Weather-Induced Government Follies Post #4

Today, severe thunderstorms and torrential downpours caused all kinds of damage across Westchester County. Downed power lines, downed trees, power outages, and so forth, and so on. No real surprise, right? Today's the first of August; this is just summertime weather.

OK. But why does Westchester County and Liberty Lines, the company that operates the county's Bee-Line bus system, allow buses to travel down streets that have become all but impassable?

When I got on the bus to come home from work, after leaving really late to avoid getting drenched -- I forgot my umbrella -- the driver told me I wouldn't be able to get off at my usual place ("Your stop is canceled," he actually said), because power lines were down at the intersection just before my usual stop. I wound up getting off one block away, which is no big deal. But the driver didn't say anything to any of the other passengers to let them know there was a detour, he just crossed Scott's Bridge and followed the course this particular route used to run the MTA complained that the buses were causing extra wear and tear on all the bridges over the Metro-North tracks. But buses headed in the opposite direction -- some of them double-length -- went right up to the intersection where the wires had come down, then were forced to wind their way through streets too narrow for such large and wide vehicles. Why didn't someone somewhere redirect the westbound buses to follow the same course the eastbound ones were taking? Or would that have made too much sense?

Government Follies Post #3

One thing that's all over the news here in the NYC area is a referendum before the Nassau County taxpayers to fund a new arena to replace the old Nassau Coliseum. The owner of the NHL's Islanders, Charles Wang, has said he will move or sell the team if Nassau County doesn't provide his team a new stadium.

It seems like every professional sports team pulls this stunt, or tries to, at some point. Why do these multimillionaires think the public is supposed to build them a place of business? Do you ever hear of Walmart threatening to relocate one of their stores because the local government won't provide a new building for their business? If Charles Wang wants a new stadium, he should build one. Period.

Government Follies Post #2

I was all set to rant about how all this stupid political posturing in Congress was about to create financial chaos, when lo! the sparring parties managed, somehow, to put aside their ideologies and agree to some kind of compromise. Of course, the sticking point were these Tea Party rookies who haven't yet learned that in strong winds, grass survives because it bends, while trees stand stiff and resist the wind and thus they break.

Earlier tonight I saw some talking-head show where one of the Tea Party rookies naturally said, "Hey, it wasn't us, it was the oldsters who've been there 30 years who made this mess." And yeah, he was right. The underlying mess wasn't created by the Tea Party rookies. But if everybody stuck to their guns, with no chance for compromise, millions of people who did all the things they were supposed to do, and contributed to the Social Security kitty all those years, would have been told, "Sorry, we can't pay you." And the military members who the Tea Party people seem to think they emulate would have gone unpaid also.

Of course, it's not really over just yet. Everybody still has to vote, and let's face it, little bits of the crisis they're supposed to be trying to prevent will still come to be. The US economy, and the US government itself, will not stop on a dime. It's more like one of those oil supertankers that need thousands of feet to make even the smallest course changes.

And, for what it's worth. a balanced budget is mandatory. There's no way it can just be pushed aside. But adding a constitutional amendment saying the budget must be balanced cheapens the Constitution. You don't have to add an amendment in order to do it. Just... do it.

Mass T-RANT-sit (Government Follies Post #1)

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority, a New York State agency that manages public transportation systems in and around New York City, wants to charge $1 for Metro Cards. They've been trying for awhile now to encourage reloading existing cards rather than buying new ones. That's well and good for people who use the subway or the city buses every day, or at least live near a subway station where they can recharge their card before going on the bus.

But for us in Westchester County, which signed on to using MetroCards a couple of years ago, this amounts to a tax or a fee, for using a system we didn't ask for. I happen to live in Mount Vernon, which borders the Bronx. I can walk to the 241st Street subway station to recharge my card... theoretically, at least. More about that later. The point is, someone in, say, Tarrytown or in Mount Kisco, doesn't have a subway station nearby to put more money on their cards. Their local Metro North train stations have ticket machines that will dispense MetroCards, since MetroNorth is a division of the MTA, but those machines don't recharge existing cards.

The MTA would probably claim that the cost of allowing for recharging cards outside the city is prohibitive, not cost-effective, and so forth and so on. But there is an obvious solution to that problem. Since the cards are issued by the MTA, and Metro North is run by the MTA, just allow for Metro Card use for Metro North train fares. Metro North is not a closed system as the NYC subways are, but the system could be made to accommodate the cards if the MTA wanted to do it. 

As it happened, I went to the 241st Street subway station intending to put some money on one of my Metro Cards, only to see when I got there that I couldn't get into the station. It was closed because of trackwork. Riders were being offered shuttle buses to the 180th Street station, but I wasn't about to ride to 180th Street just to put money on my card. I wound up using the remaining balance on my one Metro Card with money on it to go to a local store, then taking a cab home, since I didn't have change or a Metro Card for the bus. Again, if there were a way to recharge the cards in Westchester, I wouldn't have to go the subway station just to find that I can't get in.

Yeah, I know, I didn't have to wait until I had only one ride left to recharge. But that's beside the point... ;-)

Clowns Packing Up Albany Circus?

First off, I apologize to any actual clowns or circus performers who may read this and be offended by my decision to characterize the warring New York State senators as clowns. I did not mean to offend your noble profession...

So it's beginning to look and sound like the circus (Bungling Brothers/Empire State Circus) that's been preoccupying the New York State Senate for the past five weeks has finally run its course, with the renegade Democrats Hiram Momserrate Jr. and Pedro Espada finally settling down and dancing with what brung 'em, as the saying goes. Espada has been making a pitiful attempt to frame this as something other than a power play. But he went from an apparently unhappy Democratic senator voting Democratic, to a Democratic senator voting Republican and being appointed Senate Majority Leader by the Republicans, to voting Democratic and being appointed Senate Majority Leader by the Democrats. It's bad enough that he's deluded enough to be clearly unfit for public office, but does he really think anyone else outside of Albany (and Syracuse, where deluded billionaire Tom Golisano lives) shares his delusion?

I say fire all of 'em. Monserrate, Espada, Dean Skelos, everyone who was part of this plot that paralyzed government and cost the state, counties, and municipal governments millions and millions of dollars, while they argued over whose (majority) was bigger. But, of course, they can't just be fired, since they were elected. But they can be denied the opportunity of being rehired (re-elected) when the next terms come up. The people these miscreants represent should make it clear that they shouldn't even waste their time thinking about running for re-election.

But that's not all.

I say, total up the apparent losses to all the affected jurisdictions, and make them pay. Better yet, since billionaire Tom Golisano has nothing better to do with his time than muck up government for his own amusement by instigating political coups, prosecute him for obstruction of government services and make him foot the bill. He has the money, and if the forces lined up against him (there are almost 20 million people in New York State) exert enough pressure, he'll have no choice but to pay up and, in the future, mind his own business and stop using the state government as his own personal sandbox to play with as he pleases.

Them's my two cents...

MORE Bonuses for AIG?!

Let's see...
The federal government (that is, We the People) owns 80% of AIG...

AIG is in the process of doling out $165 million in more bonuses...

And, according to the Treasury Department, nothing can be done about it?

That's ridiculous. AIG got over $100 billion in federal bailout funds. That means the people charged with managing the company did not do a good job, by any measure. Bonuses are supposed to be a reward for doing a good job. So, why are these people getting bonuses? More to the point, why is AIG getting federal money?

I say, cut off the bonuses, and let it be known that that's just the way it is. If these people want their bonuses that bad, well, since AIG (standing in for We the People) claims to be contractually bound, make the execs sue the government for the money. Such a lawsuit is bound to be covered as much as possible by the media. Maybe the extra scrutiny is all that's needed to make them fall back and make do with the millions they've already been paid.

AIG also says they'll "work on reducing bonuses in future years by 30%," but they can and should be made to do better than that. As long as the government has a stake in the company, in fact, there should be no bonuses. Make that their motivation for getting the company back on the right track.

To be fair, AIG did not fall into such a deep hole only because of the stupid bets they made with their policyholders' money -- the hole got deeper after AIG started falling, but the company itself dug the original hole. AIG insures the banks and financial service companies that all fell so hard throughout 2008, so they would have landed hard no matter what. AIG is also one of the companies that has to cover the loss for airlines whenever a plane goes down. AIG actually insures ("reinsures") insurance companies. But they wound up falling into the hole in the first place, not because of any of that, but because they violated a cardinal rule of the insurance business: do not risk policyholders' money. When an insurance company begins making high-risk investments in the same mad grab for cash that endangered Wall Street, well, we've all seen the result. In this case, it means the government winds up owning 80% of what should by most accounts have been a private company gone bust. After all, AIG may be a huge company, but it's not the only reinsurer. If it had gone under, there are plenty of insurers that could have taken up the slack. The interim would have been quite bumpy for the policy holders, particularly for the airlines (at least it seems that way for me). Watching such a big company go bust, though, would have sent a message to other companies -- namely, that they shouldn't think they're somehow entitled to a bailout from the Feds. Now, of course, because of all the money that's been handed out, there's that much more anger from the public, because the fat cats have been bailed out but the general public, the ones who are out of work and competing with millions more people for the few jobs available, are only getting crumbs.

And then Dick Cheney goes on TV and says that the Bush administration shouldn't be blamed for the mess "that was handed to the Obama administration." Well, who handed it to them? And who made the policies that created the mess? Cheney also said that the previous administration "achieved all its goals in the campaign in Iraq." Well, that can be true only if its goals included enriching Cheney's friends in the military-industrial complex, companies like Halliburton, and Bechtel, and of course the oil companies that are making billion-dollar deals in Iraqi Kurdistan (I'll add the link when I find the Forbes.com article).

Naming Rights vs. Bailout

I see that I'm not the only one who thinks it's wrong that Citibank and others can give out tens or even hundreds of millions of dollars to sports arenas for naming rights, then turn around and beg the federal government for bailout money. As far as I can tell, the furor seems to be contained to the New York area, since Citibank has agreed to pay the NY Mets $400 million over twenty years for the naming rights for the Mets' new stadium, set to begin use this year. But I wouldn't be surprised if it goes farther than that. This bears some research...

Mets' chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon says Citibank is right in continuing to pay the money. Of course he says that, he and his team are getting those millions. But I can't help thinking that his perspective is corrupted by the estimated half-billion dollars that the Mets' parent company, Sterling Equities, is rumored to have lost in the Bernie Madoff scandal.

It looks to me like the Feds are paying Citibank to replace what the Mets lost to Madoff. Pretty good deal, if you can arrange it...

Interesting quote for the day...

...from Shirley MacLaine, of all people:

It is useless to hold a person to anything he says while he's in love, drunk, or running for office.

It's Been Way Too Long (part one)

What with a governor trying to auction off President-elect Obama's Senate seat, the New York media trying to anoint Caroline Kennedy as Hillary Clinton's successor in Congress, Ponzi scammer Bernie Madoff (the fifty-billion-dollar man), the government throwing billions of dollars after companies that will probably collapse anyway, and God knows what else means I would have had plenty to write about -- but I've had some personal issues that kept me from posting. But the news that some person going by the handle of Fishgrease Jenkins is being blamed for encouraging shootings in Brooklyn (like the ones in the Brownsville section of Brooklyn last night) and attempting to defend himself that finally pushed me to go ahead and post something.

First off (and in no way am I suggesting this is most important): ¡¿FISHGREASE?! Of all the things this thug could have chosen to call himself, he couldn't come up with anything better than ¿Fishgrease? But then, judging from that lightweight ringtone-jingle of a rap he calls "I'm from East New York," Fishgrease is probably about as original as he can manage. (Why do these rappers all try so hard to sound just like everybody else?)

I do have to say, though, that it's kind of a knee-jerk reaction, to make a scapegoat of this one video and its apparently challenged author for five people being killed in Brownsville. Unfortunately this is all too common in Brooklyn and anywhere people can easily get guns, and see them as the go-to method for settling "disputes."

Blagojevich: Jay Leno's been calling him "Governor Sonofabitch," and understandably so. And yet the governor says he did nothing wrong, I'm guessing because no actual money changed hands. But if there are FEDERAL wiretap recordings proving that he was soliciting offers for Obama's former Senate seat, how can he claim innocence? Conspiracy is just as much a crime as bribery, in case you didn't know, Governor...

Bailout: Speaking of Leno, he's been making a good point about this bailout situation -- the government was all too quick to throw billions of dollars at the financial "industry," when all they really do is move other people's money around. But when it came to the car manufacturers, who actually make and sell a physical product, they're hemming and hawing. Rightfully so, since the Big Three car companies have waved their wastefulness and arrogance in everyone's faces -- flying to Washington separately in corporate jets to beg Congress for money -- but it would have made a lot more sense if Congress had been as cautious with Wall Street as they're being with Detroit. And notice that, when it looked like whatever help they got from Congress would come with conditions, Ford suddenly didn't have an immediate need for the money. So why were they there begging for it?

And now the sports industry is getting into it. Sports teams have a long history of raking in millions of dollars during the season and then, when they decide they want/need a new home, they beg their home city and state for help. Why would the New York Yankees, about to move into a brand-new stadium, be in need of help if they can afford to set aside $420 million-plus for three players? I know this amount is a multi-year commitment and not a one-time expenditure but still, if you have that kind of cash to hand out, why should you get any money out of We the People?

And why isn't the federal government forcing sports teams to give back any naming-rights money from banks and other financial-industry players getting bailout money? The naming rights money doesn't nearly match what the bailouts will add up to, but every dollar these companies get back from the sports teams is a dollar the Treasury Department (that is, We the People) won't have to dole out.

Meeting of the Presidents

Yesterday I saw a paper with a cover photo of the Obamas and the Bushes in front of the White House, as I'd imagine most papers had in the US. But apparently none of Bush's people involved with arranging the photo-op thought about how this photo would work wih a tabloid paper like the NY Daily News. With the paper fully opened out, it's a wraparound photo of both couples; but on the newsstand it's the Obamas on the front cover and the Bushes on the back. To most people, apparently, that's just about right. Oh well...

Hookers and Cheaters and Britney, Oh My!

I'm back. Sorry if it looked like I'd abandoned this blog...

Spitzer and Paterson

By now everyone on the planet knows about former New York State governor Eliot Spitzer and his foolishness with high-priced prostitutes and with money-laundering, both on his own end (moving money between accounts to avoid triggering bank secrecy procedures) and in his dealings with the escort service that got him busted (paying a shell company that was under surveillance). He is both a former prosecutor and a former state attorney general, so I think it's fair to say that he couldn't possibly have been any dumber in how he went about his business.

All concerned parties in Albany breathed a sigh of relief at the prospect of dealing with the incoming governor, Spitzer's lieutenant governor David Paterson. But now it's come out that Paterson and his wife have both had affairs in the not-so-distant past. Since he came out with it -- actually they both admitted to having cheated -- it shouldn't really be a major issue, though of course the media is going to milk every drop of coverage they can wring out of it. A greater issue, maybe, is that he misused campaign funds at various times, usually reimbursing the payments later. So what? What politician hasn't dipped into the till and then repaid it later? The crime, when there is one, is using taxpayer funds, or campaign funds, for personal things and then not reporting or repaying. But, as was pointed out today, there are probably plenty of people not at all happy that the man at the top of New York State's government is black. If they can find something, anything, that might discredit him, they could consider it worth their while to fling it at him and see what happens.

That includes today's page 5 article in the New York Daily News on Paterson's past experiments with drugs. There were "whispers" circulating Albany about his past drug use, so he admitted to having used marijuana and cocaine a few times. This was in the 70s, when he was in his early 20s. The man is 53 now. Let it rest.

Or would those same folks rather have to deal with... Governor Joe Bruno, with the potential to be the Republican version of the Democrat "bulldog" Spitzer?

And on top of all this, it now comes out that some political sleazebag (his own self-description) named Stone now claims that he was the one that tipped the Feds off to Spitzer's wrongdoing while he was being paid consultant's fees of $20K a month by Bruno and other Republicans. But -- get this -- Stone claims also that, although Spitzer was in the middle of a smear campaign against Bruno, he
did not tell Bruno about the Spitzer dirt he mailed off to the Feds.

And this is someone with no sense of loyalty (but what sleazebag is ever loyal?) -- he hates Bruno's top aide so much that, even though he considers Bruno his mentor, he'd "happily" bring Bruno down if that's what it takes to put the aide out of the picture.

And they call "Kristin" a whore...

(Except for this line, I don't think Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick deserves even a mention here. "Liar liar," etc.)

Get Your Britney Fix Here

I'm not one to join the Britney Spears media pileon, especially since I'm NOT member of the media, but it's interesting that Britney decided to start her "artistic reputation rehab," as NY Daily News entertainment writer David Hinkley puts it, by taking a cameo role in a sitcom. In this case, "How I Met Your Mother." I've never watched the show, and didn't get a chance to see it last night, but by all accounts she did good. Let's see what happens next...

Interesting quote from Charlize Theron

Esquire magazine's annual poll claims that Charlize is the "sexiest woman alive." She is a good-looking woman, though I have major qualms with the idea of her being the sexiest alive. (Esther Baxter, anyone? Somaya Reece? I could name others...) But she had an interesting quote in the article; after speaking about working with director John Frankenheimer, she made a comment about, as the paper said, "a different kind of American director -- one that frequents the Oval Office instead of the back lot." She says, "I grew up in a country that learned the lesson that you can't impose your way of life on 26 different kinds of people just because you call yourself righteous... I think there are lessons this country still has to learn."

NY Daily News article: Charlize winner of battle of the babes

Fred Thompson needs to do his homework

In today's NY Daily News it's reported that Thompson has hired ex-Virginia senator George Allen to be a top advisor to his presidential campaign team. Allen was forced from office after the controversy that came out of his using a racial slur (macaca) to refer to an Indian-American man who was tracking Allen's campaign for a political rival. He claimed he didn't know what it meant, but what kind of person calls people names without knowing what the name means? And even if he really didn't know, why did he feel the need to single out this particular person for namecalling? I'm sure questions about this will come up on Thompson's campaign stops. If he wants to be President, he'd better be ready.

Wikipedia article on macaca

Big Brother? No, more like Big Nanny

Towards a Nanny Internet -- "Are we moving towards a Nanny Internet? Between network neutrality, laws requiring dating sites to perform background checks and ISPs to rat out their users, laws banning anonymous posting, and cyberbullying legislation, one might argue that the Nanny Internet is shaping up nicely. Or not."

If Charles Barkley Were President

Video interview of Charles Barkley, pointing out what he sees wrong with politics as it's done today. He makes some good points, too...

If Sir Charles Were US President

It just occurred to me that if "Sir" Charles Barkley were to become president, we'd have to call him "Lord President."

NOT!! :-)

Mark Twain quote on Iraq, um, I mean the Phillippines

Mark Twain could have been a prophet, it looks like. As you read the following quote, change "the Phillipines" to "Iraq," "Filipino(s)" to "Iraqi(s)," and "Spanish" to "Saddam Hussein's," and this quote could have been made recently about the current war in Iraq, instead of one hundred years ago about a war halfway around the world in the Phillipines (from Wikipedia):

"There is the case of the Philippines. I have tried hard, and yet I cannot
for the life of me comprehend how we got into that mess. Perhaps we
could not have avoided it -- perhaps it was inevitable that we should
come to be fighting the natives of those islands -- but I cannot
understand it, and have never been able to get at the bottom of the
origin of our antagonism to the natives. I thought we should act as
their protector -- not try to get them under our heel. We were to relieve
them from Spanish tyranny to enable them to set up a government of
their own, and we were to stand by and see that it got a fair trial. It was
not to be a government according to our ideas, but a government
that represented the feeling of the majority of the Filipinos, a govern-
ment according to Filipino ideas. That would have been a worthy
mission for the United States. But now -- why, we have got into a mess,
a quagmire from which each fresh step renders the difficulty of
extrication immensely greater. I'm sure I wish I could see what we
were getting out of it, and all it means to us as a nation."

As always, this quote refers to a miscalculation on the part of the US government. Or, rather, it resulted from the custom of going in shooting first, then figuring out what the suitation is and what is at stake. In this case, Spain had lost the Spanish-American War -- which many believe the US provoked by blowing up an American ship docked in Cuba and blaming it on the Spanish -- resulting in the US gaining rulership over Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Phillipines. Since Filipinos had been putting up an armed resistance to Spanish rule, the US mistakenly thought the Filipinos would be happy with their new rulers.

Wrong. They didn't want new outside rulers, no matter who they were. The result was four years of war in a land where both the terrain and the culture were totally unfamiliar to the US forces, resulting in four years of war and over four thousand of American solders killed.

Seem the least bit familiar?

Stop snitching? How about "Grow up"!

Every time I hear about these idiot rappers and others going around talking about "stop snitching," I just want to wring somebody's neck. People have a right to be able to go about their lives confident in the fact that, if they are done wrong, somebody who saw something till speak up on behalf of the person who was hurt. Instead, you have these fools talking about some "code of the street."

When I was much younger, I understood that there were certain things that distinguished "grown-ups" from kids. One of them was that grown-ups had to go to work, while kids didn't (and usually couldn't). More importantly, I know that when you passed a certain point in your life, you were expected to take responsibility for your actions. If an eight-year-old breaks a neighbor's window, his (or her) parents have to pay for it. But if a working teenager or adult does the same thing, he or she is responsible for it. To run away from responsibility was to avoid "being a responsible person," that is, an adult.

Which means that these idiots pressuring people to "stop snitching" are basically overgrown boys and girls trying to pass themselves off as men and women. Do you hear me, Tony Yayo? You "had something to do" with a shooting that escalated from your G-Unit crew's stupid tactic of starting beef with any- and everybody just to get headlines, and it ended up with a man being killed in cold blood. Until this matter is settled (and if you did the shooting, that means you behind bars), YOU CANNOT CALL YOURSELF A MAN. Grow up, and take whatever the law has coming to you like a man.

But wait, there's more...

The New York State Metropolitan Transit Authority has a slogan, "If you see something, say something," to prevent would-be terrorists from disrupting services or taking lives. The saying also applies to those "stop snitching" idiots. If you see a crime being committed, especially against someone who did nothing to merit being wronged, you have a responsibility (there's that word again) to speak up. To do otherwise, again, is avoiding being a responsible person, an adult.

Did you hear that, Busta Rhymes? Until you do right by the family of your slain bodyguard, YOU CANNOT CALL YOURSELF A MAN. "Doing right" by them doesn't mean only paying for the funeral arrangements and whatever else you might have done to ease a guilty conscience. It means speaking up so that the triggerman, be it Tony Yayo or whoever, will go to jail and pay for what he did. As for you, Busta, you don't have to prove anything to people who don't want to grow up, unless you yourself don't want to grow up either. Until this thing happened I had always thought you were a stand-up guy, as they say. I guess I was wrong...

Being responsible also means not blaming others for your own stupidity or lapses of judgment. You hear, Lil Kim? You refused to testify against people who cooperated with the police. What in God's name was the poInt of that? Don't you know that anytime you even refuse to answer a cop's question on the street, they can get you for obstruction of justice? Even if you harbor a fugitive that you know is innocent, you are still guilty of obstruction even after the person's innocence is proved. That charge doesn't mean allowing someone to get away with something, it means not cooperating. You chose not to cooperate, so you went to jail. Case closed. Yet you run around, yapping to anyone who will listen that your former friends "snitched" on you. But they didn't make you decide not to cooperate, that was your choice. Until you can own up to that (and shut up and move on) , YOU CANNOT CALL YOURSELF A WOMAN.

I could go on and on -- the hip-hop world, in particular, excels in providing examples of this kind of stupidity -- but I've made my point. Once you pass a certain age, you take responsibility for your actions. That is what "responsible adult" means. If you won't do that, YOU ARE NOT AN ADULT. Period.

And just for the record, I am not some old, conservative, Frank Sinatra contemporary who just "doesn't get the younger generation." Nor am I Stanley the Grouch, um, I mean Stanley Crouch writing incognito. I'm 41 years old; I grew up with rap but I remember when there were no rap records. I remember when there weren't so many thirtysometings walking around acting and talking like teenagers to appeal to an audience who will forget all about them in six months.

I'm boss, Hil tells Bill (updated)

Originally posted 3/21/06 -- update at the end

It will be interesting to see just how this works out. Hillary Clinton, the wife if I understand correctly, wants to OK all public statemens by Bill Clinton, her husband, before he makes them, in order to make sure he doesn't say or do anything to hurt her chances of getting the Democratic Party's endorsement for President in the 2008 election.

I'm boss, Hil tells Bill

The thing is, I don't see a whole lot of conflict in some of what the press is portraying as conflicting statements made by the two in recent weeks. For instance, Hillary Clinton made it clear that she voted in favor of the resolution to remove Saddam Hussein from power, seeing it as a move to stabilize the Middle East. Bill later went on record as saying that the Bush administration made errors in judgment in determining just how long it would take to remove Saddam and his supporters and oversee the transition to a democratic government.

Where's the conflict? Did Hillary say that she thinks the President and the military are doing exactly what needs to be done? I don't recall reading or hearing that. Nor do I recall Bill Clinton saying that Saddam should have been allowed to stay in power. The conflict, if there is any, is just the press making a mountain out of a molehill in order to sell newspapers and attract TV news viewers. After all, the NY Daily News article this post links to is advertised with a cartoon of Hillary Clinton pulling the strings of a zipper-mouthed Bill.

UPDATE: Suddenly I'm picturing Hillary Clinton dancing around the house in Chappaqua, singing along to Kelis' "Bossy."

NFL Commissioner Condi?? Secretary of State Tagliabue?!

Current NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue has announced that he intends to leave office in July unless the NFL owners haven't found a replacement for him by then, in which case he might stay a bit longer. An article in today's NY Daily News lists ten possible replacements for Tagliabue, among them US Secretary of State Condolezza Rice, ex-US President Bill Clinton, and ex-NYC mayor Rudy Giuliani. Of the three, I'd have to say that Giuliani is probably the one most owners would take seriously. On the other hand, during his tenure as mayor he tended to come across as hall-monitor-in-chief rather than the city's CEO, and the billionaires and multimillionaires that run the NFL might not appreciate someone with that demeanor. (Though I recall some of the members of my high school's Red Brigade, as we called them, and they were a tough bunch. Charlotte Rodriguez could whip the NFL into shape pronto.)

Condi Rice actually said, back when she was national security advisor, that she would be interested in the job once Tagliabue left office, but a story in today's Daily News makes it clear that though she's a huge football fan -- "she thinks football is the greatest sport on earth," according to a spokesperson -- she won't be leaving the White House for the NFL, though at least one owner is clearly in her corner should she change her mind. Bill Clinton is also being touted by another Daily News writer as a good candidate to replace Tagliabue, though dealing with NFL owners' egos could make him nostalgic for Pennsylvania Avenue, according to this article.

[Interestingly, Condi made this statement about wanting to be NFL commissioner during Bush's first term, suggesting that either she didn't expect Bush to be (re-)elected or she didn't plan to stick around for a second term.]

And if Hillary Clinton getting elected to Capitol Hill while her husband was still President made a big splash in the news, imagine Bill as NFL commish while his wife's running for or if she's elected President!

Better the NFL than major league baseball, I say. Hillary's supposedly a lifelong Chicago Cubs fan, she would be hard-pressed to refrain from meddling if Bill were to become MLB commissioner, with all the mess that's going on in baseball these days. There's the Barry Bonds situation (retire, please, NOW); the "ownerless" Washington Nationals, who will never be allowed to become competitive as long as all of baseball's owners officially co-own the team; and who knows what else could pop up.

UPDATE: It has come to light that not only is it Condi Rice's dream job to be NFL commissioner, but it's also Paul Tagliabue's dream job to be Secretary of State! He's already on a couple of foreign policy committees, due to his past high-level employment by the federal government, and still has high security clearance. Maybe the Feds and the NFL could work out a trade?

Price gouging because they can

Since I have a few chronic health conditions that require me to take medication daily, I'm very interested in medical developments and events that affect the prices and availability of medications. So sometime ago, when I got an email pointing out how medications that drugstores charge anywhere from 50c to $2 per pill contain fractions of a cent worth of medicine, it made me quite upset.

I'm fortunate enough to have insurance coverage from my government job, as well as secondary Medicare coverage since I'm an organ transplant recipient. But millions of people in this country don't have ANY health coverage, and millions of others don't have enough, forcing them to forgo needed medications in order to eat or to have a roof over their heads. And even those who have coverage are at risk of losing it when employers have to deal with escalating premiums due not only to fraud, but also to rising medication costs.

With the billions that the pharmaceutical companies make each year, this is uncalled for. Here is another blogger who agrees, telling her story.