I know I said I wouldn't post on weekends but I just read a really funny piece by Jonah Goldberg on the Pledge ruling and I wanted to recommend it. Though I strongly suggest reading the whole thing my favorite part is:

Within hours, the Senate voted 99-0 to condemn the court's ruling, perhaps in a move to ward off the curse of Michael Dukakis, the 1988 Democratic presidential candidate who managed to find himself in the position of running against the Pledge of Allegiance in 1988. (I feel I can now report that Michael Dukakis was actually a prototype designed in a MIT laboratory to be the worst presidential candidate in history. My sources say that Dukakis 2.0 will actually spray acid in the faces of old people and call for the eradication of puppies, ice cream and the home mortgage interest deduction.)

Meanwhile, Republicans were, quite simply, giddy. The president and his spokesmen had to take a few deep breaths before voicing their outrage over the decision. And GOP congressmen raced, with me-too Democrats in tow, to the steps of the Capitol for an impromptu allegiance-pledging. And then, for good measure, they belted out "God Bless America" with extra-special emphasis on the "God." That'll show those left-coast pinkos!
# Posted 9:41 PM by Karol

Would the damn press leave the boozing Bush girls alone already? They're normal college girls who shockingly drink. At least they're not like the angelic Chelsea Clinton who was talking about the Bush tax cut as the twin towers fell.
# Posted 2:02 PM by Karol

Can you believe the nerve of Al Gore? He is now blaming Bush policies for the current economic scandals, like Enron and Worldcom. As I said in my post a few days ago, these scandals do not develop overnight. Billions of dollars don't go missing in under a year and a half.

I don't know what's more sickening to me, that Gore made these ridiculous comments against Bush or that he made them at Lot 61, the trendoid paradise on Manhattan's West Side. Is he still trying to be cool Alpha male Gore? G-d help us all.

I particularly like this quote where he plays the 'I told you this was going to happen if you didn't vote for me' role:

"You see now what it means to have an administration that's that committed to fighting and working on behalf of the powerful, and letting the people of this country get the short end of the stick"

No word on whether 'the people' he's talking about were also knocking back one of Lot 61's sixty-one choices of $15 martinis.
# Posted 12:11 PM by Karol

Ummmmm anything you guys want to tell us?
# Posted 11:35 AM by Karol

An amusing political take on 'the beautiful game' fantasizes about a US-Iraq match-up in the World Cup 2006 in Germany and talks of equality between otherwise unequal (in world power anyway) nations on the field.
# Posted 10:45 AM by Karol

Court Puts Pledge Ruling on Hold
That was quick!
# Posted 5:11 PM by Karol

I'm home sick from work today (which should explain the shortage of posts both yesterday and today) and I had spent the morning thinking about all things judicial-the Pledge decision, the Supreme Court ruling on school vouchers and also on random drug testing in schools, even the few days old ruling on executing the retarded.
I had been having some problems with blogger (among the difficulties is when I press 'backspace' my entire write-up erases) and so took a break in my frustration and went on my boyfriend's blog. He has a link on his site to the NY Times piece mentioned in my blog below about the last 102 minutes of the WTC and also a web movie about the events of that day. I've seen the movie before, albeit at work without sound, and I know all of us have seen movies like it before. It shows the planes crashing, people running and crying, people jumping out of the buildings, voices of people leaving messages to loved ones, firemen going up the stairs as everyone else was going down them. Watching it today though, I am reminded of how easy it is to get distracted. Who cares about these court decisions or the Worldcom mess or Martha Stewart's problems? I don't, not really. What I care about is what we are doing to bring justice to the people involved in the 9/11 attacks and to prevent future ones. What I care about is not dying. I also really hate that the Israel-Palestine mess has let us divert our attention from our own war on terror. All of the 'friendly', 'moderate' Muslim(*) states (always with the exception of our real friend Turkey) have led us to believe that the attacks on us and the attacks on our Israeli friends have the same core reasoning. While on one hand I see out of control Islamic militance as the reason for both countries' woes, I also think it's important to draw a distinction. Bin Laden never mentioned one word about his Palestinian brethern until after 9/11. None of the 9/11 hijackers were Palestinian. We can't let these two-face states, especially Saudi Arabia, distract us like this. Israel is a democratic state and should be able to and allowed to handle it's own problems as such. It doesn't need us, in fact we hold her back from having the true security she and every other free state needs. I'm going to try to stay focused on the things that are important to me in our post 9/11 world, I hope our government does too.
# Posted 1:42 PM by Karol

I'm not too worried about this new ruling that the Pledge of Allegiance is unconstitutional. The Ninth U.S Circuit Court has a reputation for having many of its decisions overturned by the Supreme Court. In the last few years 80 percent of the rulings by the Ninth have been overturned. You'd think they'd learn....
# Posted 11:43 AM by Karol

A good question by Jonah Goldberg that has been on my mind too and a comment on the coverage of the decade of greed (the 80's) versus the decade of much greedier (the 90's):

How is it that Bill Clinton's name barely comes up in the current firestorms over Enron, Tyco, Kmart, Arthur Anderson, etc., etc.? All of these companies' problems didn't develop overnight. They grew out of those turbulent years of Clinton Greed. But, for some reason it was obvious to everyone that Enron was Bush's fault, even though the company's problems developed under Clinton and merely metastasized under Bush. It is flatly inconceivable that if similar business upheavals occurred in the wake of Reagan's tenure that the media wouldn't have made a huge deal about it. Indeed, Michael Milken was humiliated and publicly destroyed (by a Republican named Rudy Giuliani by the way) for "crimes" not one pundit in a hundred can explain — because someone had to pay for the decade of greed.

# Posted 9:53 AM by Karol

I went to see Clinic play yesterday at Maxwell's in Hoboken. They were very good in their usual attire of scrubs and surgical masks. I normally can't stand when bands have a gimmick but I think I'm going to have to give Clinic and White Stripes a pass as both these bands' gimmicks don't take away from the band's sound at all. Opening up for Clinic were Sea Ray, who were excellent, and Radio 4, who I blame for that ringing in my ears today. Despite the space being quite hot and the trip to New Jersey being a bit of a mission, I enjoyed the bands very much.


In between sets there was a girl smoking a cigarette next to me and blowing the smoke in my direction. I asked her (and I promise I used my sweetest 'so sorry to bother you' voice) if she would mind switching her cigarette to her other hand and thereby away from me. She gave me a completely unnecessary dirty look, said nothing, but did what I asked. Now, why be rude? Is she not completely in the wrong here? Is she not the one with the stupid, uncontrollable habit? Why should I have to suffer for her weakness? At least why not be nice about it?


Another rudeness story for you: I was at my friend Armen's show at Black Betty in Brooklyn recently. Armen plays an instrument called a Theremin which produces a beautiful, ethereal sound without being touched. Armen is an always gorgeous drag queen, usually in a gown with perfect make-up, looking like one of those women from the 1920's that could bring men to their knees with their glamour alone.
At Black Betty, there was this girl, sitting right at the front in a table by the stage and talking so loudly that all of us in the back could hear her conversation. The drummer in my boyfriend's band commented 'talk louder, the theremin is drowning you out.' Armen glared at her while playing but she would not let up. When Armen was finished with the set, he came off-stage and over to a group of us that had come to see him. He was stunned at her rudeness and decided not to remain quiet about it. He came up to her and calmly said that in his 16 years of performing he had never seen rudeness like hers, with someone actually trying to talk over the performer whilst sitting right in front of them. She sat there in stunned silence and didn't say anything. We were all quite proud of him for actually saying something. On her way out, her male companion decided not to let her have all the rudeness for herself and said to Armen 'well you were crap anyway.' Again, how is anyone but the offender in the wrong here? She couldn't just say 'I'm sorry' and learn to behave in public for next time? For the guy to insult the performer just shows where our society is at the moment.
# Posted 11:52 AM by Karol

An article in the New York Times (link requires registration which is free and will keep you always signed in) about a month ago details the last 102 minutes of the World Trade Center through phone calls and emails and details that could've only been put together after some time has passed. Reading it, I almost completely lost the plot at work so I warn you that it is a tearjerker. I'm posting it now because the NYT archives its articles ever so often and soon it will be a 'pay to read' piece. I encourage everyone to read it.
# Posted 10:24 AM by Karol

Regarding Osama:

"If he's alive," Senate Minority Leader Trent Lott, R-Miss., said Sunday, "I'd like him to stick his head up and let us get a good look at him. And then I'd take it off."


I know I'm going to get some eye rolling with this one (though why most people are eye rolling over email as opposed to the awesome comments section I have set up is beyond me), but I like this kind of talk. It's ok for us all to be angry and want this motherfucker dead. It's ok for us to say things like this without being criticized as being 'simplistic.' I know it's been said (and I also know it would not happen this way) but should we catch Osama I really think the best punishment would be to let the firemen of New York City have him and do what they will with him. I think that would be the closest we would come to justice.
# Posted 4:11 PM by Karol

I realize that with time cracking jokes about 9/11 is going to become normal, especially among those always very funny Brits, but am I crazy to find that just ugly and wrong? I've heard the 'you have to laugh or you would cry' cliché but I find comedy based around 9/11 just unacceptable. The Guardian, a lefty British paper, has a satirical day by day account of the days after the attack. Some 'funny' entries include:

"30th: Twelve days after the collapse of the World Trade Centre, amazed rescue workers uncover an entire office floor that is still doing business. Despite falling 890 feet and being buried under 12,000 tons of rubble, all workers at Leeman Sachs Trading Inc are unharmed. They have remained at their desks since the bank's Tokyo HQ saw television pictures of the burning towers, called them up and ordered them to keep working. 'We were still sitting at our desks when we landed in the rubble,' said one dealer. 'I actually completed three transactions on the way down.' In fact trading at the buried floor has been so good since 11 September, the bank may sue the New York Fire Dept for digging them out."

Or this gem which seems to make fun of the fact that by February the American public was still not over losing 3000 of it's citizens. We're such babies, I know:

"20th: US is criticised over 'manipulative' Olympics opening ceremony in which the entire American team form a human twin towers which is then smashed into by a flying snowboarder dressed as an Arab and carrying the ribcage of a genuine New York fireman. As chained al-Qaeda suspects sing 'God Bless America' at gunpoint, 100,000 doves with weights tied to their ankles are released to recreate an engulfing mass of white dust and the crowd tearfully applaud for five hours."


In addition to this piece there is also a just as funny list of quotes such as:

'Yessssss!'
First reaction of many British people who subsequently claimed to be appalled

Can someone tell me what they think about this? Have I just lost my sense of humor completely?

# Posted 11:24 AM by Karol

CNN Says it Erred in Mideast Coverage

They are only referring to one particular story in which they gave more airtime to the family of the homicide bomber than to the family of his victims, but I suppose it's a start.
# Posted 10:10 AM by Karol

To the two people that have written me to ask why I don't post on the weekend, I say to you as John Goodman's character, Walter Sobchak, in 'The Big Lebowski' said to his bowling team:



'I don't roll on Shabbos"

# Posted 3:09 PM by Karol

John Derbyshire has a great point in today's National Review Online about why a Palestinian state as most people understand it would not be technically feasible.
# Posted 2:11 PM by Karol

NOW Arafat is ready to accept the peace plan offered 2 years and hundreds of dead bodies ago. What a hero. Now I can completely see how he won the Nobel Peace Prize.

It occurs to me that there is no way that Sharon is going to offer the same terms as Barak. Could this be a clever ploy by Arafat to deflect the blame of the fallen peace process onto Sharon? This way, when Sharon turns the proposal down it will appear that Sharon, and not the murderous Arafat with his army of human bombs, is standing in the way of peace. What are the odds that Europe is going to fall for this? I know what side I'm betting on.
# Posted 1:58 PM by Karol

My boyfriend's band has a show tonight at Luna Lounge at 8:30pm and you should all come.
# Posted 1:06 PM by Karol

I watched the US-Germany match this morning at an Irish bar on the Upper East Side. Our boys played well, a different team than the one Germany creamed in the last World Cup, but unfortunately victory was not to be.

There were two girls in the bar who were blatantly and loudly cheering on Germany. I just want to say this: in what other country do people go to a pub to cheer for the opposite team of the country they are in? Imagine if people were cheering on Brazil in a bar in London this morning. I could understand if this was a German bar, like Zum Schneider in the East Village, but it wasn't. The vast majority of people in the bar were rooting for the US. They inspired bad thoughts in me, those girls. As they walked past I had to resist the urge to say 'yeah but we've got those two bigger matches under our belt.' Of course if I had said it I would've been the typical arrogant American. You just can't win.
# Posted 12:44 PM by Karol

I just spoke to my best friend, a Social Studies teacher in a public school in Brooklyn, and what she was telling me about some of her students is really bothering me.

She has two Muslim boys in one of her classes and when she starts teaching about other religions they stage wild outbursts and refuse to learn. They tell her that they will only learn about Islam. They tell her that they don't care if she calls their parents, that their parents will agree with them. She has another class with a few Muslim kids who always ask others if they are Muslim. She says that some kids lie and say that they are Muslim because of intimidation by the Muslim kids.

Now, picture for me a group of Catholic children refusing to learn about any religion except their own. Picture two Jewish children putting their hands over their ears and not letting the teacher go on. Imagine a Mormon child asking who else is Mormon in his class, with a warning in his tone. Picture the outcry about these 'close-minded' religions, these religions that obviously foster hate and ignorance.

We've come to the weirdest junction in our war. On one hand, our enemy tells us plainly, you are the great Satan and Israel is mini Satan and jihad is coming to you. We can hardly get any Muslim leaders to unequivocally condemn all terror. Their condemnation invariably comes with a 'but' that is just unacceptable to me. When the Saudi Prince, Alwaleed bin Talal, offered a check for $10 million to New York, he made sure to add that perhaps US policies contributed to the attacks. Rudy Giuliani, one of a handful of politicians who calls it as he sees it, turned him down. Rudy said "one of the reasons I think this happened is because people were engaged in moral equivalency in not understanding the difference between liberal democracies like the United States, like Israel, and terrorist states and those who condone terrorism."
On the other hand, we can't turn around without hearing the phrase 'Islam means peace' and being reminded that it's not ALL the Muslims who hate us. Forgive me for not believing it, but it's time for a little proof.

I feel like this: that we are going to lose this war because of our naiveté. Americans are the most open, generous, trusting people on the planet. The New York Times 9/11 Neediest Fund, for example, gave $25,000 to the Jewish Museum for a program on tolerance for Islam in two high schools near the World Trade Center. I mean, hello? Are they the ones who need to learn the tolerance? I think the students near the World Trade Center were being awfully tolerant on the 11th of September. Why isn't the New York Times giving this money to Islamic Saudi Academy in Northern Virginia where students are taught that the day of judgement can't come until Muslims start attacking Jews and Israel is not found on any map. Why? Because it would be insensitive. It would mean that we were judging them. I am terrified that we are all going to die because we are too nice, because we don't question enough, because even now we still can't do what we have to to not be killed. We won't racially profile, we won't torture, we won't even criticize.
As the always impressive John Derbyshire has written:

"The state we have sunk to, after 30 years of political correctness, is that we would rather permit ourselves and our fellow citizens to be slaughtered by lunatics than run the risk that we might hurt the feelings of foreign guests. Our dogged belief that every culture is just as worthy and admirable as every other will admit of no exceptions; it even extends to those cultures where children are raised from infancy to hate Jews and the Great Satan"

We suffered a great loss on September 11th and it isn't enough for me to hear that Islam is a religion of peace. I want to see that in action. I want to see Muslims take a stand in great numbers against terrorism. I want to see my friend report those kids and to hear that their parents were outraged that their kids act as they do. I want them to question if they contribute to their kids behavior. I guess I want what I always want, for equality to truly reign, for us all to be held under the same standards without exception. I realize I am wanting too much.

# Posted 12:24 AM by Karol

A survey conducted in May and pointed out by Ramesh Ponnuru on National Review Online, finds that only 49% of the college students surveyed are able to correctly identify Colin Powell as the Secretary of State and only 32% can say that Donald Rumsfeld is Secretary of Defense. The numbers get even more dismal when they are asked to identify the UN Secretary General or the US National Security Advisor. The most disturbing statistic is while only meager numbers can identify the leadership of our country, a full 55% can identify the Terrorist-in-chief, Yasser Arafat, a good signal as any that he has been there for waaaaayy too long.

Also interesting in this survey is that 37% say that they would avoid the draft should they be called and 71% disagree that US values are superior to the values of other nations.

Sigh.
# Posted 3:06 PM by Karol

A search engine on the Department of Health's website let's you see if your favorite establishments have had any violations during their last inspection. It's not looking good for the bagel place downstairs from my apartment that I love. Or for the swanky restaurant where I have reservations for Friday. This has kept me fascinated for about an hour now.
# Posted 6:19 PM by Karol

Sorry for the lack of 'real' posting today. Spent the day trying to figure out a bit about html. Will actually have some content tomorrow, promise. In the meantime, check out my cutie 'independent' boyfriend's not at all right wing site.
# Posted 5:44 PM by Karol

67%

This is how worshipable I am. How worshipable are you?


I really thought I'd be more worshipable.
# Posted 4:32 PM by Karol

'I have created fire!'-Tom Hanks in Castaway


'I have created a comments section!'-Me


Thanks to http://www.enetation.co.uk
# Posted 11:13 AM by Karol

Am I the only one who reads the New York Times editorial page with a look of disbelief on my face and a firm conviction in my heart that most of the writers on the page are routinely hitting the crackpipe?

Today we have this just ridiculous piece by Nicholas Kristoff about what he considers to be a fact that President Bush, the US senators and especially the left's favorite punchingbag John Ashcroft, don't care about the world's women because they haven't ratified some treaty that Kristoff himself says has 'languished in the United States Senate ever since President Carter sent it there for ratification in 1980.' The treaty vaguely 'bans discrimination' and if ratified by the US would supposedly help women like the one described in Kristoff's piece whose parents married her off at age 15 to an abusive husband who, when she tried to leave him, stuck a 220 volt wired rod into her vagina. Kristoff, of course, doesn't make it as clear how the treaty would help her exactly (would her husband think 'well, there IS a treaty against this sort of thing, I guess it must be wrong') as he does that Bush et al are practically barbarians for not having ratified it.

He writes:
"In societies where males and females have relatively equal access to food and health care, and where there is no sex-selective abortion, females live longer and there are about 104 females for every 100 males. In contrast, Pakistan has only 94 females for every 100 males, pointing to three million to seven million missing females in that country alone. Perhaps 10 percent of Pakistani girls and women die because of gender discrimination."

Yes perhaps. And perhaps they die of natural causes. Or perhaps not. But does this statistic have any point to it?
Or this story:

In most cases it is not that parents deliberately kill their daughters. Rather, people skimp on spending on females — just like Sedanshah, a man at an Afghan refugee camp I visited near here. When his wife and son were both sick, he bought medicine for the boy alone, saying of his wife, "She's always sick, so it's not worth buying medicine for her."

Am I missing something? How would this treaty force this man to stop being a moron and buy his wife medicine? Someone would come to his house and force him to buy it? If she died they would charge him with what? Neglect? Murder? Fat chance.

He also writes: "In Pakistan, for example, women who become pregnant after being raped are often prosecuted for adultery and sentenced to death by stoning. But this treaty has helped them escape execution."
So now I really don't get it. If the treaty is already helping them, what difference does it make that we haven't ratified it yet?

Why don't we just admit what this treaty is taking the long route to say? That there are countries that are backward and they treat their women slightly better than their dogs, in some cases worse. But we can't admit that, because to admit that is to also say that we are better and there is no way the NY Times editorial page is going to acknowledge that. They'd rather our government sign some useless treaty instead of truly standing up for their beliefs and condemning a way of life that no one can deny is wrong.

# Posted 4:06 PM by Karol

Last night I was out with some friends at Zen Palate in Union Square and we were having a very nice dinner accompanied by some bottles of wine we had brought with us. Then, a loud noise, a boom and we look around and say 'was that thunder? that was thunder, right?' willing it to be thunder because for few of us was that really our first thought. My phone rings and its my brother in Brooklyn and he wants to know if anything has happened in Manhattan because he just heard a loud crashing sound. But then he sees lightning and we all realize its just a storm.

We've become a city on edge, jumping at loud sounds. I'm sad about this, it's not how I've always known New York.
# Posted 3:17 PM by Karol

Being sharp and brilliant as always, James Taranto sums up Ted Turner's stupidity, the reasons statehood for Palestinians would not lead to peace and the celebration of murder within Arab states all in the first item of today's Best of the Web.
# Posted 3:14 PM by Karol

Suicide Bomber Hits Jerusalem Bus, Killing at Least 19, wounding at least 50 others


Tell me again how Islam means peace, because every time a bus full of high school students blows up, I start to feel kind of skeptical.
# Posted 11:33 AM by Karol

Ted Turner, owner of CNN, accuses Israel of terrorism

This is the guy who also called the 9/11 terrorists 'brave.' How such a dipshit came to be a billionaire is far beyond me.

But here is a man who has said it better than I can:

Daniel Seaman, a spokesman for the Israeli government, said: "My only advice to Ted Turner is if people assume you are stupid, it is just best to keep your mouth shut rather than open your mouth and confirm everyone in that view."

# Posted 11:00 PM by Karol

3 Shot in Racist Rampage

But will he be prosecuted as perpetrating a hate crime? Or is it not 'hate' when the victims are white, the man with the gun (and kerosene) is black and shouting 'whites will burn'? Hmmmm.......


# Posted 1:18 PM by Karol

I have an English friend staying with me for a few days. He's been living in Australia for the last few years and spent about a year in East Timor working as a draftsman for the UN. He's a calm, happy person and he gets visibly nervous when we talk about politics.
When he arrived at my place on Friday, he saw the Israeli flag draped on my window. I'm not much of a flag waver for any country, including this one which I love most of all, my patriotism is fierce but more subtle. The Israeli flag was a purchase from an Israeli website for products made in Israel. I was just doing what I could, in my own small way, to help their economy in a time when going to work might mean being blown up by a psychopath 'martyr.' It was hung up by my mother while I wasn't home one day and she was doing me a favor and waiting in my apartment for some maintenance men. When my friend saw the flag he said 'what is that?! They're killing loads of Palestinians you know.' I'm often startled when my British friends say things like this and in my surprised state I said 'good.'
Of course it's not good. Of course all of us would want all the killing in the world to end and for everyone to hold hands and run barefoot through fields of flowers. Who doesn't want peace? I feel like I am realistic though in the belief that peace is often achieved through war. Especially in the case of these Islamofascists, no amount of conversation is going to change a single thing.
The conversation with my friend took place within his first ten minutes of being in my apartment and so we changed the subject to try to not ruin our time together. It kept popping up though, this thing vaguely called politics. In the case of Israel, and in the case of our own country's actions since 9/11, it goes far beyond politics for me. I could have a rational conversation with people who disagree with me on almost anything. You're pro-life and I'm pro-choice but we can be best friends because I understand where you are coming from, I understand that your opinion isn't in any way hateful to me. But I've already lost one friend because he said these words: 'Israel has no right to exist' and as a Jew it was equivalent to hearing 'I don't care if you die.' I think that I won't see an Israel-Palestine compromise in my lifetime, and it looks like I will lose many more friends.

We're such a different country now that I don't know that I can still find my common ground with my far away friends. Their understanding of things seems so abstract to me, so unrealistic. They think that dialogue can solve something and I think it is impossible. More than just impossible, I think it is deadly for us to try.
I told my English friend that I was one of the more moderate among my friends. I don't make sweeping statements like 'let's kill all Arabs' or talk about dropping nukes on Mecca or anything really that radical. He seemed not to believe that I could be considered 'moderate' until we spent the day with a friend of mine who on September 10th I would've described as a bit of a hippie. She used to say things like 'all war is wrong man.' She now asks things like 'why doesn't the US torture the prisoners?' and implies that we should just nuke any unfriendly Arab states. The torture conversation continued into the evening and my 20 year old brother joined us. He was watching the Yankee-Mets game and wasn't paying much attention to what we were talking about. I interrupted his glazed over concentration to ask what he thought about torture. He thought it was wrong, he said. 'Really?' I asked, surprised since I remember having conversations with him where his opinion was very different, 'even for say, Daniel Pearl's killers?' 'Oh no' he said, 'for those people we should peel the skin off their bodies and make their mothers watch, I thought you were talking about torture for regular run of the mill murderers.'
Right.
We are a different people now, especially New Yorkers and especially New York Jews. It feels like they are coming for us again, and again Europe is cowering, misplacing their blame out of fear, guilt, ignorance or imbedded hate. I can't tell which of those is the worst reason. The result seems to be the same.
# Posted 10:58 AM by Karol

USA! USA!
# Posted 10:11 AM by Karol

The Plain Answer
"Saddam must go. His continued survival after comprehensively losing the Gulf War has done untold damage to the West's standing in a region where the only unforgivable sin is weakness. His flouting of the terms on which hostilities ceased has made a laughingstock of the international community. His appalling mistreatment of his own countrymen continues unabated. It is clear to anyone willing to face reality that the only reason Saddam took the risk of refusing to submit his activities to U.N. inspectors was that he is exerting every muscle to build WMD. We do not know exactly what stage that has reached. But to allow this process to continue because the risks of action to arrest it seem too great would be foolish in the extreme."
-Margaret Thatcher
# Posted 9:58 AM by Karol

Several people have now emailed me to ask when I will have a comments section. As I am very new to this whole blog thing (in fact this whole doing anything except surfing the web thing), I have no idea how to make a comment section. I promise to look into it this weekend. Maybe by Monday you can all be ranting back at me.
# Posted 2:00 PM by Karol

From: http://www.opinionjournal.com/best/?id=110001851:

Attack in Karachi
At least 10 people, none of them Americans, are dead in a car-bomb attack outside the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan. It's not yet clear who the perpetrator was, but al Qaeda and related Muslim terror groups seem the obvious suspects. The BBC reports that "Pakistan's information minister said the involvement of the Indian intelligence services could not be ruled out." The Beeb doesn't stipulate whether Pakistan's information minister said this with a straight face.

No one can hit that sarcastic note quite like James Taranto.
# Posted 1:53 PM by Karol

Peggy Noonan , one of the most exceptional writers of all time and one you can expect to see quoted here often, has an amazing piece in today's Opinion Journal about what the product of Bush's vision for his new department should be. She writes the most obvious, hopeful thing: that Rudy Giuliani should head the new department. She writes:

It is absurd even to consider anyone else. Mr. Giuliani may in fact be the only person who could do it. He has the standing for the job. He is the symbol of Sept. 11 leadership and Sept. 11 suffering, of Sept. 11 success and American toughness. He is a galvanizing, dramatic figure who comes with his own klieg lights. People on the ground admire him, and people in the bureaucracy will fear him. This is good.

Tom Ridge, through little fault of his own, is a symbol of failure, a symbol of a governmental response that so far has not worked. He is Mr. Yellow Alert.

Mr. Giuliani's unique standing gives him the one thing the new director must have: pull and sway with Congress and the public to do what needs to be done, from profiling to a national ID card to fingerprinting to taking on Norm Mineta's Transportation Department for its security rules, which at once betray a frightened timorousness and an unwillingness to respect others. (E.g., pilots can't be armed because they can't be trusted not to run around shooting people.) Unlike Mr. Mineta, Mr. Giuliani knows what time it is. And he loves to tell people what he knows.

I know that as time progresses and September 11th moves further into our past, some people will say that Giuliani was an unspectacular leader and he had his moment of greatness on that awful day through 'luck'. The truth is Giuliani was the best leader I had seen in my life well before 9/11. I was too young to really remember Reagan (he left office when I was 11, though as my brother was named after him I'll let you imagine for yourself the kind of stories I heard at the dinner table), Bush Sr. never really made any impression on me beyond the belief that Republicans should never raise taxes under any circumstances and I don't have to go into what I think about Clinton as even my first two posts can give you some indication as to what I'd say about the man. On a local level, the only mayor I can remember clearly was Dinkins and what I remember was weakness in our leader and fear in our city. Even before the Crown Heights riots that he was powerless to stop, I remember how scary the subways were and how high the murder rate was. When Giuliani came into office, I was dividing my time between Boston and Scotland. My parents and friends would tell me what a great job he was doing but it really didn't mean anything to me in any real sense. I came home for a summer in 1996 and I saw how things had already started to change. When I moved back for good in 1999, it was a new city from the one I had left 5 years prior. The city just felt different, looked different, and better. The look of defeat was no longer a New York trademark. A lot of people miss that defeatism, for reasons not understandable to me. They miss the dirty New York where you couldn't walk ten feet in the Village without being offered drugs, where criminals had the run of things, beggers were everywhere, hookers hung out freely on that island in the middle of the street on the Bowery and being afraid after dark was the norm. They call it 'gritty'. I call them stupid. And more often than not, the people that miss the 'old' New York are not native New Yorkers. They were people who had seen too many movies and decided to live that underachieving dream.

Now that fear has become a national curse with terrorist warnings coming in from everywhere, with all of us being targets, I'm hoping for Rudy to take over and to tell us all what time it is, again.
# Posted 10:45 AM by Karol

I'm not into celebrities. I'm especially not into celebrities in a 'oooooooooooooh Matt Damon is soooooooooo cute' kind of way. A few years ago though, while I was a college kid living in Scotland and watching movies obsessively, I rented a movie called Palookaville. It was a cute film, definitely enjoyable with a bottle of cheapish wine on a random Tuesday night. Watching this flick was the first time I ever really fell for an actor. His name is Vincent Gallo and he had this intensity about him in the movie, he was practically vibrating, I saw him as being so wound up that he could almost take off of the ground and fly.
I tried to follow his career as much as I could. I rented Abel Ferrara's 'The Funeral' in which he played the corpse (with some flashback scenes) and caught little snippets of him in films like 'The Perez Family.' They were good movies and he always stole every scene he was in, even when his was a cameo role.
Then came 'Buffalo 66' and that really sealed the deal with my love of Gallo. He wrote, directed, edited, starred and did most of the music for the film's soundtrack. The movie was so sharp, with the most interesting dialogue I had heard in awhile. When I meet someone who has seen the movie we invariably start quoting from it.
I could go on and on about him, his movies, how he is a phenomenal photographer, how he is beautiful and the only actor I think that of, how the songs I've heard from his new album 'When' are really dreamy and good, how I know he is full of himself and how I don't really care because I think he deserves to be, and how he seems to be the last walking, talking renaissance man on the planet. Today though, I want to write about something else. I want to write about why he is on the cover of Shout magazine with the words 'Why you should hate this man' across its front.

Hate. What an ugly word. Everyone's mother always taught them not to hate anyone, right? Everyone has some redeeming qualities my mom would always say (albeit in Russian). So what has Vincent Gallo done to deserve not only the writer of the Shout piece to hate him, but to have hate encouraged upon him. Has he killed someone? Raped? Cheated? Lied? On the witness stand? Oh yeah, right, we don't care about those kinds of lies. You should hate Vincent Gallo, ladies and gentleman, because he very well might have a different opinion than you. Stop gasping, I know it's shocking that anyone could fall out of step in New York, especially if one belongs to the exclusive world of celebrity, but unbelievably it has come to the attention of Shout magazine that Vincent Gallo is, and I hope you're all sitting down for this, a conservative! The writer, Bruce Benderson, opens his piece with the words 'I really want to hate you, Vincent Gallo' and goes on to call Gallo an 'uncontrolled ranter who spits out right-wing ideology.' Benderson gets queasy when Gallo talks of being a fan of Reagan, Nixon and Gingrich and describes Gallo's opinions as painting a 'a pretty stark political portrait.'
Get it? If you don't agree with me you should be hated. If you like anyone I don't like, you are wrong. Benderson writes 'Maybe all he needs is a spin-doctor, I began thinking, somebody to let the public know when he's being facetious. God, I hoped he was.' Benderson can't even entertain the idea that he is falling for someone (and throughout the article it is Benderson doing the worshipping) who is real, who isn't spun and who shockingly differs from him. Benderson describes himself as a 'queer anarchist ' and goes on to prove the queer part by talking of the hustling boys he used to pick up, including implying at the end of the article that perhaps Gallo was one of those boys. The anarchist part is bullshit, of course. No true anarchist would ever be a liberal, not if they had any sense. Let's review: an anarchist is against any government. Liberals are for a very big, controlling government. Conservatives want a smaller, less involved government. Realistically, which of these would a true anarchist most relate to? I have a friend in DC who is what I consider a true anarchist. She believes everything should be privatized, including defense, and there should be no government. I can hear Benderson gagging on that idea now.

I didn't know Vincent Gallo was a conservative during the entire time I have been into him. The first I heard about it was through this article so I suppose on some level I am happy it was published. I hope others read the piece and regardless of whether they are Gallo fans or not see how unoriginal the whole liberal 'movement' in New York is, how close-minded and uninteresting. I see it all the time when people find out I'm a conservative. The first reaction people have is the same as Benderson had about Gallo: you must be kidding or trying to be different and if not we have to find a way to better present this because as it stands it will not do. Even my boyfriend has told me that the night we met I had two minuses against me: the fact that I didn't like Radiohead's last two albums (a whole other post) and that I was a Republican (never mind that since Sept.11 his views on many things have jettisoned sharply to the Right). It's so annoying that you can't just be whatever comes naturally without the criticism or scorn (or hate) of the supposedly open-minded liberal populus. I'm into indie music and movies, love to travel, have idolized drag queens since my teens, worked at Limelight and Club USA when NY had a real club scene, drink more than you do, and yes I am a true Republican in most every way. So go ahead and hate me. At least I'm in good company.
# Posted 11:36 AM by Karol

Victor Davis Hanson, to whom congratulations are in order for winning the 2002 Eric Breindel award yesterday, writes in todays National Review Online of the Middle East:

Let us remake our relationships with the states of the region into something far different and far better from those existing before September 11 — and so thereby keep faith with the dead now by a simple pact: "If you are a terrorist and kill Americans — you will suffer our terrible and swift justice. If you are a state who aids terrorists — you will experience war and wreckage undreamed of for the wickedness you have wrought. And if you are a nation of the Middle East, whose people are not free, whose media are censored, and whose elections are fraudulent, then you also have proved to be an indirect agent and abettor of this new plague — and so you too shall soon have a rendezvous with the American people and their wrath."

Am I the only rightwinger/New Yorker/hawk/reasonable person to think it's time for us to not just say this but to do this? I didn't vote for G.W Bush-for reasons outside of ideology, simply because I have never voted for either of the major parties in Federal elections since it hasn't mattered in NY in my voting lifetime- but when September 11th happened I was glad he was in power, safe in the knowledge that a Republican would take care of us. Most liberals I know felt the same way. They were all thankful it wasn't Gore in the White House. We all knew Bush would not lob a few missiles at some empty buildings for show. He would not listen to the European elite as they immediately rose up to challenge any war that was coming. He would not stop until we felt safe again, until we were safe again.

It feels now though, with our 'friend' Prince Abdullah having visited Crawford, with Rumsfeld flying over to soothe Pakistani-Indian relations, with Bush sending warnings to Israel to ease up, that he has lost his focus. My friends in Europe drop their jaws when I say Bush isn't being hawkish enough, but really, what has he done to deserve any kind of military-esque personality to be fitted on him? Am I crazy to expect more from the man seen as a swaggering cowboy, someone not to be messed with, than just a one front war in Afghanistan where we have already installed a friendly government? Swagger G.W! I want to see you tough and unafraid. I want to see us flex the muscles we haven't used in so long. If Saddam needs to go, let's take him out. If Saudi needs to be reminded how to be our friend, how to play nicely with us, then let's remind them. If Arafat can't get his own people to stop blowing up 8 year olds, let's let Israel do it for him. The truth is, and we all know it, that if we weren't so humane, if we weren't so decent, there would be no Iraq, Saudi, or any other country we wanted there not to be. If it came down to a wild west showdown, it would be us left standing and them lying face down in the dust. As we are reminded constantly by the lefty worldwide press we are massive and powerful but it seems to me we are afraid to use any of that might. I want us to do what we have to to protect the homeland and it's citizens. I want to see George W. Bush be the badass I know he can be.


# Posted 4:53 PM by Karol