman had simply told us: "Look, Cuban-Americans, there ain't enough of you voting in Louisiana to make any difference to me. Worse, all you Cubans are Republicans and didn't vote for me or contribute to my campaign anyway. I owe you people nothing." How refreshing it might have been! But no. She insists on warbling about the "strictly business" aspects of the visit and how this "builds bridges with the Cuban people," and how this "positions Louisiana for dealing with Cuba after the transition," etc., etc. The best came when she rationalized her luncheon with the mass murderer himself. She did it, said her spokesperson, "out of respect for the Cuban president." Mrs. Blanco, I realize you're very busy with state business, but in case you haven't heard: There have been no "presidential" elections in Cuba for the past 46 years, ma'am.
WORTH IT IN BAGHDAD
Major General Peter Chiarelli, head of US military’s Task Force Baghdad and commander of the Army’s 1st Cavalry Division, spoke a few days ago at a AUSA (Association of the United States Army) meeting at the Ft. Hood (Texas) Officer’s Club. A friend of To The Point’s took notes. This is how it really is.*Baghdad is about the same size, geographically, as Texas’ capital of Austin, with ten times the folks: 700,000 for Austin, 7 million for Baghdad.*Baghdad’s main problem area has been a huge slum called Sadr City. Last fall, there was an average of 160 terrorist attacks per week. For the last three months, they have flatlined: five to zero a week.*The media blared in front-page headlines about the 100 Iraqis killed in Baghdad as they were lined up to enlist in the police and security service. It was never reported that the next day, there were 300 lined up in the same place.
THUNDERBIRD
Outlook Express remains the default mail client for most Windows users.. Most people are used to it, and it does an acceptable job of getting and sending mail. Furthermore, Outlook Express has a built in news reader. I’ve mentioned newsgroups in the past, including my column on Firefox two weeks ago. I’ll mention them again later in this column.If you feel comfortable with Outlook, and rarely use newsgroups, by all means keep using it. Microsoft's programs work perfectly with Microsoft's operating systems. If, however, you want a fast, efficient, easy and - perhaps most important - expandable e-mail program, you should switch to Mozilla’s Thunderbird, companion to the Firefox browser.
THE REAL LOCKBOX
So now Alan Greenspan says the “lockbox” the Democrats pretend to advocate for Social Security must be “real.” Addressing the Senate Committee on Aging this Tuesday the 15th, he proclaimed:
In addressing Social Security's imbalances, we need to ensure that measures taken now to finance future benefit commitments represent real additions to national saving. We need, in effect, to make the phantom `lock-boxes' around the trust fund real.It’s going to be very interesting to watch Democrats squirm - and a lot of squishy Republicans - when conservative Republicans on Capitol Hill take Greenspan’s demand seriously.They are going to advocate something called The Real Lockbox. It puts the Dems in a lockbox without a key.There are some very smart Congressional Republicans getting behind The Real Lockbox concept, which is far superior to President Bush's own private accounts plan. Whether they end up in a tug-of-war with the Bushistas, or the latter admit to the flaws of their initial proposal, is going to be a major political drama this spring.
FRUITCAKE FASCISTS
The decision by San Francisco Superior Court Judge Richard Kramer this week that withholding marriage licenses from homosexuals is somehow unconstitutional is the latest example of America’s retreat from democracy. The type of government America is moving towards is a krytocracy.Remember the word. American democracy has been superceded, replaced, by a krytocracy - a government of judges. Unelected judges.America’s Constitution and the laws passed by Congress under its authority no longer have any meaning. The Constitution’s only - only - meaning is what judges say it has. We live in an era of krytocratic tyranny: rule by the arbitrary feelings and whims of judges.But it’s worse than that. The Kramer decision is yet another example of the seizure, the wholesale theft, of American culture by a tiny fraction of Americans. Less than 2% of Americans are homosexual, engaging in practices the vast majority of Americans find abnormal and perverse if not morally repugnant - yet are willing to tolerate and ignore. Yet being tolerated and left alone is not good enough. Despite the fact that no culture in human history has ever looked upon homosexuality as psychologically normal and made no legal, moral, or cultural distinction between its activities and those of normal folks, homosexuals are waging a war upon America to force her to do so. That’s why they have become Fruitcake Fascists.
DON’T DEMOCRATS KNOW HOW TO PLAY FOOTBALL?
Partisan politics in Washington this season are getting interesting, as a few Democrats are cautiously beginning to challenge their leadership's strategy of total opposition to major Bush initiatives. It is dawning on some Democrats that their all-defense strategy may not pair up well with President Bush's all offense strategy. President Bush plays politics the way my friends and I used to play pick-up football when I was a kid. In the huddle, the quarterback would tell everyone else to go out long. On the snap the quarterback would dance around in the backfield until one of us five or six receivers got open, at which point he would complete the pass. With both sides going long all the time, we often ended up with basketball scores. The Democrats, on the other hand, when on offense, merely receive the snap and fall on the ball. When on defense, they put all their men on the line, trying for a quick sack of the quarterback. If the quarterback is too agile for them, they are vulnerable to be scored upon, given their lack of a pass defense. When two such teams meet, the best score the all-defense Democrats can hope for is a 0-0 tie. The best score the all-offense Republicans can expect is at least a 56-0 win.
ITALIAN MORAL STUPIDITY IN IRAQ
Giuliana Sgrena does not lack a sense of self importance. The 56-year-old journalist for the Italian communist newspaper Il Manifesto thinks she knows so many deep dark secrets the U.S. military tried to shut her up permanently. Sgrena went to Iraq to report on the heroic resistance to the American imperialists. Dutch journalist Harald Doornbos rode in the airplane to Baghdad with her. "Be careful not to get kidnapped," Doornbos warned Sgrena. "You don't understand the situation," she responded, according to Doornbos' account in the Nederlands Dagblatt. "The Iraqis only kidnap American sympathizers. The enemies of the Americans have nothing to fear." She got nabbed on her way back to her hotel. Sgrena told her captors she was on their side, and suggested they kidnap an American soldier instead. But the U.S. government doesn't pay ransoms.
RUSSIA LOSES ANOTHER ONE
A friend of mine whose name you know but is embarrassed to have his name mentioned and I will never forget standing on a street corner in Kishinev, Moldavia. We stood there looking like fools trying to keep our jaws from dropping open and our necks from snapping back and forth - for everywhere we looked, we saw another stunningly beautiful woman walk by. Between the two of us, we had been to just about every country in Europe, and we agreed: the most beautiful women on the European continent were right here. Kishinev left Paris in the dust.That was back in 1990, and the place was still part of the Soviet Union. During World War II, Stalin decided to move the USSR-Romania border westward, from the Dniester River to the Prut River, and called the territory he had seized the Soviet Socialist Republic of Moldavia. The smallest of the USSR’s 15 republics (at 13,000 square miles, slightly larger than Maryland), it along with the others declared independence in 1991, changing its name to Moldova and its capital to Chisinau. Except there was this one little problem.