Monday, February 03, 2003

Yellow Ribbon Overload: James Taranto in his always meaty collection of wazzup on the web emphasizes the point that the national reaction to the Columbia disaster is more grown-up than reactions in the past and points to 9/11 for having produced a certain amount of scar tissue. He also mentions the Free Republic eyewitness thread on the shuttle's problems that scooped the big guys at the wire services by eleven minutes. Congrats to The Other Site. Way to go, guys.

Big Fat Want-Ad: Apparently when BJ Clinton visited the New York Post editors last month they asked him to write a piece for them. Note his byline for the feisty tabloid is "Bill" - at the New York Times his efforts are by lined William Jefferson Clinton. The piece smacks of a want-ad - either for pal Joel Klein or for the former first Hound Dog himself.. Ground Zero Czar would be such a high visibility spot for him to direct his wife's campaign.

Tiny Irony: So far the reason given for the Columbia exploding was a "corrupted left wing." Lowell Ponte at FrontPageMagazine takes it a step further and suggests that Clinton's gutting of funds to the space program is equally to blame. He's not the only one saying it. Look for more of this kind of analysis to come.

Who's The Jew? Funny how running for public office gets one in touch with their inner kreplach. Remember Hillary's genealogical contortion when she tried to use someone who was Jewish and had married into her family to woo the knish vote? Now comes this Boston Globe story of John Kerry trying to turn a boiled beef dinner into stuffed derma. Actually, it's more interesting that his grandfather shot himself in the head in the men's room of the Copley Plaza than that he was Jewish. In the end, it's all borsht to us.

It's All In How You Say It: As pundits look for more tiny ironies in the Columbia explosion, much is being made of the fact that it blew up over or near a town called Palestine in Texas. The folks who live there pronounce it PaliSTEEN and it has nothing what so ever to do with a non-country in the Middle East where citizens blow themselves up.

No Place to Run To: Arab leaders are caught between Iraq and a hard place as they try to persuade Saddam to pack up and split. He won't budge. Compounding that is the fact that no one will take him. The likely countries, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and even laid back Libya all say "NIMBY" to him and, one assumes, an entourage of several thousand and crates of gold bullion. France took Baby Doc, Saudi Arabia let Idi Amin in even though he liked to munch on his own staff and Argentina had no problems with all those Nazis. It's enough to give a guy a complex. One bullet would solve his travel plans. Hopefully he is thinking along those lines.

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