12 July 2004

Only in dreams

[source]

Cuba has ordered a study of its military recruitment program, hoping to enlist more young men in the armed forces during a period in which authorities say they are increasingly concerned about a U.S.-led military attack.

Ah, if only!

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Let's not be speciest

[source]

The European Union knows the precise number of cows grazing its fields, but not the number of citizens in the 25 member states, its chief statistician has been quoted as saying.

There’s a difference?

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Auditor, audit thyself

The UN is now accusing the Coalition Provisional Authority in Iraq of havingshoddy accounting with regard to money spent on reconstructing Iraq. While I would like the USA to be more transparent about how the money was spent, it does seem a bit odd that a program the USA ran for just over a year gets this kind of scrutiny but the Oil For Graft Food program has yet to have public audit.

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We're not partisan, we just prefer a particular candidate

[source, source]

The media “wants Kerry to win” and so “they’re going to portray Kerry and Edwards as being young and dynamic and optimistic” and “there’s going to be this glow about” them, Evan Thomas, the Assistant Managing Editor of Newsweek, admitted on Inside Washington over the weekend. He should know. His magazine this week sports a smiling Kerry and Edwards on its cover with the yearning headline, “The Sunshine Boys?” Inside, an article carrying Thomas’ byline contrasted how “Dick Cheney projects the bleakness of a Wyoming winter, while John Edwards always appears to be strolling in the Carolina sunshine.”

No, no bias there.

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If it's defined to produce useless output, why keep it?

[source]

Tony Blair’s war case has suffered a fresh blow after MI6 took the rare step of withdrawing intelligence about Iraq’s WMD, the BBC has learned.

So Blair is in trouble because MI6 gave him bad information? Isn’t the lesson here that MI6 should be disbanded since no PM will ever be able to use its information again because it might be wrong and the PM, not MI6, will take the blame for that?

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Sic transit gloria Alemania

[source]

an influential all-party committee of German MPs has recommended a mandatory speed limit of 130km/h (80mph) across the entire 7,000-mile autobahn network - and, for the first time, there seems to be enough popular support for the proposal to be approved by parliament.

Oh, truly this is a sad day. Why would Germany do such a thing?

Ernst Ulrich von Weizsacker, the chairman of the German parliament’s environmental committee and a member of the Left-leaning Social Democratic Party, which leads Germany’s ruling coalition, said that the time was is right for change. “People can see that it makes sense in the face of rising fuel prices, and increasing concerns about the environment and public safety,” he said.

Ah, so that when the Germans pass from history they’ll leave behind a clean landscape.

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Everyone likes soft targets better

[source, source]

An increasing number of Saudis who crossed the border into Iraq to fight the U.S.-led military occupation are returning home to plot attacks against the Saudi government and Western targets in the desert kingdom, according to Western counterterrorism officials and Saudis with ties to militant groups.

Well, yeah — the Saudi security force shoot back a lot less often and accurately than the Coalition forces.

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Clever or stupid? It's so hard to tell these days

[source, source]

At issue are the taxi vouchers the DNC wants to give to delegates arriving at Boston’s Logan Airport. Under the DNC’s proposal, taxi drivers would be required to accept the vouchers, worth $12 per passenger, in lieu of payment, even though the meter fare from Logan into the city, including tolls and an airport surcharge, is typically over $40. To add insult to injury, they’d then have to apply to the DNC to redeem the vouchers.

Soviet style central planning! One wonder why the DNC expects the cab driver to show up at the airport at all under this system. Is it all part of a clever plan to prevent any news coverage of the Democratic Party Convention, on the theory that the less people hear about Senator Kerry, the more likely they are to vote for him?

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