War and Peace October 17, 2002February 22, 2017 For those who missed it, this speech was delivered on the floor of the Senate on October 7. We face no more serious decision in our democracy than whether or not to go to war. The American people deserve to fully understand all of the implications of such a decision. The question of whether our nation should attack Iraq is playing out in the context of a more fundamental debate that is only just beginning — an all-important debate about how, when and where in the years ahead our country will use its unsurpassed military might. On September 20, the Administration unveiled its new National Security Strategy. This document addresses the new realities of our age, particularly the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and terrorist networks armed with the agendas of fanatics. The Strategy claims that these new threats are so novel and so dangerous that we should “not hesitate to act alone, if necessary, to exercise our right of self-defense by acting pre-emptively.” But in the discussion over the past few months about Iraq, the Administration, often uses the terms “pre-emptive” and “preventive” interchangeably. In the realm of international relations, these two terms have long had very different meanings. Traditionally, “pre-emptive” action refers to times when states react to an imminent threat of attack. For example, when Egyptian and Syrian forces mobilized on Israel’s borders in 1967, the threat was obvious and immediate, and Israel felt justified in pre-emptively attacking those forces. The global community is generally tolerant of such actions, since no nation should have to suffer a certain first strike before it has the legitimacy to respond. By contrast, “preventive” military action refers to strikes that target a country before it has developed a capability that could someday become threatening. Preventive attacks have generally been condemned. For example, the 1941 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor was regarded as a preventive strike by Japan, because the Japanese were seeking to block a planned military buildup by the United States in the Pacific. The coldly premeditated nature of preventive attacks and preventive wars makes them anathema to well-established international principles against aggression. Pearl Harbor has been rightfully recorded in history as an act of dishonorable treachery. Historically, the United States has condemned the idea of preventive war, because it violates basic international rules against aggression. But at times in our history, preventive war has been seriously advocated as a policy option. In the early days of the Cold War, some U.S. military and civilian experts advocated a preventive war against the Soviet Union. They proposed a devastating first strike to prevent the Soviet Union from developing a threatening nuclear capability. At the time, they said the uniquely destructive power of nuclear weapons required us to rethink traditional international rules. The first round of that debate ended in 1950, when President Truman ruled out a preventive strike, stating that such actions were not consistent with our American tradition. He said, “You don’t ‘prevent’ anything by war…except peace.” Instead of a surprise first strike, the nation dedicated itself to the strategy of deterrence and containment, which successfully kept the peace during the long and frequently difficult years of the Cold War. Arguments for preventive war resurfaced again when the Eisenhower Administration took power in 1953, but President Eisenhower and Secretary of State John Foster Dulles soon decided firmly against it. President Eisenhower emphasized that even if we were to win such a war, we would face the vast burdens of occupation and reconstruction that would come with it. The argument that the United States should take preventive military action, in the absence of an imminent attack, resurfaced in 1962, when we learned that the Soviet Union would soon have the ability to launch missiles from Cuba against our country. Many military officers urged President Kennedy to approve a preventive attack to destroy this capability before it became operational. Robert Kennedy, like Harry Truman, felt that this kind of first strike was not consistent with American values. He said that a proposed surprise first strike against Cuba would be a “Pearl Harbor in reverse. “For 175 years,” he said, “we have not been that kind of country.” That view prevailed. A middle ground was found and peace was preserved. Yet another round of debate followed the Cuban Missile Crisis when American strategists and voices in and out of the Administration advocated preventive war against China to forestall its acquisition of nuclear weapons. Many arguments heard today about Iraq were made then about the Chinese communist government: that its leadership was irrational and that it was therefore undeterrable. And once again, those arguments were rejected. As these earlier cases show, American strategic thinkers have long debated the relative merits of preventive and pre-emptive war. Although nobody would deny our right to pre-emptively block an imminent attack on our territory, there is disagreement about our right to preventively engage in war. In each of these cases a way was found to deter other nations, without waging war. Now, the Bush Administration says we must take pre-emptive action against Iraq. But what the Administration is really calling for is preventive war, which flies in the face of international rules of acceptable behavior. The Administration’s new National Security Strategy states “As a matter of common sense and self-defense, America will act against such emerging threats before they are fully formed.” The circumstances of today’s world require us to rethink this concept. The world changed on September 11th, and all of us have learned that it can be a drastically more dangerous place. The Bush Administration’s new National Security Strategy asserts that global realities now legitimize preventive war and make it a strategic necessity. The document openly contemplates preventive attacks against groups or states, even absent the threat of imminent attack. It legitimizes this kind of first strike option, and it elevates it to the status of a core security doctrine. Disregarding norms of international behavior, the Bush Strategy asserts that the United States should be exempt from the rules we expect other nations to obey. I strongly oppose any such extreme doctrine and I’m sure that many others do as well. Earlier generations of Americans rejected preventive war on the grounds of both morality and practicality, and our generation must do so as well. We can deal with Iraq without resorting to this extreme. It is impossible to justify any such double standard under international law. Might does not make right. America cannot write its own rules for the modern world. To attempt to do so would be unilateralism run amok. It would antagonize our closest allies, whose support we need to fight terrorism, prevent global warming, and deal with many other dangers that affect all nations and require international cooperation. It would deprive America of the moral legitimacy necessary to promote our values abroad. And it would give other nations — from Russia to India to Pakistan — an excuse to violate fundamental principles of civilized international behavior. The Administration’s doctrine is a call for 21st century American imperialism that no other nation can or should accept. It is the antithesis of all that America has worked so hard to achieve in international relations since the end of World War II. This is not just an academic debate. There are important real world consequences. A shift in our policy toward preventive war would reinforce the perception of America as a “bully” in the Middle East, and would fuel anti-American sentiment throughout the Islamic world and beyond. It would also send a signal to governments the world over that the rules of aggression have changed for them too, which could increase the risk of conflict between countries such as Russia and Georgia, India and Pakistan, and China and Taiwan. Obviously, this debate is only just beginning on the Administration’s new strategy for national security. But the debate is solidly grounded in American values and history. It will also be a debate among vast numbers of well-meaning Americans who have honest differences of opinion about the best way to use U.S. military might. The debate will be contentious, but the stakes – in terms of both our national security and our allegiance to our core beliefs – are too high to ignore. I look forward to working closely with my colleagues in Congress to develop an effective and principled policy that will enable us to protect our national security and respect the basic principles that are essential for the world to be at peace. — Edward M. Kennedy.
Jeb October 16, 2002February 22, 2017 Did you see Jeb Bush on yesterday’s Today Show? Part one ran in the 7am hour – a thing I know exclusively thanks to the wonders of TiVo – and part two, about Jeb’s daughter’s drug addiction, ran an hour later. Jeb was as heartfelt as any good father would be in his anguish over his 25-year-old daughter’s problem, which has been ongoing for some years. She may even wind up in prison at some point if she can’t kick the addiction, Jeb acknowledged. The Today Show was much too polite to ask why, with all his compassion and first-hand experience, Jeb slashed Florida’s drug treatment budget by 85%. How could the Today Show not ask this question? It’s nice to know Jeb loves his daughter, and I’m sure he does. But what about the rest of Florida’s children? For more on the reasons for this budget cut – it was made in order to cut taxes for Florida’s wealthiest families – click here. Tomorrow: A Speech on War and Peace
Two Thoughtful Statements on Iraq October 15, 2002February 22, 2017 The man recruits three ships full of men to make this unbelievably dangerous, scary voyage to what turns out to be America . . . and we can’t close the stock market for one rotten little day? Sorry there was no column yesterday – I thought it was a long weekend. We will get back to your good comments on Rob and the Mideast tomorrow, but for today, just this one, from Paul Berkowitz, who writes: ‘The most succinct summary of the Mid East I have seen: If the Arabs laid down their weapons, there would be no more violence. If the Jews laid down their weapons, there would be no more Israel.’ Okay. Let’s talk Iraq. Two ‘must-reads’ are the relatively short statements of the junior Senator from New York – who voted with the President – and of a long-time Democratic congressman from California, who did not: Senator Hillary Clinton “will take the President at his word that he will try hard to pass a UN resolution and will seek to avoid war, if at all possible.” Congressman Pete Stark “doesn’t trust this president and his advisors.” Which of these two statements most closely reflects your views (click to see them)? Whichever it is, my great hope is that by rattling our saber we will not have to use it – or not without UN sanction, anyway. Or, at the very least, not without considerable allied support. The fear is that the White House hawks really don’t see the huge downside in a unilateral invasion. Nicholas Lemann had a really important piece in the September 16 issue of The New Yorker – long, but very much worth reading if you can find the time. In part: The contrast between the Democrats’ faith in international treaties and organizations and the hawks’ mistrust of them [the piece reads in small part] couldn’t be more deep-seated; it reflects fundamentally different views of human nature. Do you get people to behave the way you’d like them to through power and force, or by encouragement and friendship? As one of you kindly wrote me not long ago, it’s sort of the difference between a martial plan and a Marshall Plan. (Both, of course, may be needed. But Democrats tend to get more excited by the latter than the former, and vice versa.) We made a terrible mistake declaring war on terror generally and not on Al-Qaeda specifically, Lemann’s piece argues. And we badly bungled Tora Bora and the subsequent Operation Anaconda. One of the most thought-provoking passages in the piece comes from Harvard Professor Stephen Walt. He tells Lemann: We didn’t get Mullah Omar and Osama bin Laden. We’re killing civilians. We’re killing friendly forces. This is ultimately a battle for the hearts and minds of people around the world. When your village just got levelled by an American mistake, the conclusions you draw will be rather different from what we’d want them to be. Americans do not yet perceive a cost to having a freewheeling foreign policy. We stayed in the Persian Gulf for ten years, and lost fewer than three hundred people. We knocked off the Taliban in a few weeks. But imagine going into Iraq. If things go badly, we end up there for a long time. There’s a point where the costs start adding up. It will generate higher and higher levels of resentment. Empires start generating a lot of resentment. I’d leave Saddam right where he is. Keep him bottled up. Wait for him to die. What do we do if we’re successful? How many coups were there in Iraq between 1958 and 1968? It’s a country riven with internal divisions. That’s why the Bush people didn’t go to Baghdad in 1991. Iran is much more powerful and important than Iraq—how do Iranians react? I have limited confidence in our ability to run countries we don’t understand. Why, in the middle of pursuing Al Qaeda, would you decide, “Oh, let’s take a big country and invade it and create a giant political mess there!” We’ve seen people attempting this in the Middle East before, and it hasn’t worked. You never know how these operations will go. History is not on the side of the advocates here. The one thing we know for sure is that the timing of all this is starkly cynical. After all, George W. Bush knew as a candidate all the things about Saddam he has told us as President. Saddam’s gassing of the Kurds, the invasion of Kuwait, the plot to kill his dad, the absence of inspectors since 1998 . . . he knew all this! (“It’s as if he’s been watching the History Channel and thinks it’s Headline News!” moans CNN’s Paul Begala. “Wait til they show him the briefing book on Tiananmen Square!”) Why didn’t candidate Bush campaign on this then? “And if you elect me, I will lead us into a unilateral invasion and American occupation of Iraq!” Or if not during the campaign, in his inaugural address? Or over the summer of 2001? Or last spring? Or – having held off over this summer – why not hold off to November 6? Why just now has the debate been so necessary? Why just now is he truly alarmed about Saddam? Republican strategists have made it very clear that the war is their way to win the election November 5 – thereby to get a more conservative Judiciary for their rightwing base and to make permanent their multi-trillion-dollar tax cut for the best off. The first slide of the PowerPoint found on a floppy disk near the White House in June outlining Karl Rove’s strategy for Republican candidates in the midterm election was titled: “Focus on War.” Get prescription drugs and educational and job losses and Social Security and deficits and Harken and Halliburton off the front page. Focus on War. They are a tough crowd when it comes to winning elections. Florida in 2000 may have been just the beginning.
Rob Responds October 11, 2002January 23, 2017 Several of you wrote in to say that, based on his spelling and grammar, Rob must not be very bright. My assumption is that English is his second language. Russian is mine – barely. Rob’s English far outshines my Russian. Another of you wrote to say: ‘Rob’s views are wide-spread enough where they can’t be dealt with by simple ‘Peace, Rob, Peace!’ Takes guns. Arguing with him, though, is useless – no intelligence, just hate. He will only respect force. Israelis understand it, time for American Jews to understand it, too.’ I disagree. Not to say there aren’t terrible closed minds and awful haters out there. But my sense was that if Rob read the column and wrote back – I didn’t know if he would – his tone would be different. Often, when people send heated e-mails, they are, well, not at their best. (I have sent a few of these myself.) Engaging people with respect can sometimes bridge the seemingly unbridgeable. I’m not saying it was done here, but Rob did read the column and respond: Thank you for publishing my view. You are saying that Isrealis have been hystorically persecuted and murdered and wars have been raged against them. This is true, and it was nothing good!!! But this is in the PAST. Now Isreal is doing the same thing to the Palestinians. This too is not cool. That of course dos not make others better. We shall be aware that too much of radicalism is no good. Arabs led wars with Isreal becouse it was not a legitimate country at the time and it was installed there by Britain and US. Regardless of the question that Jews always lived in those lands – they did not have a legitimate state there. Now they do. And it is doing well. Except for the radical Jews and businessmen that have no mercy for the Palestinians. I am suspecting Isreal has taken an advantage of them. Those suicidal wrecks are not good. It is a sign that something went wrong. But we won’t find out the truth until both terrorists – Sharon and Arafat – are gone. What I am against is misleading and manipulating the society for religious causes. You said it right: Peace man, peace.
A Pro-Palestinian View October 10, 2002February 22, 2017 Rob [in response to ‘Harvard’s President on Anti-Semitism,’ October 1]: ‘I believe that a lot of people does not trust Jews, becouse while they complain that they have been hystorically harrased, they discriminate others like there is no tommorow. Even you in your everyday writings – you sponsor mostly Jewish writers. Let’s be fair and start treating people equally. I think it is great that the President of Harvard is Jew. Maybe he should go back to live in Isreal – to understand the situation better and see how Palestinians are treated like dogs and murdered without any warnings. Then maybe he will give scholarships to Arabs, becouse they are people too. This is what Europe dislikes. Isreal is one horrible country that treats Arabs like the Nazi. What we won’t allow here in US is Jewish pressure to push our sons and daughters to a war against Iraq (which is mostly Isreal-i enemy). ‘Is it great to see Arabs and US soldiers (mostly Christians) die, for the Jewish sake? You might think so. I thought of you as a great writer. Many non jewish people are reading you too. You can do better than this. Religion is not worth the paper it is written on (including Christian or Muslim too).’ ☞ Gosh – where to start? I guess by explaining why I post this message at all. It is because it sounds sincere to me, even though terribly wrong-headed; and because the more that people feel heard, the less they may seethe with frustration. And also because it’s important to know what others think, and to respond. (As to posting the message unedited, I’m not sure I made the right choice. Normally, I clean up grammar and spelling. But it seemed to me in this case that the jarring point of view came through, also, in the jarring writing, and I would not tamper with it. No disrespect meant.) Where do I agree with Rob? In believing that people should be treated fairly and equally . . . in feeling awful for innocent Palestinians who have suffered or even been killed . . . in thinking that religion, taken to extremes, can be horrendously negative instead of the positive force it is meant to be. Where do I disagree? Well, in every other respect. I recognize that Rob is ‘venting’ here. But venting against Jews – or any other group – is very dangerous business. I think we should all lean over backwards to avoid it, and to temper our remarks with sympathy and respect. There is, for example, no question in my mind that Palestinians have been suffering terribly, and that we need desperately to find some way to resolve this. (The Bush administration’s notion of just butting out and letting the two sides handle it themselves proved disastrous. The Clinton administration came so close to helping to broker an agreement – but Yasir Arafat could not take yes for an answer . . . or even put forth a counter-proposal.) But where is Rob’s acknowledgement of the thousands of Israelis recently murdered and maimed by Palestinians? Of the wars launched against Israel and the long-stated goal of its destruction? Or the millennia of persecution? Or the systematic murder of 6 million Jews less than 60 years ago? Does he not see how an event like that, and subsequent attacks, could lead a people to complain? Perhaps even – when a peace plan is rejected and the mass murder of civilians resumes – to strike back? All this seems so obvious to me and, I would expect, to most of this column’s readers (who, Rob is surely right, come from all faiths). But there are hundreds of millions of people who feel as he does – hundreds of thousands of them if not millions in the U.S. – so I don’t think it makes sense just to ignore it or fail to respond. Harvard does, of course, give scholarships to Arab students. And as to my sponsoring mostly Jewish writers, I don’t know the religion, ethnicity or nationality of many of those who write in – including Rob himself. Comparing Israelis to Nazis, meanwhile, is both wildly offensive and completely absurd. It is some of the Arab militants who have called for Israeli extermination, not Israelis who have called for, let alone embarked upon, the extermination of millions of Palestinians. President Summers’ great speech wasn’t anti-Palestinian, it was anti-anti-Semitism. What decent, fair-minded person could be against that? Peace, Rob – peace!
Bubble, Bubble — Real Estate Trouble? October 9, 2002February 22, 2017 In response to Stephen Wright’s famous line – ‘You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?’ – Kevin Roon writes: ‘Obviously, you’d put it everywhere.’ [Some of you had trouble getting to the Davis columns. If I get time, I will link them all.] # T. Hardy: ‘Our question concerns the reality of the ‘housing bubble’ that is being written about fairly regularly now. We are in the mid-west, own our own home outright at this point and we are considering buying a new house. We are considering waiting until next year to see what happens to the ‘bubble,’ but I am wondering if this is a real phenomenon.’ ☞ I am flying back from San Francisco and Los Angeles. These are certainly different markets from Cincinnati, and Cincinnati is different from Milwaukee or Mapleton, Iowa, or Columbus – and I have no doubt that various parts of the Columbus real estate market are different from each other – so the first thing to say is that every market is different and there are no ironclad rules. But the second thing to say is that, yes, I think in many places there will be a correction. In San Francisco, a once-wealthy friend is thinking of selling his second home. (He’s still doing OK, but his dot-com bonanza blew up.) It’s worth about triple what he paid five years ago, he tells me as he drives me to the airport, and I am screaming SELL! Yes, there’s only one California, and yes, the nation’s population will continue to rise. But the biggest drivers of the phenomenal real estate appreciation he seems to have experienced, it would seem to me, are: Sharply falling interest rates, which makes the monthly payment on a $600,000 house no higher than the payment on a $400,000 house used to be. So what’s another $200,000? Well, yes – but rates could rise! Trouble! Or they could stay low, or go even lower. But if they do that, I fear it will be for ‘bad reasons’ – a terribly weak economy – which would not bode well for real estate prices. Phenomenal new wealth in the San Francisco/Silicon Valley area, which obviously spun sharply into reverse . . . leading more than a few people to take money out of stocks and put it into something tangible and safe, that can only go up. (How comforting it was to know, a while back, that stocks could only go up. Now we’ve found the new thing that can only go up.) So, on the one hand, I don’t imagine the nation’s basic housing stock will decline drastically in value, if it declines at all – we are not likely talking anything even remotely like the 80% or so decline in the NASDAQ. Maybe more like 20% if you had to sell your house . . . or 30% if you were really unlucky and had to sell it in a hurry . . . or no decline at all if you just kept living where you’re living and waited it out. But a luxury home that’s tripled in value in 5 years? What’s to say it can’t go back much or even all the way to its price of five years ago? Has it gotten bigger? More beautiful? What has made it so much more valuable? All that wear and tear on the roof? My San Francisco friend thinks maybe there’s a fundamental shift – that people are going to start spending a larger slice of their income on shelter. That’s where the extra juice could come from to sustain continued appreciation in home prices. But the housing slice – especially in California – is already pretty thick. Let’s think this through. What are the competing sectors for the consumer dollar? There’s food; people might spend a little less on that, I guess. And they might conceivably spend a little less on transportation, keeping their existing cars a little longer before trading up, and buying more economical models when they do. I rather doubt it, but it’s possible. But what about health care? Isn’t that a huge slice that will give housing a good run for the incremental dollar? Much of it is covered by insurance; but with rising co-pays and elective therapies people may increasingly want . . . it just seems to me as if the health care slice could grow as technology offers ever more – and more expensive – new treatment possibilities. And what about retirement contributions! Isn’t that a big one? With shrunken 401(k) accounts, and a diminished expectation for the rate at which those accounts can grow, won’t a larger slice of our dollars be going into retirement accounts to make up for the lower anticipated growth rates? I’m not saying people will direct a smaller share of their resources to shelter; just skeptical that it will be larger. And what of all those 3%-down homes now in, or headed for, foreclosure? Won’t they turn what was at least until recently a seller’s market in many places into a buyer’s market? One more rich-guy example before getting back down to earth. In Los Angeles, I was staying with a friend who rents a pretty wow house in the Hollywood Hills from a pretty wow movie star (who lives next door in an even more wow house). He feels silly renting, and gets no tax deduction for his monthly check. He has been thinking of buying it – please don’t hate me for knowing people like this – for $2 million. But he pays ‘only’ $5,000 a month, and I am screaming: DON’T BUY! Right? If you figure the carrying cost of that $2 million at 6%, that’s $120,000 a year in interest, or maybe $75,000 a year after the tax deductions – versus $60,000 in rent. But he’d also have to pay the real estate taxes! And the repairs! And the insurance! And he’d be the one to suffer the $600,000 loss if he ever moved back east and had to sell it for, oh, say, just $1.5 million less brokerage commission and closing costs. Back on planet earth, where people rent houses for $900 a month and buy them for $120,000 or $240,000 or $360,000, I imagine any correction would be less severe. (Then again, the current administration is reserving the bulk of its economic assistance for those at the top – hundreds of billions in tax relief over the next decade – so, you’ll be relieved to know, the high-end homes may hold up somewhat better than I imagine.) And some places could even defy any correction entirely. A friend just bought yet another beautiful 19th century mansion in Buffalo for $15,000. Maybe Buffalo is dying; surely it’s freezing; but this is the kind of real estate speculation that appeals to my contrary nature. And now to the Hardys’s specific situation. Actually, I don’t know their specific situation (or how to spell the possessive plural of Hardy), but I’d venture the following: First, what they should do depends on whether they were thinking of downsizing, because the kids have finally flown the coop, or buying ‘more house,’ as sounds likely from their question. If it’s the former, Mr. And Ms. Hardy – go right ahead. It would be like selling part of your position in what may be an overpriced stock. But if you’re planning on ‘moving up’ to a more expensive home, then it would be like buying more shares in that possibly overpriced stock. I think the prudent thing to do would be to wait. In the next year or two you may find some truly motivated sellers (including a lot of banks) who will make you a better deal than they would today. Second, I could be wrong about all this, especially for your particular real estate market, (whichever that is). And, in any event, as my father used to say, life is not a business. If you find a place you love and can afford, maybe you should buy it anyway. Not because it’s a brilliant investment move, but because it makes you happy. Bottom line: I would go with your current instinct, which seems to be to sit tight and not rush into anything.
Dick Davis #35 October 8, 2002February 22, 2017 For some time now, when I’ve been short on stuff to say or time to say it, I’ve excerpted the wisdom of Dick Davis. There have been 35 items in all, taken from a lecture he delivered early in the year. The topics were: 1. What’s A Reasonable Return? 2. Groups Will Return To Favor 3. It’s Never That Urgent 4. The Durability Of Major Trends 5. Face It, It’s History 6. The Role Of Market History 7. The Income Buyer 8. Do It Yourself Investing 9. Any Approach Can Work 10. Negatives Of Being Totally Informed 11. Advice To Family 12. Investment Versus Speculation 13. Oldtimers Out Of Step 14. It’ll Always Go Lower 15. Brilliant Market Calls 16. Advice From Brokers 17. What’s A Reasonable Price? 18. Why Stay Fully Invested? 19. Index Funds 20. The Contrarian Approach 21. CEOs On Their Own Stock 22. The Insignificance Of News 23. Predisposition Toward Failure 24. Avoid Big Losses 25. Why Markets Go To Extremes 26. Stick With Your Winners 27. This Time It’s Different 28. Market Symmetry 29. Know The Downside 30. Behind The Moves In Stocks 31. Dollar Cost Averaging 32. When To Sell 33. The Market Has Its Own Agenda 34. A Critique Of CNBC 35. Stay Healthy Herewith, the last. (To see one of the others, enter its title in the SEARCH field.) Item 35: Stay Healthy Most everything good that happens in the market requires the passage of time. By trying to stay stress-free, by giving time a chance to smooth out the wrinkles, by taking lots of vacations away from your stocks, by living the good life here at Boca West, and mostly by just staying physically healthy, you’ll be sure to be here when the time comes to collect your rewards. Equally important is staying mentally healthy, keeping things in perspective. The pursuit of financial gain can be challenging, exciting and gratifying. But, taken to extremes it can cause us to lose our balance and distort our priorities. Ross Perot, who at one time was the 3rd richest man in the world, says, ‘There is no worse way in this world to judge a human being than what he is worth financially.’ Comedian Stephen Wright puts it another way. He says, ‘You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?’ ☞ Amen.
Bush Rules! October 4, 2002February 22, 2017 Bob Ridenour: ‘Looking on Google for ‘name sucks’ is a version of something that’s been going on for many years and which is probably a better metric. Check out http://srom.zgp.org for an example. You learn a lot more about something when you look not only at how many people think it ‘sucks,’ but also how many people think it ‘rules,’ too.’ ☞ The first thing to say, for those who found 3,820 hits for ‘Tobias sucks,’ is that ‘single quotes’ are ignored by Google – you have to use ‘double quotes’ or else you get all the hits for Tobias and all the hits for sucks. The second thing to say is that ‘Bush Rocks’ totals 398, and ‘Bush Rules’ totals 3,830 – but most of the latter seem to be ‘Bush rules out North Korea talks’ and ‘Bush Rules Out Meeting With Gay Supporters’ and ‘For now, lobbyists play by Bush’s rules.’ Have a great weekend. Are you registered to vote? Is everyone you know registered? Seriously! Now is the time to do this – not just because so many people died for your right to vote, but because if we don’t all go out and vote 32 days from now, there’s a real chance the right wing of the Republican party will control all three branches of government . . . that John Ashcroft would be sending lifetime judicial appointments to Trent Lott for confirmation . . . that those like Chief Justice Rehnquist who believe the separation of church and state should be abandoned would get their way. (And forget about the stem cell research that might save your life, or the twice-passed Oregon assisted-suicide law, or the California-passed medical marijuana referendum that spares nauseated chemotherapy patients some of their agony.) As I mentioned this summer, Chief Justice William Rehnquist, in his 1985 dissenting opinion in Wallace v. Jaffree, wrote: ‘The ‘wall of separation between church and State’ is a metaphor based on bad history, a metaphor which has proved useless as a guide to judging. It should be frankly and explicitly abandoned.’ Tom DeLay, in line to become House Majority Leader, told 300 Baptists in Pearland, Texas, April 12, that God had put him on this earth to promote ‘a more Biblical worldview’ in American politics. Justcie Scalia lamented to a divinity school audience in January that democracy deemphasizes the true authority by which we live – divine authority – and said that people of faith should do all they legally can not to accept that. Clarence Thomas is deeply religious as well and votes with Scalia. Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, asked where he got the notion that gays are sick, like kleptomaniacs and alcoholics, snapped back, ‘I’ll tell you where I got that – I got it from the Bible.’ The Attorney General is deeply conservative in his religious views. Candidate, now President, Bush, asked what kind of Justices he hoped to appoint, said that the two he admires most are Scalia and Thomas. And all these guys are totally entitled to their beliefs. I just don’t want to see them controlling both houses of Congress and all three branches of government. Which they are one Senate seat away from doing. So register to vote, get an absentee ballot NOW if you might not be in town November 5, and pester all your friends and relatives to do likewise. Many will be Republicans – and that’s fine. But would they really want a John Ashcroft Supreme Court for the next 25 years?
In the Old Days, You’d Check with the Better Business Bureau October 3, 2002February 22, 2017 Gary Diehl: ‘I’ve noticed several recent messages regarding AOL’s infamous tricks to keep subscribers. Thought I would pass on a trick I use to find out if I want to deal with a company in the first place. Go to Google and in quotes type ‘<Name of Company> Sucks.’ I find this an excellent indicator of how angry the company has managed to make its customers. For example: ‘GE Sucks’ only gets you about 48 hits, ‘GM Sucks’ gets you roughly 136, but ‘AOL Sucks’ brings in 7,960 hits. Coincidence? I think not. Also notice how many of the hits are actual sites people have built just to vent their rage. This is also fun to try with political candidates.’ ☞ For the record, Bush scores 6,390 votes by this standard versus just 296 for Gore and 523 for Clinton (using last names only). AOL, meanwhile, in the few short days since Gary sent this, has acquired 500 new detractors. (I am not one of them.)
Is Anyone to Blame? October 2, 2002January 24, 2017 Monday I linked to a Paul Krugman column about California’s artificial energy shortage. Re-reading it reminded me of this column by Carlton Vogt. The three-paragraph nub of it: Faced with the decision of whether to buy medicine, food, or electricity, they picked the first two and tried to live through the summer heat without having to spend precious resources on our extortionary electric rates. This was a choice no one should have to make — choosing which means of neglect would kill them: heat, hunger, or lack of medicine. Those of us who live in California now know that our electricity shortages and rising rates were the direct result of manipulation by Enron and its corrupt and greedy gang of executives. We know that if those rates had not risen astronomically, these elderly people most likely would not have been faced with the ultimate dilemma. So, who killed these four people? A corporation? People? “Evildoers”? All of the above? But more important, who will be brought to justice for their deaths? Will anyone? A little melodramatic perhaps, but the folks are dead, and neither tax cuts nor plans to drill in ANWAR nor a hands-off Federal Energy Regulatory Commission seems to have helped avert that. A HOT NEW SHOW Full disclosure: I have a little piece of Jolson & Company, which opened at the Century Theater in New York Sunday night . . . but that can’t be true of all the people jumping to their feet at the end to cheer and applaud. So if you’re having trouble getting good seats to Hairspray or the Producers, check it out.