Navy blind ads

I’ve run blind ads, just like the Navy does. Only my ads asked for a programmer when I really needed a programmer or a secretary when I needed a secretary. I did not pretend to be looking for a postal worker or a welder just to have someone call me. But, that’s what our Navy has been doing with the okay of the Defense Department – running deceitful blind ads so that they can get some gullible person to unknowingly call a Navy recruiter. They have been running ads nationally touting the benefits of being a postal worker among other jobs. Nowhere do the words US navy appear.

I wonder how many people are actually recruited this way. It is not only deceitful but, to my mind, a waste of time, money and resources. Why anyone would persist in talking with someone who got them there under false pretenses boggles my mind.

The web, crystal meth and the gay community

We often forget that good things can often be used for evil purposes. I was reminded of this truism while reading an article in the New Yorker about what seems to be a resurgence of sexually transmitted diseases among gay men. Some numbers quoted in the article to support the view that there is a resurgence:

• In New York City, the rate of syphilis has increased by 400% in the past five years; gay men account for virtually all of the increase.
• In Chicago in the late ‘90s 15% of the syphilis cases could be attributed to gay men; now it’s 60%.
• In this new century, the number of new diagnoses of HIV have remained relatively stable for the general population, but have increased in every year for gay men.

The author, Michael Specter, attributes the resurgence to the web and crystal methamphetamine. The web because, in the words of the writer of “Avenue Q”, “You can get sex within minutes. Anonymous. No names. No commitments. No connections.” The crystal methamphetamine causes you to lose all common sense, so that anything goes, including unprotected sex.

I’m sure that you get several pieces of spam every day touting Viagra and similar products or offering to meet your every sexual desire. But, this is probably only the tip of the iceberg. Specter reports on his using Google to turn up dozens of sites “devoted specifically to uniting men for the purposes of immediate, anonymous and, often drug-induced sex.” Even Craig’s List is being used for this purpose. And, of course, I just remembered that the first industry to make money on the web was the porn industry; so I shouldn’t be too surprised at this segment of the porn industry using the web.

What is surprising, however, is that many of the people combining the web and methamphetamine are people in their 40s and 50s who saw so many of their friends and partners die from Aids. The question is why. Larry Kramer, a New York City gay activist, asks, “What could motivate a person who has lived through the worst of the epidemic to cast off the safe-sex practices that have protected him for years?” There is some evidence that, like most of our problems, it comes down to self-esteem; the body has aged, you are no longer a hot, young stud. The crystal meth gives you back your youth for a day. Like most quick solutions, it will not solve the fundamental problem of liking who you are now and living in today’s world.

Different Worlds

We all live in different worlds and there are so many of us that’s it’s difficult to find a world that looks like it may be of value to you and to others who do not live in that world. It’s refreshing to discover such a new world and to read the ramblings of that world’s inhabitant. So, it is with my discovery of the world of Phillip Carter. He’s one of the authors of Slate’s report of the use of torture in the War on Terrorism. In scanning that report I was led to an article Carter wrote in The Washington Monthly, The Road to Abu Ghraib .

It’s a very comprehensive and reasonable article. It accepts the fact that there are sometimes circumstances where you can’t be Mr. Nice Guy all the time; you may have to bend the law to get information that may be vital to your survival. However, he argues that, if you reach that point, you need to have the approval of those at the top and those leaders should articulate very clearly what can and cannot be done and, most importantly, why it is necessary to violate the law. He recounts the concerted efforts made by the Administration to avoid this clarity and leave a very murky set of regulations as to torture so that no one really knew what the limits were.

Carter also argues fairly convincingly that the lack of sufficient troops to fight the war, their limited training, the speed with which we attacked all contributed to the mess of Abu Ghraib. He also joins a number of experienced interrogators who question the value of information gained by torture applied by inexperienced interrogators.

Of course, you tend to like those who have ideas similar to yours. So, Carter repeats my dictum that we have to win the hearts and minds of the Iraqi people and others who are our enemy today or may be our enemy tomorrow. He concludes with questioning the wisdom of Bush’s frequent assertion: You’re either with us or against us. The world, Carter asserts, is not that simple. I think you have to be pretty self-centered and naïve to believe that it is.

Carter is described as a former Army officer, a lawyer and frequent writer in security matters. In my naivete, I assumed that he would be at least in his 40’s. I was surprised when I went to his web site and discovered that he graduated from college in 1997. Oh well, some of my best friends are young people.

Achoo!

In the flu seasons of my youth my parents occasionally would recall the Flu Epidemic of 1918, which they lived through and which killed perhaps as many as 50 million people. It also debilitated many times more people for a week or more. We’ve been lucky here in the US as such an epidemic has not been repeated. Will our lucky streak continue?

Unless we do something, our luck will run out, according to acknowledged experts in influenza. The current issue of Nature warns that the avian flu that is currently moving through Southeast Asia has the potential to exceed the damage of the 1918 flu and could affect 20% of the world’s population. The scientists estimate that 60% of those hospitalized by the avian flu will die.

The damage would, according to the head of University of Minnesota’s Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy, be more than death and illness. He writes that the flu could, “change the world overnight...reducing or even ending foreign travel and trade”. And, if trade and travel are curtailed, the ability to transport vaccines and other medical supplies is also curtailed.

The writers call for a global task force to attack the problem. If the comments of Anthony Fauci, the Director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, are listened to, something may actually be done in time. Fauci said, “Unless we improve our capacity to produce such countermeasures, we may experience again the devastation of past pandemics.” Of course, our outsourcing the production of last year’s flu vaccine to England should give one cause to worry whether we’ll make the necessary effort as well as do something we seldom do – cooperate with other nations.

Avarice, thy name is CEO

Of course, we all knew that directors were not the only beneficiaries of corporate munificence re air travel (see my May 22 article re American Airlines). Today’s Wall Street Journal features the air travel perks granted to CEOs of Fortune 1000 supposedly public companies. Some generous companies include IAC (its CEO earned $930,000 last year in salary alone, another $832,000 in air travel and who knows how much in stock and other benefits), Leucadia (its CEO enjoyed $744,000 worth of free air travel benefits) and E-Bay (Meg Whitman received $358,000 in free air travel benefits).

But, these numbers may be understated. The companies report the incremental cost of the flight as a benefit. Now ‘incremental’ cost sounds nice, but there are some companies which have planes that spend most of their time ferrying executives and their families and friends on personal trips, such as ferrying a nanny to their summer house. Shouldn’t the benefit as recorded by these companies include all of the costs of the plane, including fixed costs?

Some companies claim that the security of their executives warrants a private plane; this gives them tax benefits as well as being safe and secure. Yet, many companies don’t use the same rationale of their executive’s security. Should their security be so important? Are they really so valuable to their company? I think not.

Since these companies want to fulfill their patriotic duty and pay all taxes due, they do record a portion of these flight benefits as income taxable to the CEO. The problem is the tax rules allow them to record a very small amount of the benefit as taxable. The journal lists one example where income of $1500 is attributable to a flight whose incremental cost is $11,000. Moreover, many of these companies also give the CEO money to pay the taxes due on this income; Whitman was given a ‘bonus’ of $128,000 to cover her taxes on the air perquisite.

The lesson to be learned - Raise your kid to be a CEO of a Fortune 1000 company.

The Wonder Drug?

Last week we learned that Viagra is being used to make horses run faster. This week we learn that it has been given to convicted sex offenders and we are paying for it, as the funding for the pill comes from Medicaid. In the past four years, Florida has spent $93,000 on Viagra for these offenders. Other states have spent more.

The states felt that they had to supply Viagra as such dispensation conformed to the rules. Apparently, no one saw fit to ask whether supplying Viagra to convicted sex offenders might lead to more crime.

Fortunately, the federal government has now ruled that states have discretion as to the distribution of drugs under the Medicaid program and it is unlikely such a blatant misuse of common sense will recur.

Who would Pogo say was the devil?

A short while ago I read where China has an upper leg in the race for energy in that they will make a deal with the devil, whereas the US will not. But apparently the race for energy is one thing, fighting terrorism is another.

Nat Hentoff, in The Village Voice, has an interesting article (based in part on reporting by the LA Times and Nicholas Kristoff on the NY Times) asserting that our silence re the genocide in Darfur is a function of our CIA’s desire to use Sudan in our war on terrorism. So what if the powers that be there are vicious and violent murderers? We need them more than the 500 people being slaughtered every day in Darfur need a smidgeon of help.

Stating the obvious

A front page headline in today’s New York Times read “Filibuster Fight Bruises the Image of Capitol Hill”. I didn’t know that the image of our elected government could be any lower. Instead of trying to address the challenges facing us – such as Iraq, China, Afghanistan, North Korea, Iran, the deficits, our lousy educational system, the fantastic rise in our prison population and on and on and on – they waste their time on things that are really not very important – the Schiavo case, 10 words in Newsweek, gay marriage, and now the question of the century: should Senate rules be changed

I guess the media thinks we are having some slow news days. Heck, the Scott Peterson trial is over, the Runaway Bride is back home, things are slow at the Jackson trial. Now what could be more important than the brouhaha over the possible change in Senate rules to kill the filibuster? That’s why it’s hard to avoid hearing some very concerned Senator inveighing on one or the other side of the question of how they can best waste time.

Our elected leaders should start earning their bread by at least acknowledging that we have some real problems. If they really wanted to actually get work done, they could resolve this controversy in a couple of hours. PBU21

Oh, to be a board member of a Fortune 1000 firm!

You’re losing money, a lot of money. You’ve asked your employees for concessions. You are at risk of joining some of your competitors in bankruptcy court. Yet, if you're American Airlines, you let your board of directors and their families fly free and even pay the taxes due to such benefits. Does this make sense to you?

One of the directors is Philip Purcell, of Morgan Stanley fame. His travels on Morgan Stanley’s jet were worth over $450,000 last year as reported by Morgan Stanley. Yet, American stockholders paid $14,528 for his travels on American. One director was paid over $60,000 for his travels on the airline.

What’s the second best job in the US? A member of the board of a major corporation.

Are Muslims more violent than Christians or Jews?

I don't often agree with Jeff Jacoby, a conservative columnist for the Boston Globe, but in a recent column he asked the question as to why the alleged desecration of the Koran caused such violence in the Islamic world. It's an interesting question. Reports from Saudi Arabia about desecration of Christian symbols has not and will not cause Christians to riot.

Yes, the Crusades, the witch trials, the burnings at the stake were all Christian doings. But, what have the Christians or Jews done in the 20th and 21st century that is comparable to the recent doings in the Islamic world? Is it the religion? Is it the culture? Whatever it is, it is not a good sign.

Times have changed

I sometimes wonder whether I’ve become an old fart. Why else would I cringe when I read in the Wall Street Journal that about two-thirds of mortgages issued in the last half of 2004 were either adjustable rate (46%) or interest-only (17%) mortgages? Were Catherine and I fools when we put 20% down and took on a twenty-five year mortgage on the houses we’ve bought?

Or, are the people who take out these ‘new’ mortgages running a risk that we never wanted to take: that the housing market will continue to be hot for as long as they live in the house? Or, do these people feel entitled to buy a house that, in my opinion, they really can’t afford? In California 61% of the mortgages issued in the first two months of this year were interest-only mortgages. Yet it is estimated that only 18% of Californians can afford to buy an average house using the old 30-year fixed rate mortgage.

The question of entitlement is underlined by another Wall Street Journal article. Here are some numbers that should make you gag:

In 1990, household median income was just under $40,000. Now, it’s just over $40,000. In 1990, median household spending was just under $40,000. Now, it’s around $45,000. In 1990, median household debt was around $59,000. Now it’s slightly more than $100,000. Perhaps, the citizens have taken a lesson from our government: borrow, borrow, borrow. Live today, tomorrow may never come.

Maybe Purcell is getting worried

The jury in the Morgan Stanley-Ron Perelman case has awarded Perelman $850 million in punitive damages. When combined with the $604 million awarded earlier, Morgan Stanley is looking at a bill of almost $1.5 billion due to their arrogance and technical incompetence.

Of course, they will appeal. Who knows how that will turn out? Even if they win on appeal, the PR blotch on Morgan Stanley's reputation is probably worth more than $1.5 billion and is certainly fodder for the group trying to oust Purcell as CEO of the firm.

What? Me worry?

It may be nothing to worry about. But, then again, it may be the early days of a move by foreign central banks to lower their investment in US debt. In February foreign central banks bought $11.3 billion of our debt. In March they sold $15 billion of our debt; this was the first time they were net sellers since August 2003.

Although the banks turned into sellers in March, other foreign buyers (such as hedge funds) more than filled in the gap so that, on balance, foreigners continued to invest in our debt. However, the amount bought was significantly less than in the previous two months. Plus, the nature of the private buyer is much more volatile than that of the central bank.

Another worrisome factor is the purchase of US stocks by foreigners. In February it was $7.5 billion, in March $1.7 billion.

Our government’s debt – and, in a roundabout way, our economy – has been propped up by foreign investments. What happens if that goes away?

A Vital Debate

Since March the Pentagon has been studying how it should spend its future budgets. Rumsfeld and many military people say it should be spent on speed: getting to combat areas fast (before the enemy is ready for us) and destroying his capabilities fast. They have dubbed this concept “10-30-30”. Ten days to “seize the initiative” from the enemy. Thirty days to defeat the enemy. And be able to move to another combat theater in thirty days.

Other military people say that speed is important in a conventional war but few will challenge us in this way. It is more likely that we will be tested in guerilla wars ala Vietnam and Iraq. And for these wars you need troops who can defeat guerillas, restore law and order and rebuild a country. They argue that the ‘speed’ approach simply improves our already strong capabilities but does nothing for our poor capabilities in fighting a non-conventional war.

We don’t have enough money to do both. What do you think is more likely? War with China, North Korea, Iran,….? Or war with a bunch of fanatics who do not play by the rules of war? It’s not an easy question to answer.

The Downing Street Memo

You really should read it. "It" being the minutes of a Prime Minister's meeting held on July 23, 2002, in London with regard to Iraq. This was published in The Times of London on May 1, has not been denied by anyone and has been confirmed by "senior officials". I have the feeling that it is a real document and not a scam.

To my mind, the key excerpt is "Bush wanted to remove Saddam, through military action, justified by the conjunction of terrorism and WMD. But the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy. The NSC had no patience with the UN route, and no enthusiasm for publishing material on the Iraqi regime's record. There was little discussion in Washington of the aftermath of military action (my emphasis)."

Not exactly something to write home about if you're Philip Purcell

What does it take for some companies to get a message? Morgan Stanley, which just lost $604,000,000 to Ronald Perelman primarily due to shoddy production of primarily computerized documents such as e-mail, should certainly have been on notice that they had a problem in this area. In November 2002, it was fined for violating regulations about retaining e-mails. In July 2004 it lost a $54 million sex discrimination case where one of the major disputes centered around e-mails. Again in July 2004 they had another fine relating to failing to hand over documents. And making July a triple-header, they paid a $2.2 million fine relative to failing to disclose documents in a timely manner.

How could management tolerate this?

More than one use

We're reading more about drugs being used - and used effectively - to treat conditions for which they were not originally designed, such as a breast cancer drug helping those with prostate cancer. But, the Italians have topped the cake: Viagra, if given just prior to a race, apparently also helps horses run better.

Another dropped ball by our federal government

A suicide bomber strikes again in Jerusalem. Who knows the intimate details sooner? The FBI or the New York City Police Department? You win the prize if you say the Police Department. The department has NYC police officers serving in seven foreign cities from Singapore to Montreal. Their job is to funnel anything about terrorist attacks back to Manhattan so that the police there can be better prepared. You might ask why can’t the FBI do the same thing. After all, New York has been a prime terrorist target and is likely still one. Shouldn’t the feds be as proactive as the city police? What is the federal government doing for its citizens?

It's my God or no god

Is your belief in ‘my’ type of God a prerequisite for serving in the Armed Forces of the US of A? If the claims of Capt. MeLinda Morton, a chaplain at the Air Force Academy, are true, we are certainly moving in that direction.

Morton claims she was fired as chaplain and ordered to Japan because she accused some of the leaders of the Academy of using their positions to promote evangelical Christianity. There seems to be some basis for her contention. A study by people from Yale Divinity School found that some chaplains, in the words of the Times, “were insensitive to the religious diversity of the cadets”. Mike Weinstein, an alumnus of the Academy, a member of the Reagan administration and father of a cadet, has spoken with 117 people at the Academy who have complained about religious intimidation and proselytizing. A rabbi from a task force investigating the religious climate at the Academy called Weinstein and asked him to shut up already.

Stan Levey

When I was in college I often listened to Symphony Sid Torem, a jazz disk jockey on Boston radio. Sid had spent time in New York and personally knew many of the musicians of the modern jazz era. One of the musicians he introduced me to was Stan Levey, a drummer with Dizzy Gillespie and Charlie Parker and a member of the Lighthouse All-Stars. He died last month.

The obituary in today’s New York Times had two interesting facts in addition to his drummig talent. He was only 19 when he played with Gillespie and Parker. He gave up music completely when he was less than fifty years old and became a commercial photographer. He was a helluva talented guy.

Stand your ground

In Florida "stand your ground" means you now have the right to shoot a gun at someone if you feel really threatened. The law was passed with the support of Governor Bush last month. The NRA intends to get a similar law passed in other states.

It sounds like the perfect excuse to wipe out someone you really don't like.

A Tiny Improvement But Still An Improvement

The March trade figures are in and March was a better month for our trade balance than February. Our trade deficit was down 9.2%. It was only $55 billion.

However, we're still on track for a record year. At our current rate the annual trade deficit will hit almost $700 billion, 13% more than the previous record.

Spin and more spin

Spin is everywhere in 21st century America and possibly also in the world at large. The latest episode is in the world of medical journals. You know – those magazines with the very scientific articles that have been reviewed by the author’s peers; the articles touted in drug ads. Those journals.

A study in the Journal of the American Medical Association (JAMA) found that, of the articles they surveyed in a study published last year, 65% did not fully report the harmful effects of a particular medical regimen. Some other interesting numbers:

• 34% of the articles described as secondary what was originally the main goal of the research
  
• 28% didn’t even specify the original main goal
  
• 19% pretended that the original secondary goal was, in fact, the main goal
  
• 17% of the articles created a new main goal for their research.

What can you believe these days?

The Complexities and Evils of War

NPR had two interesting stories this morning. One on a war that is always in the news, the other about a war that is seldom in the news. Neither warms the cockles of your heart.

An Insecure World - The Web

Yesterday's news reported a couple of major security flaws in Firefox, the browser I and 50,000,000 others use, and the attack last year on Cisco routers used by NASA, research labs and our military.

Was it Jefferson who said, "Eternal vigilance is the price of liberty"? That's even more true in today's cyberworld.

Reality Behind the Rhetoric

Here's something you should read in your quest to discover just what reality is in our world of the spin and its concomitant corruption of language.

The Good and the Bad

The bad
GE has restated its earnings going back to 2001. They ‘misapplied’ an accounting rule. It so happens that although this misapplication did not really impact annual profits, it did smooth out quarterly earnings and made them come closer to analysts’ estimates.

The good
GE is doubling its research budget for environmentally friendly technologies. By 2012 it is also aiming to improve its energy efficiency by 30% and reduce its greenhouse gas emissions by 1%. (Yes, 1% is not much, but it’s something.) And, most importantly, it will report publicly every year on its progress.

Another casualty of the insurgency

The insurgents are not only killing people, they are affecting the production of oil in Iraq. In the first quarter of this year, daily production was a little over 1,800,000 barrels a day. In the last half of 2004, it was 2,000,000. Pre “Iraqi Freedom” it was 2,500,000 barrels a day. So, since the war production has declined more than 25%. Just another reason why you’re paying so much for gas and another cost of this war.

It's a judgment call

I guess my wife and I are not very good shoppers. For example, when we buy a television, we’re interested in reliability and price. Any gadgets – a vchip, flat screen, etc. – are of little concern to us. Yet to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), which, among other things, compiles the Consumer Price Index (CPI), is very concerned with the gadgets – they call them an improvement in quality of the tv – in coming to a conclusion as to whether the price of televisions has increased this month.

Now, you and I might conclude that if the price were $300 last month and is $350 this month, there has been a price increase. That doesn’t cut it with the BLS. Its possible that the price, from a CPI point of view, has actually decreased when you consider that these gadgets may have improved the quality of the tv in the judgment of the BLS analyst who specializes in televisions.

You have to admit that determining whether prices are rising or falling in a market where innovation occurs almost daily is extremely difficult. In these markets the BLS uses something called hedonics, which involves using some arcane – very arcane – statistical techniques to determine whether the tv is rising or falling in price. However, the final determination of its price change is made by a human being, like you and me. And you know how wrong we can be.

The use of hedonics is becoming more prevalent. In 1995 .2% of items were priced this way, now it’s more than 3%. What will it be in tomorrow’s wired world? In the meantime we old folks on Social Security can take little comfort that the size of a portion of our monthly check is a function of someone’s judgment. And they're making these judgments based on things that I care not one whit about.

Two more headed down the road to obscurity?

Earlier this year, AT&T bit the dust. Now two more American household names – GM and Ford – seem to be moving in the same direction as Standard & Poors lowered their bond ranking to junk status.

Remember when “Engine” Charlie Wilson, Eisenhower’s Defense Secretary and former head of GM, caused a ruckus when he said, “What’s good for General Motors is good for the country.”?

Still the best job in the world

How would you like this deal? Your job requires you to be in two distant cities at times during the year. So, having a few extra dollars and disliking life in a hotel room, you decide to buy or rent a house in each city. If you are the CEO of a Fortune 1000 or other public company, the chances are good that you can have the company pay you for living in your own house, even it's only for a few days a month. That’s what more and more companies are doing. For example, Time Warner pays its CEO $9,500,000 a year, yet he feels the need for $48,000 more to pay the rent for his apartment in LA, whether or not he spends much time in it. Michael Eisner of Disney has a better deal: he gets $120,000 a year for his Pierre Hotel pad. And the list goes on.

How do you spell greed? A public company CEO.

Maintaining a vibrant economy

Assumption: scientific research was the basis of our economic growth in the twentieth century. Just think of the world prior to World War II. There were no transistors, fiber optics, integrated circuits, wireless communications, LCDs, lasers, Internet, GPS, etc., etc. By far the vast majority of these inventions came from the US of A and were the result of scientific research conducted in the laboratories of the government, universities and companies.

These inventions occurred in a world where we were dominant. Now that we are being challenged by developing super-powers such as China and India, we seem to have started to take a back seat in scientific research. And it does not appear as though we are being pushed into the back seat, we’re moving there on our own. Consider the following. The federal budget spends half (on a percentage basis) on scientific research than it did in 1970. The number of graduate students in the sciences is down 20% since 1993. Fewer articles in scientific journals (usually indicating research successes) are written by Americans.

It will not get better until we improve our education system and have a government that realizes the critical importance of scientific research.

Ho Hum - Another Day, Another Audit

This time it’s led to a criminal investigation. “It” being another audit by the US Special Inspector General for Iraqi Reconstruction. In reviewing almost $120,000,000 paid out at a reconstruction office in Hilah, the IG can’t find $7,000,000, a mere discrepancy of less than 6%. Chicken feed. However, since they can’t find the right paperwork for another $89,000,000, the missing amount may grow. There were enough questions to initiate a criminal investigation. For example,

Why was a contractor paid twice for the same job?

Why was $300,000+ paid on contracts that were cancelled?

Why were two employees able to leave Iraq with $700,000 in cash?

Of course, this is peanuts compared to the $9 billion discrepancy uncovered earlier this year. How much of our Medicaid expenses would $9 billion cover?

Afraid to face the real world?

Marsh & McLennan, AIG and now MBIA. All leaders in the insurance industry. All paragons of American business. All multi-billion dollar enterprises. All now tainted by scandals. And the sad part is that all of their accounting manipulations were designed to make their earnings look better and appear smoother. Why could they not have been satisfied with good earnings most years? Why did they need to have very good and rising earnings every year?

Shit happens in this life. Let’s acknowledge it and move on with the knowledge and the will to make it happen less often and with less dire effects.

Sinlessness above all

Brazil seems to have an effective anti-AIDS program. In 1992 experts forecast that 1,200,000 Brazilians would have AIDS in ten years. They were twice as wrong, as the actual number in 2002 was close to 600,000. They did it with a combination of measures including both the encouraging of abstinence and sexual fidelity and education and distribution of condoms. Prostitutes have been very active in this campaign. Yet, a condition of receiving anti-AIDS funds from the US is the signing of a pledge condemning prostitution. This Brazil refused to do and turned their back on $40,000,000 in AIDS grants. Accepting this aid would force out of their campaign perhaps their most effective resources – the prostitutes.

The refusal of this aid was made by a commission that included church representatives. Yet, we want to impose our religious beliefs – I should say the religious beliefs of those in charge of our AIDS grants – on a sovereign nation that is succeeding in the battle against a plague killing people of all faiths and of no faith. Not only do these grants require a pledge condemning prostitution but they also oppose clean needle exchanges.

Didn’t Christ say something about the lives of the lowest among us?

Go to your room and stay there!

The impossibility of reporters moving about Baghdad with any degree of safety was, the Pentagon says, the reason why an electronic - rather than a printed - copy of their report on the killing of the Italian secret agent was issued. As a result, the classified portions of that report are now available to the world at large.

So much for the independence of the press relative to what is really going on in Iraq.

On the 1st of May

It’s a dreary day today on Martha’s Vineyard; rain is forecast. But, it is the first of May and if you want some sunshine in your life, listen to Ella Fitzgerald singing Rodgers and Hart’s “Mountain Greenery”, which begins, “On the first of May it is moving day…..”

If you don’t have her version, try that by Mel Torme or Matt Dennis.