John Maynard Keynes on Fahrenheit 9/11 June 30, 2004February 25, 2017 FAT CHANCE Tim Sweeney: ‘You picked a poor example of a fat chance yesterday. The Astros have a legitimate shot at the National League Pennant. Texas has enough to apologize for nowadays, so don’t dump on our Astros!’ Aaron Long: ‘Notice that ‘fat chance’ is without exception said sarcastically. Consider how such phrases as, ‘Brilliant!’ or ‘Nice move, genius!’ mean their opposite if said with the right inflection.’ John Seiffer: ‘And why do ‘slow up’ and ‘slow down’ mean the same thing? I guess it’s amazing we can understand each other at all!’ REAL SOON NOW Walter Willis: ‘[The ‘Real Soon Now’ phenomenon Dan Nachbar described yesterday] isn’t self deception. Most innovators only know their special branch of technology. They don’t study innovation in general because they are not innovators, they are chemists or solid state physicists or whatever. I have studied innovation in great detail and depth so I know why things take longer and cost more. It is because every piece of technology out there is supported by dozens of pieces of enabling technology that have accumulated over the years as the problems were solved, one by one by one. A specialist doesn’t really have any reason to know this. Learning is a long and hard process. It’s also why I have literally hundreds of inventions and haven’t developed any of them . . . because it is a lifetime to make not just the one invention, easy enough, but the dozen other inventions to make the one invention work. To use an analogy that you would be familiar with, if you had just the idea of an engine that drove a car, and the understanding that would enable you to make a two-stroke or otto or diesel cycle engine, would you understand the need for a differential, or a pneumatic tire, or a windshield wiper, or a head light, or an electric starter, or a lead acid battery specialized for peak output, or a distributor, or a radiator, or a transaxle, or a rolldown mechanism for a window, or a safety glass windshield, or a transmission, or … It’s like that for every piece of technology out there. Can you imagine thinking up an automobile and understanding why tires have not merely carbon particles added to the rubber, but bias cut fiber reinforcement, and why?’ ☞ I know the woman who invented the Scrunchie, and I don’t think it was even three years between brainstorm and bonanza. But I see your point. Yet Dan is right, too, I think. Faced with a massive project, there is the natural tendency to tell ourselves ‘it won’t be long now.’ FAHRENHEIT 9/11 John Ryan, Beaumont, TX: ‘Usually around here when you attend a documentary there may be one or two other people in the theater. Not today. The afternoon screening of Fahrenheit 9/11 was three-quarters full. And at the end of the movie, people stood up and applauded! Amazing, as this is right in the heart of Bush Country.’ ☞ It’s huge. Here’s another example, from a wire service story: Irvine, CA – In the heart of conservative Orange County, a Regal Cinema theater was initially not even going to show the film, but under pressure from the community is now offering 12 showings a day. The organizer of the Irvine opening, Mitchell Goldstone, wrote to tell me ‘it was the highest grossing event in the theater’s history. I just talked with Regal Entertainment Group management and they actually used the word ‘pandemonium’ to describe what is occurring in front of the theater right now. ‘There are enormous lines of people waiting to buy tickets’ in front of the Irvine Regal University Town Center theater right now – at about 2:00PM (Saturday).’ So think of it this way: if there’s ANY issue you kind of prefer the Democrats on – perhaps ‘the environment’ or ‘separation of church and state’ or the ‘stem cell research’ that could save your spouse or child from some devastating disease (an issue on which Nancy Reagan, among others, agrees with our side) – go see Fahrenheit 9/11. You may leave the theater more convinced than ever that Bush / Cheney / Ashcroft are the men for you. OK. At least you’ll know you’ve withstood a test of your faith in their competence and good judgment and come through it unshaken. Or you may leave the theater less sure. But that’s OK, too. As Lord John Maynard Keynes is alleged to have remarked – ‘When the facts change, I change my mind. What do you do, sir?’
Real Soon Now? Fat Chance! June 29, 2004February 25, 2017 FAT CHANCE I know the big shrimp are the most prized, but at least they are, as logic would demand, bigger than the little shrimp. So answer me this: how is it that a fat chance (as in . . . ‘Astros win the Pennant this year? Fat chance!’) is leaner than a slim chance? How is it, indeed, that a ‘fat chance’ is a chance that falls someplace between slim and none? BOREALIS Chris Bourne, head of PR for Borealis, responds to Leslie Mercer’s posting: ‘We don’t believe it is wise to engage in a semi-public debate on company policy. Such a debate might even fall foul of the SEC disclosure rules, which is why we also avoid making semi-public statements on bulletin boards discussing our company. Most serious companies take the same view. I would much prefer it if people would write to me at pr@borealis.com with these queries. Leslie, for example, has done a whole load of due diligence and has worried about this for nine months now, but has never in all that time contacted us to ask for an answer. If Leslie does, I promise a reply. Indeed, sometimes such replies find their way into our weekly report as well, which is constructed and distributed so that it does meet SEC disclosure regulations, and then everybody can have the benefit of them.’ Dan Nachbar: ‘It’s very hard to draw much of a conclusion from the ugly string of missed deliveries from Borealis that your other readers listed. Often with new technologies it seems like success is right around the corner – only to have the corner become a ‘mirage’ that continuously slips a little further away whenever it is approached. This is true whether or not the technology eventually turns out to be a success. I have heard this behavior referred to as the RSN (Real Soon Now) phenomenon. The RSN phenomenon arises (I think) primarily because inventors/innovators MUST believe that some kind of payoff is reasonably close at hand. Otherwise, how could anyone ever keep themselves in hot pursuit of such elusive goals – sometimes for decades? In other words, RSN arises from that foggy space between dedication and self-deception. It is by no means a completely bad thing. Without it, many of the world’s important inventions would never have been developed.’
How Will These Stories End? June 28, 2004February 25, 2017 A SOBERING VIEW OF IRAQ Click here. BOREALIS Sergei Slobodov: ‘So you call sucking up to the host, shameless self-promotion and a good-old government conspiracy theory a speech that reads well? And you would recommend people spend their money already earmarked for Las Vegas to buy these guys’ stock? Would only make sense coming from a person who owns a fair chunk of the shop, while pretending to be objective.’ Rintala, Donald: ‘I put some money on them myself. Even though failure is probable, expectation value may be very positive (as you point out). I didn’t think much of the Chorus Motor, but the Cool Chips seem pretty revolutionary. Of course, no one yet knows how to manufacture them. That’s the rub. But if someone had demonstrated that it’s impossible, Boeing et al probably wouldn’t be interested, so it’s probably an open question at this point. I think the physical principle behind the Cool Chips is valid. In fact, it’s quite simple. As for manufacturing, you just have to align two metal plates facing each other with a few atomic radii of vacuum in between. Conceptually, that’s also simple. (I don’t know if you’ve read through their tribulations in trying to actually do it.) At a $30 million market cap, they just need to do one little thing right to win (as you also point out). So it’s enticing. Even if you lose your money, you didn’t necessarily make a mistake, as it’s rational to put some money into probable losers which could win big. If only we could really estimate the probabilities involved.’ Leslie Mercer: ‘I respect your right to recommend a long shot like Borealis, however I think you are doing your readers a disservice by talking up Rolls-Royce, Boeing, and IBM while ignoring Borealis’s track record. Last September, I took a look at the history of the Chorus Motor as told by Borealis as published in the company’s annual reports. I went back to 1996 which is as far back as Borealis’s web site allows, but my understanding is that work on Chorus has been going on since before 1996. Anyway, here is the history of Chorus as told by Borealis: Chorus FY96 [W]e continue to work at… demonstrating and certifying the performance advantages of the Borealis Motor(tm)…. [W]e are aiming to lock in strategic partnerships with key industrial giants en route to the commercialization of our technologies and entry into the marketplace. This process will take time and money. Chorus FY97 Borealis Motor Works is in the final testing phase prior to commercialization. We have one major player wanting to use the technology for Locomotives and Off Road Haul Trucks. Once we achieve certification, we expect relatively rapid optimization and sales. Chorus FY98 Borealis Motor Works is in the final testing phase prior to commercialization. The testing has been stalled by over a year at a research organization associated with the Ontario Government. [Then they repeat the claims from FY97 regarding locomotives and haul trucks.] Chorus FY99 Closest to market is the Chorus Motor…. We have built and tested an Alpha version, and are now completing testing on an improved Beta version; we expect to announce these results shortly. Work is already underway on production prototypes. The Chorus Motor has production prototypes underway that should rock the industry. It should be noted that we are building these production prototypes… with leading electronics companies. Borealis expects to license the Chorus Motor technology to major motor manufacturers. Chorus FY00 The Chorus motor is on the market. We are actively seeking purchase orders for Chorus motors for test purposes and we are very interested in selling exclusive worldwide licenses for particular market niches…. While the Chorus motor’s operating specifications look very similar to permanent magnet (PM) motors, Chorus motors offer much higher reliability, at a fraction of the cost of a PM motor. We have built and tested three versions of the Chorus motor, with work well underway on a Delta version, an advanced engineering prototype…. [T]he Chorus motor will help make hybrid-electric cars an economic reality. Fiscal 2001 should yield improved operating results. The Chorus Motor has several purchase orders pending for development motors for specific customers. This is a very short step to market. Additional builds of the Chorus Motor have been basically completed, and we are beginning a public round of testing. We hope Chorus Motors plc will have both positive cash flow and earnings in fiscal 2001. Chorus FY01 To date the Chorus Motor technology is still under development such that the Company has not made any related sublicence sales. Chorus FY02 The Company and Technical are actively working together to negotiate sales or further sublicensing of its technology to various parties, which is expected to generate profitable operations in the future. Chorus FY03 Fiscal 2003 was, we expect, our last year as a development-stage company. Shortly after the fiscal year-end, we completed our first production prototype Chorus Motor, and we plan to introduce Chorus to the marketplace at a series of motor/drive trade shows beginning in June. We hope a year from now to report significant revenues and earnings for fiscal 2004. ‘FY04 is complete and it’s almost time for the next annual report. What are the odds Borealis will report ‘significant revenues and earnings for fiscal 2004?’ Not good in my opinion. ‘I realize this is lengthy, but I’d be honored if you made this information available to your readership. However, what I’d really like is for you to use your position as an apparently major stockholder to extract from Chris Bourne some kind of explanation for Borealis’s repeated failures to close a deal. I want to believe. I really do! We all dream of holding that winning lottery ticket. I merely want to be convinced that I’m not buying my lottery ticket from a swindler.’ ☞ Amen. (If Chris Bourne responds to this column, I will post his response.) Now . . . go back to the top of this column, if you have time, and click the link to the piece on Iraq. If it’s valid (and I deeply hope it’s not), it’s hard to see how the near-term U.S. investment climate could be particularly bright.
Take in a Movie June 25, 2004March 25, 2012 Listen. I just saw Farenheit 9/11. You don’t have to agree with every aspect of Michael Moore’s world view to find it deeply affecting. For those unhappy with the country’s direction, it is a must see. For those who voted for Bush, it will be challenging to watch. Rise to the challenge. Think of it as a civic duty to listen to an opposing point of view. You will find it far less taxing than jury duty. And then tell me what you think. Have a great weekend.
Borealis, Again June 24, 2004March 25, 2012 Long time readers will know that I have written about a company called Borealis in this space many times. Two reasons. First, it is as loony and colorful story as one is likely to find . . . a preposterous number of red flags . . . and yet, as I have written before, Why would Boeing have allowed its name to be used in a press release if this were all nonsense? Why would it later have issued its own press release saying, in effect, this is not all nonsense? Why would IBM have invited Borealis’s CEO to speak at one of its regional conferences earlier this month? And why does that speech read so well? Yet why, if this stood any chance of being real, would those in the audience have rushed out to buy the stock? (The stock barely ever trades.) And that’s the second reason. To me, the stock is like a lottery ticket – but a lottery ticket that I have developed the insane belief may offer powerful odds. It would be quite different if the company had a single drug that might or might not extend the lives of some cancer patients by six months and were selling for $800 million. This company, with its 5 million shares outstanding at $6 each is selling for $30 million . . . less than some homes now sell for, or a new corporate jet . . . and if its claims prove true, it would be far more valuable than the aforesaid hypothetical drug company. So it can’t be true, or else, among other things, all the scientists and engineers who have by now been pitched by the company would have bought shares and told their friends to buy shares, bidding up the price. So trust me – it can’t be true, and it’s going to zero. But then why would Boeing . . . why would IBM . . . why . . . Several of you with vastly more technical background than I have explained over the years why all this is technologically impossible. A few have then come back to say you’re not quite so sure, though still doubtful. Anyway, if you have $600 to blow on a 100-share lottery ticket – and most people don’t! – read the speech and see what you think. If there’s a 10% chance this could pan out, two things could be true: first, and most evident, you have a 90% chance of losing your money. Second, it could be a very good bet. Why? Because if it panned out, it could easily be worth a 100 times what it is today. In which case you’d have a 10% chance of a 100-fold gain, which the mathematicians in the crowd will tell you is a very good bet to take. (Bet $1 ten times and you lose $9 the first nine times, then make $100 the tenth time. Repeat.) One must be very quick to add that this kind of logic could be applied to justify any speculation. It’s all in the assumptions one pulls out of the air. If there is only a one in a million chance Borealis technology is real and can be commercially exploited, then you would bet ten bucks a million times, losing $10 million, before finally, on the millionth time, making $1,000. I am dying to find out the end of the story. Promise me you will not gamble any money on this you cannot truly afford to lose without pain. But promise me also you won’t sell if it goes up a few points. You don’t take one-on-ten chances (let alone one-in-a-million chances) to turn $600 into $900.
Sculpture June 23, 2004February 27, 2017 PREDICTIVE TEXT Jeff: ‘T9 is awesome. Here’s their home page.’ ☞ There’s an on-line demo and even a training game. And for the words your cell phone’s predictive text doesn’t recognize – it will, in the future, once you spell them out the long slow way. SCULPTURE This nine foot-long syringe by sculptor Edie Brown incorporates a 55 gallon oil drum and is called, Oil Addiction. The U.S. uses 178 of these drums every second. It was placed in an exhibit of oil drum art for New Haven’s International Festival of Arts and Ideas and it won an award. (Do you know of an environmental organization that might want to display it? I think it would go well in the lobby of the Energy Department or Environmental Protection Agency, but not under this administration.) HATE Steve: ‘There are many reasons why one person may (however irrationally) hate another enough to commit a heinous act, and no one wants to see crimes against their own group be considered less deserving of punishment than another. However, it is the essence of hate crime statutes to make such a distinction and elevate some over others. To argue inclusion of gays and lesbians is to argue a step towards the effective repeal of the statutes, for when all cases are ‘special,’ none will be.’ ☞ Well said – but I think incorrect. It’s not just African Americans who are protected now, it’s people of ANY race, including white (even though there have obviously been more hate crimes against blacks than whites). It’s people of ANY religion who are protected (even though synagogues tend to be defiled more often than churches). And, yes, if a bunch of hateful gays hopped into their pick-up and found some apparently straight man at random, chained him to their truck, and dragged him through the streets of West Hollywood until he was decapitated – they would be guilty of a hate crime if hate crimes based on ‘sexual orientation’ were added to the existing 1968 federal statute. Because, yes, in a sense all people ARE special, and none should have to fear being targeted just because of who they are. More of your comments in the days to come.
Stupid June 22, 2004February 25, 2017 E-MAZING HOW STUPID I AM So I have this cell phone that lets me type in reminders and messages and the like, but with the 12-key phone keypad – an immediate problem for anyone who uses a 26-letter alphabet – and it’s got some ‘predictive text’ system that’s supposed to help but that never works so I quickly (and with some annoyance) went into the menu and found a way to turn ‘predictive text OFF.’ I did this because I am an idiot. It turns out that if I had been just a tiny bit more patient (or if I had read the manual), I would have seen how miraculous this really is. With predictive text ON, you just type the whole word without concern for the fact that, at first, it seems to be guessing wrong. Say you want to type AMERICA. You press the 2 key (abc) and it displays A. So far, so good. You then press the 6 key (mno) and is displays N. No! No! You wanted M! And even if you think to then press the 3 key (def) – although why would you, when it’s already gone off course? – it displays D. So now it reads AND where you would have wanted it to read AME . . . you are never going to get to AMERICA at this rate, you might just as well have headed for ANDYVILLE . . . so you quit in disgust, switch ‘predictive text OFF,’ and crawl back to your Neanderthal cave. Now comes a house guest who explains that you need only keep typing the word you want, and predictive text will generally figure it out by the time you get to the end. If I had just kept typing, by the time I looked up from the keypad to the display, I would have seen: AMERICA. And there’s more! When it does guess the wrong word, you just hit the STAR key and it pops up what it considers the next best alternative, which is usually the one you want. Or else press star again. If you are trying to type, say, Kozlowski, it’s not going to guess that, so gives you the ‘spell’ option for that one word, where you use the slow-old method (press the 2 key once for A, twice for B, three times for C). ‘It’s not new, you know,’ laughs my house guest. ‘Every six year old in Europe has been doing this for years.’ Over time, he says (long before you’re seven), you don’t even look at the keys any more. Your brain just knows which key to press for an M N or O. (Play around with the # key also, when you’re about to enter text. Depending on your phone, it will probably toggle on or off predictive text mode, and/or switch between ‘Sentence’ mode, where the first word starts with a capital letter and text mode where it does not.) AMAZING HOW STUPID THE ARMY IS Last week, the Senate voted to authorize the Army to add 20,000 new soldiers. Meanwhile, over the last five years, 9,682 soldiers serving in 161 different occupational specialties have been discharged for being gay or lesbian, including 88 linguists and 49 nuclear, biological, and chemical warfare specialists. For details, click here.
Personal Loans June 21, 2004January 21, 2017 Georgia: ‘Re Mark Holman and the $15 he owes you from 1970. If you found him and charged him interest on that $15 for the last 34 years, how much would he owe you?’ ☞ If I were charging the 18% credit card rate, it would come to $4,196.46 – plus late fees. At the 21% some cards charge, it would be more than twice that. With the $29 late fee each month, at 21%, it would come to $1,089,722.80. And at the 27% ‘default rate’ I saw on a recent Citibank credit card offer, with those late fees added in each month, you’re talking $4.4 million. You see why the credit card companies hope against hope you get into financial difficulty? John: ‘In the summer of 1959 I worked at the Concord Hotel in the Catskills as a page boy. The superintendent of service, my immediate supervisor, was a very nice man, but a compulsive gambler. From time to time, he would call me (and others) over to his desk and borrow $10 or $20. This was quite a lot of money for a page boy who worked for twenty-five- and fifty-cent tips, but I never had the courage to say no. By the end of my second summer, he owed me exactly $250. He had never made even one payment on this growing loan, even though we both knew the exact total. I never wanted to antagonize him because the following year I would be eligible to be a bellhop, a much more lucrative position. ‘Jump to 1996. My wife and I are attending a reunion of her very large family at another Catskill resort. As we are standing in the lobby I am looking at the Superintendent of Service desk, and the fellow’s name and face look strangely familiar. We look at each other, and after a moment or two we recognized that we had been fellow page boys some thirty-six years earlier. We spent fifteen minutes or so recalling all our fellow workers, our bosses and even some memorable guests. Towards the end of the conversation, he pointed out the man who had been superintendent of service at the Concord – he was now reservation manager at this resort. He brought the old ‘super’ out of his office. He remembered me well. We recalled many humorous incidents and many friends and co-workers. When I mentioned the earlier loan, his memory went sour, gave me a big bear hug, excused himself and returned to his office.’ ☞ Note that since 1959, $250 would have grown to $3,441 at 6% without late fees, or to $12,081 at 9%, or to $1.3 million at 21%. Add in $29 monthly late fees and ratchet the rate up to the 26% I see American Express charging a green card holder I know who chooses to extend his payments (while keeping $200,000 in a money market account – go figure), and you get to $57 million and change. Of course this is silly, because there were no credit cards in 1959, and the monthly late fee is a more still modern invention. ☞ Note, also, that for loans of any size, you may want to use CircleLending.com, as described here a couple of years ago. Had I done so over the years, my guess is that I would be at least several thousand dollars ahead. A BETTER WAY TO READ MOLLY Jerry Minkoff: ‘May I suggest that a better place to read Molly Ivins’ column is here. It’s posted more promptly, and they maintain an archive – e.g., the one you suggested Friday.’ TECHNICALLY, TODAY IS NO LONGER THAN ANY OTHER DAY But I love it anyway. Fiat lux.
Listen to Molly June 18, 2004February 25, 2017 “The modern conservative is engaged in one of man’s oldest exercises in moral philosophy: that is the search for a superior moral justification for selfishness.” – John Kenneth Galbraith Did you see Molly Ivins’ June 8 column? It’s riddled with examples like this: Last January, Bush praised veterans during a visit to Walter Reed Army Medical Center. The same day, 164,000 veterans were told the White House was ‘immediately cutting off their access to the VA health care system.’ There is example after example like this. If you know someone who thinks President Bush is a straight shooter, you should send him or her Molly’s column. ‘With the release of the 2006 budget,’ she writes, ‘we’re constantly finding instances of programs that Bush, the candidate, proudly claims to support, while he prepares to cut them drastically in order to pay for making his tax cuts permanent.’ That’s not flip-flopping – it’s willful deception on a grand scale. And since you mention flip-flopping (I was just waiting for you to bring it up), it turns out that Senator Kerry has not done this in nearly the way Bush has spent $50+ million to have you believe. Independent critics have found these TV commercials to be grossly deceptive. Not that every Democratic ad is at all times 100% certifiably fair. But to quote James Carville again, from the 1992 campaign: ‘We say one plus one equals three, and the Bush folks say one plus one equals three thousand, and you write, ‘both campaigns wrong.” Anyway, I hope you’ll find time to consider the June 8 column. To find it, click this link . . . scroll to the bottom of her current column . . . pull down the ‘archive’ menu . . . and select June 8. (Sorry for the extra work.) Have a great weekend.
Laying Blame Where’s It’s Due June 17, 2004January 21, 2017 Cynthia: ‘I suppose it’s more emotionally gratifying to play the victim. My feeling is that you are compensating for your lack of AIDS activism during Reagan’s time by playing catch-up now. Why weren’t you writing about AIDS then?? Point the finger at yourself before you point it at Reagan.’ Joel Margolis: ‘What exactly did you want Reagan to say? ‘Hedonists of the world (that’s you drug addicts and homosexuals) stop being hedonists. Change your values. Change your morality. Change your actions. You liberals at CDC and the public health community have to immediately begin contact tracing of all AIDS patients so that we can stop this horrible disease now, rather than after hundreds of thousands have died of it.’ I’m sure that would have been effective. Every drug addict and homosexual would have changed his values and behavior. Immediately, if not sooner. It’s time homosexuals stopped blaming Reagan and the rest of America for their actions. Yes it was a tragedy that some hemophiliacs died because blood wasn’t properly screened in the early years of the AIDS outbreak. But that wasn’t the fault of Reagan. Perhaps if you and your homosexual friends had spoken out and said that no homosexual who is sexually active should give blood that might have helped. By the way, have you ever condemned the hedonists in the homosexual community for their behavior in causing AIDS?’ ☞ Rather than respond in full (where would one start?), let me limit it to this: I hope that, to be consistent, Joel is equally tough on the nation’s 400,000 lung cancer victims each year, and thinks we should stop wasting money trying to prevent or cure that completely avoidable disease. Quitting smoking and quitting sex are both reasonable things to require of people. End of story. Erik Olson: ‘I have two points regarding your June 15 column. First, the supposed excerpt from Reagan’s 1986 State of the Union address is the real example of ‘revisionist history.’ That myth was started in a December 2003 column by Deroy Murdock of the National Review, who recently acknowledged that he was mistaken, and that the passage actually wasn’t in the State of the Union after all. Reagan’s first major speech about AIDS was on April 1, 1987 [nearly 6 full years after the New York Times first broke the story], when he advocated a modest federal role in AIDS education. ‘And second, Larry Speakes’ clowning about AIDS in that 1982 press conference you quoted is not the only or most egregious example. Andrew Sullivan (June 10) and others have also pointed to this press conference from December 11, 1984 where the hilarity continued:’ MR. SPEAKES: Lester’s beginning to circle now. He’s moving in front.(Laughter.) Go ahead. Q: Since the Center for Disease Control in Atlanta (laughter) reports… MR. SPEAKES:This is going to be an AIDS question. Q: that an estimated MR. SPEAKES:You were close. Q: Well, look, could I ask the question, Larry? MR. SPEAKES:You were close. Q: An estimated 300,000 people have been exposed to AIDS, which can be transmitted through saliva. Will the President, as Commander-in-Chief, take steps to protect Armed Forces food and medical services from AIDS patients or those who run the risk of spreading AIDS in the same manner that they forbid typhoid fever people from being involved in the health or food services? MR. SPEAKES:I don’t know. Q: Could you – Is the President concerned about this subject, Larry MR. SPEAKES: I haven’t heard him express… Q: …that seems to have evoked so much jocular MR. SPEAKES: …concern. Q: reaction here? I – you know – Q: It isn’t only the jocks, Lester. Q: Has he sworn off water faucets Q: No, but, I mean, is he going to do anything, Larry? MR. SPEAKES: Lester, I have not heard him express anything on it. Sorry. Q: You mean he has no expressed no opinion about this epidemic? MR. SPEAKES: No, but I must confess I haven’t asked him about it. (Laughter.) Q: Would you ask him Larry? MR. SPEAKES: Have you been checked? (Laughter.) ☞ As you may know, the Senate passed a measure Tuesday, 65-33, that would include sexual orientation in the existing federal Hate Crimes statutes. A third of the Republican Senators even voted for it (albeit not the Republican leadership), and that is nothing if not progress. Even if you are one who opposes hate crimes statutes, the question is – since we do have them – why do two-thirds of Senate Republicans believe gays and lesbians should be excluded from their protection? My guess is that Cynthia, Joel, and Larry Speakes have ready answers. Which just means that those of us who disagree need to continue to engage them in respectful dialogue. If we do, I have no doubt the progress will continue. Friday: Good Golly, Ms. Molly!