Have a Great Weekend May 28, 2004January 21, 2017 Wednesday’s column, and its links, would have taken much of your day to read. You would have been fired for showing up at quarter past one. So you didn’t read it and it’s my fault for failing to find a way to make it more compact. But it’s our planet. So if you find a little time over the long weekend, maybe give it another shot? And go see THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW, which opens nationwide today.
The Other Two Movies Plus Food and Money May 27, 2004January 21, 2017 Yesterday, The Day After Tomorrow. Today . . . FARENHEIT 9/11 This is the Michael Moore film Disney chose not to release that won the Palme d’Or in Cannes last week and will surely be one of the biggest films of the summer. One of you who runs a decent sized company writes: ‘Our service manager lost a son in Iraq. He was invited by Michael Moore to see the movie in NYC. He saw it and said any Republican who sees the movie will not vote for Bush. The service manager is a Republican.’ The truth is, while we should be grateful for whatever good things George W. Bush has done for his country these past three and a half years – and I invite your suggestions, because I am hard-pressed to think of any – the world, and ultimately the investment markets, will breathe a huge sigh of relief (and I suspect he may, also) when his term is up. LORD OF THE WEST WING Roger Berkley: ‘I got this from a Bush supporter who appreciates good humor regardless of the topic.’ FOOD Are you a wealthy New York Shut-In? If so – or if you have more money than time (noting, as I occasionally have, that Bill Gates has about $2.40 for each year since time began) – then you should really try FreshDirect. The web site is a snap to navigate; they carry a really wide variety of everything; it arrives on time in great condition; I may never leave the house again. And actually, some of the prices aren’t bad at all. MONEY Bob Novick: ‘Doubting that SVNX could possibly have been EIGHTEEN HUNDRED DOLLARS a share, as you said Tuesday, I checked with Morningstar. Its all-time high was actually $2320 at the close and, intraday, $2400.’ ☞ Well, that’s very nice, but it closed Tuesday at $3.
Three Movies May 26, 2004January 21, 2017 ‘THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW’ OPENS THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW And you should go see it. Not because it is remotely plausible – as you can see from the trailer, it is completely over the top – but because, first, I’m told it’s fun to watch, and second, if we are very lucky, it will focus attention on a planetary emergency so real I have bold-faced it and put it in red. Click here to learn more. The problem with this emergency is that – while completely real and undisputed by any serious scientist (the way the link between smoking and lung cancer was known to be real but disputed for decades by the eminent scientists at the Tobacco Institute) – it is a slo-mo crisis with such a long lead time that the citizenry is easily lulled into complacency. Yet we are already so far along with this, and it takes so long to change course, that even if we start today, as we should, to reduce CO2 emissions, you can expect a 50% increase in the severity of our storms and a significant rise in sea level, not in the centuries but in the decades to come. Imagine New York’s subway system – and Wall Street’s subterranean communications nexus – flooded with salt water. That could tie things up pretty rotten. Imagine much of the most densely populated portions of Florida submerged. New Orleans? Now there’s a laugh. The West? Think desert. The nation’s breadbasket? Think near desert – or at least highly challenging growing conditions. The Bush administration has suppressed a dozen studies that would have aroused interest. It has outright rejected the Kyoto Protocol on Climate Change which, once you understand the situation, you will realize is absolutely critical to avoiding enormous planetary hardship down the road. It has shut down environmental prosecutions inherited from the previous administration. Global climate change is a huge deal, and one about which we will be hearing more and more for the rest of our lives. If we’re smart, we’ll begin to fix the problem. Russia’s President Vladimir Putin seems to be leading the way. In his surprise move last week, he breathed new life into the Kyoto Protocols. The planet owes him a huge thank you. President Kerry, while he might tinker around the edges, would likely find a way to add to the momentum. There is, after all, a tremendous economic opportunity for us here . . . not just to minimize the mega-dislocations that loom long-term, but to exploit technology for the new century that will make us more efficient and prosperous in the very near future. Did you know that if we could increase the average fuel efficiency of our automotive fleet by something like 7.6 miles to the gallon – which we easily could over a relatively few years – we could stop importing oil from the Persian Gulf? Not only would that make us more secure, it would save us a collective fortune every year. And it would make our air cleaner and our people healthier and our dollar stronger. How can we not be doing this? Did you know that Ford will finally be bringing out a hybrid car next year, long after Toyota and Honda . . . but that it is licensing the technology from the Japanese? Do you know where the Japanese got this technology? From American scientists who couldn’t interest Detroit. But here is my favorite, and by far the most encouraging ‘did you know.’ Remember the alarm about the hole in the ozone layer? Like a giant bald spot over the pole (please don’t ask me to try to remember which pole; I’m old, I get confused). (Oh, okay, the South Pole. A hole in the summer bigger than Russia and Canada combined. Click here.) Remember how even the strongest sun screen soon wouldn’t be able to save us from melanomas everywhere our skin was exposed? But do you also remember how that led to a worldwide ban of the spray-can gases – chlorofluorocarbons – that caused the hole? And that somehow we found a different way to make spray cans, and that people’s underarms continued to smell nice? Well, did you know it worked? The world got together 25 years ago, banned the CFCs, and we now seem to have arrested the growth of, and may in a few decades see the complete repair of, the hole in the ozone layer. When we are smart, we can do amazing things. When we are dumb, we can poison the future for all the generations to follow. The Bush Administration has a penchant for doing really dumb things. For example, shutting down the stem cell research – outsourcing an entire industry, really – that could save you or your kids from Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s or a whole raft of other diseases. And then going to the U.N. to try to shut it down globally. (Fortunately, the U.S. lost that vote, at least for now.) Last fall, according to an account by Kathryn Schulz, we went to a meeting at the headquarters of the United Nations Environment Program in Nairobi, Kenya, and . . . . . . demanded an exemption from a Montreal Protocol requirement to phase out the use of methyl bromide by 2005. Methyl bromide is a deeply toxic pesticide that destroys ozone at 45 times the rate of chlorine, the better-known bad guy in the ozone-hole drama. (Chlorine is the insidious ingredient in chlorofluorocarbons, or CFCs.’) . . . It is a really interesting article, and I urge you to read the whole thing. Did you know that the earth’s atmosphere is so thin it is like the varnish on a globe? That the ice sheet atop the Arctic Ocean is 40% less thick than it was just a few decades ago? That at the rate we are going it could soon melt away entirely each summer? And that as it shrinks, global warming accelerates? That’s because as ice, it reflects 95% of the suns rays back out away from Earth. But as a deep blue pool of water, it would absorb those rays as heat. Those of you who are scientists surely recognize I have no standing whatever to be making this case. I am just trying to digest what I’ve learned. But we’d all better try to learn the basics of this stuff, because if we don’t, we won’t care. And if we don’t care, our politicians won’t feel they can make the tough choices required to avert disaster, like changing the way we deodorize our underarms, or driving cars that convert the friction generated when we step on the brake into energy that helps power the car. As Al Gore recently observed, the trillions in new debt we are now laying on our offspring is nothing compared with the ‘environmental deficit’ we are saddling them with. These past 40 months could have been so much better. Tomorrow: Much Briefer, the Other Two Movies
Fun with Economic Statistics May 25, 2004January 21, 2017 But first . . . Many thanks to David Groshoff (and others) for filling in yesterday’s Winners of the New World: ISLD – Feb 29, 2000: $116.13 . . . acquired by CWP in 2001 at $3.40. EXDS – Feb 29, 2000: $71.19 . . . Chapter 11 bankruptcy, then acquired by CWP INKT – Feb 29, 2000: $137.13 . . . last traded price, $1.65; acquired by Yahoo. SNRA – Feb 29, 2000: $55.80 . . . acquired by Telia for about $8 SVNX – Feb 29, 2000: $1,882.50 (David swears this is not a typo) . . . $2.94 Friday. OK, now . . . Here’s a fun site: You can find the U.S. population, Gross Domestic Product – in real or nominal terms – for any year since 1789. In 1789, the Gross Domestic Product per capita – there being only 3.81 million capitae at the time – was $55 . . . about $1,100 in 2004 dollars. Today we are nearly 300 million, each accounting for $38,000 or so of the GDP. Here’s another fun site: It shows the current National Debt and, also, the historical debt. The site’s author attributes the rapid growth in the debt mainly to Democrats, though it rose only 24% under Kennedy/Johnson compared with 82% under Nixon/Ford . . . quadrupled under Ronald Reagan and George Bush, yet rose only 40% during the Clinton years . . . and has resumed its skyward sprint under George W. Bush and the Republican Congress. What matters, of course, is not the size of the debt so much as its size relative to the economy as a whole (the debt quadrupled under Reagan/Bush, but the economy only doubled) . . . its projected rate of growth (the debt is now again growing faster than the economy) . . . and, perhaps, most importantly, what it has been spent on (most recently, tax cuts for the rich and what some say was the unnecessary, or at least poorly planned, invasion of Iraq). President Bush came into office with ‘budget surpluses as far as the eye could see’ . . . with urgent warnings about the ‘tremendous,’ ‘immediate’ threat from Osama Bin Laden . . . and with the good will of much of the world. He turned the surpluses into deficits . . . ignored the threat from Osama Bin Laden . . . and converted the world’s amity into enmity. Oh – and as of last week, gay guys, no matter how healthy, are no longer permitted to donate sperm (although they are still permitted to pay taxes). To help hire a more competent CEO, click here.
Winners for the New World May 24, 2004February 25, 2017 The Prudent Bear is a site worthy of note if you have significant exposure to the stock market. If you are 28, putting 10% of your pay each month into the market and planning to do so until you retire – don’t stop! Over long periods, the stock market should be a fine place for a large chunk of your money. But if you are retired, or a premature curmudgeon, check out its strong ‘value’ perspective. For example, I draw your attention to Rob Peebles’ May 21 Market Summary, with this charming first line: ‘A person can learn a lot by not attending a conference.’ (Which was the model I aspired to, but did not always attain, in college.) Bears tend to make fun of market pundits who pooh-pooh value – especially after those pundits’ picks have turned to pooh-pooh – and so this column dredges up Jim Cramer’s February 29, 2000, list of ‘Winners of the New World.’ Jim is a voluble pundit you can see nightly on CNBC and read regularly in New York Magazine. His predicted ‘Winners’ four years ago were: Mercury Interactive (MERQ) – $96.38 then, $45.39 today, down by more than half . . . Veritas Software (VRTS) – $197.88 then, $24.67 (and symbol VRTSE today), down 87.5% . . . InfoSpace.com (INSP) – down 85% from $217 then to $32.30 today . . . VeriSign (VRSN) – down 93% from $254 to $17.75 . . . Ariba (ARBA) – down 99.3% from $264.50 to $1.88 . . . and then these others for which I could not readily find prices: Digital Island (ISLD) . . . Exodus (EXDS) . . . Inktomi (INKT) . . . Sonera (SNRA) . . . and 724 Solutions (SVNX). Some of them merged, others disappeared. Could those of you who owned them fill me in? (Why should I do all the work?) We certainly don’t have a bubble of the kind we had in 2000. But this can be a tough game, even if you attend conferences or watch the experts on CNBC. Tomorrow: Fun with Economic Statistics
What the Party Believes May 21, 2004February 25, 2017 Before you jump on me for being too partisan, please note that the bits below are excerpted from the 2000 Republican Platform: 1. ‘The arrogance, inconsistency, and unreliability of the administration’s diplomacy have undermined American alliances, alienated friends, and emboldened our adversaries.’ 2. ‘Gerrymandered congressional districts are an affront to democracy and an insult to the voters. We oppose that and any other attempt to rig the electoral process.’ 3. ‘The current administration has casually sent American armed forces on dozens of missions without clear goals, realizable objectives, favorable rules of engagement, or defined exit strategies. Over the past seven years, a shrunken American military has been run ragged by a deployment tempo that has eroded its military readiness. Many units have seen their operational requirements increased four-fold, wearing out both people and equipment.’ 4. ‘An administration that lives by evasion, coverup, stonewalling, and duplicity has given us a totally discredited Department of Justice.’ 5. ‘The Social Security surplus is off-limits, off budget, and will not be touched. We will not stop there, for we are also determined to protect Medicare and to pay down the national debt. Reducing that debt is both a sound policy goal and a moral imperative. Our families and most states are required to balance their budgets; it is reasonable to assume the federal government should do the same. Therefore, we reaffirm our support for a constitutional amendment to require a balanced budget.’ Much as I would like to take credit for culling these snippets, I have condensed them from a recent posting on The Daily KOS. Have a great week-end.
1% More Interest; 4.4 Fewer Divorces May 20, 2004February 25, 2017 THE ING THING Gray Chang: ‘I am a new customer of ING Direct (that you suggested yesterday) and my experience has been entirely good. I received an ad in the mail offering a money-market savings rate of 1.98%, more than twice what I get from my regular money-market fund, plus a $25 bonus for opening an account. So I opened the account, and found the service to be good. When I call them, I get to talk to a real person without a long wait. I plan to keep most of my cash there. Last month at their web site, I found they were offering ARM mortgages at a very good rate, with a minimum of fees. I applied for a refinancing loan and was fortunate enough to lock in a low rate, one day before the rates went up. I called my regular mortgage broker and bank, and checked around the Web, and could not find a better deal. The loan application and closing was the easiest and most hassle-free that I have ever experienced. They sent a notary out to my home for signing the papers. (Note: I don’t work for ING.)’ HAS YOUR MARRIAGE BEGUN TO FALTER YET? That’s the fear – that by being allowed to embrace the institution of marriages, joyful same-sex couples will, by their celebration of the commitment and responsibilities marriage entails, ruin it for everyone else. Yet a May 14 column by Tom Keane in the conservative Boston Herald notes that Nevada, ‘which ranks first in the country in its divorce rate (6.8 per 1,000 residents vs. a national average of 4.0),’ have a law against gay marriage . . . indeed, have ‘enshrined their anti-gay animus into the state constitution.’ While Massachusetts, ‘the only state to permit gay marriage, has the nation’s lowest divorce rate (2.4 per 1,000).’ Curious, isn’t it? [asks Keane] The state that most makes a mockery of marriage protests mightily against including gays while Massachusetts – derided for subverting marriage – seems to take the institution far more seriously. Or perhaps it’s not so curious. Perhaps people in Massachusetts know a little bit better than most that marriage matters. And perhaps that point has been driven home after having watched gays struggle to secure that right for themselves, much in the same way that battles by blacks and women for the vote made us appreciate that suffrage was not something to be taken for granted. If so, then perhaps Monday will [prove to have been] a different line of demarcation than most think: More than just the expansion of equal rights, it may be the beginning of a new understanding of the gravity and obligations of this tattered institution we call marriage.
The Deep End May 19, 2004January 21, 2017 OK, if we’re going to keep some of our money safely on the sidelines for a while – and you should always keep some money liquid and safe, even if you don’t share my concern for the direction of the Dow (or, equally valid, if you don’t want to try to ‘time the market’ and are, sensibly, in it for the very long term) – then I guess maybe it’s worth a look at ingdirect.com. You get an extra 1% or so, and you don’t even have to switch banks! Regarding yesterday’s story of the British woman handcuffed at LAX . . . Marty Preston: ‘I could hardly believe what I was reading. How humiliating for our country.’ Daniel D: ‘One cannot take the author’s position that America is bad because we enforce laws on our books during times of war that were overlooked in the past. The author states all she had to do was declare herself a tourist and no problem. She is free to move about this country like any other tourist, foreign or domestic. Still quite an accomplishment and testament to freedom in our country. She chose to declare as a journalist . . . then does not want any of the corresponding responsibilities that come with . . . then further to blame the host country for enforcing its laws. Rather, she should have taken responsibility for arriving on America’s shores ready to comply with America’s laws. She suffers just like rest of society today, when things go wrong it is always somebody else’s fault.’ ☞ Daniel was not the only one to take this hard line. I’ll admit I find it baffling. It’s one thing – a rather huge thing, really – to deport her under these circumstances. I don’t get that either. But handcuffs and the rest? To her credit, if I read her right, she did not take the position that ‘America is bad.’ She said she loves America and hopes to come back. But her experience at LAX suggests we’ve gone a bit off the deep end – and I fear this is all the more true if some good folks like Daniel have no problem with the way she was treated. I’d hate to have him be the cop who pulls me over for doing 65 in a 55mph zone. Finally (speaking of the deep end) . . . have you seen Molly Ivins’ latest? By MOLLY IVINS May 18, 2004 AUSTIN, Texas — It’s quite difficult to convince people you are killing them for their own good. That’s our basic problem in Iraq. You can try explaining that you are killing them in order to bring freedom and democracy to their nation — “Freedom is the Almighty’s gift to every man and woman in the world. And as the greatest power on the face of the earth, we have an obligation to help the spread of freedom,” said President Bush. However, this argument is less than convincing if an American bomb or bullet has just killed your child. Or if you were among the 70 percent to 90 percent of the prisoners at Abu Ghraib who were there by accident. Team, our national debate on this occupation is approaching the hopelessly dotty. This is no longer a matter of trying to decide if the glass is half-empty or half-full, or whether our media are looking at this through rose-colored glasses or through a glass darkly. What is, is. The trend lines get steadily worse. The accumulation of American errors has cost us the goodwill of the great majority of Iraqis. As their attacks on us increase, so do our responses, so does the number of innocent Iraqis we kill, so does the number of Iraqis who then hate us and search for vengeance — in a downward spiral of violence that no one sees a way out of, except for out. That’s what is. On the plus side, Saddam Hussein is no longer in power. On the minus side, we have encouraged anti-American terrorists everywhere, put ourselves at greater risk of terrorist attack, lost enormous amounts of goodwill around the world, earned the resentment of many of our closest allies and cost ourselves around $200 billion we really could have used for more constructive projects. The worst possibility is that we have set up the Iraqis for a horrible three-way civil war, and development that was foreseen before the invasion and is looming now. The dotty part of the debate comes from the neocons, whose idea this was in the first place. A few weeks ago, Douglas Feith, undersecretary of defense for policy, said, “I think no one can properly assert that the failure to find Iraqi WMD stockpiles undermines the reasons for the war.” Really? Well then let me assert it improperly. You told us that it was why we had to go to war, and you can’t just stand there and lie about it now. This is like trying to debate the Red Queen. Sometimes it’s more a matter of the neocons not being able to get their act together. Paul Wolfowitz, my fave, said the other day, “No one ever expected this would be a cakewalk.” Actually, those were the very words rather famously used by his neocon buddy Ken Adelman, who predicted the war would be a cakewalk. But nothing tops Wolfowitz’s classic declaration, “There is no history of ethnic strife in Iraq.” The Center for American Progress has an exit strategy I think sounds useful. It is recommending Bush call an emergency international summit immediately, seek to have the United Nations fully oversee the transition, have NATO take the security responsibility and set up an independent trust fund for reconstruction. Further details of the plan can be found at the center’s website. Paul Mulshine from of the Newark Star-Ledger suggests Bush do an LBJ announcement: “I shall not seek and I will not accept the nomination of my party for another term as your president.” That would improve the likelihood of the success of a summit, though the administration is in such deep denial about how badly this war is going it seems unlikely. Just as a political calculation, the administration should consider the center’s plan: It’s not going to do them any good electorally to keep pretending everything is hunky-dory while we all watch it spiral out of control. According to The Wall Street Journal, the June 30 “handover” date is a complete sham: The United States is picking proxies and advisers at every level. Do you think the Iraqis don’t realize that? One of our more impassioned public scolds, Michael Massing, wrote last week of “our great national narcissism,” our notorious lack of knowledge about other cultures, our inability to speak foreign languages and our indifference to the deaths of Iraqis (hundreds of civilians dead in retaliation for the attack on four American contractors). Excuse me, but I really don’t think Americans need a lecture on our many failings — I think it is time, rather, that we call on one of our greatest strengths. We are a practical people and often quite shrewd. That means knowing when to cut your losses. Let’s use it now. Let’s not stand around with our thumbs in our ears pretending the nincompoops who got us into this knew what they were doing. We were attacked by Al Qaeda. Let’s go get them and leave the Iraqis to international authorities. To find out more about Molly Ivins and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators Syndicate. COPYRIGHT 2004 CREATORS SYNDICATE, INC.
Welcome to Los Angeles May 18, 2004February 25, 2017 Three warning signs for real estate: Interest rates appear to be headed back up. The same $1500 monthly mortgage payment that supports a $279,000 30-year loan at 5% supports just $231,000 at 6.75% (and $157,000 at 11%, a typical rate during the inflationary Seventies). We are already pretty heavily in debt. James Grant reports that – adjusted for inflation – there was about $3,300 in mortgage debt for every employed American in 1965 . . . versus more than $52,000 today. The June issue of Money has real estate on the cover, asking, ‘What’s Next for Home Prices’ and answering, ‘Even with real estate values sky-high and rates on the rise, the outlook is for more gains this year.’ This is by no means to predict a crash. Just to suggest that bargains in real estate may be more plentiful in a year or two than they are now. WHAT ARE WE DOING? In case you missed this, it is the story of how we welcomed a British journalist to Los Angeles. Imagine if she had come from France. A Foreign Reporter Gets a Story of U.S. Paranoia By Elena Lappin May 11, 2004 As I boarded my flight from London to Los Angeles on May 3, I looked forward to my first California experience. I had a freelance assignment for a British newspaper but also had been offered a bit of sightseeing by friends during my six-day stay. Instead, I spent 26 hours as a detainee. My only view of the city was framed by the metal bars on the security van transporting me, in handcuffs, from LAX to a downtown detention facility. Inadvertently, I had arrived on American soil as a foreign journalist without a press visa, a requirement that has been on the books for years but is actually being enforced now under the strict guidelines of the Department of Homeland Security. I was traveling on my British passport and believed that, like most visitors from countries included in the U.S. “visa-waiver program,” I could still come in and go out easily without special paperwork. I was unaware that since March 2003 (when the Department of Homeland Security was created) the United States had begun to regard journalists from friendly countries as hostile aliens. Our intentions must be closely scrutinized before we are allowed to do our jobs. What sort of country is afraid of the foreign press? I had plenty of time to ponder this during my disturbing, humiliating and deeply disappointing encounter with a United States that seems to have become a travesty of the country I love. (Only countries like Cuba, Syria, Iran and North Korea demand that journalists apply for special visas.) If I had announced myself as a tourist at passport control, I would have been waved through. By declaring honestly that I was a journalist (as I had done on previous visits), I had become a suspect persona non grata. As I explained my situation to various officials, I was sure that my innocent mistake based on my (and my paper’s) ignorance of the still-obscure visa requirement would soon be clarified. After all, I had come from Britain, a staunch ally. Could I possibly be denied entry? Incredibly, I was. And from the moment the decision to deport me was made, I was treated like a dangerous criminal without any basic rights. I was groped and searched. I was fingerprinted; mug shots were taken. Then, with my hands handcuffed behind my back – a particularly painful and demeaning method – I was taken through the airport to a van. Walking handcuffed among free LAX passengers was an indescribably strange experience; more than anything, it brought home the Kafkaesque fact that I was now a prisoner. Later, I was to spend the night in a “detention tank” behind a thick glass wall, without a chair or bed. It contained only two steel benches, about 15 inches wide, a steel toilet and sink (all in full view of anyone passing by and of the camera observing all), a glaring neon light and a Big Brother-controlled television playing a shopping (!) channel all night. I found it hard to breathe in this human fish tank, yet knocking on the glass, repeatedly, brought no help. When a security officer finally walked by and I shouted through the door that I felt unwell, he wasn’t interested. In the morning, I was transferred (again in handcuffs) back to a security room, where I spent the rest of the day awaiting my evening flight back to London. I and two other detainees, whom I was not permitted to talk to, were supervised the entire time by eight sleepy, TV-watching security officers. While they ate their breakfasts, I had to ask four times for food and was shouted at before something edible was brought to me, paid for with my own money. I later found out that mine is not the only such case: In 2003, 12 journalists were detained and deported at LAX, and one at another U.S. airport, according to Reporters Without Borders. As a detainee, I was not allowed a pen. But it is not hard to remember what I saw: a glimpse of a country hiding its deep sense of insecurity behind an abusive façade, and an arbitrary (though not unintentional) disrespect for civil liberties. Nevertheless, I am applying for a journalist’s visa so I can come back and, I hope, see another America. May 3, as it happens, was World Press Freedom Day.
From Pat Buchanan No Less May 17, 2004February 25, 2017 Pat Buchanan is not the guy you expect to see linked to here, least of all on the day marriage licenses finally become available to gay and lesbian couples in Massachusetts. (Some of these devoted couples have been waiting more than 30 years.) But he makes a case on the war that is worth consideration. He argues, in part: Bush’s “world democratic revolution” is history. Given the hatred of the United States and Bush in the Arab world . . . it is almost delusional to think Arab peoples are going to follow America’s lead. . . . Iraq was an unnecessary war that may become one of the great blunders in U.S. history. That the invasion was brilliantly conceived and executed by Gen. Franks, that our fighting men were among the finest we ever sent to war, that they have done good deeds and brave acts, is undeniable. Yet, if recent surveys are accurate, the Iraqis no longer want us there. What should Bush do now? He should declare that the United States has no intention of establishing permanent bases in Iraq, and that we intend to withdraw all U.S. troops after elections, if the Iraqis tell us to leave. Then we should schedule elections at the earliest possible date this year. It didn’t have to be this way. People with better judgment would have focused on Bin Laden, not Saddam. I am sure we will soon capture or kill bin Laden – but we should have done it back then, before al-Qaeda had been able so widely to metastasize. The invasion of Iraq, which we now know was a top Bush agenda item long before September 11, should only have been undertaken as a true last resort (as Bush promised), with far more of the world with us and far better planning for the aftermath. As to gay marriage, those who are upset about it need to understand three things. First, it is voluntary. You don’t have to do it yourself or attend weddings or send gifts. You can even disown your child if he or she does it. Second, it is civil marriage we are talking about, not religious. What the Pope says still goes. Just not with respect to Massachusetts tax law. Third, it’s not about sex. If you want to discourage gay sex, you should be for gay marriage. In the now rather famous words of Bill Maher, What business is it of the state how consenting adults choose to pair off, share expenses, and eventually stop having sex with each other? Loving, stable, supportive relationships are a good thing, not a bad thing. The federal government confers more than 1,100 rights and benefits to married couples that cohabitating singles do not enjoy. Discriminating against one group of citizens by denying them those rights is un-American. It’s not about sex, it’s about discrimination. Today there is just a tiny bit less of it in America.