Internal threat

A piece in the International Herald Tribune notes that Sharon used to demand 7 days of quiet before he’d negotiate with Palestinians, but when there were 6 weeks of quiet, nothing. (That’s assuming that “quiet” means only attacks on Israelis; Israel killed 75 Palestinians during that period). But he did appoint as head of settlements (and there’s a new settlement today, by the way) a proponent of expelling the Palestinians from the West Bank. Tom Friedman writes today that Sharon wants to both treat Arafat as irrelevant and treat him as responsible for everything that occurs.

And Maureen Dowd comments re Germany that the Bush policy is now that the US can decide not only who can run a country, but what the proper issues are for their election debates.

Those of you read the NY Times online instead of getting ink on your hands missed a hilarious picture of Kyrgyzstan’s dictator Akayev and his amazingly improbable eyebrows. He wants more US aid for supporting the US on terrorism. The US did put an opposition Muslim group on its list of terrorist groups--as I’ve said before, we now seem to be negotiating such listings with other countries.

William Bennett has formed a group called Americans for Victory over Terrorism, which has a list of Americans it considers an “internal threat.” I’ve checked their website, but there’s no application form. I’ve always wanted to be on an enemies list, although personally the only internal threat I know of is attached to my ascending colon.

The government is threatening to vaccinate us all for smallpox. Those of us already vaccinated would have to be revaccinated because no one knows whether it’s still effective. Doesn’t that give you a cozy feeling, that they’re planning to inject this stuff into you and don’t even know how long it lasts? An Amerind leader is demanding that Indians be vaccinated first, since they have less immunity.

It took Clinton forever to get RU-486 licensed, but he did so under such stringent conditions (whose validity I can’t judge, but France seemed to get along quite well without them for many years) make it difficult and a pain in the ass to use, as well as more expensive ($100 a pill, with three being the recommended dose--I thought it was being manufactured by a non-profit) than surgical abortion. That’s great national medical policy isn’t it? Why do policies that produce unnecessary surgical procedures always seem to involve women? OK, I know the answer to that one.

And since I wrote that, the House has voted to allow hospitals and insurance companies to refuse to pay for or perform abortions and still keep their Medicare and other federal funding.

When the Federal Building in Oklahoma City was blown up, it was storing a TOW missile in a locker a few floors above the famous daycare center. The government sees nothing wrong with that.

The most hilariously tasteless 9-11 commemorative thingy since the last one.

Remember thinkofthechildren.co.uk, that satire of mob mentality I sent out on the 15th? It’s been closed down at the request to the web provider of the Metropolitan Police. The author is pissed, but does see the irony.

I haven’t tried this experiment, but someone who ran “why do they hate America” through a search engine got 823,000 hits.