Sunday, June 05, 2005

OAS Meeting to Start Tomorrow; US Agenda to be Blown Off   The Organization of American States is holding its annual summit starting this Monday.  The US is going to be pushing for a Central American Free Trade Agreement (a treaty that's about 40 votes down in the US House of Representatives right now...at a time when most Mexicans want out of NAFTA, which has cost them more farm jobs than it's gained them industrial jobs) and trying to strengthen fragile Latin American democracies, in an era where there's been more controversy over recent American elections than Latin ones.  In other words, we're going into this with a dash of condescension and a pound of support for big businesses looking to move abroad.  This should all go over really big with the OAS states who have seen from NAFTA that a free trade agreement can hurt even cheap labor countries, and that our insults to the strength of their governments is really an ideological attack on the parties in power around most of Latin America; particularly just over a month after a new Secretary General was elected to the OAS (former Chilean Foreign Minister Miguel Insulza) despite vehement US campaigning against him. Secretary of State Condeleeza Rice says this meeting has a chance to be "transformational".  She's right.  In the past, other members of the OAS used to pay attention to us.  But right now, we've got Mexico on our side, El Salvador, Nicaragua, the junta in Guatemala, and probably the murderous regime in Haiti...we've managed to alienate most of the democracies of Latin America, in addition to those in Europe, Africa, and parts of Asia. 7:57:00 PM    comment []

Game 6:  Heat-Pistons   In the matter of who’s more valuable to the Miami Heat, last night it was established that the Heat without Dwyane Wade are about as bad as the Lakers without Shaq, while it was already clear that the Heat without Shaq are still an excellent playoff team.  (If Shaq really was making the people around him better last night, then without him, the Heat players would have all had leprosy.)  The Pistons romped, winning by 25, and Rip Hamilton played like a man possessed; like a player who might someday be almost as good as…Dwyane Wade. Shaq played like a guy ready for his pension. 2:59:04 PM    comment []

Quote for the Day, 6/5/2005   "Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself."   -Rita Mae Brown 1:52:39 PM    comment []

Burn, Baby, Burn   Pope John Paul II left a mass of written notes behind when he died, and he made the request that all these documents be burned.  His personal secretary, Archbishop Stanislaw Dziswisz, has not done so, saying that "None of it is fit to be burned.  It is a great heritage, a huge treasure, great texts of a rich variety.  All of it should be kept for posterity." There are a couple of things I want to say.  First of all, I also have a private secretary, and--funny story--he's also an Archbishop.  Seriously, there's just a little rank inflation when the guy who picks up your phone is an Archbishop.  There's also the Bishop of the liquor cabinet...he used to tend bar at 21...and I hear the Pope’s bagel guy is a Cardinal.  Also, I think the Pope probably knew what he was doing when he asked for his private writings to be burned.  Maybe there's just stuff about his personal life that's no one's business but his own, and maybe there's a cache of erotic novels he wrote that are a particularly huge treasure.  Who knows, really?  But I say burning his notes was the Pope's call to make. 6:16:21 AM    comment []