Fitness road hogs

Why is it that you see joggers cruising down the side of the road when there is a perfectly good sidewalk right next to them. What about the road induces a lemming-like need to run right next to traffic? In the space of three minutes this morning on the school run, I must have counted five joggers (for they were not running) running along side the road. The road in question is heavily travelled, so there is a constant risk of getting whacked by the driver putting on make-up or gabbing on the cell phone ... and there is also the exhaust that the joggers must breathe in along the way. This cannot be good for them in any possible way, shape or form. Road running has long been acknowledged to be hard on the knees, spine and feet ... so why do it? Just to shed a few pounds? Cardio fitness? If it is the weight, eat less, walk more. If it is the fitness, eat less and walk more. Try walking for 1/2 hour briskly three times a week. That should get you where you need to be, although it won't make you am 8% bodyfat type, they are ugly anyway!

And bike riders ... get a frikkin grip!!!! If you are on the road, you must obey the laws of the road as though you were a car. You get no extra privileges because you are being green, being fit, training for some stupid marathon ... nothing. You are a vehicle according to the laws of the land. That means stopping at lights. That means signalling your intentions. That means you can't just swerve into oncoming traffic and glare at car drivers because they nearly hit you. You are at fault just as if you had done the same move behind the wheel of your Toyota Pri-o-pustibule.

To be fair to the cyclists, I can understand that you might feel an endangered species when around SUVs because the little blond bubble headed Wellesley soccer mom can't see you and is talking on the phone anyway. But if you insist on having your cake and eating it too ... well bad things happen. A cyclist, like a motorcyclist ought to behave like he is a turkey a week before Thanksgiving: a target about to become dinner. Even if the motorist is totally in the wrong, and you are dead right, you may be ... well, dead. Oh boy. What a great vindication of your rights.

To be fair, the cyclist morons are almost exlusively male -- although the few females that express rage in this regard are so rabid as to require immediate recourse to hazmat suits and the ASPCA. But it seems to be the women that insist on running (OK, so I will retreat from jogging) in the road.

Lest I seem anti-environmental and a champion of the obese, I am not. I would LOVE it if we Americans started driving the little shit-boxes that pass for cars in Europe, made use of diesel fueled basic transportation. Diesel? Yes, diesel: in our lofty ignorance on this side of the pond we have ignored the revolution that has occurred in Europe in this regard. More than 50% of cars in Europe are diesel powered, the average fuel consumption of which is more than 40 mpg. That includes large BMW 530ds returning 40.9 mpg. ANd the smaller prol-cars? Many over 50 mpg. If we Americans could overnight adopt European car habits (not necessarily built there) across the board, we would drop consumption of fossil fuels in this country by 65-70%. Then we could tell the Arabs to bite themselves.

Oh, you scream, what about the pollution of those diesel? Well, No1., the engines are so small (typically 1.8 liter machines) that your lawn mower makes more pollution by far. Secondly, technology has come so far that the only thing more polluting about them is particulate emmisions, far fewer polluting gases than a gasoline engine. And the newest generation of diesels now produce equal or fewer particulates than gas engines. A huge problem in the States has been that diesel fuel had large quantities of sulfur in it: that was a result of allowance for poor engineering of engines and also cheaper refining for the oil companies (read more profit). With the advent of low sulfur fuels, there is NO reason to discount diesels. They don't smoke, don't smell, provide more power per gallon, more miles per gallon in ANY equal comparison, are more dependable, require fewer servicing visits. The list goes on. Why spend thousands more for a hybrid (with a battery that is an environmental nightmare and a limited life) that actually returns fewer miles per gallon than a similarly powerful diesel? Its crazy!!!

Those crafty Germans are plotting a double whammy: appease the greens with hyrbid technology (even though the battery question exists), and get even larger benefits by equiping the main motor with a diesel. The returns? Something like 60 mpg for a hybrid BMW 530. Meanwhile, Detroit is planning new push-rod, two valve garbage. Like 5 liter engines producing 185 hp, burning 21 mpg. No wonder we don't buy Detroit.

Egypt

It must have been 1997 or perhaps 1998, I was in Egypt acting as counsel to a multinational investment bank, writing the prospectus for the offering of an Egyptian hotel/resort company. We were on the Red Sea at one of the portfolio hotels when we received news of the killings in Luxor ... a terrorist attack. One day later we were headed back to Cairo and onwards, the offering cancelled without hope of resurrection in the near future.

Egypt, you see, is trying to become a Mediterranean rim nation, and not merely a Middle East nation. They have aspirations of becoming at least a Greece-grade player and do not want to be seen as a backward third world banana republic (OK, cotton). Egypt is also painfully short of foreign exchange and relies heavily on tourism to augment its income. They want to develop a 365 day tourism base, using its Red Sea resorts to provide the bulk of the income, the Med coast being too cold in Winter. Pharaonic tourism is great, but it does not create the huge income streams possible in the "sun and sand" category: there are only so many monuments and relics, and only so many people that are willing to spend extended visits viewing them.

So the "sun and sand" sector is also Egypt's achilles heel with regard to maximum terrorist bang for the buck. If you want to hurt Egypt, hurt the tourism industry which is desperate to move upwards from the package deals for Eastern Europeans into the real bucks of luxury resorts with golf and all the bells and whistles. The Eastern Europeans (and Russians) will come, irrespective of bombs and bad food, its still the best value they can aspire to. But the Egyptians want the English, the Germans and even the Americans. They won't come if there is even an outside risk of getting their heads blown off (notwithstanding the reality that the risk of getting hurt is higher in NYC, London or Berlin on any given day). That said, you would not want to rely on Egyptian hospitals....

Egypt has also been foolish in turning a blind eye to all but the most threatening of Islamic fundamentalism within its borders. Sure, Egyptian prisons are full of the Muslim Brotherhood types (the same group that whacked Sadat), but if you do not separate the inmates and remove them from other fundamentalist teachings, all you do is create an indoctrination center. And you also need to eliminate the imams, clerics and mullahs that preach hatred and violence. Here Mubarak has tried to walk a thin line, not wanting to irritate his Islamic support groups (not wanting to end up like Sadat), encourage foreign aid support from more fundamentalist states (Saudi Arabia ... again), and still advance Egypt as a western-oriented advancing country. The tension is that the people he is trying to appease do not want "advances" into a secular lifestyle. They do not want western tourists spending their money in sin on Islamic soil. They want a theocracy (and a presumed return to the Middle Ages in terms of personal liberties, with thelseves set up as the arbiters of right and wrong according to their version of Islamic Law).

With almost unlimited funds available for the spread of Wahabbi thought and practices (kill the infidel), Egypt cannot really believe that it will end here. Today the soft targets of tourism. Tomorrow, the revolution setting up the Islamic Republic. Shortly thereafter, the march on Jerusalem.

Hama-Nazis

What ... Hamas and Nazis? Huh? Apart from the obvious shared desire to kill Jews, what on Earth am I prattling on about?

The Hamas Interior Minister Said Siyam has decided to appoint a known terrorist Abu Samhadana (wanted by Israel for multiple rocket attacks, and survivor of numerous assassination attempts by Israel; by the US for the attack on a US Embassy convoy in the Gaza when it was still civilized) as the head of a new security force -- made up exlusively of Islamic militants. And get this: Abu Samhadana's thugs will be answerable only to the Interior Minister.

Does this sound like the SA (Sturmabteilung) to you, or perhaps the SS (Schutzstaffel)? They too, were not answerable to the electorate but only to Roehm and Heydrich (well Himmler, but more acurately Heydrich in terms of executive function) until they too met their demise. Where society creates "security forces" of any sort that are not answerable to the electorate -- and please don't bore me with the notion that Hamas can now be voted out ... that is why the security forces are to be created -- we see the inevitable creation of a dictatorship, a one-party state where any right to dispute politics will be ruthlessly crushed.

Hamas will cleanse its population of dissent. Anyone not on board with the notion of terrorism and violence will be eliminated (or liquidated?) until Palestine is forged into a tool to do the political bidding of its rulers.

The net of this will be a show-down: there can be no peace with Israel without a democracy on the other side. Israel will have to pull up the ladders and build the bunkers. By this one move, Hamas has declared its long term intent in a more demonstrative way than any mere verbal proclamation to destroy Israel. If I were in the driver's seat in Jerusalem, I'd start thinking about a systematic way of targeting and eliminating anyone associated with the new security force. By any means.

Camp X-ray

Otherwise known as Gitmo, that pustibule on the sphincter of the Caribbean ... Cuba.

So the US has released a definitive list of the occupants of Camp X-Ray. There has been a huge amount of whining from various UK nationals held in Gitmo, how they were tortured, how prostitutes were brought into the camp (where did they get them ... Cuba? Or were they flown in on US military planes?). Well, they should just shut up. How did they get rounded up with the list of scumbags that are revealed to comprise the inmates of that resort?

To read that list is to be gob-smacked at the few source countries for the global jihad (and remember, these cats were rounded up in Afghanistan and maybe some in Iraq). If we postulate that 90% of gitmo is Afghan-sourced in terms of where they were caught, then why are at least 50% of the residents from Yemen, Saudi Arabia, another 25% from Algeria, Libya (few), Pakistan (more), Sudan, Syria, Egypt and the rest of the Middle East (very few Palestinians -- persumably fully occupied at home, no need to travel to stir up trouble)? Why did these guys have to travel to Kabul to join with the Taliban and oppress the locals ... create their own version of what we could only regard as hell? Where flying a kite could get one executed?

No this list clearly outlines the sources of the golbal jihad and the engine that drives the lunatics trying to create a civil war in Iraq. If we want to eliminate the threat of global terrorism,we need to put the lid on hateful teachings and money coming from Saudi Arabia, Yemen (they are funding the Sunnis globally) and Iran (they are funding the Shias in Iraq, and anyone making trouble globally). These are not home grown movements rising up to throw off the yoke of the unbelievers ... these are carefully orchestrated movements by theologian/politicians in those source countries.

This puts the US in a difficult position: we have to have the Saudi oil to run the SUVs for the soccer moms at home, but equally, we have to try and make believe (for global prestige) that we are not getting it up the whazoo by some guy wearing a robe and a fan belt on his head. But Ibn Saud just smiles -- while the Wahabbi clerics continue to spew forth their particular brand of anti-western hatred, convincing the useful idiots outside of the Saudi revenue stream (hence surplus to the needs of the Kingdom) that to find meaning in life they would be well considered if they would kill a few (fill in the blank ... Americans, Shias, Jews, etc.).

Yemen ... a god-forsaken place indeed. Feudal, funded by Saudi Arabia, extremely fundamental in the Wahabbi fashion, and still largely in the middle ages. For a small and relatively poor country, they have disproportionately the largest presence at Gitmo. Meaning, that they are the great Jihadists, exporters of extreme and violent Islam for consumption abroad. The Saudis encourage this: historically, Yemen has been a thorn in its side, raiding, murdering and pillaging in the Kingdom for hundreds of years. With the advent of Saudi oil money, they proved to be capable of being bought off (actually, there were before -- kidnapping and extortion being a pastime long practiced by the various bedouin tribes) -- and so with a bought peace, the Saudis needed to find a channel to get rid of these potential threats. Left to their own devices, the Yemeni warlords would no doubt have made attempts on Saudi Arabia. The British SAS spent more than a few years hunting these assholes down in the 1950s and 1960s on behalf of Oman.

But back to the present: the Saudis NEED to keep the Yemenis flowing abroad to keep the lid on them at home. It would destabilize the Kingdom to have them in large numbers spreading their more virulent brand of Islamic life at home ... precarious as it might be already. If the wild-eyed fundamentalist masses suddenly realize that they are being sold a bill of goods -- princes and businessmen swilling Scotch in Bahrain, entertaining hookers on their yachts, etc., that Wahabbi fervour might turn inwards. Voila, a Taliban nation on top of the world's largest oil reserves. Bend over Uncle Sam and take some more ... although, arguably, you might be happier terminating the existence of the wild-eyed masses and "owning the oil" more directly by encouraging civil war in the Kingdom. But that won't happen. The ruling elite will resort to mass murder before they let go of the strings.

It is striking to note that there were more than a few X-ray residents from China and the 'Stans.... Wake up, Russia and China: this means that you have a underground there too that might love to set up a Islamic republic on your territory -- guaranteed by the Islamic Republic of Iran and their nuclear arsenal. Remember too, that if they die in a nuclear holocaust of your creation (in presumable retaliation for an Iranian bombing), the Iranian will go to paradise, whereas you are in no doubt as to where you are going.

Iran, again

I wonder if there are any polly-annas out there that are suddenly shocked that Iran has now successfuly enriched some nuclear fuel. Russia and China certainly fit that description: either that, or they represent the very worst in human duplicity and greed. "Today, thank God, the Iranian nation is a powerful one and we are going to have a dialogue with the world from a position of power," Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said in a speech in the northeast of the country. "Everything we have is from God, and a few weaklings cannot stand against the Iranian people." The weaklings being the U.S., France, U.K., Russia and China ... the UN Security Council. The "position of power" is ... a nuclear armed Iran willing to use the damn things. Top cleric Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati said in a prayer sermon Friday that the United States was a "decaying power," and pointed out that Iran was "not Iraq or Afghanistan."

Worse, the Iranians again called for Israel's demise, in no uncertain terms. Iran’s president Mahmoud Ahmadi-Nejad on Friday described Israel as “a dry and rotten tree that can be destroyed by a storm.” That one storm ... does not take a great deal of imagination. The Israelis, of course, have no option. The question rapidly becomes this: do the Israelis nuke them before or after? I have to think that the frikkin Iranians will actually use the weapons -- there rhetoric over the last two years is unminstakeable. ``Like it or not, the Zionist regime is heading toward annihilation,'' Ahmadinejad told a conference for supporting the Palestinians that opened in Tehran on Friday.

The Iranian dream: take the Israelis out, free the Palestinian people, and lead the Islamic World into a new tomorrow, dominated by the Shia theologians in Tehran. Who stands to lose, apart from Israel,... well I would think that would have to include the whole of the Sunni Arab world. In particular, the Saudi royal family, the Gulf Arab elite and anyone that does not feel like kowtowing to Tehran. Think about it: nukes in the hands of people that are not afraid to use them because they speak the greater truth of God. The U.S. in its current state would be paralysed ... imagine all the liberal weenies wringing their hands and telling us that we should peaceably co-exist with the Iranians -- and the Ayatollahs laughing their asses off at our weakness, then promptly doing whatever they want, explaining that anything that we should be freaked at is only a mistake -- and the Kerrys of this world believing them. Meanwhile, we lose ground to the Islamic hordes.

Russia and China are the greatest assholes here: they have large domestic muslims populations -- ripe for the formenting of unrest orchestrated by Tehran. And with a nuke empowered mentor, who is going to seriously threaten the Islamic revivals in the 'Stans and China? Once used, the genie is out of the bottle (where is has resided since 1945): decadent societies will not have the sheer guts to defend themselves, creating a situation where only a few bombs in the hands of the willing will control the essentially the whole world. Iran states: we have bombs, dirty ones, in NYC, Moscow, Beijing and Washington. Back off or else. Who will move against them? The only people that might is Tel Aviv / Jerusalem. They may be the only people with the guts to do what needs to be done. Otherwise, the new century is Islamic, Western Civilization (and Communism) having collapsed under its own weakness and lack of courage.

I just can't bear it. And Boosh has screwed up so far that there is no chance that he will ever be able to muster the support to accomplish this most necessary of tasks. THAT is the great legacy of Iraq.

Ha-morons

The trouble is the Palestinian nation suffers from mass psychosis. Today the Eu announced that they will suspend payments to the Palestianian Authority. Why? Because, according to an EU spokeswoman, Hamas has not yet met the international community’s conditions of recognising Israel, renouncing violence and accepting past peace agreements. Pretty simple, no?

But Hamas doesn't quite look on it that way. No, not by a long shot. A Hamas MP condemned the move, accusing the EU of "collective punishment" of the Palestinian people. A Hamas spokesman described it as blackmail. Ghazi Hamad, a government spokesman, told reporters: "We will not accept such a blackmail. Hamas was elected democratically and the Palestinian people are punished for their choice. "The EU will not only punish the government but all the Palestinian people -- the poor, the students, the workers. "It is unjust because first of all it’s Israel should be punished, Israel continues its aggression. They should rethink and understand that this government will not fail its political positions."

Yup, the Palestinians elected Hamas -- their choice. And EU's decision to reject payments to those they consider to be terrorists, committed to violence and politically unacceptable goals is also a choice. Blackmail? You mean the notion that we may choose not to send you money because we abhor what you do and stand for is blackmail? Hmm. What IS blackmail? According to Wikipedia, blackmail is the crime of threatening to reveal substantially true information about a person to the public, a family member, or associates unless a demand made upon the victim is met. This information is usually of an embarrassing or socially damaging nature. There is no threat to reveal anything here ... so I don't agree with that assertion.

Maybe he meant extortion -- extortion involves an underlying, independent criminal act, while blackmail does not. So what criminal act might we be talking about? Not giving the PA the money? If anything, there appears to be an independent extortion involved here: the PA may be saying, send us the money, or we will kill you all (it is already a given that they want to kill all the Israelis). Remember there is no obligation to give the money to the PA or a right on their part to receive it -- any treaty (contract) to that end also requires observance of the the contents.

According to the New York Times, "Dr. al-Zahar said that Hamas was ready to enter talks with the international community over the prospect of Israeli and Palestinian states co-existing. But he gave warning that his Government would demand to know what Israel and the international com munity would offer in return." What is implicit in this statement is that currently the PA's position is that there can be no co-existence with Israel -- that means death to Israel. Giving up that intention for money ... well does that not sound to you like extortion? The underlying crime the intent to kill?

Can the Palestinian people so stupid as not to see that when they voted Hamas in, they voted themselves out of the international community. Yes, it was democratic, but so is a vote to join a conspiracy to muder or steal. Both can land you in prison or worse. Democracy by itself is not a universal panacea, you have to combine it with a desire to live peaceably and in some form of civilization. It is possible to conceive of a large mass of humanity democratically devoted to the goal of conduct that would land one in prison, psychiatric hospitals, or universal condemnation in other parts of the world. Say the people of New Guinea decide that they want to return to the ways of their tribal ancestors and enshire the ritual eating of their enemies as a national pastime: they could do that. But sane and rational people may decide that they do not want to go there anymore. And we should have no obligation to send them money to practice their national ritual.

The killing of innocents through suicide bombing is, to me and many others, no less abhorrent than eating your enemies in a cultural ritual. And no way should anyone feel forced to to support those who would commit these crimes. If you vote for it, you have made your choice: as I see it, it is a pact with the Devil.

Reconquest -- MTO

Reconquest ... my ass. Mexico Take Over. Mexica.

Look at this URL: http://www.mexica-movement.org/ENTERHERETEXTONLY.htm
These people are serious. They plan to take over not only the American Southwest by demographics, but the whole of North America, which they consider to be native Mexican by right.

So 500,000 illegal immigrants protested in Los Angeles. California WAS Mexican, but lost through various nefarious means. They mean to take it back. Mexico looks at the US like we are a bunch of idiots -- and with respect to Mexico, we are. President Fox has this wonderful situation in hand: send the excess workers to the US where they are cared for, where they earn money to send back to Mexico without the hassle of administrative support and fewer people to feed domestically. Perfect. The US gets felons, tax evading workers, a huge burden on our health system (already mired in expenses), drugs smuggled across the border and of course, a massive expense to support some misplaced liberal idea (actually, smart because the legal ones vote liberal-biased) that we should support bi-lingualism in schools, government and in every other facet of our lives.

People, this is bullshit. Previous waves of immigrants became Americans through the simple expedient of learning English, through being forced to learn English if they wanted to get a job or succeed in this country. And, by and large, immigrants invested in America: they wanted the American dream. Waves of Italians, Germans, Swedish and Russians came to our shores and within a generation became English speaking Americans.

The massive Latino immigration wave, does none of these: they persist in speaking Spanish to the exclusion of English, they do not assimilate and they persist in their own set of morals and ethics. This is not expanding the "melting pot." This is foisting the cost and burden of having someone else's culture imposed upon us. The Latin goal is to make a bundle and return to your island, or country, rich and respected, NOT to climb the societal ladder within the U.S. No re-investment and no assimilation. We represent a huge piggy bank to break open and raid for needs elsewhere. Make no mitake about it. Liberals feel guilty at all we have in the U.S. -- ignoring the reality that we have all these riches by virtue of working for them and having created them. The English and French explorers that came to the U.S. intending to rape the country in the Spanish manner, to send the wealth and prosperity derived back to their home countries. We, the descendants of the deprived and poor of our own countries of origin kicked their sorry asses out. The Hispanic historical system was one of continued plunder and repatriation of wealth. And if you have any courage to think outside of the liberal box, you will see that this is historically true.

Oh, I hear you say, the Mexicans ony want the American dream. Bullshit. They want to take the money and go home. They don't want to pay the taxes, they don't want to fund the community organizations: "the Anglos should pay for that stuff. They owe it to us because we work for such low wages." As far as I am concerned if you don't like our system, stay home. Have fewer children. Elect officials in your own country that are honest.

Any person sympathizing with the Latinos need to ask themselves a question: do you want the U.S. to become a replica of ANY Latin American culture? Name one that has had ANY success in moving the civilization of mankind forwards, just name one!! Do you want the endemic corruption that is present in EVERY Latin American country to become the "norm" in the U.S.? I don't. And if you have not traveled in Latin America, you can have no idea of how messed up it can be. None. Books and reports cannot do the chaos justice. Nor the grinding poverty and ignorance. It is a reason so many try to come here -- but it is not our faults: we are not guilty. We should try to help as much as we can because we are rich ... but we need to make sure that we can do so in an orderly, controlled and efficient way.

Yet, those craven shits in Congress are going to give citizenship rights to those who have been here illegally for more than 5 years, and rights of re-entry to those that have been here illegally 2 years ... that is we are giving gifts of membership to those that have violated our laws to be here at all. And those from around the world that are begging and yearning to come the U.S. and have had to wait, sometimes as long as 10 years for that precious visa, that ticket to the assimilation and the American dream, what about them? Tough luck. Because the Latin Americans can violate our borders with impunity, they have a special ticket. Merde! Give me a shipload of Poles, Lithuanians, Indians, Nigerians (maybe not, talk about home country corruption), Vietnamese any day. They come not to plunder and go home: they come to become us, the country created with the goal of a fair shot for everyone that plays by the rules.

There are whole areas of the Southern U.S. where there are third (and more) generation Latinos who are incapable of expressing themselves in English. That is crazy: we should not try to stamp out their culture, we should force the assimilation of that culture into our own -- with the unifying agent of a common language. As every culture assimilates, the whole moves slightly towards that culture, but the new culture moves further towards the whole. The Latinos have no notion of integration; rather they feel we should all learn their morals and ethics (or is it that they are simply too lazy to try?). No thank you. I have seen enough with my own eyes in the courts of this country, in the prison systems, and in the barrios of my native Los Angeles. No freaking way. Human life has a greater value, and so do the women of the United States in particular. We should not have to live in fear of violence, extortion and corruption.

By all means, let immigrants from all countries come to the U.S., our unemployment rate is very low and we need the population to avoid the demographic trap that is headed Europe's way. BUT, learn our language and pay taxes. Become American, liberal, conservative, or Hollywood-weird. And enter our country in the legal way, take your turn, show your need or skills to offer the country. Do not take the places of other and do not violate our laws.

As to the pending legislation, how about we try this: if you have been here for 5 years (tax status ignored) and provided only that you have not been arrested for any crime apart from coming here in the first place, you only have to prove that you can speak English and presto, you have citizenship. If you have been here only 2 years, but paid taxes, wait three more years (you don't have to leave), and then prove you can speak, read and write English ... congrats! If you are here and have never paid taxes ... go home and try again. NO EXCEPTIONS. Say your child is American by virtue of the 14th Amendment; you take them home until they are 18 and of majority under American law, at which time they can come back, no questions asked. If you are cuaght violating this code from here on in: you go home and never come back.

If you are a migrant worker, only wishing to earn a living here, then get a working visa, pay our taxes and obey the laws. If you are caught as a felon, even while here legally, you go home forever. No dispute. You try to come back and we catch you, you do hard time for free in a labor camp. We do need to fix the infrastructure of the country and your contribution would be welcome.

President Fox: you mess with us in this regard, we will ruin your economy. Russia is clearly not above economic warfare, nor is any other major western power (apart from those pathetic assholes in the Labor party in Britain). Let's get with the plan to preserve the United States as a place of dynamic opportunity, not a piggy bank to the north.

Enforcement? The National Guard to the border and the creation of a one year service draft to protect the U.S. -- separate and apart from the U.S. military and not susceptible to foreign service ... purely homeland defense. Three-time losers trying to enter get a one way ticket to road gangs. You want to come that badly, you can, but not as you might like it -- but no long term penalty there: you are still free to apply for a working visa after time served: your only crime was one of economic necessity.

This is harsh, but necessary. Now.

Merde, Alors!

Contrary to belief, it has one "l."

Say you were to establish a nice terrorist group, bomb a few buses, kill a whole bunch of innocents (and in your mind, even better, Jews) and then win an election to lead your people: the ultimate vindication of a terrorist organization ... legitimacy. And then as you were throwing your party, celebrating victory, refusing to stand down from your ideals, you found that nobody wanted to attend the party, except for some rich but obnoxious relatives, and toadying creeps from the down the road you always suspected were engaged in something like pedophilia, or selling drugs ... why then you'd find yourself in the same position as Hamas!!!

Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States have agreed to pay the salaries of the Palestinian authority for a couple of months ... humanitarian, supposedly. There is a little glitch in the process though, no bank will agree to handle the account. "Officials of Hamas, which is listed by Washington and the EU as a terrorist organisation and whose charter calls for Israel's destruction, say the banking problem is part of an international campaign against the Islamist group," according to Reuters. Isn't that just precious? The Arab Bank in Amman, the PA's banker claims that it is "under pressure" to cease operations handling the PA's account. Which party could conceivable "pressure" the Arab Bank?

Could it instead be a recognition that Hamas represents a load of lunatic terrorists? Possibly? Supposedly the Arab Bank simply confiscated hundreds of millions in the PA account to pay back loans ... and the PA is upset about it. Think about this. Would you grab 10 cents on the dollar now if you felt that tomorrow it would be 2 cents on the dollar? You do have shareholders ... oh, now we are on to something. Could it be that certain wealthy Arabs have decided that this is a poor bet?

The PA has about 140,000 employees in an area the size of, well, maybe Rhode Island? Of the habitable parts, maybe less? Irrespective, that is a whole bunch of people taking government handouts. How about some industry? Oh, I forgot, the "People" in celebrating Hamas victory and the withdrawal from Gaza trashed all the Israeli greenhouses, buildings and industry. Ooops. It was a good bonfire though.

The End of Network News

Normally, I would not consider wasting a nanosecond writing about the sugar-frosted pustibule that is Katie Couric ... but given that she has replaced news in the Great American Consciousness I feel compelled to weigh in with a hearty "what in hell are they thinking about at CBS? Are they on drugs? Does Couric possess some negatives that we should all know about? In short, "what up" (as Katie is fond of saying when she attempts ebonics)."

Katie (as NBC has asked us to think of her .. at least until now, when they might perhaps take my suggestion of renaming her "Kootie"), is perhaps the single most irritating "personality" on television. She was hired 15 years ago to join the "Today Show", then languishing near the bottom of the league tables for morning shows. As NBC managed to elevate the Today Show to the dominating spot, Kootie rose with the tide, becoming a national "celebrity." But, throughout the rise of the Today Show Kootie has managed to assemble a string of gaffes, misrepresentations, idiocies, etc., that has polarized the TV viewing nation -- which is more or less all of us (even if you don't watch the Today Show, even from a hotel room when on the road, you will have seen her drivel onthe Macy's Thanksgiving Parade coverage). IF you care about her at all, you then either hate her with the searing passion of a nuclear reactor "gone critical", or you love her perky liberal inanities. Very few people can be said to be on the sidelines if pushed. So pushing myself to make a determination, I find her to be slightly more reliable than Chirac, a man I would not believe as far as I could throw him (though, inasmuch as he is a bloated gas-bag, he might travel farther than I might think).

My best Kootie moment had to be when she cried "on-air" after the results of the Boosh/Kerry election were announced. Hmmm, stunning piece of news journalism, that. Sort of puts away any contention that she in unbiased and objective. For anyone that has endured the Today Show (on TV at the gym, for example), Kootie's unrelenting liberal bias is grating. Everything that is remotely contentious, is posed from the view point that the interviewee must be stupid if he/she thinks contrary to her liberal point of view. A classic example was when Kootie asked "if it would hurt Schwarzenegger when people learned his dad had been a member of the Nazi Party. Then she went on to list every "bad" thing she could think of – all in the form of a question, of course." -- Ackley.

The trouble is, she is so often confused or simply wrong with her facts, or too stupid to see an opportunity even when it lands in her lap like a melon. Take the following (from the Drudge report): Sen. John Kerry claimed this morning on NBC TODAY that 53% of America's children do not graduate from high school -- a claim that raised eyebrows in the NBC control room, sources tell the DRUDGE REPORT.

Kerry made the comments after host Katie Couric asked the former presidential candidate about Bush's State of the Union call to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

COURIC: He wanted to train 70,000 additional teachers in math and science.

KERRY: That's terrific. But 53 percent of our children don't graduate from high school. Kids don't have after-school programs... He didn't ask America to sacrifice anything to achieve great goals and the biggest example is making the tax cut permanent for the wealthiest people in America. The average American struggles to find time to take carry of families, working two or three jobs... It's a disgrace. He did not tell the real state of the union.

Kerry's 53% claim conflicts with a recent press release from the U.S. Census Bureau: "High School Graduation Rates Reach All-Time High"

And the Census Bureau's own website states: 85.9 Percent Of Americans Aged 20-24 Are High School Graduates. (U.S. Census Bureau Website, www.census.gov , Accessed 2/1/06)

Even the liberals (or most of them ... why does Hillary look like a deer in the headlights?) want to avoid being associated with her: Kooties to the cause, she makes them look bad. Try googling "Hate Katie Couric" and you will see that about half of the websites are liberal-biased, maybe more than half. Stunning in that nobody wants to be associated with her, especially her co-hosts for the past 15 years. Matt Lauer in particular ... he loathes her, or more likely having to quickly pick up on any gaffes or misstatement that she makes over the course of a morning. Kind of like having to follow a chihuahua around with a pooper-scooper. You never know.

When Kootie's husband died of cancer in 1998, she gained tremendous respect from viewers for her strength and example. But why was she not at home with her two daughters, then aged seven and two? I am not suggesting that she should be a stay at home mom, but providing a necessary psychological support for her kids at a critical point in time. At the end of it all, will her children be better off to know that her mom went on TV as usual as their dad lay dying? Or is it more important that the US could see brave Kootie continuing to soldier bravely on, a paragon of courage?

Kootie has morphed from the Mary-Lou Retton of the TV news world (cute, but an absolute moron), into a paradoy of Diane Sawyer on a cocktail of anti-depressants with a few shots of vodka added. You have got to believe that more than a few blondes are getting up a petition to the effect that Kootie is perpetuating stereotypes and for her to dye her back to her normal color for all their sakes. Was she smarter as a brunette? Was that when someone saw a perky, bright thing just right for the slot of the cheerleader on the Today Show? Or were they aghast at the monster they created and then could not tame? Truly this is the End of Network news. If they think that anyone younger than 60 is going to tune in to watch Kootie for the news, they are sadly mistaken. If anyone tunes in, it will only to laugh their asses off: it will become a college phenomenon ... happy hour with Kootie. Perhaps that is what CBS is planning? Hook the ignorant on the "CBS Evening News with Kootie," then feed them liberal pap and mumbo-jumbo that they are too wasted to parse as the bullshit that it is? A great, long-term liberal conspiracy to brainwash the braindead? It had better be that or it is just too insane for belief.

Allons les enfants...

So 3 million people marched the streets tonight in Paris.

"We have the government on the run," said Sébastien, 21, a history student from Paris 5 University. "But we must not give up in the final straight. Chirac may think that he can come back with a new law which is not much different than the first one. We are here to show him that he is wrong."

This is a history student speaking, mind you. Think about it ... what is this character going to do when he graduates? If he was in the States, I'd be thinking about "would you like fries with that, sir?" In France ... maybe he could teach (nice, strong union with tenure for the undeserving), maybe he could become a postman, whatever ... but a leader of industry? No. A physician? No. A lawyer, even? No. We are looking at the civil service, (an absurdly large segment of the working population in socialist France) or a position in which he will earn his 13 months salary, get his pension at 60 -- both irrespective of how incompetent he may be.

Sebastien will not get a job in higher civil administration, however, that is reserved to graduates of the Grandes Ecoles, the ones that actually lead France and its industries. Accordingly, he is already consigned to the slag heap of the mediocre and in THAT we see his true reason for marching: he knows that he is forever barred from true success and is desperate to ensure an easy life that his native wits and intelligence cannot provide. Better to extort it from those who are capable ... it becomes the ugly masses, or Lenin's useful idiots (hereinafter "Les Idiots."

The CGT (the trades union congress of France) may well be the puppeteers of this "uprising": the last thing on Earth they want to see is a retrenchment, however small, in the gains for the workers in France (35 hour week, paid vacations, 6 weeks of vacation, 13 months pay, guaranteed employement, impossibility of termination, even for malfeasance...). And imagine how sweet life must be for a trades union leader in France -- if they do any work at all: "you see, mes amis, all that I have provided for you? The Aristos cower under my thumb, alll for the glory of the workers! And don't forget those lovely little brown envelopes, keep them coming or labor unrest is in your future. Yes, my account number in Geneve is ....

France wants to turn Europe into a model of itself because they fear the dynamic, the aggressive, the forward thinking from a long nourished sense of paranoia, of a fear of being "used" by the Aristos. The irony is that they are the greatest users of the EU systems out there, courtesy of the graduates of the Grandes Ecoles and the people who run France -- and who see that they need to change to hope to stay competitive in a market they can no longer control. France has to change to enable the French Aristos to continue to manipulate the world to the advantage of the French. If France does not change, the people hurt the most will not be the Aristos, but Les Idiots marching on the streets. The Aristos are very capable of feathering their own nests and arranging things so that they are comfortable at the expense of Les Idiots.

Sort of reminds me of Londoners electing Ken Livingston or watching the succession dance that will lead to Gordon Brown becoming Prime Minister. I can't wait to watch the Tories eat his lunch during debates. A frikkin troglodyte of the old school. Putin must be thanking his stars that they don't teach French in Russian schools -- or French ethics (oh, that is an oxymoron), and laughing his ass off at Chirac, the francophone. Connard.