Disparities

The AFL-CIO and other union organizations are flexing their tiny Colorado muscles to pressure the Democrats to pay more attention to them:

The nation's fractious labor movement has found common ground in Colorado, the newest battleground state for unions hoping to bolster their thinning ranks.

Leaders from opposing labor camps - the AFL-CIO and the breakaway group Change to Win - threaten to make trouble if the Democratic National Committee holds the 2008 convention in Denver's nonunionized Pepsi Center. Observers expect labor organizers to use the issue as leverage as they press the Democrats to help advance their ambitious union agendas.

Nationally, private sector union membership has fallen to about 7.4 percent, down from 7.8 percent at the end of 2005. While the public and private sectors combined have a higher percentage of workers in unions, Colorado lags the national average.

For some reason the reporter doesn't say what Colorado's percentages are: 5.3 percent in private industry, 7.7 percent combined. Nationally, combined public-private union membership is about 12 percent.

On the other hand, New York state, with 24.4 percent of its workforce unionized, has an unemployment rate of 4.9 percent--not too shabby; Colorado's, though, is an almost unbelievable 3.8 percent, more than a point lower.

Of course, that doesn't mean anything. As an academic quoted in the story points out, it's income disparity we're supposed to worry about now.

Sham defense demolished

Nice fisking by Pirate Ballerina of Ward Churchill clone Charley Arthur's typically sneering attempt to shore up Churchill's discredited claim that a real scholar backs up his lie that John Smith intentionally spread smallpox among the Wampanoag Indians.

Bonus! Commenter Noj speculates interestingly on the course of events at CU.

The winter that wouldn't die

They say Colorado gets 300+ days of sunshine a year. Any deviation from this line can have severe consequences.


Flowers undergo struggle session.

Tulips bow to the might of the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Update: Weather forces cancellation of Easter services at Red Rocks. I blame glo--God.

Liveblog! Doing taxes at (almost) the last minute

This may be a first. If not, there are some sick *ucks out there.

As small businesspersyns with a variety of income streams (trickles) (dry washes) our methods of document organization have to be exacting. During the year, every scrap of paper that has anything to do with taxes, we throw in a cardboard box. Sometimes the papers hit the box exactly. Most of the time, not. It works okay.

10:00 a.m.: We've dumped out the box. There's mouse poop in the bottom. Josie eats the mouse poop. (Update: Josie is a dog).

We go through all the papers, separating out the necessary from the un. D-a-W prints out last year's return for us to go by. We use TaxACT, which should let us file electronically, but has never quite worked.

10:28: We've made one big pile of paper into several smaller piles. Progress! Time for breakfast. There's a new place in Edgewater. Woo-hoo. Back sometime.

11:50: Nice place, sort of coffee-shoppish. Wi-fi. We sat on a couch by the window, looking out on the liquor store across the street. Good variety of old soaks buying their weekend supplies. We compared our physical deterioration to theirs, generally favorably.

12:00 p.m: Okay, we need to use the laptop for inputting. We've also got Charlotte's Web on the DVD player. Got some hellacious liveblog going here. Back later.

2:20 p.m.: I cried only a little when Charlotte was dying. Some Pig!

2:38: Got my part of things done. Now to pawn the laptop!

Oh yeah, I'm liveblogging. But my God we're poor.

Now we've got The Secret playing on DVD. Don't tell the D-a-W, but, blehhh. Hoke. Um. With a little common sense thrown in. These guys have great job titles: Bob Doyle, Author; Dr. Joe Vitale, MSC.D (Doctor of Metaphysical Science), Metaphysician; and my favorite, the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, D.D., Visionary. Hey, since The Secret is all about changing your thinking, I am now the Rev. Dr. Michael Beckwith, Visionary. Minus the dreads.

Oh, forget it. I'd have to change all my business cards. And my racial orientation. I'll just settle for a new car.

4:10 p.m.: Boy, this sucks. Not the tax preparation, the live-blog.

As for the taxes, we're getting there, but our debentures keep getting in the way of our amortizations. Hey, Morty!

Now we've got something called Blue Butterfly on the DVD. Kid who's dying goes to Costa Rica with William Hurt to hunt walla--kidding!--to hunt the rare blue butterfly. What happened to William Hurt's hair? They should be hunting for that instead. He should join the Hair Club for Growth.

I've been wanting to work that into a post for weeks: The Hair Club for Growth.

Uh-oh. Just when this was getting fascinating [sic], I have to input more numbers. Back lamer.

1:48 a.m.: Well that worked out just great. We had an outage until just a few minutes ago, so there went the liveblogging. You don't know what you missed.

Effluent

Dogs will always look for a toy close to wherever they happen to be, even if they know it isn't there--at least, that's what Billy Bob does.

Appendix A of Blues Guitar for Dummies is "How to read music." Eight pages. Me and this book are gonna get along just fine.

A toast from Robert Benchley in some movie I wasn't really watching: "May all your little ones be troubled."

Anybody listened to Dennis Miller's new radio show yet? I've heard a few minutes here and there, and despite the promos, which call him "the king of rants," he seems throttled back to the point of comatosity.

Who cares? He dislodged satanic hamster Michael "you should get AIDS and die" Savage. More than that one can ask of no man.

For months I've been collecting links for a long piece on Wikipedia. Now I've got so many I'm totally overwhelmed. And uninterested.

Favorite wikipedia story: Poor John Siegenthaler, Sr., a well-known journalist whose wiki for more than a day claimed he'd killed and eaten John F. Kennedy.

Fun paragraph saved from a newspaper years ago:

Custer also admitted he used LSD and hallucinogenic mushrooms, smoked marijuana and shoplifted a block of cheese from Kmart "every Sunday."

It's Friday, gotta have an old-time radio show. No, not I Was a Communist for the FBI. Tonight it's Bing Crosby, with Ella Fitzgerald and the Mills Brothers. A little noisy, a little scratchy, a little skippy, but after all it was taken from a nearly 60-year-old disk (9/11/49). Still eminently worth listening to.

Update: LGF: "Wikipedia Moonbat Says Rathergate Docs Are Real"

Everybody hit the ground

Orrin Judd notes that Fountains of Wayne has a new album out. Haven't listened to it yet, but Traffic and Weather has critics bleating with joy at the band's "continuing quest for pop perfection." That's ridiculous, of course: they've reached pop perfection several times, including on their very first album. Check out "Survival Car."

Limitation of Statues

A statue to be erected in Littleton that depicts a rifle-cradling Navy SEAL who was killed in Iraq has some people upset. Seems it's too close to schools and playgrounds:

The site for Danny Dietz's memorial occupies a corner near the Littleton middle school where he first dreamed of becoming a Navy SEAL.

According to the Post, Dietz, a Heritage High School graduate, died "fighting off dozens of al-Qaeda guerrillas. He posthumously received the Navy Cross for heroism." The News picks it up:

Linda Cuesta, whose child was at Columbine High School during the murders on April 20, 1999, told the City Council last month that it would be a mistake to put the statue where hundreds of children would pass it every day.

"After our experience with Columbine and the clear message of nonviolence that we teach within the Littleton schools - honestly, what are we thinking?" she said.

Honestly, some of us are thinking that it's soldiers like Dietz who ensure that the Littleton schools can indulge in fatuous but guilt-reducing exercises like teaching "clear messages of nonviolence." The Post concludes by quoting a Denverite to illustrate the proper attitude to take:

Ann Levy of Denver, who calls herself a "peacenik," would like to see Dietz's sacrifice honored in a different way.

"They should be putting up a peace dove instead," she said. "The question is do we stand for peace or do we stand for war?"

Um, just a guess, but: it depends on the situation? In the News, Dietz's widow responds well:

Dietz's widow, Patsy, said Thursday that comparing the guns at Columbine with the weapon in her husband's hands is like comparing a criminal's knife with a surgeon's scalpel.

"One is used to take lives," she said. "And the other is used to save them."

Update: Michelle Malkin has much more.

Everybody to die

Right now it's 30 degrees in Denver and half-ass snowing/sleeting/raining. Since according to Algore we can now control the weather, I'd like to request just a touch of gumball warmeling.

Speaking of which:

Southwestern droughts soon will become a permanent feature of life here - not just an occasional disaster to weather, according to a new study.

The Southwestern droughts of the past several dozen years are totally different from those that will occur as the planet warms, scientists discovered in a study published today in the journal Science.

"The future changes, they are something we haven't seen before," said Jian Lu, co-author of the study and a researcher with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder.

NCAR, if you haven't heard of them, is a leader in gorebal warbling hysteria.

Lu and his colleagues found that historic droughts in the Southwest could all be linked to natural variation in sea-surface temperatures, often to La Niña conditions, where the tropical Pacific Ocean cools.

That spins weather patterns around the globe - usually drying out the Southwest.

Such ocean-driven droughts can last one season or several years, but they break when the sea-surface temperatures shift back toward normal or warm, said co-author Richard Seeger, a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in Palisades, N.Y.

Seeger's research team used 19 computer models to study the origins of the droughts that have been predicted for the future Southwest in a warmer world.

Studying the origins of predicted droughts. That's a neat trick, even with 19 (count 'em!) computer models.

Global warming causes a very different type of drought, by sending rainstorm and snowstorm tracks northward, and by evaporating more moisture from the ground.

There's little relief, then, from shifting ocean temperatures, Seeger said.

"The next century, it will be like a permanent 1930s or 1950s drought," he said.

How does he know? To quote the old hymn: the models tell him so.

Where's that recommendation?

If CU's Privilege and Tenure Committee is going to make its recommendation this week on whether Ward Churchill should be fired, as P & T chairpersyn Weldon Lodwick told the Silver & Gold Record it would, they better step on it.

And how predictable is it that they'd wait, not just until a Friday, standard for news one wants buried, but until Good Friday? (Answer: very.)

Update: My ampersand key is wearing out since the Churchill case moved to the P & T Committee and I've begun quoting the Silver & Gold Record.

Update II: Sources who wish to remain alive tell the Drunkablog that the committee's recommendation may well be confidential, and that we as ordinary American citizens may not hear anything until the regents make their decision--perhaps weeks from now. Just a couple of months ago I would have scoffed at the notion of CU dragging this out until the end of the school year. Now it seems inevitable.

Update III: Unless, of course, "Charley Arthur" over at Try-Works wants to clue us in on the committee's decision.

Update IV: By the way: Pirate Ballerina notes that's it's been five days since Charley said he'd post an hour-long video "proving" Ward Churchill's Indian ancestry. Better speed it up, Charley! You're blog co-host Ben Whitmer must be getting antsy after sending an e-mail announcing Ward's video vindication to "everyone he could think of." You dont' want to embarrass Ben, do you? He's liable to make a death threat against you, and then you'd have to threaten him back, and he'd threaten you, and you'd threaten--well, it would just be a mess. (Though, of course, being revolutionaries who only urge others to violence, neither of you would actually be in any danger.)

Weird Bird Friday

Brazenly stolen from here.

--Drunkawife

UPDATE: Awwwwwwwww!

UPDATE 2: Remember Weird Bird Friday a couple of weeks ago? The Birds on a Wire one? Thanks to regular commenter, dougie, we now know where the picture came from. It's definitely worth a look. Thanks, dougie!

Boo, Hiss

And here I'd thought it was pretty much settled:

NEW YORK (AP) -- Scholars probing anew into the Cold War's most famous espionage case suggested Thursday that another U.S. diplomat, not Alger Hiss, was the Soviet agent code-named Ales.

Meanwhile, a stepson of Hiss said his chief accuser invented the spy allegations after his sexual advances were rejected.

Oh, for God's sake.

The two claims, presented at the daylong symposium "Alger Hiss & History" at New York University, provided startling new information that, if true, could point toward a posthumous vindication of Hiss, who was accused of feeding U.S. secrets to Moscow and spent nearly five years in prison for perjury before his death in 1996 at age 92.

That makes it sound like Hiss died in prison, when he actually served his term in the early 1950s.

Kai Bird, an author who has done new research on the 60-year-old case, said that although Hiss was accused of feeding secrets to the Soviet military intelligence agency GRU under the code name Ales, there was new evidence to suggest the real spy was another U.S. official named Wilder Foote.

Bird said that he and co-researcher Svetlana A. Chervonnaya had identified nine possible suspects among U.S. State Department officials present at the U.S.-Soviet Yalta conference in 1945. A process of elimination based on their subsequent travels to Moscow and Mexico City excluded eight of them, including Hiss, he said.

"It left only one man standing: Wilder Foote," Bird said.

Foote, a member of a well-known Boston family, died in 1974 after a career as a diplomat and owner of a string of newspapers. During World War II he was involved with U.S. lend-lease operations supplying the Soviets. . . .

Check out the wiki on Hiss. Every piece of evidence has been contested at one time or another. But here's the fun part:

Also Thursday, Timothy Hobson, an 80-year-old retired surgeon who was Hiss' stepson and grew up in the family home in Washington, D.C., said that Whittaker Chambers, whose bombshell allegations against Hiss broke the case open, had lied about his personal relationship with Hiss and had never visited the home as he claimed.

Hobson said that as a 10-year-old boy, he suffered a broken leg and was in a cast for months, during which time he met everybody who came calling.

Met everybody who came calling? What was he with that broken leg, a doorstop?

"It is my conviction that he was in love with Alger Hiss, that he was rejected by Alger Hiss and he took that rejection in a vindictive way," Hobson said. . . .

His evidence being, apparently, that he never met Chambers.

Hobson shared the platform with his younger half-brother, Tony Hiss, who has written two books that make the case their father was innocent. Hobson was close to tears as he said that he, as a gay man, was given an undesirable discharge from the U.S. Navy - and said that was what kept Hiss' defense lawyers from calling him as a witness in court.

"This puts it all on the record," Hobson said, to a partial standing ovation from the audience, including university faculty and students.

Maybe they should give him the Franco and Shpagetti Societal Helpfulness Award for Helpfulness to Society! All I know is, it's time for another chapter of I Was a Communist for the FBI! Tonight's episode: "The Red Octopus."

Update: The announcer on I Was a Communist for the FBI says "FBI" in a very bizarre way, doesn't he? Wonder if he was a communist.

Not a book review!

As I read Richard A. Posner's fine The Little Book of Plagiarism, one question kept recurring: why has no one ever called me, as the Wall Street Journal's Gary Rosen calls Posner (on the book's cover), "a one-man think tank"? Sure, I've been called a "one-man drunk tank," but it's just not the same.

Oh yeah, I remember why: Posner is a U.S. Court of Appeals judge, senior lecturer at the University of Chicago Law School, and author of lots of books on different stuff. Of course, I too am a judge, senior lecturer, and author of lots of books on different stuff. I just don't brag about it.

But you're safe, I'm not going to review the book, mainly because any review would be longer than the book itself. Just a couple of interesting facts and figures from the Jedge:

Laurence Sterne, whose great novel Tristram Shandy copies extensively and without acknowledgment from other authors, also sent letters to his mistress that he had copied years earlier from letters he'd written to his wife.

Nice guy. Thrifty, too. Discussing why plagiarists are sometimes rather too easily forgiven and "rehabilitated," Posner notes that

one reason for the ambivalence of reactions to plagiarism is that the Left, which dominates intellectual circles in the United States, is soft on plagiarism. Notions of genius, of individual creatiivity, and of authorial celebrity, which inform the condemnation of plagiarism, make the leftist uncomfortable because they seem to celebrate inequality and "possessive individualism" (that is, capitalism). Debora Halbert asserts that "for the feminist and the postmodernist, appropriation or Plagiarism are [Posner's sic] acts of sedition against an already established mode of knowing, a way of knowing indebted to male creation and property rights."

That reminds me of University of Colorado professor Tom Mayer, who in 2005 used that particular leftist argument in defending Ward Churchill (though he has since apparently abandoned it). Of one incident of Churchillian plagiarism, Mayer wrote:

Movement people did not conceive the world in terms of property rights, nor were they obsessed with using publications to chalk up status points. Thus the ethics of citation within the new left movement differed substantially from standard academic protocol.

As long as nobody was making money, of course.

Anyway, The Little Book of Plagiarism, besides being an intellectual tour de force, is an erotic roller coaster ride of thrills and suspense! You literally won't be able to put it down--Posner the one-man think tank developed a special book glue that prevents you from doing so!

Sorry, I promised. No review.

Update: Posner notes that attitudes toward plagiarism were much more relaxed in the 17th and 18th centuries. Sock-puppetry, it seems, was also more easily overlooked. James Boswell pseud- or anonymously praised himself and his works many times. Nobody seems to have minded (at least, as far as I could tell from Boswell's Presumptuous Task). Even now, 225 years later, it seems almost cute--that being the last word I'd apply to Ward Churchill, Natsu Saito and Ben Whitmer's several forays into sock-puppetry.

Not cute at all.

Update: "Movement people." Yurch.

MIM on Churchill's latest appearance with Lynne Stewart

The jolly folks at the Maoist Internationalist Movement have a sketchy account of Ward Churchill's appearance with terrorist-abetting (ex) lawyer Lynne Stewart in New York last week at a rally in support of convicted cop-killer Mumia Abu-Jamal.

After noting that Stewart said she was "pleasantly surprised that her sentence was only 28 months for conviction by a jury that saw oversized posters of Osama Bin Laden linked to her," MIM moves on to Churchill, who

was also noticeably upbeat despite the University of Colorado's attempts to fire him. He autographed his books after the speech. He pointed to the history of slaughter of indigenous people including in New York City going back to the 1600s. Yet he also pointed out that the federal government became more significant and repressive in the last century. . . .

In other words, ancient material. MIM adds a slight gloss:

From the 1600s to 1800s, Euro-Amerikans themselves could still advance even as they killed other peoples. They learned farming from natives for example as Ward Churchill pointed out. According to Lenin's theory, with the onset of imperialism as the highest stage of capitalism, decay and parasitism set in as the principal characteristics of the economic system. So we have a huge central government that specializes in war and policing--nothing that really advances society. As Ward Churchill answered one question, we already live in a police state and our responses must be according to that condition.

In other words, snore. MIM concludes by noting that:

The radio station WBAI 99.5 FM sponsored the event. The moderator for the talk said he started out hanging out with the Black Panthers in his community and, "I used to think that a requirement for being a member of the Black Panthers was to be paranoid," but he added that he soon learned the FBI really is there. Black Panthers provided security for Ward Churchill and speakers emphasized the reality of the existence of the state. Ward Churchill pointed out that COINTELPRO continues to exist just under new names and it has new technology at its disposal.

More interesting is MIM's announcement of rallies around the country in support of Ward Churchill on April 16-17.

Stop the Witch-Hunt against Ward Churchill!

Oust University of Colorado Chancellor Phil DiStefano!

Prosecute civil rights violators!

(h/t Snaps)

Update: Oops, the MIM page I cited for the rallies is from 2005. No rallies. Rats.

Update II: The Rocky is as dumb as I are (and later).

Solidaaarity!

First, if you haven't seen it already check out Pirate Ballerina's post for today. He presents many interesting facts and figures, and mocks Ward Churchill homonculous Ben Whitmer in an entertaining and effective manner. University of Denver professor Dean Saitta, who co-founded the Churchill-supporting Teachers for a Democratic Society (yes, let's Recreate68), makes an appearance as well, but is not mocked much at all.

Anyway, just wanted to note that since nobody's ever asked me to sign a petition proclaiming solid (or even liquid) arity with Ward Churchill, I went out and found one I could sign:


A-Aaron's 5-10% Bail Bonds on 13th near the Denver jail supports Dog the Bounty Hunter (be sure to listen to the hit tune "Set the Dog Free")
--and now, so does the Drunkablog!

Update: Yes, I lied. The guys in A-Aaron's wouldn't let me sign their stupid petition either. Something about "get out of here, pencil-neck," and "looks like a snitch to me."

Update II: A-Aaron's tried so hard to be listed first in the bail bonds section of the yellow pages and still got beat out by A-Aaardvark (three a's) 5 & 10% Bail Bonds.

Update III: Aaas it turns out, you can't avoid listening to "Set the Dog Free." Sorry.

"Critical thinking" = bad writing

Inside Higher Education notes that the full-page ad defending Ward Churchill bought by the Wardophile site Defend Critical Thinking has appeared in the New York Review of Books. Some idiot paid $9000 for the ad, putting it on his or her credit card. The text has been available at the site for a while, but here's the first paragraph:

The militarist reflex to rely on the war option for post-9/11 security is daily proving itself disastrously dysfunctional, and as its failures become more manifest, those American leaders responsible reaffirm their extremism, relying on a brew of fear, demonization, and global ambition to pacify a nervous, poorly informed, and confused citizenry at home. And where there are expressions of significant, principled opposition, the impulse of the rulers is often repressive. In such a setting it is hardly surprising that academic freedom is menaced, but not less troubling.

The decayed phrases pop out of their cans like botulistic cocktail weenies--fear, demonization, and global ambition; nervous, poorly informed, and confused citizenry; significant, principled opposition. Party-organ verbiage at its most zombie-like. You can practically see Stalin smiling over the signatories.

(h/t: Snaps)

Update: Fave line: "The oppressive strategy adopted often resembles a lion hunt, focusing toxic energies on those in the herd who seem most vulnerable." Is that how Teddy Roosevelt did it?

Scotty to be hefted into space

AP: "The ashes of James Doohan, who played chief engineer Montgomery "Scotty" Scott on the original "Star Trek" TV series, have been loaded into a rocket that is set to launch in New Mexico later this month."

Update: See, in his later years Scotty was not what you'd call sve--oh, forget it.

The way of my people

The fireworks boomed a second ago, and just now two F-16s cranked over the house at a couple thousand feet--ka-whammm! Our Colorado Rockies begin a new season at Coors Field! The future lies glittering before us!

Update: To be fair, the occasional nitwit or amiable chucklehead thinks the Rockies might finish third in the NL West.

Update II: The radio guy says Rockies mascot Dinger the Dinosaur will be handing out free poppers to kids 12 and under!

Update III: The Post has a nice Opening Day slideshow. Check out pic 11. Looks like they're at about 500 feet, not 2000.

Update IV: D-backs 8-6. "America's Pastime" my ass.

Update V: The Rockies' radio announcers have a blog! Think I'll go leave a comment linking to this post.

Update VI: Apparently they forgot to tell the web gink about their blog.

Update VII: So I'll link to Rox Girl, who exemplifies the triumph of hope over experience: "Not a pretty start to the season, but then again, we've had good starts go way bad in the past, so maybe the change will kick us in gear."

Truthforce!

Time for another I Was a Communist for the FBI! This episode: "Red Ladies" (2/25/53). Matt Cvetic interferes with the Commies' plans to take over the "Women's Peace League." Things sure have changed since those hysterical McCarthyite days. Now the peace leagues start out communist.

Six clips in search of a point

As Pirate Ballerina noticed, CU "Professor" Ben Whitmer has posted video clips at his Try-Works blog of discussions among the Keetoowah band of Cherokee about Ward Churchill's proposed associate membership in the tribe. Whitmer thinks these clips prove Churchill is a full tribal member as he claims, but, as any reasonable person will conclude, they prove nothing of the sort, but rather highlight the tribe's mistrust of Churchill.

I'm not going to put them up here. PB has them all.

Daily Kos on Iran and the Brit sailors

You'll be shocked to learn that it's all our fault. But first, the ritual (equivocal) condemnation:

The letters and the broadcasting of video of the sailors and marines have outraged the British government and, of course, the British tabloids. It’s hard to imagine that the British populace will be take a different stance. Publicly parading military captives before the cameras in the way that has been done is a clear violation of the Third Geneva Convention. The sort of thing that really pisses people off.

As LGF says, "BUT":

Sadly, there was a time when we took the Geneva Conventions seriously before Alberto Gonzales wrote in a January 25, 2002, memo that "the war on terrorism is a new kind of war, a new paradigm [that] renders obsolete Geneva's strict limitation on questioning of enemy prisoners and renders some of its provisions quaint."

The British government did not attempt to write itself out of the Geneva Conventions. However, as America’s chief ally in the war Tony Blair helped George Bush concoct, it certainly tainted itself with abuses of the sort given the seal of approval by Gonzales. So the cognitive dissonance that sounds when we hear Tony Blair trying to take the moral high ground in this matter is deafening.

The Kossack quotes the Grauniad today:

[British sailor] Turney may have been "forced to wear the hijab", as the Daily Mail noted with fury, but so far as we know she has not been forced into an orange jumpsuit. Her comrades have not been shackled, blindfolded, forced into excruciating physical contortions for long periods, or denied liquids and food. As far as we know they have not had the Bible spat on, torn up or urinated on in front of their faces. They have not had electrodes attached to their genitals or been set on by attack dogs. . . .

The false moral equivalence is, as always, sickening. The Kossack konkludes:

Whether Tehran was justified in taking the sailors and marines captive last week is something that can’t be ascertained fairly under the circumstances. What’s clear is that Iran deserves condemnation for its treatment of the 15 captives, even if that treatment doesn’t measure up to some of what Yanks and Brits have done in the past four years. What’s also clear is that we desperately need some mediator, someone with influence with the Iranians to urge them to put down the kerosene they keep pouring onto this crisis and figure a way to put out the fire before we all get burnt.

Way to end on a cliche, hemp-head. But you think we need a mediator, eh? I know just the fellow.