September 17, 2003

What next? Will Bush say the Saudis did it?

Suddenly, the Bush administration story on Saddam Hussein’s involvement – or rather lack of it -- in the 9/11 attack on the World Trade Center has shifted. President Bush said today he had no evidence that Saddam was involved. Defense Secretary Rumsfeld said the same thing yesterday. Why, then, do polls routinely show that about 7 Americans in 10 believe that Saddam was involved in the attacks? Because the Bush administration has been subtly pushing that line many months by emphasizing Saddam’s supposed links to Al Qaida, though there has never been any intelligence that Saddam was directly involved and though 15 of the hijackers were citizens of Saudi Arabia, not Iraq. I have just one theory about why the administration has suddenly changed tack on this issue: maybe even they can't take Vice President Dick Cheney's dissembling anymore.

Posted by tbrown at 02:36 PM

Frothing over the latte tax and dope

It took them a couple of decades, but Seattle voters finally found a tax they didn’t like. A proposal to tack 10 cents onto the price of every cup of espresso sold here in Starbuckland lost by about a 2-1 margin -- a very good thing. One political strategist said that, “From Day One, I thought we don’t want to be a laughingstock.” Well, it’s far too late to worry about that, but at least we didn’t dump this flawed idea on small coffee vendors. Before the hate mail starts, let me say I’ve got nothing against kids, usually (I have two, so there are exceptions) but imposing a tax on coffee to pay for day care and preschool programs just doesn’t make sense. The good citizens of our burg also gave landslide approval (nearly 59 percent “yes”) to an initiative that would make adult possession of marijuana for personal consumption the city’s lowest law-enforcement priority. Nonetheless, Police Chief Gil Kerlikowske says that regardless of will of those silly voters the police will continue their current policies, which result in about 400 misdemeanor-possession cases a year. Defense attorneys are likely to take a somewhat different view of the significance of the vote. Speaking of dope, growing it may best be left to those who know how Health Canada, the government health-care provider north of the border, began selling marijuana to cancer and AIDS patients for symptom-relief in July, and now some users want their money back. "It's totally unsuitable for human consumption," said Jim Wakeford, 58, an AIDS patient in Gibsons, British Columbia, according to an AP report. “Wakeford and Barrie Dalley, a 52-year-old Toronto man who uses marijuana to combat the nausea associated with AIDS, are returning their 1-ounce bags, and Dalley is demanding his money back -- about C$150 ($110 U.S.) plus taxes. Wakeford is returning his unpaid bill for two bags with a written complaint.” Let’s look in our friends the French They’re at it again. The Brits, who are just about as overstretched as we are in Iraq, nonetheless decided to send another 3,000 troops to prevent what Foreign Minister Jack Straw warned could become a “strategic failure.” To get them there, the UK defense department contracted with Corsair, a French air-charter service often employed for moving British forces around. Then, as first contingents were getting ready to leave, the French government suddenly ordered the Airbus 330 not to fly because of “safety concerns.” The French Transportation Ministry said there were no safety issues and pointed a finger at the Foreign Ministry, the lair of the mendacious Dominique de Villepin. The bureaucrats there, of course, threw up their hands and denied there was any “political motive.” Right. Fortunately, not all the news from France is bad. Winds of Change has an interesting post from blogger Gabriel Gonzalez in Paris, who explores the coalesence of the French left around an intertwined theme of anti-Americanism and anti-Semitism and the much more hopeful emergence of opposition to this destructive brew among leading French intellectuals. He quotes one of them, Pascal Bruckner, this way: “I see today in France a kind of destructive delusional sanctimoniousness (‘angélisme’). Some Europeans think they can escape the harshness of History by putting on display their good intentions or they reconstruct a progressive ideology though the demonization of the United States. Bush is compared to Hitler and we cozy up to the Islamists? We have not made much intellectual progress since the fall of Communism. Actually, we've even regressed." If ideas like this spread, there may yet be hope of rescuing our historic alliance. Microsoft’s contribution to the war effort I’m not sure how I missed Microsoft’s contribution to our victory in Iraq, but here it is. Will reality immitate The Onion? The satire site offers this “news” about the Patriot Act: Revised Patriot Act Will Make It Illegal To Read Patriot Act WASHINGTON, DC—President Bush spoke out Monday in support of a revised version of the 2001 USA Patriot Act that would make it illegal to read the USA Patriot Act. "Under current federal law, there are unreasonable obstacles to investigating and prosecuting acts of terrorism, including the public's access to information about how the federal police will investigate and prosecute acts of terrorism," Bush said at a press conference Monday. "For the sake of the American people, I call on Congress to pass this important law prohibiting access to itself." Bush also proposed extending the rights of states to impose the death penalty "in the wake of Sept. 11 and stuff."

Posted by tbrown at 01:53 PM