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Thoughts, comments, musings on life, politics, current events and the media. Blogroll Me!  Comments by YACCS   |
Saturday, March 16, 2002
Two is more than oneBritain is isolated from continental Europe in supporting a United States attack on Iraq.Germany's chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, yesterday brought into the open the growing rift between Britain and continental Europe over taking the "war on terror" to Iraq when he signalled he had no intention of participating in any unilateral military action launched against Baghdad by the United States.Maybe it's just me, but I think that if the United States and the United Kingdom both join in attacking Iraq, it ceases to be "unilateral." Does anybody bother to read the cliches they write? In a move that highlighted the breach between Tony Blair and his European partners, Mr Schröder's spokeswoman confirmed a report that Germany would only join in a broadening of the US-led "war on terror" if the action were backed by the United Nations. "It's a position of principle of which our American partners are also aware," she said. Mr Schröder's reported remarks chimed with the sceptical stance adopted by Paris. French government sources said Mr Schröder was "pretty much in line" with their view.Well, the U.N. Security Council is the body that would be tasked to authorize this; it's made up of Mauritius, Mexico, Norway, Russia, Singapore, Syria, the United Kingdom, the United States, Bulgaria, Cameroon, China, Colombia, Guinea, Ireland and France, and it takes nine votes to authorize an action. Now, which of these countries do Germany and France think should be making these decisions? Should invading Iraq be contingent on whether the United States can convince Cameroon that it's a good idea? Even if the U.S. gets nine votes, it needs to avoid a veto by China and Russia (and France!). Does Germany really have as a "position of principle" that China should govern European/NATO policy? I doubt that even the craven Europeans are that silly. So isn't it more likely that this multilateralism principle is just a way for Schroeder et al. to support Iraq without having to take responsibility for so doing? Euro-kryptonite?Megan McArdle analyzes the European Union as a corporate merger, pondering the question, what makes a merger successful?So let's look at the EU "merger". Is there redundancy? Absolutely. Tons of it. But over half the French population is employed by the government -- think they're going to initiate massive cutbacks? The "merger" is introducing another layer of redundancy, not removing it. How about transaction costs? Well, here we hit the mother load, in the form of national differences that restrict the flow of capital and labor between countries. There's a third reason to merge, of course, and that's the hope that you can get rid of competition.Read the whole piece; it cuts through the consultant-buzzwordization like "synergy" to conclude that European dreams of becoming a superpower to rival or replace the US remain, for now, castles in the air. ChomskanalysisCharles Murtaugh has a good piece on left wing theology:Why do bad things happen to good people? This is one of the questions that defines human existence, and in every culture, people have looked to religion for an answer. What I only recently realized was how similar the theology of the far left is to that of the far right. It came to me in a flash last week, when I heard a interview with Noam Chomsky on a local NPR show, "On Point". And I thought garbage recycling was badTipper Gore may run for the Senate, for her husband's old Tennessee seat. Special bonus: if she does, she might be running against Lamar Alexander. Who exactly thinks this is a good idea? Al Gore couldn't win his home state in the 2000 election, and Lamar "Plaid Shirt" Alexander couldn't even buy his mother's vote in the Republican primaries in 1996 or 2000, finishing just below "Let's cancel the whole thing and create a monarchy."Qui bono?James Robbins in the National Review asks the same question I've been wondering about: who leaked the Nuclear Posture Review story, and why? He dismisses the idea that it was the Bush administration, and concludes it was probably disgruntled congressional Democrats. Worth a read.Create a cartoon spokesperson?A column by David Ignatius in the Washington Post asks How can the United States sell a war against Iraq to skeptical Arabs and Europeans? How, indeed?A good start would be to level with them and admit there is no solid evidence linking Baghdad to Osama bin Laden's terrorist attacks against America.Well, as I recall, the "skeptical Arabs" refuse to believe that Osama Bin Laden is linked to Osama Bin Laden's attacks against America, so somehow I don't think the issue is the existence, or lack thereof, of "solid evidence." Here's a novel idea: how about if we don't try to sell a war against Iraq to skeptical Arabs and Europeans? How about defeating the Iraqi military, ousting Saddam Hussein, and then telling the "skeptical Arabs" that if they have any questions or objections, they should ask the French, who never seem to be at a loss for words? The Bush administration might win more support for its anti-terrorism effort if it offered less rhetoric and more straight talk about the dangers ahead. There has been a kind of bunker mentality in the administration's actions the past few months.Seems to me that the "straight talk" is exactly what gets Bush in trouble with our "allies." It's too "simplistic," remember? When you realize that U.S. officials go to sleep at night worrying about nuclear or biological attacks on Washington, you begin to understand their odd decisions: why they planned what amounted to an office of strategic deception in the Pentagon, why they began rewriting U.S. nuclear weapons doctrine, why they created a secret "shadow" government to carry on if the capital were obliterated. Most of these are bad ideas, but at least they become more comprehensible.Most of these are bad ideas? Ensuring the continuity of government in the event of an attack on Washington is a bad idea? Reviewing -- not "rewriting" -- U.S. nuclear weapons policy is a bad idea? I'm glad Ignatius finally "comprehends" these moves, but I'm not sure he really does, if he thinks they're "bad ideas." What I am sure is that he really doesn't have any answer to the question he poses -- but fortunately, he's just a newspaper columnist, so he doesn't have to. Friday, March 15, 2002
Garbage reportingMost of the time, when people talk about "media bias," they're talking about partisan bias, the idea that a reporter favors liberals or conservatives (usually liberals). But reporters try to be fair, and the real bias tends to show up in more subtle ways than trashing of politicians. Most of the time. But how about this New York Times story on recycling? Now, this isn't on the Op/Ed pages. This isn't in a column, or one of the "fluff" sections like Arts or House & Home. This isn't even labeled "news analysis," the Times' disclaimer that they're going to editorialize in the news section.The headline alone gives away the bias: "Bloomberg puts doing well ahead of doing good," setting up the two schools of thought on recycling as the people who want to do good things and the people who want to save money. The Times does cite the mayor saying that some forms of recycling (non-paper) are fiscal negatives for the city, and backhandedly acknowledges -- in a single, throwaway sentence -- that he's correct: Few people dispute Mr. Bloomberg's assertion that tough times demand tough choices.But it then goes on to disparage the decision: But to a great degree, experts in consumer behavior say, the mayor's proposal -- and the anguished reaction that some people have had to it -- says a lot about the long strange trip that recycling has been through over the years.A reaction "that some people have had?" How many? Is it really "anguish?" Is it more or fewer people than were "anguished" over the departure of David Duchovny from the X-Files? Shouldn't we try to reserve "anguish" for events like plane crashes or terrorist attacks? Do we have any facts here at all, or is this just the reporter's personal opinion? Psychologists do not have a firm answer why saving and sorting took such root in the American psyche. Some think that it tapped into a frugal frontier impulse that is also behind the phenomenon of swap meets and garage sales, that one person's junk must surely be good for something. Other say it became a crutch, a way for Americans to feel as if they were contributing to the environment without actually changing their consumption driven behavior.Do psychologists have "firm answers" about anything? Wouldn't it be nice to at least see a citation to something to show that "some" think those things, let alone that these thoughts are accurate or representative? (Remember, the Times isn't letting us know what people think here; it's assuming what people think and then letting us know what psychologists think about what people think.) In any case, it is often said that more Americans recycle than vote.I've heard that 72.4% of all statistics are made up. It is often said (to use the Times' passive voice) that reporters are really lazy, and can't be bothered to do any research. Do you think the Times would agree? I'm pretty sure someone, somewhere, must keep records of how many people vote. They may even print the numbers somewhere. About 105 million, in the last presidential election. And someone probably figured out at some point how many people recycle: About 136 million. Wow, that was tough. (The comparison is silly and tells us nothing about the psychology of Americans, since recycling in many places is mandated by law, and voting is not.) So after setting up this premise, the article goes on to quote an assistant professor of sociology, who denigrates "narrow cost-benefit calculations," the Bronx borough president, who complains that "I think people are sort of in shock," an associate professor of environmental psychology and conservation behavior, who says that he "can imagine people thinking that the city is being hypocritical," and a professor of history (whose book "is considered one of the founding works in the field of eco-psychology"), who gripes that "I'm not sure what the measure is of something working in our society." Lots of experts on recycling, in other words. Oh, it also quotes the president of a company that tracks the waste industry, who says "There will be an increasing incentive to recycle," in support of an assertion by the reporter that "some researchers say that the Bloomberg administration may well have bet on the wrong horse." There's not a single person quoted who thinks that "cost-benefit analysis" should be the basis for government decisions, let alone someone who agrees with Bloomberg's analysis that cost-benefit analysis comes out on the side of less recycling. There's not a single person quoted who thinks that recycling was a silly idea spread by environmental groups who mistakenly thought that raw materials were running scarce. There's not a single person quoted who thinks that recycling is a great idea but that it should be voluntary rather than government mandated. Is that because nobody thinks these things? I doubt it, since the Times' own columnist John Tierney has written about the bad math behind recycling economics. Couldn't this reporter at least have talked to him? YawnFor all five people who care, Andrea Thompson has resigned from her slot as anchor of CNN's headline news. That was fast; she had only had the job for seven months. And given that she resigned "to make a change in my daily professional life," is there any doubt that she was forced out? How about the Washington Post's headline: Model-Anchor Quits Headline News. Nothing demonstrates the unimportance of the job like the phrase "model-anchor." They read news off teleprompters. A trained chimp -- or even an untrained one, as Thompson demonstrates -- could do the job, as long as it looked good on camera.And speaking of bad reporting, the Post says Poor CNN hasn't even had time to stop smarting over its hire of Thompson -- who played a blond, busty vixen on prime-time soap "Falcon Crest," an alien on sci-fi drama "Babylon 5" and Detective Jill Kirkendall on the ABC drama "NYPD Blue" -- at the same time it was laying off seasoned journalists.Not to prove that I'm a geek or anything, but actually, she played a human (telepath) on Babylon 5, not an alien. It's almost as if the reporter didn't know the facts when writing the story. Axis of Evil updateLet's see. Today we have Iran prosecuting a journalist, with the New York Times explainingA state-run newspaper, Iran, unexpectedly announced on Saturday that the trial had begun last Thursday, just before President Mohammad Khatami's trip to Austria and Greece. During his past visits to European countries, hard-liners have arrested reformers back home in order to embarrass him.Those wacky, fun-loving hard-liners. Always ready to play a practical joke. And then in North Korean news, we have refugees seeking sanctuary in the Spanish embassy in Beijing, threatening suicide and asserting they face starvation and oppression at home. The refugees explained: "We are now at the point of such desperation and live in such fear of persecution within North Korea that we have come to the decision to risk our lives for freedom rather than passively await our doom," said the statement by the Life Funds for North Korean Refugees. "Some of us carry poison on our person to commit suicide if the Chinese authorities should choose once again to send us back to North Korea."You know, it occurs to me that you rarely see Americans risking death to get into North Korea. But let's not get "simplistic." (Anybody think it's an accident that the refugees tried the German and Spanish embassies, but not the French?) Breaking newsNever let it be said that Arthur Schlesinger is behind the times. He has a hard-hitting news story in the current American Prospect which makes the heretofore unreported point that George Bush didn't win the popular vote sixteen months ago. He uses this newsflash as a jumping off point to discuss, in tedious detail, the history of the electoral college. You can't learn this stuff elsewhere -- at least not without staying awake in a high school social studies class. Amazingly, while listing the instances where the popular vote leader lost the election, it never once occurs to him that candidates campaigned, and voters voted, based on an electoral vote strategy, and might have acted differently if a different system were in place. But nevermind.This all leads up to various proposals to "reform" the presidential election process, but I fell asleep while reading, so I can't summarize them. Mostly because, well, who cares? This is one of those issues of great interest to history professors and Al Gore, and nobody else. As Schlesinger himself notes, with regard to the 2000 election: I expected an explosion of public outrage over the rejection of the people's choice. But there was surprisingly little in the way of outcry.Surprisingly? If people were passionate about Al Gore, he would have won the election outright. But they weren't, and he didn't. Surely there must be something more interesting to talk about. I suppose this raises the question of why I did talk about it; the answer, I suppose, is that if I had to suffer reading it, I might as well spend some time mocking it, so that it wasn't a total waste. Well, duh?The Washington Post informs us that Hispanic Lawmakers Defy Categorization, which is good to know, because many of us have been spending our free moments, between stereotyping blacks and Jews, trying to figure out how to "characterize" Hispanics. The rest of the article doesn't really say much of anything, except the usual "Hispanics are growing in numbers and are becoming more influential" banalities we can read anywhere.Thursday, March 14, 2002
Thanks, but no thanksReuters reports that the United States is going to be given back its seat on the U.N. Commission on Human Rights, after a one year absence. This brings up the key question of why we should care. A commission that includes among its members Libya, Syria, China, and the Sudan doesn't exactly carry a lot of moral authority when it comes to human rights. Other than sponsoring the infamous World Conference against Racism in Durban last year, which managed to conclude that (1) Western countries owe Africans lots of money and (2) Israel is evil, it's not clear exactly what the UNCHR has ever accomplished. They do issue an awful lot of reports, though. Did I mention that Western countries owe Africans lots of money?She was pining for the fjordsI hate to be judgmental, but I think the doctor who sent the elderly woman to the morgue alive just might not be a good doctor.The color of her skin led the doctor to declare her dead and send her to the morgue.I'm not positive, but I think there are better tests. Culture countsIain Murray makes an excellent point as to why economics are not the only thing that matter.There are plenty of countries that are economically free but god-awful places to live -- Singapore, Bahrein and so on. What makes the Anglosphere a distinct branch of civilization is that the social and economic freedoms are all predicated on an older set of freedoms, freedoms from executive power, a restraint placed on government by the people that makes liberty, not safety or the common good or anything else, the main object of the constitution(s). Wednesday, March 13, 2002
Your government at workThe major story floating around the blogosphere, and now in the real world, is the Immigration and Naturalization Service's major screwup. Six months (to the day !) after 9/11, they formally notified a Florida flight school that two aliens, who just happened to be a couple of 9/11 hijackers, had been approved for student visas.The primary focus of the coverage has been how bad the INS' security has to be that nobody noticed the names on the applications -- it's not as if "Mohamed Atta" is obscure anymore. And that's certainly a valid point. But ignore all that, pretend that these were two legitimate applicants, and this is still a debacle. The INS notified the school of the visa approvals nineteen months after the visa applications were filed. A year and a half. What the hell good does that do? It's useless for the students, right? Well, not exactly. The INS solves the problem of not processing paperwork promptly, by not actually using the paperwork: The schools are not required to deny instruction to foreign nationals while the visa applicants wait for an INS decision, officials said.So, in other words, if the visas were denied, it wouldn't matter because the students would already be done. And how does that nineteen months break down? A year to process the paperwork. A year. And then another seven months after the approvals were granted to actually send the paperwork to the school. I can buy a book from Amazon and get it in two days. I can apply for a mortgage and get approved over the phone. But the INS takes a year to figure out which filing cabinet the forms belong in, and then seven months after that to find stamps? You could defend the INS by blaming the delay on their outside contractor, except that: A spokeswoman for ACS Inc., the contractor that runs the London, Ky., processing center that mailed the paperwork to Huffman, said that INS rules allow the company to wait six months before sending approved student visa applications to flight schools. "There was no delay," said Lesley Pool. "We perform our services according to their dictates."Ah. So it's no longer six months. It's thirty days. Thirty days? That's supposed to impress us? How about reducing the deadline to a week? Or how about next day service? Remember, we're not talking about deciding whether to approve the application -- we're talking about mailing it. What a system. Aren't you glad the government has taken the responsibility for airport security away from the evil private sector? Don't you feel reassured? U.N. complains that U.S. skyscrapers keep killing innocent Saudi touristsOkay, not quite, but the New York Times reports that U.N. Secretary General Kofi Annan has called on Israel to end its "illegal occupation" of Palestine. Generously, he also chided the Palestinians:"To the Israelis I say: you have the right to live in peaceIn other words, "Israel has the right to live in peace, if Palestinians generously decide to stop attacking them. But otherwise, no, because Israel doesn't have the right to defend itself. He continued: "To the Palestinians I say: you have the inalienable right to a viable state within secure internationally recognized borders. But you must stop all acts of terror and all suicide bombings. It is doing immense harm to your cause, by weakening internationalBy making Israelis believe that it's their existence as a state? How about because the Palestinians keep saying so? The other problem? As this link explains (from Smarter Times), the Israeli "Occupation" isn't really an "Occupation" at all, let alone an "illegal" one. Everyone agrees by now that a Palestinian state is inevitably the only long-term resolution to the conflict; the problem is that Israelis stubbornly insist on retaining a state of their own. And somehow I doubt Kofi Annan's stern lectures are going to make a big difference in whether Arafat et al. decide to blow up some more pizzerias. Grand theftAnd no, I'm not talking about Ruben Rivera stealing fellow Yankee Derek Jeter's glove. I'm talking about the election which just took place in Zimbabwe, where incumbent president Robert Mugabe has been declared the winner by incumbent president Robert Mugabe.If Jesse Jackson wants to complain about oppressed blacks having an election stolen from them, perhaps he ought to start here, instead. But, hey, it's not as good a photo op, right? He wouldn't be able to use it to raise money which he could then avoid reporting to the IRS, so it's not nearly as compelling an issue. Plus, if he actually went there to protest, he might put himself at real risk, instead of the pretend risk of going to Florida. Certainly, though, Jesse Jackson is not the only hypocrite; the South African government, virtually alone among election observers, is claiming that the election was legitimate. When Africans can claim whites are oppressing blacks (or even that they did so centuries ago), as they did at the U.N. Racism Conference, they're eager to do so. But when a story doesn't fit that script, then they're uninterested. Tuesday, March 12, 2002
That was fast.I can believe that Andrea Yates was convicted of murdering her children. What I can't believe is how quickly the jury made its decision. It took them less than four hours, after a three-week trial. Certainly Texas law made an insanity defense difficult (and Yates' actions made any other defense impossible), but I would have thought that the jury would have debated the issue for longer than it took them to decide what to have for lunch. It will be interesting to see what happens in the penalty phase of the trial, where Yates' mental illness (which both the prosecution and defense agreed existed) can be a mitigating factor.As Damian Penny points out, there's a huge difference in the approach to defendants who are fathers and defendants who are mothers. There's a presumption that (as Yates' attorney argued), "If drowning five children by a loving mother isn't a gross psychosis, there isn't any such thing as gross psychosis," while a man who does the same is just evil. Getting your priorities straightThe French government apparently can't be bothered to support us in battle, but they do have time to harass innocent citizens (link requires registration). The New York Times reports on the French government's attempts to stop a French doctor from preserving his dead parents in cryonic storage:But this time, local authorities said, enough is enough. They want both bodies removed and they have charged Rémy Martinot, a civil servant who works in Paris, with disturbing the peace.I believe that last sentence is the motto of the European Union. (Except, of course, when talking to Islamo-fascists, where their motto is, "Go ahead. We won't stop you.") Turnabout is really sillyAn intramural basketball team at the University of Northern Colorado is protesting the mascot of a local high school (the "Fightin' Reds") by naming itself the "Fighting Whities." (The Rocky Mountain News reports that there may be a personal agenda behind the protests, unrelated to the politics of mascots; the protest leader's wife had a dispute with the high school.)Little Owl said, "The Fighting Whities" issue is "to make people understand what it's like to be on the other side of the fence. If people get offended by it, then they know how I feel, and we've made our point."And if people don't get offended? Will these people admit that the issue is silly and that they have no point? Somehow I doubt it. Cuny said he, and most other young Indians, are more interested in larger issues, such as health care, tribal treaties with the federal government and mineral rights to their land, but offensive mascots are a starting point to deal with the weightier issues.Sure. Because all the other schools that changed their names have really helped bring health care to Indians. Maybe they should focus on more important issues, like the ongoing scandals at the federal Bureau of Indian Affairs, the agency which is supposed to be safeguarding Indian money. Instead, millions of dollars are unaccounted for, and their computers are so insecure that stealing Indian funds is apparently easier than using Napster to steal music. Your government at work.
Weird ideas from the editorial staff of the New York Times: America as Nuclear Rogue. (Link requires registration.) Referring, of course, to the supposed Nuclear Posture Review which was leaked to the L.A. Times this past weekend:
If another country were planning to develop a new nuclear weapon and contemplating pre-emptive strikes against a list of non-nuclear powers, Washington would rightly label that nation a dangerous rogue state. Yet such is the course recommended to President Bush by a new Pentagon planning paper that became public last weekend. Mr. Bush needs to send that document back to its authors and ask for a new version less menacing to the security of future American generations. Isn't "contemplating" such a great word? Even if Bush is deciding not to enact this plan, that's still "contemplating" it, right? Aren't the editors of the New York Times guilty of contemplating it, too? I know I am. I wonder if I'm a rogue state. I'd like to think so. The review also calls for the United States to develop a new nuclear warhead designed to blow up deep underground bunkers. Adding a new weapon to America's nuclear arsenal would normally require a resumption of nuclear testing, ending the voluntary moratorium on such tests that now helps restrain the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran. Uh, guys? The threat of annihilation is what restrains the nuclear weapons programs of countries like North Korea and Iran. Whether the United States blows up a few square miles of Nevada is of concern only to the punditocracy. Oh, and maybe to people who live in Nevada. Monday, March 11, 2002
Creating newsAccording to the New York Times, there has been a rash of anti-South Asian hate crimes (Link requires registration.) in the last six months. Interestingly, the story cites a report "to be released on Monday," which raises some questions about the entanglement of advocacy groups and the media. But the big problem is that the report doesn't say anything at all. It has an impressive statistic: 250 incidents in the last 3 months of 2001, four times the typical rate of 400-500 incidents for a year.Of course, read further and it's clear that there's no there there. The statistic involves incidents which were reported as bias incidents; it's quite logical to assume that reporting would have gone up significantly after 9/11, given all the attention paid to the potential problem. Moreover, it uses the classic advocacy group tactic of lumping together different times of problems and discussing the total number as though they were all the worst type. So in this case, there were 250 incidents, "including racial slurs, threatening phone calls and homicides." It's the magic of the conjunction. After 9/11, fifty thousand people bought such items as nuclear weapons, mustard gas, and bottled water. Half of all marriages end in ways including divorce, annulment and the murder of a spouse. Two hundred million Americans suffer from such diseases as cancer, AIDS, and the flu. But I shouldn't minimize the situation. After all, many of the victims cited in the report suffered tremendously: " In many instances, frightened drivers reported being targeted on the road by other drivers who would point fingers at them as if they were carrying guns." Uh oh. Those finger hate crimes. Sunday, March 10, 2002
Why we're fightingJust saw the CBS documentary on 9/11. I just hope some of the politicians, American and European, who have begun to waver were watching. Maybe they'll begin to remember why this war is "open-ended," why there's no "exit strategy" now, why the war can't stop at the borders of Afghanistan. This isn't the U.S. "getting even" with the perpetrators. This is the U.S. making sure nobody ever tries to do this again. The cost needs to be made high, not so that we'll feel better about ourselves, but so that the roguest of rogue states rethinks its support for terrorist organizations.What's most striking about the documentary is the dignity, the calm professionalism of the firefighters. As the events unfold, you can see them getting more and worried, but they never panic. Until the buildings start coming down and they get the order to evacuate, they're headed in to help. The sickening thuds of bodies falling told them how bad it was, and they're startled, but they don't run. They wait to be told where to go and how to help. It's facile, but I can't help but contrast their behavior with those in the West Bank and elsewhere in the Middle East, cheering, dancing, and celebrating as they hear the news. Still, I spent most of the documentary thinking back to my own experience watching 9/11 unfold on television. The fear, the confusion, as wild rumors spread, the realization that some of the rumors were true, and the relief when others weren't. It's hard to believe it has been six months since then, that we identified who did it and responded already. People who thought this country was soft, who boasted that it would be another Vietnam if we tried to strike back, have already lost the battle. But the war's not over, and it's good to be reminded why it needs to continue. Glad to hear itCNN tells us that Transportation Secretary Mineta pledges 'world-class' airport security that "does not tolerate screening mistakes." Oh, good. Even better, he has everything worked out:"What we're trying to figure out is what are the best practices that we can employ to ensure that we have world-class security and world-class customer service," Mineta said in an interview last week. Whether it's the airport in Los Angeles, California, or Evansville, Indiana, "it's going to be uniform."The beauty of the federal government: uniformity. The same setup in Los Angeles and Evansville. From the same people that want to screen Canadians and Saudis as if they posed the same security risk. What is this?A new blog. Everyone else is doing it, right? Like many others, I was inspired by Glenn Reynolds' Instapundit to share my thoughts with the world. The plan is to feature commentary on the world from a libertarian perspective, but more importantly from an "anti-idiotarian" perspective. (I believe the term was invented by the esteemed Mr. Reynolds.) That means that stupidity is the real target, whether it comes from the right or left, the U.S. or Europe, politicians or the media. But especially the media. |