-Caveat Lector-
from:
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<A HREF="http://www.aci.net/kalliste/">The Home Page of J. Orlin Grabbe</A>
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Impeached POTUS
A Nation is Shaken by Bumpers and Almighty Howlers
by Mark Steyn
GOD is not yet on-side. No sooner had former Arkansas Senator Dale
Bumpers returned to Washington to defend his old pal Bill than the
Almighty rained down a barrage of freak tornadoes on their home state.
Huge twisters - a meteorological term, not a reference to the President
and his lawyers - swept through Little Rock leaving the grounds of the
Governor's Mansion looking like the opening scene in The Wizard of Oz.
Mr Clinton, the Wizard of Iz, was well out of range, back in Washington
with the Wicked Witch of the East Wing (Hillary Clinton), the Tin Man
(Al Gore) and the Scarecrow (Janet Reno) as the Senate continued to
debate his Cowardly Lyin' about his favourite Munchkin (Monica).
Looking at one scene of an upended double-wide - tornado-damaged
trailers - you could not but ponder the wrath of God. Of course, God is
not a US Senator, lacking the necessary gravitas, solemnity and dignity.
If He were a Senator, He might have recognised Dale Bumpers's authentic
southern-fried hogwash for what it was: an awesome invocation of
Senatorial self-importance. "Oh, colleagues!" wailed the former Senator.
"You have such an awesome responsibility!"
What a stroke of genius to sign up ol' Bumpers for the closing speech.
Senators revere the Constitution, they revere this great Republic, they
revere its history. But mostly they revere other Senators. "One of the
finest performances I've ever seen on the Senate floor!" cooed Iowa's
Tom Harkin, as ol' Dale outlined his admiration for the President - one
of the finest performances we have seen on the Oval Office floor.
Senator Harkin is, to modify Sherlock Holmes, the poodle who yaps too
often. At the start of the trial, Bill's new best friend dismissed the
case as "a pile of dung" and, in the days since, has peddled so much
down-on-the-farm Ioway hokum, you wonder whether Larry Flynt does not
have some Polaroids of Tom in bed being "inappropriate" with a herd of
Holstein.
Whatever the reason, he reacts to every Clinton defence response as if
David Kendall has scored a home-run instead of sniffing that the ball is
not even worth trying to hit. When Mr Kendall denied that the President
obstructed justice in the Jones matter on the grounds that at the time
he was too busy obstructing justice in the Lewinsky matter (I'm
paraphrasing), Mr Harkin was hard put to resist leaping up and yelping
"Yesssssss!!!"
His 44 colleagues are just about retaining their comportment, but we all
know Tom is high-fiving for the entire caucus. Yesterday, the trial
moved into its second phase, with the Chief Justice reading out
questions handed to him by a Senate hostess, like some protean Fifties
game show trying to identify the Animal (Bill Clinton), Vegetables
(nerdy House managers) and Mineral Water (the only tipple available to
tetchy Senators).
On the Republican side, they are not happy. If they press on with
witnesses, their poll numbers could easily collapse from 4 per cent to 2
per cent. On the other hand, if they fold and spare the American people
any further "agony", their poll numbers could rocket from 4 per cent to,
oh, easily 4.5 per cent, plus they will de-legitimise the House
managers, the impeachment articles and Ken Starr; make the President
even more insufferably cocky; and invite vicious retribution from their
conservative base in the next primaries.
"We've heard enough," says Vermont Republican Jim Jeffords, an all but
certain defection. Mr Jeffords in the Republican Party is like, say, Sir
Ian Gilmour signing up with Hamas: he does not really have the stomach
for it. Yet others on the party's nancy-boy wing - Rhode Island's John
Chafee, Maine's Susan Collins - are still hanging tough, much to the
irritation of Democrats. "We're all sick of this," sneers Minority Whip,
Harry Reid. "This was jammed down our throat by the House," - a
peculiarly vivid image which psychotherapists would consider a classic
case of "projection".
On Friday, more considered Democrats were busy recycling David Kendall's
favourite Constitutional anecdote: the one in which Washington holds up
his tea and explains to Jefferson that the House is the cup but the
Senate is the saucer - there to catch any spillage and cool it down.
The only thing wrong with this analogy is that in the US these days the
saucer is virtually obsolete: when the scalding coffee spills over,
Americans catch it in their laps and then sue McDonald's for six million
bucks. And if the saucer is the Senate and the cup is the House, then
what is the spillage? The President?
The President, Mr Bumpers explained, was devastated by his betrayal of
"his wife whom he adored and a child he worshipped and for whom he would
happily have died to ameliorate her shame". Mr Bumpers is speaking
figuratively, not proposing a compromise solution.
The London Telegraph, Jan. 23, 1999
The Religion Business
The Marketing of the Pope
Uproar over selling frenzy in Mexico
MEXICO CITY - Pope John Paul II arrived in Mexico on Friday, and the
Roman Catholic Church assembled an all-star roster of corporate sponsors
for his visit. Among the more than two dozen ''official sponsors'':
PepsiCo, Federal Express Corp., Sheraton Hotels, Eastman Kodak Co.,
Hewlett-Packard Co. and Mercedes-Benz.
The sponsorships, designed to help defray the estimated $2 million cost
of the four-day visit, have outraged many Mexicans. Critics complain
that the church and the Mexican government have adequate resources to
pick up the tab rather than permit defiling of the Pope's image through
commercialization.
Church officials here said that without the sponsorships they might have
had to charge people - many of them poor - to attend the Pope's
appearances during his fourth visit to Mexico. He leaves Mexico Tuesday
for St. Louis and a meeting with President Bill Clinton.
The bill for such visits is usually paid for by the host country and its
branch of the Catholic Church, and sales of papal memorabilia have often
helped cover costs. But in Mexico, in the view of religious scholars as
well as many priests and church members, the mixing of the spiritual and
the commercial has gone overboard.
''They've sold the Pope's image before, but they've never done it in
such a corporate way, as if it were a soccer World Cup,'' said Elio
Masferrer, president of Mexico City's Latin American Association for
Religious Studies. He said the practice illustrates the rise of ''the
theology of prosperity'' within the church.
The sponsorship generating the most controversy is that of the Mexican
snack food company Sabritas, which is owned by Frito Lay, which in turn
is owned by PepsiCo Inc. The company has stuffed bags of Ruffles potato
chips with stamp-like pictures of John Paul II and the Virgin of
Guadalupe, Mexico's patron saint. The pictures have devotional messages
on the back. For an extra 2 pesos (20 cents), one can buy a special
frame to display the 10-picture collection.
In a play on the word papa, which in Spanish means both potato and Pope,
the Reforma newspaper ran a satirical full-page ad for Sabritas ''Fried
Hosts,'' calling them ''Las Papas del Papa,'' or the ''Potatoes of the
Pope.''
''It's not bad that church officials try to market the Pope, but they
have managed the campaign with great clumsiness and bad taste,
particularly the Sabritas ads, which have prompted gibes and ridicule
and vulgarity, as if the Pope were a soccer player or a prominent
showbiz figure,'' said Bernardo Barranco, president of Mexico's Center
for Religious Studies. Of the companies involved, he said, ''When it
comes to capitalizing on the Pope's visit, they're just going after
profits.''
''It's a grotesque campaign,'' he said.
Tod MacKenzie, a spokesman for Frito Lay in Dallas, said Sabritas was
approached by the church to help sponsor the trip, and that they
collaborated ''on a program to reach millions in all corners of Mexico
with images of the Virgin and the Pope.'' Proceeds from the sale of the
2-peso frame will be donated to the construction of a shelter for
pilgrims next to the Basilica of Guadalupe in Mexico City, he said.
Reforma, which for two weeks has been running a front-page countdown to
John Paul's arrival, is hardly in a position to poke fun at anyone for
commercializing the visit. This week, the newspaper has been running
half-page ads encouraging readers to buy special classified and display
advertisements to ''Send your message to the Pope,'' enhanced, perhaps,
with a picture, your name or a drawing of hands in prayer, the ad
suggests.
Huge billboards by PepsiCo and Bimbo, a Mexican bread company, tout the
papal visit along Mexico City's highways. The Bimbo ads have a picture
of the Pope and the Virgin of Guadalupe, and proclaim that at the birth
of a new millennium, ''We Reaffirm the Faith.'' Pepsi placards and
billboards cite the words of John Paul on a previous visit: ''Mexico,
Always Faithful.'' The signs add: ''Pepsi - Official Sponsor of the
Fourth Visit of His Holiness John Paul II to Mexico.''
A spokesman for PepsiCo in New York said the ads ''spread a positive
message in a tasteful way.''
''Our folks in Mexico don't perceive there's any controversy,'' he said.
Radio Red, a nationwide radio network, has bought full-page ads
promoting its coverage and showing a smiling figure that looks like
Jesus with his arm around the Pope's shoulder. The Mexican bank Bancomer
SA, another official sponsor, is airing television spots advertising
commemorative coins to mark the visit, with the bank's logo in the
background. TV Azteca, one of Mexico's main television networks, is
promoting its coverage of the trip with a slickly produced dramatization
of a miracle by John Paul.
On Tuesday, La Jornada newspaper ran a cartoon of a dismayed Pope asking
himself, ''With so many commercial messages, will I have time to give my
divine message?''
In a news conference, the Vatican's envoy to Mexico, Justo Mullor, and
Mexico City's archbishop, Cardinal Norberto Rivera, who approved the
sponsorships, said they had seen no disrespectful ads and defended the
concept.
''We live in an age of advertising, and we are men of that age,'' one of
them said, according to Mexican press reports.
Bishop Trinidad Gonzalez Rodriguez, from Guadalajara, who helped
coordinate the visit, said that many bishops were dubious about
involving a potato chip company in promoting it but that lay people on a
commission that organized the visit were in favor of the idea.
''They decided it was more important to promote the Pope than risk
criticism for such sponsorship,'' he said ''I would have done it
differently.
''We made a mistake, and we are paying the consequences. We've gotten a
lot of criticism, and there are jokes all over the newspapers.''
International Herald Tribune, January 23, 1999
Financial Markets
LTCM Blames Failure on Giant Conspiracy
Those dirty rats
Partners at Long-Term Capital Management, the hedge fund whose meltdown
brought turmoil to world stock and bond markets last year, are blaming
in part the actions of Wall Street trading firms and other funds for its
near-collapse. Speaking publicly for the first time since September's
$3.625bn (£2.2bn) bail-out of the fund by 14 Wall Street firms, LTCM
partners allege that after the rouble devaluation in August, unnamed
institutions began trading against the fund's investments, causing it
further problems.
John Meriwether, the fund's senior partner, said: "The few things we had
on that the market didn't know about came back quickly. It was the
trades that the market knew we had on that caused us trouble."
Victor Haghani, an LTCM partner, said: "It was as if there was someone
out there with our exact portfolio, only it was three times as large as
ours, and they were liquidating all at once."
LTCM partners are undertaking a roadshow to explain to investors,
lenders and regulators their view of why they almost entered bankruptcy
last summer.
They are explaining their demise as a two-stage process: first, market
panic by Wall Street firms following the Russian government's default on
its debt; and second, a period in which Wall Street firms allegedly
traded against LTCM's investments.
The partners believe that Wall Street firms and funds began to get out
in front of LTCM's positions to protect their own investments.
Richard Leahy, a partner, says: "It ceased to feel like people were
liquidating positions similar to ours. All of a sudden they were
liquidating our positions."
The quotes appear in this weekend's New York Times Magazine. Michael
Lewis, the article's author, writes that Mr Meriwether is convinced that
one US financial institution - which he names in the article - was
trying to put him out of business. Mr Lewis goes on to say that
strategists at the fund spent "several days with me going over the
details of their collapse".
A spokesman for LTCM yesterday declined to comment on the allegation and
said that Mr Meriwether was unavailable for comment.
Mr Meriwether is quoted saying: "The hurricane is not more or less
likely to hit because more hurricane insurance has been written. In the
financial markets this is not true.
"The more people write financial insurance, the more likely it is that a
disaster will happen, because the people who know you have sold the
insurance can make it happen. So you have to monitor what other people
are doing."
The Financial Times, Jan. 23, 1999
Impeached POTUS
Starr May Ask Court to Revoke Lewinsky Immunity
She has refused to talk to House investigators
WASHINGTON (AP) -- House impeachment prosecutors obtained Independent
Counsel Kenneth Starr's help Friday in attempting to force Monica
Lewinsky to talk to them, contending her immunity agreement requires it,
two congressional officials confirmed Friday.
Starr's prosecutors and lawyers for Ms. Lewinsky went to court late
Friday afternoon to argue whether she had to cooperate. U.S. District
Judge Norma Holloway Johnson made no immediate ruling.
Lead prosecutor Henry Hyde, R-Ill., wrote Starr Thursday seeking his
help with Ms. Lewinsky, who rejected being interviewed by the House
team.
Two House sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Hyde cited
Ms. Lewinsky's immunity agreement with Starr in his letter.
The July 28 agreement said Ms. Lewinsky ``will testify truthfully before
grand juries in this district (Washington) and elsewhere, at any trials
in this district and elsewhere, and in any other executive, military,
judicial or congressional proceedings.''
In a letter Friday to Starr, Ms. Lewinsky's lawyers contended that the
immunity agreement with him ``does not require us to be interviewed'' by
the House impeachment managers.
``The Senate itself has provided its own rules for witness interviews.
As we understand them, there must be a deposition with equal access. As
of now, the Senate has not voted for depositions,'' her attorneys wrote.
``Ms. Lewinsky will of course respond to a subpoena to appear and
testify before the Senate.''
The House has urged the Senate to allow witnesses in Clinton's
impeachment trial, a controversial issue that could be fought out next
week along sharp partisan lines. Most Republicans have backed the call
for witnesses and virtually all Democrats have opposed live testimony.
A Senate Democratic official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
Democrats oppose Hyde's request to interview Ms. Lewinsky because it
could delay the trial and was not part of a bipartisan agreement
covering conduct of the proceedings. Majority Leader Trent Lott had no
immediate reaction.
The managers have not yet submitted their witness list. But House
prosecutors during the Senate trial have said repeatedly that Ms.
Lewinsky's testimony could help clarify who is telling the truth about
her sexual relationship with President Clinton and any cover-up efforts.
``We anticipate the Senate will scrutinize and require justification of
every witness request the House makes,'' a House source said, requesting
anonymity. ``Implicit in our opportunity to make a case for witnesses
comes the responsibility to more precisely know what they will say in
the trial.''
One of the House officials said the impeachment prosecuting team sought
Starr's help after Ms. Lewinsky's lawyers refused earlier this month to
make her available.
Associated Press, Jan. 22, 1999
Potemkin Village
Russia Unveils New Invisible "Stealth" Fighter
It would have turned the tide in the Gulf War
MOSCOW - With much fanfare on a snowy tarmac at the Zhukovsky test field
last week, Russia rolled out its long-awaited fifth-generation
''stealth'' fighter jet in front of dignitaries that included the
minister of defense, Igor Sergeyev.
The plane, with the number 01 on the fuselage, was hailed by Mr.
Sergeyev as a ''revolution in the Russian Air Force.''
Mikhail Korzhuyev, director of the MiG company, which designed the
plane, boasted: ''If this plane was used to beat off the
British-American air raids on Iraq, 90 percent of all the launched
guided weapons, including cruise missiles, would be shot down before
they reached targets on the territory of Iraq.''
But there was just one problem. The plane on the tarmac was not the
plane they were talking about. In fact, the plane they were talking
about does not exist, except on the drawing board, and may never be
built.
Instead, the Russian designers substituted a more ordinary jet fighter,
which itself has never flown, and was built for testing engines. It is
not clear exactly why the Russians staged the event, but disclosure that
they faked what they described as a fighter for the 21st century has
stirred heated exchanges in recent days.
Alexander Zhilin, a journalist for the newspaper Moscow News, who had
once been an aerospace magazine correspondent, was invited to the
roll-out by Yevgeni Shaposhnikov, one-time Soviet defense minister and
now adviser on aviation to President Boris Yeltsin.
Rumors had circulated for years about Russia's top-secret stealth
fighter. Some specialists had been quoted as saying the program had run
out of money. But the ceremony offered a tantalizing look at the plane
and suggested the program was still alive.
Mr. Zhilin recalled when he saw the plane at the Jan. 12 event: ''I was
taken aback.'' It was not the long-rumored stealth interceptor. It was
something else.
At first, Mr. Zhilin said in an interview, he thought perhaps the
Russian secret services had staged an elaborate deception, to fool
foreign intelligence services. But, he said, ''the plane was too roughly
made'' to even qualify as a decoy.
The plane on the tarmac, he noticed, lacked radar-evading stealth
characteristics. For example, he knew that stealth technology required
hiding the air-intakes, to achieve the smooth edges that evade radar.
But the plane on the tarmac had large, angled air intakes that could
easily show up on radar. It did not have other stealth characteristics;
for example, it lacked a special radar-absorbing coating, or hidden
places for the weapons.
A Western expert who saw the pictures of the plane on the tarmac said,
''The visible structure was not new.''
In fact, according to Mr. Zhilin and others, the plane on the runway was
built years ago to test the prototype engines for a new fighter.
It was a flying laboratory for the engines alone, not a combat plane,
Mr. Zhilin said.
On the Russian television news that evening, there were no questions
asked about the great advance in Russian military aviation. The news
reports, showing the plane on the tarmac, told of the first glimpse of
the MFI, the Russian acronym for multifunction, front-line fighter.
''According to experts, it can attack up to 20 targets simultaneously,''
the Itar-Tass news agency reported. Mr. Sergeyev was quoted by Interfax
as saying that the new fighter was better than anything in the Russian
Air Force and was ''not inferior to the most advanced Western models.''
''BLUFF'' was the headline over Mr. Zhilin's article saying that the
whole ceremony had been for a plane that does not yet exist. The Western
expert agreed, saying it was ''industry hype.''
In fact, the Soviet Union did begin a fifth-generation stealth fighter
project in the early 1980s. It was given the code name Project 1/42, and
planned to be a 30-ton, twin-engine, single-seat plane capable of flying
more than twice the speed of sound. On the drawing board, at least, the
$70 million fighter was to have thrust-vector ring engines allowing it
to make tight turns at any speed. But Project 1/42 ran into financial
trouble. It was frozen in 1994, and supposedly terminated in 1997. Some
mock-ups and parts of the plane reportedly exist at the design bureaus
that worked on it.
Russian officials have hinted at air shows that Project 1/42 was never
fully canceled. But Mr. Zhilin said, ''The program has stopped.'' He
said his sources were workers on the real stealth plane who were angry
about the ceremony.
To test the supersonic engines, Russian designers built a test plane
designated Project 1/44. It was the one that was rolled out on the
tarmac, Mr. Zhilin said, recalling that he had seen the same airplane
two years ago in a hangar.
Mr. Zhilin speculated that what he called the ''bluff'' had been carried
out to cover up financial misdealings in the aerospace industry. He said
some officials were questioning whether government money for Project
1/42 had disappeared.
The MiG company has been stung by the disclosures. In response to
questions, a spokesman, Sergei Samatov, said Mr. Zhilin's claims ''are
not true to reality, to put it mildly.'' He added the fighter ''is not a
bluff and it is practically ready for the first flight that will happen
in March 1999.''
But another official acknowledged that the plane that was rolled out on
the runway was in fact the engine-testing model, a far cry from the
stealth version.
Anatoli Kvochur, deputy head of the Gromov flight-test institute, said
that the test plane was ''roughly speaking the first flying model'' of
the stealth. ''Naturally,'' he said, ''the plane will be different, it
will have a different wing, but it will happen after a certain stage of
flying tests.''
''This country needs such a plane,'' he said. ''Whether our budget can
afford such a plane is a different thing.''
International Herald Tribune, Jan. 23, 1999
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Aloha, He'Ping,
Om, Shalom, Salaam.
Em Hotep, Peace Be,
Omnia Bona Bonis,
All My Relations.
Adieu, Adios, Aloha.
Amen.
Roads End
Kris
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