Open Threads

I have a couple more Saudi links to post, but I will get them tomorrow. I am well into a great bottle of wine, and doubt I will make much sense if I continue to type (although that is assuming that I normally make any sense). I am not much of a wine connoisseur. Since I do not even drink white wines, wine labeling for me breaks down into good and bad, and even then I am not capable of describing the taste very well, as I do not know all of the terms used. Indeed, I still believe that brushing my teeth counts as ‘cleansing my palate.’

At any rate, the most important thing about a bottle of wine to me is how it makes me feel, and I must say that 3 glasses of Black Opal Cabernet (an exceptionally inexpensive Australian wine) scores high marks on thaT account. It doesn’t have a hideously bitter aftertaste that many Cabernet’s have, and I look forward to the next sip. The subsequent ‘buzz’ is light, and my cheeks and knees are numb. There you have it. Wine tasting by ogres. Go get some Black Opal and try it yourself.

I would also like to thank Gregory Hlatky for adding me to his link list. Please check out his site, A Dog’s Life, if you have time.

I have a couple morePost + Comments

More Enron:

A lot of column inches from the Economist, and it appears that the Bush Administration is still only being tarred with guilt by association.

If the Bush Administration or members in it did do anything for Enron, despite reports that they turned them down when asked for help (unlike Clinton officials), they should immediately be canned and Bush et al. should suffer the repercussions. However, it just apears right now that there is no there there.

More Enron: A lot ofPost + Comments

News Flash. Yasser Arafat is a terrorist.

News Flash. Yasser Arafat isPost + Comments

Lanny Davis in the WaPo, in a piece called Enron? We’re Missing The Point.

Lanny Davis in the WaPo,Post + Comments

Gail Collins, Voice of Reason?????????:

It is going too far at the moment to call the collapse of Enron a scandal for the Bush administration. The head of Enron was one of the president’s biggest campaign donors, and we now know that he called two cabinet officers last fall to warn them that the company was in terrible trouble. But none of that was necessarily improper, and there is no indication that those calls or other conversations between Enron executives and administration officials led to any action by the government.

Oh… Never mind. It is just another veiled attempt to push for the Large Newspaper Monopoly Empowerment Act (also known as McCain-Feingold Campaign Finance Reform), after all:

There are plenty of things Mr. Bush can do to inoculate himself against any taint from the Enron disaster. He should embrace campaign finance reform, demand a severing of ties between Enron and those around him and cooperate with all Congressional investigations on the issue.

Enron might seem less threatening to Mr. Bush if his presidential campaign had not received huge contributions from the company and its top officials. The best way for Mr. Bush to minimize such taint is to work with Congress to ban unregulated party donations by corporations, unions and rich individuals, known as “soft money.”

Gail Collins, Voice of Reason?????????:Post + Comments

More Enron:

You just have to love this nonsense. Now that it is pretty clear that there is no smoking gun regarding the Bush Administration and Enron, the loony left is trying two different attacks. Again, the approach seems to be the spaghetti approach (throw a bunch at the wall and hope something sticks). The first, angle, which has been widely covered (and duly ridiculed) by bloggers and the Opinion Journal is that Waxman now has his knickers in a bunch because the administration DID NOT intervene on behalf of shareholders. This fails to pass the giggle test, but we will see if Jonathon Alter or any of the talking heads can manage to discuss this on the Sunday morning shows and keep a straight face.

The second approach is outlined in an LA Times newsitorial this morning:

In the next several days, the most pointed questions confronting the administration may not be whether officials provided favored treatment for Enron as it slid toward ruin. Instead, the White House is likely to be pressed about whether it is providing enough information to the public–and whether the Justice Department can be trusted to perform an unbiased investigation into the company’s collapse.

IE- Even though our most blatant attempts to stick this on you have failed, we are now going to attack the way that you investigate it, PRIOR to your investigation. Stay tuned folks, this will be funny.

More Enron: You just havePost + Comments

$450.00 in repairs for a car I paid $1,000 for in 1992. Some tie rod thing was bad, new tires, and new front and rear brakes. He said my brakes were really bad- I guess not only am I going nowhere fast, but I couldn’t stop real well once I got there either. Why do mechanics always ask what is wrong when you bring them the car? If I knew, I would fix it myself.

I guess I should not bitch. It is a silver 1983 Chevy Celebrity (with whitewalls), and besides being a total babe magnet, no one will ever break into it- my cd player and Willie Nelson and Dlebert McClinton discs are safe. In all honesty though, I hope I can keep this car for another ten years. I only put about 29k miles on it in the ten years I have had it (yes- it is my only car- I just do not drive much), so it should last. Plus, my insurance is miniscule (liability payments only), and other than every two years having to spend $400 bucks and an oil change very couple of months, it is relatively inexpensive.

Still, $450.00 bucks plus insurance for a car I have driven about 2500 miles this year makes me think I would be better off taking cabs. Oh, well.

$450.00 in repairs for aPost + Comments