Milosevic on Offensive, Ever Mindful of History

Unlike "Moral", "Offensive" has appeared in the same sentence as "Milosevic" a lot. This monster seems to be worried about his place in history; I don't think he has to worry. He's not Hitler or Stalin, I'll grant you, but it's not for lack of trying, and he'll be remembered the way Pol Pot is.

At one point this week, Mr. Milosevic asked Agron Berisha, an Albanian doctor who said he saw two relatives shot to death next door, whether the Serbian police had in fact been looking for weapons at that house.

"The police who came did not come to look for weapons," Dr. Berisha said. "They came to kill Albanian civilians, men and women, children and pregnant women. The sole reason was because they were Albanians."

Mr. Milosevic said: "You're Albanian too. They didn't kill you."

Oh, they didn't kill everybody. Then it's all right, you can go.

No Consensus Among Israelis As Palestinian Fight Rages On (washingtonpost.com)

This was something I was afraid of. Israel cannot fight indefinitely. The nation is too reliant upon its reserves, and they can't stay in the field too long. They're not professional soliders, and they have lives to get back to. (Also, taking that many people away from their jobs is going to wreck the economy.) And they're not animals, as the captain quoted here says, nor are they barbarians. If there isn't an attainable goal in sight, they are not going to cheerfully go off and kill.

The answer is not to back off, though. It's the opposite. Turn everything loose and beat the Palestinians into submission. (Then, as Instapundit has said, let the Jordanians take over.) Israel can bring a fairly massive amount of force to bear, they just can't fight a low level war for a long time.

U.S., Afghan Forces Launch Major New Offensive (washingtonpost.com)

I do wonder what the Taliban and al-Qaeda are thinking, but then it's pretty clear that they don't think like I do. Any concentration of forces -- more than a couple dozen, anyway -- just invites bombing. And they have no defense against that.

One American soldier was killed, as were two Afghan allies. I expect that our foes took many more fatalities. It was still probably their brightest hour since the early weeks of the war.

India Violence Spreads, Toll Hits 415 (washingtonpost.com)

It should be about dawn in India now; the odds are that toll is about to go up. The violence doesn't appear to be subsiding at all.

Possumblog

Terry Oglesby is another Bamablogger. He's a lot more representative of the state than I am, and does a really nice job on the Guardian Guy as well.

Imagine a world without Yoko Ono, it's easy if you try...

Candidate: Spam in Every Pot

Jones spokesman Darrel Ng said the e-mail wasn't spam, commonly defined as unsolicited commercial e-mail. Ng instead classified Jones' non-commercial mass-mailing as an "innovative way to use the Internet."

Oh, I see. If you don't call it spam, it's not spam! Which is illegal in California!

My address does have a *ca in it, if not in the domain. But obviously that's not the actual case. My guess is that they got a bunch of links off of one of the California bloggers and used them randomly. Why I got two copies to the same address remains a mystery.

(Via Ginger Stampley)

OpinionJournal - Peggy Noonan

Peggy Noonan has no problem with Aaron Sorkin, but then again she works for him.

I like West Wing a lot; I liked Sports Night even more. But I don't go looking for realism or anything, and it's not a perfect show. Sometimes, I roll my eyes at a speech, or think, "That would never happen!" It doesn't really distract from my enjoyment of a terrific TV program. But then, I have a pretty advanced ability to suspend disbelief.

Sgt. Stryker's Daily Briefing

OK, it's not just us pinko wussies who are getting the Jones Spam, the Sergeant got it too. Though he's still "not a Republican".

I'm listed as "cornstarch" in his "Snickers Bar" links system. That's not very complementary, but hey, it's next to Flit and Newsrack. I can deal with that.

Baseball Prospectus | Book Error

I don't normally post baseball here -- I have another place for that -- but I think this is too good to pass up. They accidently reversed two lines in every entry of their book, which accidently messed up the lines for every single pitcher. Oops.

Yes, I'm an enormous geek.

The Sacramento Bee
Jones expects very low turnout

"That's why I'm sending email to people who don't live in the state," he didn't say. "I think if I can tap into that large group of people who aren't Californians, I can really make some noise in the primary."

Gates, Buffett top Forbes' list of all the world's billionaires

And there are only 497 this year.

I find it really difficult to feel sorry for someone like Steve Case for falling off the Fortune 500. But the lost net worth at the top represents a lost net worth for the country as a whole; a lot of people are a little bit poorer this year than they were when Clinton was President. Just thought I'd point that last bit out.

Bill Gates' worth fell by $6 billion last year; that leaves him with "only" about $53 billion. If my net worth fell by $6 billion, it would be -$5,999,980,000. Maybe lower.

Enron Paid Huge Bonuses in '01; Experts See a Motive for Cheating

Enron lapses into farce now. I mean, multi-million dollar bonuses early in the year, and bankrupt at the end? What is this, a dot-com?

Democrats Starting to Fault President on the War's Future

This was probably inevitable.

Congress is supposed to keep an eye on things, no question about it. But they don't seem to realize that the war is not only not yet won, but far from over. Even if you limit it to al-Qaeda -- and that wasn't the plan as I understand it -- al-Qaeda is active in all the countries where we're currently active.

Not that the Republicans are any better, having broken out the "How dare they" and "Disgusting" rather than actually talk about things. This isn't a monarchy guys, we're supposed to have public debate.

ABC in Talks To Lure Letterman (washingtonpost.com)

If he's unhappy on CBS, wait until he gets to ABC. Maybe only old people watch CBS, but nobody watches ABC... I'm surprised Dave would consider this, considering his often-voiced respect for Koppel and "Nightline", and Koppel has better ratings anyway -- ratings almost as good as Leno's, in fact, if only for a half hour.

Fleischer Rebuffed for Remarks on Mideast (washingtonpost.com)

He probably forgot for a moment that he wasn't around the usual group of Republicans where "Blame Clinton" is always a hit.

Moms suspended after gun incident at basketball game

One was suspended for -- get this -- pulling a gun on the other. And not some little ladylike .22, a Ruger .38. The other was suspended for, I dunno, being the sort of person you want to pull a gun on, I guess. And this isn't the NBA, or college, or even high school. The game involved their respective 11-year-old daughters.

Tim Blair

Blair, meanwhile, reveals that the Guardian Guy is, in fact, really a cricket writer. Not bugs, but the upper-class English game for people whose blood pressure gets too high watching the thrilling action of soccer or golf. Since nobody in Alabama has ever played cricket, or even watched more than a few moments of the game ("Hey, them English sure don't know how to play baseball!") no wonder he looks down on us.

What She Really Thinks : February 24, 2002 - March 2, 2002

Ginger Stampley got spammed by California GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Jones; so did Jeff Jarvis, and so did I. Apparently, their campaign is not only targeting bloggers, but bloggers who don't live in California (Ginger's in Texas, Jeff in NYC, me in Alabama) and who moreover are also more or less liberal. I get so much spam on my Yahoo account -- that's mostly what I set it up for -- that I'm not too upset, but it's stupid. And in a few months, when the general election comes around, everyone will be doing it. The marginal cost of sending spam is so low that candidates -- who already blanket the world with their junk mail and quasi-illegal roadsigns every election -- are going to seize on it. I'm surprised it took so long, actually. May it backfire.

Energy Dept. Ordered To Release Documents (washingtonpost.com)

Yeah, but if Cheney doesn't respect Congress' oversight authority, why should he respect the courts'?

This is a Freedom of Information Act request from the Natural Resources Defense Council; the GAO lawsuit is something different. I can't imagine any justification for keeping this stuff secret, personally, but that's just me.

In Caucasus Gorge, a Haven for Muslim Militants

More on the (Eurasian) Georgia situation. They're saying that "dozens" of Afghans and Afghani Arabs have taken refuge here, apparently among Chechen rebels. I have sympathy for the Chechen cause, but if they decide to cozy up to al-Qaeda they're going to go down. If we let the Russians know that they can go all-out to wipe out the Chechen independence movement, it won't last long.

CNNSI.com - Pro Football - Madden signs 4-year deal with Monday Night Football

Good-bye, Dennis Miller!

Can't fail space station partners, Glenn warns Bush

Oh yes we can!

The International Space Station is one of the dumber things we have going. There's no reason to build it, and any value it might have had has been destroyed by budget cutbacks. It's time to cut bait.

U.S. Eyes Military Assistance For Yemen (washingtonpost.com)

Another version of the Philippines package of training, aid, and intel. Our policy in friendly countries -- and everybody not in Western Europe is feeling a lot friendlier now after they saw what happened to the Taliban -- is to give the governments the support they needed to wipe out guerrilla movements themselves.

Alzheimer's Gene Screened From Newborn (washingtonpost.com)

Dear anti-Science loons:

I want you to go up to this young lady in a few years and tell her how she should have been "hopelessly senile before she was 40". Barbara Katz Rothman in particular should be ashamed of herself:

"The path we're on, pretty soon no baby is going to be good enough," said Barbara Katz Rothman, a sociologist at the City University of New York. "It's just increasing the sense of guilt and responsibility on women."

Idiot.

Spike Milligan, 83, British Comedian and Author, Dies

Ah, hell... Milligan was probably the greatest influence on my beloved Monty Python; his Q shows are largely lost due to BBC shortsightedness.

A Slow News Day Leads Tuscaloosa News to Terrify 80-year-old Man

Well, the actual headline is "A promise to keep, a plane to fly", but the look on this guy's face... You really have to see the one in the paper, in all its badly color-separated glory, to get the full effect. It's pretty easy; this is the lead story on the front page today, and the picture takes up a good quarter of the top half. He looks scared half to death.

Tonight on ABC: the tragedy of NyQuil abuse.

Islamic cemetery | The Atlanta Journal-Constitution

My first reaction was, "Why would there be any problem having an Islamic cemetary?" But apparently there are some health concerns here; bodies are buried unenbalmed and without caskets. The agreement requires the use of caskets, and also of stone or metal markers, rather than the wooden ones previously used.

Not that there aren't a few people whose motives sound kind of questionable:

"It's disgusting," said Heather Stonecypher, who lives in the neighboring Grayson Oaks subdivision. "That wooden fence is going to fall down eventually."

Everything falls down eventually, Heather. Most cemetaries, in my experience, don't have more than an iron fence -- three feet high, maybe, and easy to see through -- around them, if that.

Critics rip Moore hint at 'sword' for gays
Opponents cite opinion calling for prevention of youths' 'subversion'

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore suggests that homosexuals be jailed or even executed to prevent them from leading children into homosexuality, say opponents who have closely studied Moore's opinion in a custody case involving a lesbian mother.

Well, let's not go overboard. I don't think he'd be in favor of execution. He certainly doesn't have any problem with homosexual acts being a crime, though.

CNNSI.com - Baseball - Astros buy back naming rights from Enron

Why did an energy company need to have a baseball stadium named after it in the first place? Does that make any sense?

Anyway, the crooked "E" is still going to be all over the place; the team won't be able to get all of them removed before the season. Anything that embarrases the Astros is fine by me.

U.S. Begins Anti-Terror Assistance In Georgia (washingtonpost.com)

First stop, Plains, where they're going to put an end to this Jimmy Carter business once and for all.

Obviously, they're talking about the former Soviet Republic. This seems to involve a similar, if smaller, package to what we're doing in the Philipines -- training of the local government's soldiers by Special Forces personnel, some logistical support, intelligence information and some helicopters.

Georgia's president is Eduard Shevardnadze, once Gorbachev's foreign minister. He's one of the good guys, from everything I know.

(LILEKS) James : the Screed

James Lileks rips the Guardian Guy (from yesterday) a much wider new orifice than I could. Thanks.

I have to say, the new Slate editor is a big surprise.

Enron Executive Said to Be Aiding in Federal Inquiry

You don't have to watch Law & Order to know what "helping with inquiries" means. It means, "Cooperating with the cops so you won't go to jail." That's good, because I can't read the flipping thing because the NYT's site is impossible to get through.

Guardian Unlimited | Special reports | A galaxy far, far away

Jeez, who let this clown into the state?

(Via Glenn Kinen.)

I'll fill in a few blanks for Mr. Engel, who probably wasn't paying too much attention... Birmingham has a fairly large, and growing, Mexican-American community, and a surprisingly large number of first- and second- generation Greek and Italian immigrants. The University of Alabama at Birmingham houses a medical center that is probably better than any in Britain. Daimler-Chrysler's Mercedes division is one of the largest employers in the state.

I'll give you that more Alabamians don't think much about Europe, or know much about it. (I wrote a little about this the other day.) Americans, like Europeans, get most of their information from popular culture. Our knowledge of Europe -- outside England, at least -- is vague, but it's a lot better than the skewed vision of America you get from articles like this. And as Kinen says, I'll bet the average Alabamian would do a lot better than the average European on "Mexico. Or Argentina. Or China. Or Cuba. Or Canada. Or Japan. Or all the places that we care about that aren't called, and don't call themselves, the Old World."

One last thing... America is actually a very diverse place. It's not as diverse as Europe, I'll grant you, but far more than any individual European country. But it's a graduated diversity. Atlanta is a little different from Birmingham, which is a little different than Memphis, which is a little different from St. Louis... And so on. And in mentioning the states that border on Alabama, he forgot Florida, which is a whole lot different from anywhere else on Earth.

al.com: Business

The state's 4 percent consumer use tax is to be paid when merchandise is received in Alabama from another state, and no tax has been paid to the other state.

But unfortunately, nobody pays it. I don't think it's so much cheapness as it is inconvenience. Who wants to go back and figure out how much you owe on that?

NBC Sports Is Mum on Jayson Williams's Off-Court Troubles (washingtonpost.com)

What is the deal with NBC Sports, anyway? If you remember, this is also the network that employed OJ and still employs Marv Albert. Williams seems to be somewhere between the two, in that he's accused of manslaughter, not double murder.

The New York Times on the Web

meta name="

Yet again, that's all I get.

CNNSI.com - 2002 Winter Olympics - Report: Agents left Cheney's itinerary in SLC souvenir shop - Tuesday February 26, 2002 10:49 AM

D'oh!

"When Greenhalgh called to report the mistake, a Secret Service representative promised that an agent would pick up the log, the Tribune reported. After 45 minutes, no one had arrived, so he offered to take it to the agency's downtown office.

If these guys were in charge of protecting me from crazed terrorists, I'd stay in an undisclosed location too.

State finalist for Hyundai plant

And why? "Incentives packages"! That is, corporate welfare, to the tune of approximately $253 million. (That's what getting the Mercedes plant between Tuscaloosa and Birmingham cost.) That's not a lot compared to, say, the domed football stadium Birmingham wants to build, but for a poor state it's still a lot of money.

Is it worth it? I've no idea. The Mercedes plant has certainly been good for this area, but the whole state had to pay to bring it in, and I don't know that someone in Mobile or Huntsville would appreciate it.

Bush Welfare Plan Would Increase Work Requirements (washingtonpost.com)

I don't know if upping work requirements to 40 hours a week is the best idea -- at least not in the current economy. Some of that can be job training, but that got slashed in the budget... Other than that, the Bush proposal looks just fine to me. I think welfare reform has been very good for the country, and my party needs to stop pandering to its opponents.

CNN.com - Supreme Court won't rule on statehouse Ten Commandments monument - February 25, 2002

This is just stupid. What the Supremes are saying is that we're not going to have a national standard, and that everything depends upon what Court of Appeals district you're in. Following the Indiana standard (where the Governor wasn't allowed to put a 10C monument on the Statehouse grounds) Alabama's Gaybashing Chief Justice wouldn't be able to keep his 10C monument, and the legislature's bill to post them in every school would be out. But the standards could be different here, because SCOTUS chickened out.

Unsurprisingly, Reinquist, Scalia, and their puppet Thomas said they saw no problem with the monument.

Parties Racing To Bag Last Of 'Soft Money' (washingtonpost.com)

Maybe "campaign finance reform" is just a big funding gambit by the parties? They get their contributors all hot and bothered about trying to get through the door before it closes, and then the Supreme strike CFR down.

I think of CFR about the same as I did welfare reform. It's not the plan I would have liked, but I think we've reached the stage where almost anything would be better than the status quo.

Bruces' Philosophers Song

By popular demand (well, Stephen Green asked for it) the Philosophers Drinking Song.

Washingtonpost.com: Live Online

Michael Moore
Author, Social Critic
Monday, Feb. 25, 2002; 11 a.m. EST

OK, guys, let's get the cyber-brickbats ready.

ETHICAL PHILOSOPHY SELECTOR

Everybody seems to be doing this this weekend, so here goes...

OK, I get a 100% for Mill, 99% for Kant. Lowest is the Cynics, with 2%. Make of that what you will.

"This is not to say that you and the philosopher are in total agreement. However this is a philosophy that you may want to study further."

I disagree; I say study the ones at the bottom. Challenge your beliefs. Unless you get Rand; no reason to read that crazy woman.

Also, I now have Monty Python's "Philosophers Song" stuck in my head.

The New Republic Online: Down on the Farm

Let's face it: Farm subsidies make no sense. Not that anyone plans to do anything about it, not as long as farm states hold a disproportionate amount of power in the Federal government.

Saks shares up 14 percent after positive profits report

One of the oddest outcomes of the nineties is that Saks 5th Avenue is now headquartered in Birmingham.

A split response to Moore opinion

I weep for my state.

70 percent of Alabamians think that sex between two men or two women is always wrong.

50 percent think that anyone openly homosexual is an unfit parent.

49 percent of those polled say that Roy Moore is doing a good or excellent job as Chief Justice; 20 percent had no opinion, so it's a solid majority of those who do.

Israel Eases Restrictions on Arafat

Well, since they haven't been able to kill him in his office, why not let him out on the street where they can get a clean shot?

Honestly, I don't know what the Israelis are doing. They seem to be following the absolutely worst path they could find; hard enough to anger the Palestinians and their allies, but too soft to cow them.

New Clues Suggest Bin Laden Is Alive on Afghan Border

If he is alive... does it really matter? I mean, I want him dead, but in terms of al-Qaeda, ObL is effectively dead. He can't give orders, or even communicate -- except in a low-level, messenger-service way, with notes or a smuggled tape. He's no longer nearly as much of a popular figure. And eventually he will die, if he doesn't get medical attention.

We need to remember that this isn't a war against Osama; it's a war against terrorism generally and al-Qaeda specifically. Osama without al-Qaeda is just one sick man, but al-Qaeda without Osama is still dangerous. If the choice is between continuing to hunt Osama or going after al-Qaeda affiliates in Africa or Southeast Asia, we need to choose the latter.