You have the right to bad dentistry, tight pants, a small flat and a wind-powered automobile. I can't wait for the Bidet Amendment.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:52 PM -

A Chinese zoo has agreed to suspend its policy of allowing visitors to shoot some of its animals.

The zoo, in Dandong, rented out rifles and allowed people into special areas where they could shoot the animals.

It was seen as a unique attraction to bring in more visitors but led to numerous complaints from animal lovers.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:14 PM -

A professor's plans to bicycle 1,300 miles to promote world peace derailed in North Charleston [South Carolina] on Friday after, authorities say, he tried to get a driver's license with a bogus Social Security card.

Luis Rodriguez, a 52-year-old English professor from Cuernavaca, Mexico, said he was only a week into his planned ride from Miami to New York when he became scared of sharing the roads with Charleston's aggressive drivers.

Rodriguez said he decided to get a South Carolina driver's license so he could rent a car and haul his Trek bicycle to a safer environment. The problem was, he tried to use a phony document to accomplish his goal, authorities said.

A State Law Enforcement Division arrested Rodriguez on Friday morning after he presented the Social Security card to workers at the Division of Motor Vehicles on Leeds Avenue. Still dressed in lightweight cycling clothes, he landed across the street at the Charleston County jail.

Rodriguez said a stranger handed him the phony Social Security card in 1996 after he made another long-distance ride to visit the Olympics in Atlanta. The man suggested he might need the card if he wanted to get work in the United States. Rodriguez said he had never used the card before Friday.

Rodriguez said he flew into Miami about a week ago and planned to cycle along the Eastern Seaboard. Along the way, he hoped to draw attention to the need for world peace and attract sponsors who might back his efforts to make a future cross-country journey, he said.

"I am a promoter of peace and love and freedom," he said. "I believe strongly in peace and try to promote that through this sport."
...
"I don't want to be here," he said. "I just want to go back to Mexico."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:52 PM -

Topless darts, News Bunny and the Weather in Norwegian will be back on cable television later this summer as LIVE TV makes a comeback.
...
LIVE TV was launched in 1995 by journalist and broadcaster Janet Street-Porter, who envisaged it as "Hello! magazine on acid", and by Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of The Sun newspaper.

It lured viewers with broadcasts of women's topless darts contests and a woman called Tiffany, who stripped on air while giving tips about which shares to buy on the stock market.

News Bunny was a man dressed in a rabbit outfit who loitered behind the channel's news desk and gave a thumbs-up or thumbs-down reaction to each news item.

Despite much early publicity, the channel never managed to retain viewers and it eventually shut down in 1999.

The pump-up breasts are being fixed to the star's waxwork model at Madame Tussauds in London.

Bosses want to make the £52,000 model more realistic.

So they are hoisting it up and around a dancing pole.

Her breasts will then hang provocatively out of a skimpy top, inflating rhythmically to make it look like the singer is breathing heavily.

"For the first time we are installing balloons in her chest so her boobs heave in and out," a spokesman told The Sun.

Britney will be the centrepeice of the museum's new £2m interactive room.

It will also feature a blushing J-Lo and a Brad Pitt with a squeezable bum.

I don't doubt that Jim Sweeney loves children and had dedicated his life's career to improving education," she said. "The school district has done some wonderful things ... but (on state tests) half the students are still below the 50th percentile. That's a problem."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:41 PM -

BUNIA, Congo - For six days, two terrified United Nations military observers phoned their superiors - as many as four times a day - begging to be evacuated from their remote outpost in northeastern Congo.

They were receiving death threats, they said. They were alone and unarmed in Mongbwalu, a former gold-mining town ruled by the cannibalistic Lendu tribal militias. A U.N. helicopter from the town of Bunia could have retrieved them in 35 minutes.

But the United Nations, handcuffed by its own rules and bureaucracy, never sent a chopper. On May 18, 10 days after the two peacekeepers made their first distress call, the United Nations finally flew some armed peacekeepers to Mongbwalu.

They found the mutilated bodies of Maj. Safwat al Oran, 37, of Jordan, and Capt. Siddon Davis Banda, 29, of Malawi.

Their decomposed corpses had been tossed into a canal and covered with dirt, according to those who saw the bodies. They were shot in the eyes. Their stomachs were split open and their hearts and livers were missing. One man's brain was gone.

"Why didn't they rescue them? They had armed troops here, who could have saved them," said one U.N. observer in Bunia, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

"They killed them."

Col. Daniel Vollot, the MONUC sector commander in Bunia, said all U.N. employees here work in dangerous, unpredictable conditions and that MONUC isn't responsible for the deaths of Banda and Oran.

"We can't feel guilty," said Vollot. "Certainly, if we had arrived two or three days before, they would be alive. It's difficult, but I don't feel guilty about that."

Vollot acknowledged that Oran and Banda for several days had asked U.N. officials in Kisangani to be pulled out of Mongbwalu.

When asked why U.N. troops weren't sent to pick up the two observers, Vollot said his command's Russian-made Mi-26 helicopters were piloted by civilians. The Russian and Ukrainian pilots were afraid to fly there, and the United Nations didn't want to put their lives at risk, Vollot said.

And under U.N. rules, the ruling Lendu militia had to give permission to land a helicopter in Mongbwalu. It also was unclear which Lendu militia was in charge of the town, he said.

So his soldiers had to wait for clearance from the Lendu chief, and only MONUC headquarters in Kinshasa, the capital, could authorize a rescue operation.

"These are the rules of the United Nations," said Vollot.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 6:17 PM -

As reviewed by John Marshall on June 10, 2003

Sen Clinton is one of the most extraordinary women that I have ever met, and we as a people and as a nation are lucky to have her serving this great country of ours. The book I recommend to all, to learn how one could be so graced with passion and so human. My daugthers, Laura and Paij, see her as a role model for all women.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As reviewed by Kim Smith on June 09, 2003

I admire Senator Clinton very much because she is intelligent, hard-working, kind, and has a deep faith in God. I don't know any women who have accomplished as much as she has, including repairing a damaged marriage, and done it with such grace, wisdom, and strength. I admire that. She is a remarkable woman and I don't understand why other women bash her. She is what we stand for-strength and courage.


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

As reviewed by PB on June 11, 2003

Now, more than ever, I think she could win the 2004 Presidential race AND Bill would make a fine first gentleman (?). He's had enough of his own successes he wouldn't feel competitive with her -- but rather bask in the victory of her defeating Bush !! 2008 may be too late.
If only we could fill her vacated Senate seat with a worthy democrat...

Is she doing any Bay Area book signings ?? I'd buy a 2nd copy.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:20 PM -

The silence up at the state capital over the arrest on rape charges of Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver's chief counsel is troubling, though predictable.

J. Michael Boxley, arguably Silver's most powerful staffer, is charged with raping a 22-year-old Assembly aide Tuesday morning after he agreed to drive her home from a night out in Albany bars.
...
But Speaker Silver can't even pronounce himself the least bit concerned over the possibility that a violent assault occurred.

In fact, Silver yesterday labeled the alleged incident "unfortunate for everybody involved" - presumably, Boxley is weighing as heavily on the speaker's mind as is the alleged victim. If not more so.

Apart from state Sen. Tom Duane, a Manhattan Democrat, nobody else in the Capitol is talking.
...
Of course, people are whispering: Assembly Democrats are telling sordid tales about the alleged victim - doing their best to ruin her reputation.
...
And it's not like this is Boxley's first time around the block.

Two years ago, another young legislative aide, Elizabeth Crothers, accused Boxley of raping her under disturbingly similar circumstances.

She never filed a criminal complaint, saying she didn't have the stomach for a long, drawn-out legal process.

That is to say, she feared she'd be slimed by Silver & Co.

Instead, she filed an administrative complaint with the Silver-controlled Assembly, which handled - and dismissed - the matter behind closed doors.

According to the woman, Silver - who publicly expressed his complete support for Boxley's integrity and character - told her privately that his solution for Boxley's "improprieties" was that he would no longer be allowed to go out drinking at bars.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:46 AM -

China says that 80 cracks have appeared in the Three Gorges dam, only days after the huge reservoir behind it was filled for the first time.
"If water enters these cracks, there could be negative effects, so we are fixing them very carefully," Pan Jiazhong, head of the dam's inspection group, said yesterday.

He denied that the cracks threatened the dam's safety, but said they could expand and cause leaking unless repaired.

The reservoir now extends upstream for 219km (350 miles), with a maximum water depth of 135 metres (440ft).

A failure of the dam could have catastrophic consequences downstream in the fertile and densely populated middle Yangtze valley.
...
Mr Pan said then that it was "too early to be proud" of the dam. "We have a long way to go ... I hope we will do our best to build a first-class project rather than a dam with 10-metre long cracks!"

The final inspection showed that some of the vertical cracks on the dam that had been repaired had reopened, "even though we put a great deal of money and effort into the repair work".

He said the dam would face its first real test in the severe floods expected this summer.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:33 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:09 PM -

A year earlier Mr. Thornberg had been tasked by then-Secretary General Boutros Boutros-Ghali to conduct an "efficiency review" of the UN with a view to enhancing the effectiveness of the UN's relatively small, yet bureaucratically paralyzed, staff. Mr. Thornberg submitted his comprehensive report on time and below budget. His primary conclusion was that there was an "old boys' club" that dominated the UN and that it posed an insurmountable obstacle to anything approaching real efficiency.

International civil servants and diplomats from developing countries, appointed by their parent countries on a rotational basis, frequently lacked the qualifications demanded by the UN's job description. More often than not they were successful in obtaining lucrative New York appointments as a direct result of their personal ties with their nation's leader. On arrival at the UN, their self-interest motivated them to perpetuate the system that rewarded those within their inner circle. Within two weeks of Mr. Thornberg's enlightened report landing on the Secretary General's desk it was shredded -- having been declared much too controversial! I have one of the few surviving copies.

The tribal militia controlling the Congolese town of Bunia is carrying out nightly massacres, executing civilians and burying them in mass graves, despite the presence of a French-led European Union combat force, a Daily Telegraph investigation has established.

By day the military camp at Simbiliyabo on the eastern outskirts of Bunia looks like any other Congolese rebel installation, but at night it becomes a death camp.

At about 9pm every evening drunken Hema militiamen, high on drugs and their hatred for every other tribe, pour out of the base, nestling in lush green hills, to inflict terror on the residents of Bunia's suburbs.
...
Dieu Donne was last in the line, lying face down in the dirt. "There were 10 soldiers. They took their bayonets and stabbed my father in every part of his body," he said. "Then they moved on to my neighbour, then the two boys and then my friend."

As they went down the line, they mocked the prisoners, all members of the Bira tribe, until now not directly involved in Bunia's bloody war. "They were shouting: 'Call the French, tell them to set you free'," he said.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:15 PM -

Well, you do have to hand it to them.

I mean, uh...

At least that kid in the back will be getting some hand-me-downs.

No, wait, I mean...

It's sad to see Palestinians living on hand-outs...

But on the other hand...

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 5:39 PM -

Dear Hillary,

In your new book, Living History, you correctly note that when you asked me to help you and Bill avert defeat in the congressional election of 1994 I was reluctant to do so. But then you assert, incorrectly, that my reluctance stemmed from difficulties in working with your staff. You even misquote me as telling you: "I don't like the way I was treated, Hillary. People were so mean to me."

As you know, I never said anything of the sort. I had, in fact, no experience in dealing with either your staff or the President's at that point, and had not yet met Leon Panetta or George Stephanopoulos. My prior dealing with Harold Ickes had been twenty five years earlier.

The real reason I was reluctant was that Bill Clinton had tried to beat me up in May of 1990 as he, you, Gloria Cabe, and I were together in the Arkansas governor's mansion. At the time, Bill was worried that he was falling behind his democratic primary opponent and verbally assaulted me for not giving his campaign the time he felt it deserved. Offended by his harsh tone, I turned and stalked out of the room.

Bill ran after me, tackled me, threw me to the floor of the kitchen in the mansion and cocked his fist back to punch me. You grabbed his arm and, yelling at him to stop and get control of himself, pulled him off me. Then you walked me around the grounds of the mansion in the minutes after, with your arm around me, saying, "He only does that to people he loves."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 12:53 PM -

KARACHI (AFP) - The promoters of "Mecca Cola," the Muslim world's answer to popular US soft drinks, are preparing to cash in on fierce anti-US sentiments in Pakistan.

The Paris-based company is planning to launch its product here and has been inviting tenders from local distributors through newspaper advertisements.
...
Mecca Cola advertised in local papers under the slogan with which its scored success among Europe's Muslims: "No More Drinking Stupid, Drink with Commitment."
...
Radical clerics leading fiery anti-US rallies are often seen drinking bottles of Pepsi and Coca Cola, even as they lead calls to boycott US products.
...
"We are very much confident that soon after the launch of Mecca Cola in Pakistan, we will snatch whole markets from the two colas," Javed said.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:40 PM -

Democrats have been groping for a way to counter George Bush's maniacal tax cuts, which are designed to shrink government and shift as many things as possible to the market. May I make a suggestion? When you shrink government, what you do, over time, is shrink the services provided by federal, state and local governments to the vast American middle class. I would suggest that henceforth Democrats simply ask voters to substitute the word "services" for the word "taxes" every time they hear President Bush speak.

That is, when the president says he wants yet another round of reckless "tax cuts," which will shift huge burdens to our children, Democrats should simply refer to them as "service cuts," because that is the only way these tax cuts will be paid for — by cuts in services. Indeed, the Democrats' bumper sticker in 2004 should be: "Read my lips, no new services. Thank you, President Bush."

Say it with me now: "Read my lips, no new services — or old ones."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:52 AM -

In the early halcyon days of the United Nations, politicians used to make frequent and respectful references to a mysterious place called "the bar of world opinion." Peter Simple, the London Daily Telegraph's resident satirist, used to depict it as a cheap dive on the Lower East Side of New York where every sort of crook and lowlife gathered to carouse, fight and plot his next caper.

Many years later I visited the UN and discovered that Simple's description was not wholly false--though he had omitted the crucial detail that the crooks and lowlifes all had diplomatic immunity.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:45 AM -

THE Rev. Al Sharpton is having his 2001 Ford Explorer repossessed - if the repo man can find it. According to papers uncovered by "Celebrity Justice," Ford Motor Credit Co. filed suit Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court after Sharpton stopped paying $1,127.95 a month in November and then bounced a check for $3,600 in February. A spokeswoman for the presidential candidate said he was unaware of the matter: "Rev. Sharpton personally does not drive, nor does he have a driver's license."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:11 AM -

WASHINGTON -- The president of Common Cause is facing allegations that she violated federal election laws in her Democratic race for the US Senate last year, causing embarrassment for the nonprofit lobbying group that is a leading advocate for campaign finance reform.

In her unsuccessful bid to unseat Republican Senator Susan Collins of Maine, Chellie Pingree invited donors to circumvent the limits on contributions to candidates for federal office. Pingree, a former majority leader in the Maine Senate, was hired by Common Cause after the election. Now she is the target of a Federal Election Commission audit, and election law specialists who analyzed mailings obtained by the Globe say that at least one of the two solicitations was illegal.

The Pingree campaign, said William B. Canfield, a federal elections attorney at Williams and Jensen and incoming chairman of the American Bar Association's standing committee on election law, ''clearly and inarguably'' violated federal law in a July 2002 solicitation letter.

Pingree's attorney, Marc Elias, hired to represent her in the FEC audit, said that the laws the campaign operated under are subject to interpretation and that ''there's nothing particularly unusual or out of the ordinary about this letter.''

Derek Bok, chairman of the Common Cause board and former president of Harvard University, said he expects the FEC audit to find ''no major flouting of the rules that would really cast doubt on her integrity. I don't think she would have taken the position if that were the case.''

In addition, just weeks after taking the reins at Common Cause, Pingree attended a Democratic fund-raiser, despite the group's nonpartisan credentials.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 6:53 AM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:05 PM -

Two leitmotifs run through Hillary Rodham Clinton's wildly hyped new memoir, "Living History."

One has to do with her changing hairstyles, which are discussed in detail at least a half dozen times, as they morphed with Madonna-like frequency from long to short, from frizzy to hair-banded to carefully coiffed.

The other has to do with Mrs. Clinton's penchant for blaming enemies, from political opponents to a "vast right-wing conspiracy," for her and her husband's failures and travails.

With the exception of such revelations (most of which were publicized in a leak to The Associated Press last week and in Mrs. Clinton's interview with Barbara Walters, which was broadcast on ABC on Sunday), "Living History" is a mishmash of pious platitudes about policy (not unlike those found in the author's earlier book "It Takes a Village"); robotic asides about her official duties in Washington (not unlike those found in her Martha Stewart-esque book "An Invitation to the White House"); and by now familiar accounts of Hillary Rodham Clinton's metamorphosis over the years from Goldwater girl to liberal student activist to high-powered lawyer to first lady to senator from New York.

Overall the book has the overprocessed taste of a stump speech, the calculated polish of a string of anecdotes to be delivered on a television chat show.

All this "private-life" propaganda is designed to steer Americans around the Real Hillary: the one who ceaselessly manipulated her way onto the world stage to be publicly betrayed, and then played to the gallery demanding to be loved for it. She has mercilessly milked the Wronged-Woman routine like a star attraction at the Wisconsin State Fair. But in fact, she's always known her husband's ways, and looked out for her own careerist designs by plotting to destroy any Other Woman who got in the way of her bumper-pool path to the White House.

See the George Stephanopoulos book All Too Human, page 54, for the Real Hillary: "We have to destroy her story," she told Stephanopoulos in November 1991, when rock groupie Connie Hamzy began the bimbo eruptions by telling Penthouse that Gov. Clinton propositioned her in 1984 after she flashed him her breasts. Eleven pages later, we're inside the room as Bill and Hillary plot how to manipulate the famous 1992 60 Minutes interview. "Both Clinton and Hillary were adamant about not using the A word, arguing it was too grating, too harsh, too in-your-face to the viewers at home." Then George says he "synthesized the strategy in hand-lettered notes that I gave to Clinton when Hillary adjourned the meeting around one AM." Hillary ran the meetings that figured out how to gauzily negotiate around the obvious facts of adultery, coordinated the strategy to obliterate the ugly truths and replace them with convenient lies, and creepily worked to crumble the women a feminist would have been championing, women who were involuntarily groped or even raped, with an army of hired private investigators and journalistic hit-men (see Blumenthal, Sidney).

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:28 AM -

On her first impression of Bill Clinton, in law school.

What she said: "He looked like a Viking. He had this big, bushy brownish reddish beard and longish hair, and he looked very imposing."

What she meant: "He was a hunka-hunka burnin' love."
...
On her mother-in-law's desire to sit Hillary on the edge of the tub and give her makeup lessons.

What she said: "She was an American original."

What she meant: "Next to her, Dolly Parton is Eleanor Roosevelt."

On how she reconciled Bill's dalliance with Gennifer Flowers.

What she said: "We have spent some time having marriage counseling, which I highly recommend."

What she meant: "I keep a voodoo doll of Gennifer in my top desk drawer. To this day, I stab it regularly."

On asking Jackie Kennedy Onassis' advice as to how to be a good first lady.

What she said: "She said, 'Just go be yourself.' "

What she meant: "Great advice from the widow of the guy who invented 'trolling for interns.' "

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 10:57 PM -

"Write better emails. Make more moneys."

I am Mr. Laurent Mpeti Kabila, a senior assistant leader of the Revolutionary United Front of Sierra Leone.

I present to you an urgent and confidential request: I request your attendance at The 3rd Annual Nigerian EMail Conference. This is an excellent opportunity to meet your distinguished colleagues, learn new marketing techniques, and spend your hard-earned money. Attending this conference demands the highest trust, security and confidentiality between us.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:43 AM -

Some even came the moment they knew the book was on sale.

"I was in my pajamas and I saw it on TV and I jumped up and my husband said where are you going," said Lyn Scarpati, 56, a real estate broker.

Asked about excerpts from the book that had been previously released, she said: "She always has the right answer and it just seems she thinks of everything and knows just what to say. It's very impressive to me."

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 11:25 AM -

In a virtual re-run of the battle for Bunia last month - when 700 UN peacekeepers stood by as hundreds of civilians were massacred, and 25,000 fled - the French troops remained at their airport barracks, without orders or capacity to intervene.

Thousands of Bunia's terrified residents poured back to the main UN compound they had only recently vacated, lugging their groaning wounded and hundreds of terrified, wailing children with them. But as the storm of bullets and grenades swept across the compound from all sides, this was a fragile refuge. Sprawling on the concrete floors, over 50 Western journalists cowered as bullets thudded into the walls and mortars exploded outside. Having flocked to Bunia in the expectation of seeing a triumphant French intervention, they found themselves depending on Bunia's humiliated Uruguayan UN peacekeepers, who fired not a round in return yesterday.
...
Charged with explaining the UN's latest failure to quell the bitter war in Congo's Ituri province, French commander Col Daniel Vollot said: 'Our mandate has not changed. We are trying to impede the fighting through negotiations. We went between the lines, we spoke to the soldiers, to the leaders, but no one wants to talk, they want to fight.'

Over the next few days, the French contingent -- about 700 troops -- will arrive in Bunia and begin their mission, which has been described as "complex."

The forces have "robust rules of engagement" to deal with the militias in Bunia, one French military official said.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 9:20 PM -

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 8:42 PM -

Thus we have Mr. Woody Allen accepting French currency that might have helped a worthy Baathist escape free Iraq. According to an ABC report, the French Government Tourist Office has hired Allen to combat American francophobia. So we get the following spot from Allen, whose fame now rests on his marriage to a young woman long presumed to be his adopted daughter. "I don't want to freedom kiss my wife. I want to French kiss her," Woody boasts. France can always spot a winner. But so can we, EOW speaking. How appropriate!

France has announced four unlikely new ambassadors to the U.S.: Woody Allen, Wynton Marsalis, George Plimpton and Robert De Niro.

The four Francophiles are all in a new short film promoting American tourism to the land of the fragrant fromage.

France is trying to heal the Atlantic rift created over its opposition to the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

In the ad, called "Let's Fall In Love Again," Allen says, "I don't want to have to refer to my french-fry potatoes as 'freedom fries,' and I don't want to have to 'freedom kiss' my wife, when I really want to French kiss her."

Lucky Soon-Yi.

posted by Cracker Barrel Philosopher at 7:32 AM -