President Bush's proposed immigration reform has yet to take shape as an actual policy proposal. Since it exists now only as a broad outline, any response has to be equally broad. Immigration isn't an area I know a lot about, and my first reaction was that the president's plan could either be a Good Thing or a Bad Thing, depending on the details. James K. Galbraith, who knows more about this sort of thing, thinks that Bush's plan will be... Read more
Kevin Drum has a nice rundown of the Bush administration's incredible shrinking claims about Iraq's alleged weapons and the lack thereof: March 2003: Weapons of mass destruction. June 2003: Weapons of mass destruction programs. October 2003: Weapons of mass destruction-related programs. January 2004: Weapons of mass destruction-related program activities. I've mentioned this before, but this reminds me of the Cheetoh-factor, in which every additional adjective makes the noun in question less true: "Cheese" = cheese "processed cheese" = cheese, sort... Read more
"For diplomacy to be effective, words must be credible, and no one can now doubt the word of America." — George W. Bush, Jan. 20, 2004, State of the Union address Read more
Here's presidential adviser Karen Hughes on CNN's Larry King Live: It's been a remarkable three years in our history. And we've emerged from the terror attacks and the recession that President Bush inherited and the war in Iraq. … The strategy regarding this blatant lie — "the recession that President Bush inherited" — seems to be to just repeat this over and over and over and over until enough people think it's true that it won't even seem like a... Read more
The last few weeks I've been posting excerpts from the cover story of my paper's Sunday real estate section, which "spotlights" an extravagant home from the area. As I wrote here: "This is the cover of the real estate section — a place where normal people might turn to buy and sell a home. It doesn't seem either wise or kind to these people to dedicate the cover of this section each week to showcasing homes deliberately chosen to make... Read more
Here's Margaret Webb Pressler of The Washington Post tut-tutting about young people's cavalier attitudes about debt: … a generation of consumers … have embraced and used debt in a way that no generation has before. The polar opposite of the postwar generation, which feared debt, today's young adults view credit cards as a welcome and easy path to the lifestyle they see around them. "What's extraordinary is how quickly it's changed," said Robert Manning, a professor at the Rochester Institute... Read more
Joe Lieberman seems to think that the road to the White House leads through Delaware. He has been the most visible campaigner and the most frequent visitor to the First State so far in the primary campaign. There's a certain logistical logic to this for Lieberman. Delaware is about half way between Connecticut and Washington. Traveling between the two by car or train takes you through the state's most populous — and most heavily Democratic — county, New Castle, which... Read more
From the Sunday real estate section of The (Del.) News Journal: The prestigious neighborhood Merestone graces the rolling countryside of Landenberg, [Pa.], and the grand stone and stucco home at 22 Evans [Drive] is a true testament to sheer luxury. Superior workmanship and unmatched quality is found throughout the private two-story colonial, bringing to life this classic English-style home. This 6,000-square-foot custom-built Wilkinson corner lot home is truly one of a kind, with meticulous landscaping on the acre it occupies.... Read more
Left Behind, pp. 30-32 Ace reporter Buck Williams is desperate to get in touch with his editors from aboard an airliner. He decides to take apart the “in-flight phone embedded in the back of the seat in front of him” and splice it to his laptop’s modem: … Buck guessed that inside the phone the connection was standard and that if he could somehow get in there without damaging the phone, he could connect his computer’s modem directly to the... Read more
Learned several things visiting my family this week in Vermont's Northeast Kingdom: 1. My Civic starts easily even when it's -17 outside. 2. My Civic doesn't start easily when it's -32 outside. I don't either. 3. Soap bubbles freeze at temperatures below -10. This is pretty cool. The bubbles change color, looking like they're being enveloped in a kind of gray mist. Then you can catch them on your gloves, where you can stretch them around like gummy little balloons... Read more
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