Activists link Vt. to sweatshops

Preventative bill awaits Douglas’ signature

MONTPELIER — At least three companies that contract with the state of Vermont for clothes and other materials are linked to overseas sweatshops, according to human rights advocates.

Several U.S. companies that recently supplied the state with shoes, boots, uniforms and other work-related clothes have some of their materials made in factories where there are reports of forced overtime, poor ventilation, union busting and even death, activists said.

“It does appear that the state of Vermont contracts with companies that are linked to sweatshops,” said Martin Cohn of Brattleboro, the owner of a public relations firm that conducted the research. “That means our taxpayer dollars are going to subsidize overseas sweatshops.” [snip]

[snip]
Several young prostitutes interviewed by the AP said they were having sex without condoms to attract customers now that so many more girls are on the streets. [snip]

She was paid about $18 and used the money to buy food for her parents and six siblings. She tells her family she has a job in town and they don’t ask her specifics.

“My parents were poor even before the violence,” she said. “Now that I’m on the streets, on good days, I get up to 2,000 Kenya shilling ($40) after sleeping with five or six men.”

She has no hope of returning to school. Her parents are out of work, and Janet’s contributions are vital to her family.

“At first, this job was torture to me,” Kimani said. “Sleeping with these men is terrible, and sometimes they are rough and hurt me. But with time, I have gotten used to it.”

Prostitution has long been a problem in Kenya, particularly on the tourist friendly coast. [snip]

The good news is, they don’t have any sweatshops in that part of the world. Instead of earning $0.75 a day, these children move in big money circles.

Thank you Vermonters and all you caring liberal New Englanders for saving the children from a fate worse than…than a sweatshop.

….Uhhh, alphabet. Check.  Geography.  Check.  Arithmetic. Check.  Name Teddy Bear “Muhammed”. Check…

(Lot of CAPITALS to follow) Is it just me, or is it irrational to think that a SCHOOL TEACHER in SUDAN, should already know…..in the era of post-DANISH CARTOONS!!!!…that inviting your students to name a TEDDY BEAR after the God if ISLAM is….dangerous.    She’s lucky she didn’t end up like Chinese Gordon.

Read about this idiot HERE.   That’s no library face….

US District Judge Nancy Gertner ignored Federal minimum sentencing guidelines and freed a crack dealer today.  No worries though because it’s really for the good of the community:

“Isn’t it time for us to say that there is on the one hand the impact of the drug trafficking and on the other hand the impact of mass incarceration of African-Americans from crack cocaine?” Gertner said from the bench Monday. “To suggest that the public safety requires the further incarceration of Mr. Haynes makes no sense.” 

That makes perfect sense to me.  Who in their right mind wants to get drug dealers off Boston streets?  Only an idiot would think removing this pillar of the community is a good idea.  But let’s not be too hard on Judge Gertner, she’s shirking her sworn responsibilities for the good of the children:

Glancing at Haynes’s 8-year-old son, Myles Jr., in the gallery with the defendant’s family, Gertner added, “Indeed, when I see your son, I think that public safety requires that you be with your son so that he doesn’t follow in your footsteps.” 

Sorry, but siring a child doesn’t make you a father.  Do you think Mr. Hayne’s is reading a bedtime story to his kid tonight and preparing a big turkey dinner for tomorrow?  I’m not a Federal judge, but I’m guessing that’s probably not the case.  In fact, the better question is do we really want Hayne’s senior influencing junior?  Given senior’s track record, it’s not a real stretch to imagine junior’s life being a lot better off without dad.

The irony here is that judges, like Gertner, are why sentencing guidelines became a necessity in the first place.  People got tired of weepy moonbat judges who refused to punish and remove criminals from the streets.  What we really need to start doing is removing more moonbat judges from the bench, so we can get more criminals off our streets.

                       Stay away from me.  Go CARE about someone else.

In 1992, when Bill Clinton said “I feel your pain” to AIDS patient Bob Rafsky during a campaign stop, he seemed to mean it.  And he did, in the same way he felt all the narcissistic sentiments of his various realities to come.  We learned that, as he continued to emote and feel things during his priapic presidency, the facts and values of his emotions varied a great deal.  But, whatever his faults, Clinton was a lone act; he just wore the comedy and tragedy masks and didn’t try to institutionalize his pathos.  For that, we have George W. Bush and Compassionate Conservatism.

“Compassionate Conservatism” as a theoretical approach to social problems is the creation of Marvin Olasky, professor/journalist,  former communist, Jewish atheist turned Born Again Christian, Yale grad and former Bush advisor.  The term derives from Olasky’s study of the relative successes of government and private programs in relieving the effects of poverty throughout American history.  Olasky’s ideas and conclusions were the basis for faith-based initiatives, some of them adopted by GWB as governor to Texas and later as President.  

Compassionate Conservatism passed Olasky’s empirical tests.  It had less to do with religion than it did with communitarian possibilities , and almost nothing to do with the administrative state as a dispenser of compassion.  Bush, however, has infused his administration with a soft compassionate conservatism, and pushed the phrase front stage, and  thence into that deplorable family of catch-phrases inflicted upon historians and the public by political dream merchants.   These phrases define eras, visions, goals, national purposes and the evanescent pursuits of political generations, not of “the people” themselves.  

The last full century was fouled by such blinding banalities - New and Fair Deals, New Frontiers, New Convenants, New This, New That, Straight-Talk Express, WIN, and lots more, plus that apotheosis of mawkish liberal romanticism, stewed with a touch of Albert Speer,  The Great Society.  All of them foundered in some way on the shoals of reality.  As vessels for everyone’s different wishes and interpretations, they could never really function as democratic programs.  

As a digression, what the hell was The Great Society?  Someone tell me.  If the New Haven of today, with its brutalist architecture, bloodstains and cement foliage resembles the progressive vision of 1968,  someone needs to be punished for the artwork and the final rendering.  Liberals reduced the faded,  but restorable illuminated script of American urban life to loopy spray-can graffito, not only in New Haven but in every old city in the country because they cared about the inhabitants!   Listen, Uncle Sam.  Wherever I hurt, please don’t touch me there.

The same is true of Compassionate Conservatism, which to me seems to be the spiritual rationale for the President’s  swelling sympathies for anyone who can make it across an American border, to holders of burdensome mortgages, or to a select few who can lay claim to natural rights somewhere across the seas.  Despite Mexican towns emptying of young men, most who never return, despite the  deepening Latin despotism that make it desirable to leave and abandon hope of change, despite tyrannical stasis in the Middle East among our allies, our indiscriminate goodness survives the contradictions and goes looking for another heart to heal.   And we haven’t even gotten to sub-prime borrowers and their angst.

Now Bush is  waxing sympathetic about injustice in Myanmar, which is not a moral gradient he needs to scale to remain compassionate, and which fades into insignificance anyway in the shadows of monstrous injustices in Africa and the Middle East.  No doubt Rice can make a compassionate case for the Burmese/Myanmaris who must be saved by the ameliorative West.  It’s lunacy. There’s a natural limit to caring; it’s cheap, its reality is unknowable, and conservatism is not about pain, its  simply about liberty and justice for all.   You don’t attain either of these things by sloshing in sentimentality. 

With George Bush we got prescription drug subsidies,  support for affirmative action, a volcano of dollars for the orgy of corruption and graft that followed the genuine suffering of Katrina,  open borders, and Bush’s promotion of his four C’s of “civility, courage, compassion and character” (First Inaugural Address),  but not a word about The Constitution or his governing philosophy.  When you have no governing philosophy to defend as President, just a boundless heart,  then the office is your personal hair shirt.  The last time we went down this road, we got the constipated spirituality and crabbed pieties of Jimmy Carter.  Maybe we’re better off this time.  I’m not sure yet.

Can anybody tell me what a degree in African-American Studies qualifies you to do? <Crickets chirping in the background> But thank goodness Harvard has attracted 2 preeminent African-American scholars back to the university. One of them is working on research of global importance too:

Morgan is a linguistic anthropologist and expert in global hip-hop culture who will concentrate on hip-hip’s role in AIDS prevention, Higginbotham said.

It’s good to see Harvard spending that huge endowment to better mankind. That’s going to be some valuable, earth shaking research. The next time you have trouble sleeping, it sounds like Professor Morgan’s papers might be a good bet to cure your insomnia.

The battlefield is about the size of Texas; four times the size of New England.  Its average annual temperature is like that of Massachusetts.  Its capital city is on the same latitude as Phoenix, Los Angeles and Memphis.  It’s mountainous, dramatically uplifted more than a million years ago by the thrust sheets of the advancing Indian subcontinent.  Roughly half of the country is contorted by its definining feature, a majestic but forbidding mountain range.  The capital is Kabul, the battlefield is Afghanistan and the mountain range is the Hindu Kush.

The Hindu Kush, translated by some historians as “Hindu Killer”, is a Himalayan extension of the Alpine system of Europe and North Africa.  It’s officially part of the Pamir-Karakoram chain of the Himalayas;  it angles southwest from Afghanistan’s border with Pakistan, the Durand Line.  There are seven mountain passes which have served as highways for invaders and trade at least since 1500 BC, when invaders from Central Asia brought what linguists now call the Indo-European languages to the region.

Alexander The Great, after marching and fighting the width of Afghanistan, used the Khawak Pass to reach Samarkand in 330 BC.  He led his starving army over the 12,000 foot snowy pass, and then west back through the Khyber Pass on the modern Hippie Trail to Kabul.  Today it’s likely that Taliban and other tribal fighters use the same passes for the purpose of fighting NATO and American troops.  The blood of thousands, maybe millions, of nameless soldiers and unaffiliated warriors has been spilled here since the first Aryans arrived 5000 years ago.

Afghanistan borders six countries.  Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west and south, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan and China to the north.  Its China border lies at the dead end of the valley of the Wakhan Corridor.  The Wakhan is a 150-mile long, ten-mile wide geographic tendril, like an appendix, projecting northeast, between Pakistan to the south and Tajikistan in the north to the Chinese border.  It’s an atavistic survival of Britain’s Great Game with Russia, a border anomaly established to deny Russia access to the Indian Ocean.   Marco Polo used the valley almost eight-hundred years ago to travel that portion of The Silk Road.  Today it’s a remote, hostile patch, the habitat of the Marco Polo sheep, and probably the route used to smuggle drugs to China.

The short account is that humans have been scrambling over, fighting for, and surviving in this land for 50,000 years.   It was Hellenized by the Macedonians and their successors, converted to Buddhism by adherents from India, ignored militarily by the Romans but conquered and converted by Muslims, trampled by Genghis Khan and Tamerlane, by Darius and other Persians and Parthians; invaded by Turkic tribes, by the British, the Russians and Americans.  Simulataneous with low-grade warfare, it was also a web of routes for The Silk Road, the commercial paths taken by bearers of luxury goods from the east to the Mediterranean world.  The world’s first mobile shopping mall.

The material for Julius Caesar’s silk curtains probably came through Afghanistan from China, over rocky, barren trails now prowled by American Rangers and Special Forces.  Julius and other Romans who possessed silk, believed that it grew on trees.  Julius, Augustus and Tiberius had intermittent difficulties with the Parthians, who, along with the Afghan Kushans, controlled the trade routes through Afghanistan.  The Romans were not welcome there.  The Parthians left no written account of themselves, but must have known the origins of silk.  Perhaps they played the first lasting joke on the Romans.  They told them it was gathered like fruit and nuts.

The historian’s routine explanation for Afghanistan’s long travail is that it lay at the “crossroads” of competing civilizations; that it was the junction between south and central Asia and the Middle East.  These designations are entirely theoretical to the historian-geographer.  They mean nothing.  The human explanation for the boiling activity in the region is that the wars of conquest that tortured Afghanistan for 5000 years were wars for local power, for goods, and to a lesser degree, religion.  They were fought for the things that fill the voids left by deprivation, insecurity and the anxieties of hard-scrabble life.   It hasn’t ended.

The communist coup staged in 1978 led to the Soviet invasion, and then to the Taliban in large part because of American indifference.  Millions were killed and exiled in the civil and religious wars of the past thirty years.  Today Afghanistan resembles nothing as much as itself of a thousand years ago.  Ghosts everywhere, in every corner of every mud hut and mountain pass.    It is our obligation to bring the country back to life. 

The Brits with the unbridled insistence on PC behavior are going to get their own country. What will they name it?

Voting With Their Feet

At Immigration Watch International they have the numbers for those fleeing Britain:

Britain is facing a mass exodus of people looking to escape the crime and grime of modern living. The country’s biggest foreign visa consultancy firm has revealed that applications have soared in the last seven months by 80 per cent to almost 4,000 a week. [snip]

They are almost all young professionals and skilled workers aged 20-40. [snip]

Like any situation in which there is a lack of resources, enterprising individuals step in to fill the gap:

Liam Clifford, a former immigration control officer, set up globalvisas.com as a one-man band 12 years ago. He now employs 60 people and is in the process of opening new offices in both South Africa and Australia. [snip]

Mr. Clifford says about his customers:

“And time and time again they are saying to us they don’t want to be seen as racist because they are quitting because of immigration. We tell them of course they’re not.”

There is no emoticon after that last sentence, so I’m not sure how Mr. Clifford wants us to take this last statement. Since he is obviously making a great deal of money from his clients, it would behoove him to remain diplomatic. I don’t think it’s racist to feel pushed out of a once beloved neighborborhood that has become unfamiliar and dangerous. No one signed on to live in what appears to be an oupost of Pakistan. And who’d want to be on the tube when some zealous “youth” decides to blow himself up whilst sitting next to you? [snip]

If the rate of emigration continues at the existing rate, about 15,000 less than a ¼ million young Brits will leave by year’s end. Tell me that’s sustainable. The only “refill” is the heathens from Pakistan and other Mideast Musselmen.

They better hope Gunga Din is somewhere in the Cotswold’s with his bugle. Provided any non-criminal has a weapon and a desire to join the fray.

When I was 6, my parents moved out of a poorer, mostly minority neighborhood because it and the local school were deteriorating rapidly. Additionally, my parents, who aren’t affluent by any stretch of the imagination, scrimped and saved to send me to a private school.

What my parents did is commonly referred to as good parenting. They had an opportunity to do better for their child and they took it. However, if we’d lived in Peabody, some people might see racial overtones:

“Most white Peabody parents pulled their children out of this school,” said Irene Koronas, a painter whose grandchildren attend the Haggerty School but are slated to enter Peabody for seventh grade. “There were too many African-American students here for them. I think it’s despicable. It’s a problem in Cambridge.”

But are whites fleeing Peabody’s socially engineered schools because they’re racists? Or are they just trying to do the best they can for their children? I bet the majority moved their children for exactly the same reason mine moved me—improved educational opportunities. Ms. Koronas is painting with an awfully broad brush, when most parents are just struggling to do the best they can for their children.

Hopefully, I’ll be able to send my child to private schools too. That decision has nothing to do with race and everything to do with offering her the same opportunity my parents gave me. They and I both worked hard to be in this position, and I don’t feel guilty in the least offering it to my daughter.

The unintentionally funny and nearly defunct LA Times reported on July 15th that about “45% of all foreign militants in Iraq……are from Saudi Arabia”.  15% are from Syria and Lebanon, with 10% from North Africa.  The stats came from “US military figures, and were made available to the Times by the senior officer”.   Nearly half of the 135 detainees in US military custody are Saudis. 

What can we deduce from a sample of 135 cage-hangers?  Thousands of troublemakers are in Iraqi custody, many of whom might even lie about their names and country of origin. So the LA Times report is based on a sample of 135 guys, half of whom have Riyadh Planet Hollywood ID cards.  I have information from a reliable participant in the war that Chechens even fall out for morning terrorist formation, and stray Pakistanis, Westerners and lots of others.   Iranians, too, are a small but vocal minority shouting  “HERE!”.

The same enigmatic “US military figure” said that 50% of all  Saudi fighters in Iraq go there as suicide bombers.  An interesting statistic, to say the least. To derive it, one needs to poll all of the free-range “Saudi fighters” about their life plans, and whether they have round-trip tickets.   It’s fair to say they don’t show up for interviews.

But the Times  raised two worthy questions, probably intentionally.  We are “allied” with the Saudis in the inaptly-named War on Terror, and Bush Herbert Walker and Bush George Dubya are unashamedly friendly with figures in the disgusting monarchical House of Saud.  Prince Bandar bin Sultan, the royal’s “national security advisor” is a pal of the House of Bush, as is King Abdullah.   

Then there’s The Carlyle Group, in which Bush Herbert Walker is a  prospering partner.  Those interested can investigate it on their own.  It’s the most powerful ethical missile in the left’s arsenal of accusations about the Bush family’s relationship with the Saudis.   The Carlyle Group has wide access to Saud investment funds.  There’s also Herbie’s lecture tours in Arab lands, paid for by the Saudis, and generous gits to his Presidential Library for scholarships to Andover, Dubya’s prep school.

It is, at this point, obligatory to mention that 15 of 19 hijackers on 911 were Saudis. Bin Laden is a Saudi.  Saudi Arabia has lots of sand and oil (although the oil power might be shaky).  Saudi Arabia is profligate with walking-around money, and has a national strategy of buying off enemies and buying up friends.  There’s a lot more, none of which is particularly damning for the Bush family, but appearances are everything.   The Saudis are low, self-seeking, and devious; relationships are contaminated by their presence in them, and our leaders should know it.

True, the Saudis have been fighting Al Qaeda, but for reasons of personal survival.   The ethical issues associated with advancing Wahabbism by subversion and Madrassa remain.  True, also, that the Saudis are troubled by Dubya’s strategies, worred about their extensive Iraq border and Persian ambitions.  This is a convergence of interests, ours and theirs.   They are not our friends. 

The reality is this:  We are allied with a vicious, reactionary, repressive Arab regime in our pursuit of liberalization of the Middle East.  We should be troubled by the first proposition in that last sentence, because they Saudis are troubled by the second.  The two can’t come together, and Dubya appears not to know it.

Would the UN treat US soldiers accused of widespread sexual abuse so leniently?

The United Nations said on Saturday it had suspended a Moroccan military contingent from its peacekeeping mission in Cote d’Ivoire while it investigated allegations of widespread sexual abuse.

“It means they don’t participate in our operations,” said Hamadoun Toure, spokesman for the U.N. mission in Cote d’Ivoire (ONUCI). “Those who are found guilty will be sent back home.”

Are you sure this punishment isn’t too harsh? Maybe the UN could just send them to bed one night without supper. Although I’m not surprised by UN hypocrisy, their peacekeeping missions need to be controlled better.

And the best way to ensure control is making UN officials accountable for their peacekeeping operations. When forces under UN command commit war crimes, UN officials should answer before the International Criminal Court. They’d certainly demand that our generals and leaders be accountable. If the UN wants the power, we should force them to take responsibility too.

 Gore jets to finish line

Where else but the Aspen Daily News would you expect this to be printed

Gore: human species in a race for its life

“There’s an African proverb that says, ‘If you want to go quick, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.’ We have to go far quickly,” former Vice President Al Gore told a packed, rapt house at the Benedict Music Tent Wednesday. With many scientists pointing to a window of less than 10 years to moderate the effects of global warming, he said, meaningful change is still possible, but “It is a race.” [snip]

SOS redacted.

Gore advised the audience to compare the blue orb of the Earth to Venus, where daytime temperatures reach 867⁰ Fahrenheit and it rains sulphuric acid. The two planets have the same amount of carbon, Gore explained, but Venus’ just happens to be in the atmosphere, while most of the Earth’s is still locked underground. “The habitability of this planet for human beings really is at risk,” he said.

Gore observed Venus first hand from his home on Tralfamadore. That trip produced a carbon footprint sufficient to put congress in blackface until the next election.

So is there room for optimism faced with the specter of Venus? Gore thinks so, but it’s not in the current parade of presidential candidates or the slew of climate-related bills moving through the U.S. legislature — measures Gore called “baby steps.”

This translates to “It is imperative that I run for President! Only I can save the world.”

“It’s a different kind of campaign,” he noted, one that surpasses what he might be able to accomplish in a bid for the presidency in 2008.

“Dealing with this climate crisis is not only what we have to do, it’s our chance to get our act together,” he said, pointing to the escalating loss of tropical forests, the crisis in Darfur, the destruction of global fisheries. [snip]

Except for the Chilean sea bass at my daughter’s wedding, we must protect the little fishies.

Muslim group loses cartoons libel case in Denmark

COPENHAGEN, July 13 (Reuters) - A Muslim group lost a libel case on Friday against the leader of a Danish anti-immigrant party who had accused its members of treason for publicising cartoons of the Prophet Mohammad. [snip]

“We are very disappointed with the verdict and are considering an appeal,” said Kasem Ahmad, a spokesman for the Muslim group. He added that the group would issue a fatwa, or religious edict, against Jyllands-Posten if it did not receive an apology from the paper.

“It’s too early to say any details of the fatwa,” Ahmad said. “The fatwa is the last step and will also satisfy Muslims in the Middle East.” [snip]

Definition: a fatwa is an automatic winning verdict in a Shari’a court. It allows for the celebration of diversity with heathenish barbaric behavior.
The next week or two should prove to be interesting.

Sudan resumes bombing civilian targets in Darfur: US envoy

KHARTOUM, July 13 (Reuters) - The Sudanese government has resumed bombing civilian targets in the war-ravaged western region of Darfur, the U.S. special envoy for Darfur said on Friday.

“After a halt in the bombing between the beginning of February and the end of April in 2007, the Sudanese government has resumed bombing in Darfur,” Andrew Natsios told a news conference in Khartoum following a visit to Darfur.

Perhaps we can have the Sudanese air force bomb terrorist hideouts. When they hit civilians, wedding parties and refugee compounds, the moonbat world doesn’t seem to mind.

Here’s another fantastic ruling today from the “Fab 5″.  The Supreme Court struck down race based school admission policies in Seattle and Louisville today.  Chief Justice Roberts provides the salient quote: 

“The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” Roberts said.

How you justify making up for past discrimination by discriminating against a new generation of people is beyond me.  Nobody can deny that African Americans and others suffered a great injustice through discrimination, but it can’t be “fixed” after the fact.  It’s too bad that Justice Kennedy wouldn’t go further in outlawing race as an admissions factor, but I’ll take it.

We’re in trouble when our elected critters and their staffers ask a Washington, DC, airport ticket agent these questions.

•  I had a New Hampshire Congresswoman ask for an aisle seat so that her hair wouldn’t get messed up by being near the window.  (On an airplane!)
• I got a call from a candidate’s staffer, who wanted to go to Capetown. I started to Explain the length of the flight and the passport information, then she interrupted me with, “I’m not trying to make you lookstupid, but Capetown is in Massachusetts.”  Without trying to make her look stupid, I calmly explained, “Cape Cod is in Massachusetts, Capetown is in Africa.” Her response - click.
• A Vermont Congressman called, furious about a Florida Package we did.  I asked what was wrong with the vacation in Orlando. He said he was expecting an ocean-view room.  I tried to explain that’s not possible, since Orlando is in the middle of the state.  He replied, “Don’t lie to me, I looked on the map and Florida is a very thin state!”
• I got a call from a lawmaker’s wife who asked, “Is it possible to see England from Canada?”  I said, “No.” She said, “But they look so close on the map.”
  An aide for a cabinet member once called and asked if he could rent a car in Dallas.  When I pulled up the reservation, I noticed he had only a 1-hour layover in Dallas.  When I asked him why he wanted to rent a car, he said, “I heard Dallas was a big airport, and we will need a car to drive between gates to save time.”
• An Illinois Congresswoman called last week.  She needed to know how it  was possible that her flight from Detroit left at 8:30 a.m. got to Chicago at 8:33 a.m.  I explained that Michigan was an hour ahead of Illinois, but she could not understand the concept of time zones.  Finally, I told her the plane went fast, and she bought that.
• A New York lawmaker called and asked, “Do airlines put your physical description on your bag so they know whose luggage belongs to whom?” I said, “No, why do you ask?”  She replied, “Well, when I checked in with the
  airline, they put a tag on my luggage that said (FAT), and I’m overweight. I
  think that’s very rude!”  After putting her on hold for a minute while I
  looked into it (I was laughing).  I came back and explained the city code for Fresno, CA is FAT - Fresno Air Terminal, and the airline was just putting a destination tag on her luggage.
• A Senator’s aide called to inquire about a trip package to Hawaii. After going over all the cost info, she asked, “Would it be cheaper to fly to California, and then take the train to Hawaii?”
• I just got off the phone with a freshman Congressman who asked, “How do I know which plane to get on?”  I asked him what exactly he meant, to which he replied, “I was told my flight number is 823, but none of these planes have numbers on them.”
• A lady Senator called and said, “I need to fly to Pepsi-Cola, Florida. Do I have to get on one of those little computer planes?”  I asked if she meant fly to Pensacola, Fl. on a commuter plane.  She said, “Yeah, whatever, smarty!”
• A senior Senator called and had a question about the documents he needed in order to fly to China.  After a lengthy discussion about passports, I reminded him that he needed a visa.  “Oh, no I don’t. I’ve been to China many times and never had to have one of those.”  I double-checked and sure enough, his stay required a visa.  When I told him this he said, “Look, I’ve been to China four times and every time they have accepted my American Express!”
• A New Mexico Congress woman called to make reservations, “I want to go from Chicago to Rhino, New York.”  I was at a loss for words.  Finally, I said, “Are you sure that’s the name of the town?”  “Yes, what flights do you have?” replied the lady.   After some searching, I came back with, “I’m sorry, ma’am, I’ve looked up every airport code in the country and can’t find a Rhino anywhere.”  The lady retorted, “Oh, don’t be silly! Everyone knows where it is.  Check your map!”  So I scoured a map of the state of New York and finally offered, “You don’t mean Buffalo, do you?” The reply? “Whatever!  I knew it was a big animal.”

 Do you think these clowns even know where the Mexican border is. Now you know why the Government is in the shape that it’s in!

Finally, a national leader willing to stand up to Bono:

“I’ve got to say that meeting celebrities isn’t kind of my shtick, that was the shtick of the previous guy,” said Harper in a dig at his Liberal predecessor Paul Martin, who met Bono regularly.

“I hope we do it at some point but my principle focus in public policies is not kind of to meet celebrities,” added the prime minister, a Conservative.

I have no problem with Bono’s work on behalf of AIDS, Africa, or poverty in general.  In fact, I rather admire the fact that he’s apolitical in working toward his goals.  Bono appears willing to work across the political spectrum where most lefties would shun conservative politicians.  However, nobody elected him to anything, and the access he gets to world leaders at places like G-8 Summits is absurd.

He’s a private citizen just like the rest of us.  It was way past time that somebody reminded him of that.