And This Guy's A Serious Candidate?

Here we go....

Every foreigner in America, including British visitors, would be required to carry an ID card bearing photograph and fingerprints under plans drawn up by Rudolph Giuliani, the frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination.

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“If you don’t have that card, you get thrown out of the country,” Giuliani said. He intends to call it a Safe card (for secure authorised foreign entry).

That should help with tourism....

Do the Republican frontrunners truly believe that the majority of Republican voters are xenophobic reactionaries who get giddy with excitement at the suggestion of restrictions on immigration (even legal immigration and tourism), border fences, and torture? If not, they're running peculiar campaigns.

"Because There's Nothing We're Too Embarrassed To Publish...."

That's my suggested tagline for the National Review - although given that I found this article through a link from the New York Times....

Other possibilities,

• No, we truly are not capable of blushing;
• It attacks Warren Buffett so it has to be true; or
• Math is hard.

Airport Security, Revisited

U.S. airport security astounds me. It represents a combination of excessively intrusive investigation of all passengers, without regard to risk, the chasing of yesterday's perceived dangers, and ineffectual measures apparently meant to convince passengers that we're safe (such as the stultified "three ounce bottle" limit on the (multiple) liquids and gels you can take aboard, or having everybody remove their shoes). Add to that the fact that my tax dollars pay for "express" security lines for first class passengers, and....

Is this sensible or not? For many years, laptop computers were treated as a special security risk requiring removal from your carry-on bags. This was obviously underinclusive in today's era, given the proliferation of portable electronic goods. The TSA has apparently woken up to that fact and, as of a couple of weeks ago, requires separate screening for laptops, full-size video game consoles, full-size DVD players (not the portable ones, which can easily be as big as a laptop computer), video cameras that use video cassettes, and CPAP breathing machines (that's medical equipment - because everybody wants to take their medical equipment out of its carrying case for inspection in a grubby TSA screening area). Apparently they didn't feel it necessary to inform the airlines of these changes, so they in turn could inform their passengers.

So it appears that the response to intercepting zero (0) dangerous devices hidden in portable computers over a period of decades is to expand the list to include other items in which zero (0) dangerous hidden devices have been detected, while continuing to ignore similar devices - this, like the gels and liquids policy, is an ineffectual half-measure. Either all such items pose an enhanced risk requiring special screening, or none do. Does any particular TSA bureaucrat want to lay claim to this brain child?

Here's a nebulous explanation,

The policy recommendation came from a front line security officer who screens passengers every day who observed that game consoles and DVD players are complex devices much like laptop computers. This change brings more uniformity to their policy.

The laptop computer rule was enacted in response to the Lockerbie bombing in 1998. It took almost twenty years for somebody to notice that the policy didn't make sense? And the response was to enact a new policy that doesn't make sense because, even if not actually uniform, it is "more uniform"?

When the TSA was introduced, it was supposed to bring about uniformity in the security screening process. Having recently flown out of Detroit, Minneapolis and Chicago, there were some very significant discrepancies in how security was handled at the three locations. But then, it may be that in addition to forgetting to inform some or all airlines of the new rules, the TSA forgot to uniformly inform its own agents.

I have to say, it was nice to fly back from Canada where another passenger asked security, "Do we have to take our shoes off?" The answer, "Not unless you have steel toes."

Bush's Legacy....

"If all the planets come into alignment, the people of the world hold hands and share a Coke (and a smile), and pigs fly...."

Now, assuming Bill Kristol isn't smoking crack, he had to know that his column suggesting a positive legacy for G.W. Bush was drivel.

Let's look at the broad forest rather than the often unlovely trees. What do we see? First, no second terrorist attack on U.S. soil -- not something we could have taken for granted. Second, a strong economy -- also something that wasn't inevitable.

No second attack occurred during Clinton's years either, but that didn't stop Bush and friends for blaming him for 9/11. Kristol also argues, "What about terrorism? Apart from Iraq, there has been less of it, here and abroad, than many experts predicted on Sept. 12, 2001" - he's dissembling. Maybe some experts anticipated a larger increase than we've experienced, but you still don't build a legacy by having terrorism increase. (Just like you don't balance a budget by having a smaller deficit than the absurdly large one you initially forecast.)

As for the strong economy, well, Kristol wrote that weeks ago and maybe the "housing bubble" issue is overblown. As for the economy, he is speaking from a position of privilege - not where most Americans are coming from. But even assuming the economy doesn't slide into recession, no, you don't get a glowing legacy for creating a context where the people who are supposed to appreciate your accomplishments don't feel any benefit. If we are fortunate enough not to have a recession and things turn around for the average voter, it's unlikely to occur before 2008 and Bush's successor will take the credit.

And third, and most important, a war in Iraq that has been very difficult, but where -- despite some confusion engendered by an almost meaningless "benchmark" report last week -- we now seem to be on course to a successful outcome.

Let's be honest here. If Bush's surge plan fails, he will be blamed. If it succeeds, it will be during his successor's Presidency and his successor will take the credit. And even before we reach the issue of success or failure, Kristol qualifies his projection of what "victory" for Bush would mean:

And then he could leave office with the nation on course to a successful (though painful and difficult) outcome in Iraq. With that, the rest of the Middle East, where so much hangs in the balance, could start to tip in the direction of our friends and away from the jihadists, the mullahs and the dictators.

Overlooking the "and if pigs could fly" wishful thinking, setting things on a path to where somebody else's administration will oversee the benefit? How many Presidents does Kristol credit with "winning the Cold War"? The guy who is in the Oval Office when good things happen tends to get the credit for those good things, no matter what came before.

Recall when Kristol, caught off-guard on the Daily Show, described Bush's Iraq policy as his having driven us into a ditch? Then, as now, he insists that the guy who drove us into the ditch is going to get us out. But how many years do we need to spend bouncing around in the ditch before he finally admits, "Bush isn't much of a driver."

Jackson Diehl is less grandiose in his projections, but when comparing him to Kristol that's damning him with faint praise. Noting what he describes as "aims ... utterly different from those with which Bush began his second term [such as the 'Freedom Agenda'", Diehl notes that the Bush Administration is focusing on possible solutions for the Israel-Palestine conflict and North Korea. Here, if news reports are correct, I will give Condoleezza Rice some credit for her approach to Israel-Palestine - she is reportedly attempting to reverse the traditional (and always doomed to failure) approach of spending years negotiating over minor details, suggesting that an agreement should contemplate what the final Palestinian state would look like.

Diehl doesn't mention that, choosing instead to focus on what he apparently believes are positive signs, such as Olmert's apparent willingness to enter into a "declaration of principles" (whatever that would be worth), and that Mahmoud Abbas (who is desperate for international support in the conflict between Hamas and Fatah, and who is also desperate for the lifting of crippling economic sanctions) to "work on the 'declaration of principles'". Wow... If all goes well, we might end up almost back where we were after the Oslo Accords. Diehl all but promises us that this will go nowhere - "Yasser Arafat wasn't ready to conclude a deal, even on the generous terms that Israel then offered (and Olmert now rejects)." This was generous? Diehl believes that the Palestinians can be pressured into accepting less?

I am reminded of old pop lyrics... Joplin's (really, I should say Kristofferson's), "Freedom's just another word for nothin' left to lose" - maybe for the Palestinians the last seven years have been an example of Bush's "freedom agenda" in action. But then there's Dylan's "When you got nothing, you got nothing to lose". Diehl presents a callow expectation that the Palestinians will agree to even less than a revival of Barak's "generous" offer that they give up more land, control of their borders and airspace, any real claim to Jerusalem, and the "right of return". When you talk to people who observe the conflict you tend to hear the comment, "Everybody knows what the final settlement will look like, with a border that pretty much follows the Green Line and the Palestinian 'right of return' limited to their new state." I think the expectation that you can get any traction with a "declaration of principles" that offers less than that is naive.

Diehl also suggests that the U.S. may achieve a breakthrough in North Korea, with "a full disclosure ... of of the nuclear bombs and related materials it has been accumulating and hiding for the past two decades" To the extent that this happens, I expect that as soon as Kim Jong Il deems it appropriate he will be right back to blocking inspectors and developing a nuclear arsenal. If the Bush Administration actually achieves "A deal to dismantle bombs and other nuclear facilities could be done by the end of the year", and that deal is verifiable and sustainable, I will give it the credit that it is due. But if North Korea gets concessions while simply postponing its development of nuclear weapons for a few years, it's no basis for a legacy. Even if it works, putting the Korean conflict back into the state where it was fifteen or so years ago is not much of a foundation for a legacy.

I can understand why some people want to cast Bush's presidency in a more positive light, or hope that in his last eighteen months he'll suddenly start pulling rabbits out of his hat, but I suspect his legacy will be one of failure.

Why You Should Proofread Your Ad Copy

Oops?

Litigation Threat To A Start-Up Business

We all know the story.... A poor, struggling little multi-billion dollar company like Scotts is creating popular consumer products, when all of the suddent an unexpected lawsuit - let's say a customer eats Miracle Gro, gets an upset tummy, and claims there should have been a warning label that it wouldn't make people larger - gets a sixteen trillion dollar jury verdict and puts them out of business. Sure, the story is pure fiction, but that's what the "tort reform" propagandists wish us to believe. But let's interject some reality....

The other day I was browsing through Inc.com's "30 under 30" series, and read a profile of an interesting company - what Inc.com deems The Coolest Little Start-Up in America:

If you've browsed in the garden section of your local Home Depot or Wal-Mart recently, you may have seen a new plant food somewhere north of the begonias and south of the perlite. It comes in a yellow and green shrink-wrapped bottle with a familiar shape and the kind of spray top you might find on, say, Windex. It may well be the world's first commercial product made entirely from garbage. The plant food itself is a so-called vermicompost tea, a brew made from the castings (that is, the poop) of red worms that have feasted on various types of organic waste. The containers are reused soda bottles. The spray tops are the unwanted extras that have been dumped by manufacturers of other spray-on products. Even the boxes that the plant food is shipped in are garbage: They're the misprinted rejects of major companies.

But the most striking fact about TerraCycle is the age of its co-founder and CEO, Tom Szaky (pronounced zack-y). He is now 24. A Hungarian by birth and a Canadian by upbringing, he was 19 years old and in his freshman year at Princeton University when he launched the company with one of his classmates, Jon Beyer. At the time, they were simply trying to win a business plan competition. They came in fourth--out of the money--but they couldn't shake the idea that you could build a business selling garbage. And now, five years later, they have done just that. In 2005, TerraCycle had $461,000 in sales, mostly in Canada, where the product was carried by Home Depot and Wal-Mart as well as other chains. With the decision by both retailers to roll it out in their U.S. stores this year, the company's 2006 sales are expected to top $2.5 million.

So it caught my attention when I spotted a Marketplace story about the same company:

Terracycle claims its organic plant food is "as good or better than the leading chemical fertilizer." Tough talk for a little guy when it's obvious the company means it's better than Miracle Gro.

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[Scotts is] suing to see Terracycle's plant food performance study. But Terracycle's refusing for now.*

Scotts isn't leaving it at that. It's also claiming consumers might confuse Terracycle with Miracle-Gro because of the way it's packaged.

As the story indicates, Scotts appears under the impression that it should have the exclusive right to use green and yellow packaging for gardening products - really, there's no confusing the two products - or perhaps it's just that they know how litigation costs can affect a small business:

Hemphill says big companies often use this kind of lawsuit to protect their brands and market share. That's not just bad news for the up-and-comers, its bad news for consumers too, as it can stifle competition, he says.

CEO Tom Szaky says he had to spend 30 percent of his earnings in legal fees this month — and if he's slapped with another lawsuit, it could drive him out of business

Let's see if tort reform propagandists like ATRA and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Institute for Legal Reform step in to hold a fund raiser to help with Terracycle's legal fees....

Are you holding your breath?
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* I hope Terracycle is able to substantiate that claim.

Idi Amin's son jailed for role in gang attack

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Update: More here. I wonder if Amin will assert sovereign immunity as a "Prince of Scotland".