Despite Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge's claims otherwise, it has been a fairly benign holiday season. Nonsense, however, is starting to percolate and the burbling has been intensifying over the last few days. While Tom Ridge, terror czar, intensifies efforts to induce gut-wrenching panic, the rest of the world is getting just plain annoyed. The Dems continue their winning strategy. "Downer" meat is now banned, joy, and those damned Canadians are at fault again. The Brits are still fretting about Diana and the IMF scolds the US about its impossibly bad budget.

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ABD

The "Anybody But Dean" campaign being waged by the rest of the Democratic party will surely go down as one of the great bonehead "strategies" of this or any political era. Indeed, most of the Democratic nominees have been far more vicious in their attacks on Dean than any Rebublican yet. Republicans really haven't, and don't, need to do much of anything right now as the Dems are doing it all themselves. As Stephan Zunes notes, "To have virtually the entire Democratic House leadership openly criticize a policy statement made by their own frontrunner appears unprecedented." Kerry and Leiberman are certainly leading the charge of the bozo brigade. Responding to Dean's request that the Democratic Party leadership bring the candidates together and put a halt to the internal bickering or at least temper it, Kerry calls such a suggestion "divisive and threatening". Let us all repeat that: a call for unity is divisive. The man clearly has no idea what he or anyone else is even saying and that is playing out in the polls as Dean remains strong and Kerry gets tossed back for obviously being too small a fish.

Apart from that ugliness, one of the worst aspects of this in-fighting is the wasting of the grassroots of efforts by groups like MoveOn, whose recent Bush in 30 Seconds contest drew an enormous response and produced some excellent, independently made anti-Bush advertisements. There are currently 15 finalists in the contest and the Democrats could easily just start pasting these all over the airwaves. The folks who made them would love that to happen. Unfortunately, the Dems are so lost in their own embittered fog, efforts like this are going completely unnoticed while the Republicans press an attack against MoveOn which should, by rights, see a vigorous defense by the Democrats who remain shockingly silent and unaware of such efforts. Indeed, the Democratic bungling and incompetence on display now would indicate to most a frightening inability to run even a kindergarten class.


http://www.alternet.org/story.html?StoryID=17470

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Hyped Up

Secretly, admid the security maelstrom of international flight cancellations and a flurry of fingerprinting everybody who isn't American, "nuclear scientists" were skulking around the country with Geiger counters as Tom Ridge, scourge of terrorism, had them hunting for dirty bombs.

Firstly, anyone can walk around with a Geiger counter and know that when it's freaking out, its insistance indicates an imperative of get the hell outta wherever it is you are. Of course, "nuclear scientists" are tossed in to add credence to this scenario, which so far, has none. While this is going on of course, more international flights are cancelled and a new policy implemented by Tom Ridge, bane of bin Laden, now has every foreigner being fingerprinted at the border. Amusingly, Brasil announced a retaliatory counter-terrorism strike by fingerprinting every American entering that country. And yet officialdom is perplexed "that people [in the United States] aren't more hyped about all this".


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A60519-2004Jan6.html

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Oh, Never Mind

We can all relax now as Tom Ridge, bastion against terror, announced a lowered terrorist threat status today. Whew! Barely got through that one unscathed. Likely to be described as a matter of national security, just what transpired which would see a barely two day old policy of "fingerprint all foreigners" suddenly unnecessary will doubtless remain unknown. In rounding up six-year olds and other suspicious ne'er-do-wells, there likely came a clear and unmistakable signal that the Threat Awareness of America had indeed thwarted any would-be terrorist plots and that the Homeland Security Department had done their job...and done it well.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/09/national/09CND-ALER.html?hp

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Goin' Down Down Down

Last week, after that piteous cow in Washington was discovered to have BSE, the Agriculture Department announced a ban on the sale of meat from "downer" cattle. It probably comes as a rather unpleasant surprise to most Americans that such hapless beasts were part of the food supply to begin with. That sick, injured animals are routinely shoveled around stockyards is beyond the pale and yet more shocking is the fact that some 190,00 sick or injured animals are slaughtered yearly and rarely are any of them tested for...anything. Just how sick and/or injured does some creature need to be for the shoveling to stop? Does the National Cattlemen's Beef Association have a "five second" rule?


http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A43042-2003Dec30.html

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Operation: Restore Confidence

Alberta Premier Ralph Klein said that all cattle slaughtered at a provincial facility will be tested for BSE "in an effort to restore international confidence in its beef industry." Ordinarily that might be comforting. But remember, a politician, albeit a Canadian one, said those words. Note what actually is expressed and a politician's particular bend on the BSE situation: not "we want to do the right thing and make the food supply healthy and keep people from getting sick" but rather the concern is "restoring international confidence" in the beef industry. Now, is this really our major concern? While it might be the concern of the cattlemen's associations, are most Americans and Canadians concerned with the international confidence rating of the North American beef industry? No. What they are concerned about is getting the freaking disease and that is what should be the focus of the discussion. Amazingly, the subject almost never enters any discussion carried on by the officials involved. Ok, so maybe that isn't amazing. What is amazing is that no one else calls them on it.


http://www.cbc.ca/stories/2004/01/07/madcow_testing040107

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IMF Smackdown

Recall the WTO decision against US steel tariffs? Well, in another scolding move by an international financial body, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) released a report Wednesday which insists that the record-breaking debt being incurred by the United States is of such proportions that it threatens the financial stability of the world. Current rates of indebtedness could see the US's financial obligations mounting to 40% of its total GDP within the next few years. According to the report, the danger is that enormous US borrowing could jack global interest rates, thereby slowing investment and growth around the world. So much for those marvelous tax cuts spurring growth. Naturally, the White House has dismissed the report as alarmist. This is not entirely unbelievable considering that IMF policies are almost always responsible for making developing nations' economic conditions worse. Still, this has some obvious political capital for the Dems and they ought to run with it. But of course, they won't, as they're way too busy tearing each other limb from limb.


http://www.nytimes.com/2004/01/08/business/08FUND.html?hp

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Oh Diana

For those of you fretting that Diana may have been pregnant when she died some 6 and half years ago you may rest easier now. Indeed, the former Royal coroner has assured the world that it did not loose two royals in the fateful, fiery car crash in Paris in 1997. This comes on the same day that the current Royal coroner opened a formal inquest into the deaths of Diana and Dodi Fayed.

Is there some reason for this? Is there any possible way to quantify the worthlessness of this effort? Does Tony Blair have something to do with this? Almost seven years later, an inquest is being reopened into deaths which were determined at the time to have been accidental (drunk chauffeur, Henri Paul). Apparently, people are still habouring conspiracy theories and this seems sufficient for the British government to waste enormous amounts of time and energy. We at the BHC suspect that the ridiculously low murder rate in Britain is really what's behind this. The Royal coroner simply doesn't have enough to do. Well, by God, bring him over here!


http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/international/AP-Diana-Inquest.html

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Lies My Mother Told Me

It seems that Elicia Battle lied about having lost the winning lottery ticket to last week's Ohio Lottery and, thusly, the $162 million first prize. Claiming she "wanted to win so badly for my kids and my family", she went so far as to file police report and a lawsuit to block payment of the award to the actual winner. After admitting the lie, she now faces charges of filing a false police report and could wind up doing time. It appears that Ms. Battle has a history of credit-card fraud, assault and criminal trespass which could well see her plummet from the heady heights of imagined fabulous wealth to the clink in no time.

http://www.globeandmail.com/servlet/story/RTGAM.20040108.wmegamil0108/BNStory/International/

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boneheads are back on track.