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Objective Observer
Weekly newsletter from the Objective Observatory offers a pithy insight into the inner workings of Anguillian Society.
All content is (c) 1993-2006 by RK Publications and reflects the views of the author.
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Readers, if you have ever seen the title above before, you are either a nuclear physicist or a reader of the Scientific American (hereinafter, SciAm). In a desperate attempt to keep up with the new and the news, the Staff here takes a flood of magazines and watches all important news programs, particularly weighty Sunday Morning opinion shows. In short, despite the paucity of news flowing from The Valley (Anguilla's capital), we drown in reports, opinion, and facts of more or less significance. In many ways, Anguilla's distance assists in weighing what is going on. As you heard here first, for example, Rumsfeld is plainly incompetent, and now that term is applied far and wide. The White House occupant, who never fires for incompetency (though medals are awarded for being "Dead Wrong"), also is plainly seen as not your ideal executive. We see that the President of Pfizer is getting a six million dollar a year pension, which is pretty good considering that Pfizer stock (symbol PFE) has been cut in half in recent years. What pension do you get for a disastrous war, begun for phony reasons?
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When the OO was quite young, at the time of the French and Indian wars, the young were instructed not to discuss either politics or religion at the dinner table. You Faithful Readers of this column are well aware that we do not follow the dictate to suppress commentary on politics. This week, even the ancient Conservative icon Wm. Buckley has said the Iraq adventure is a plain failure, and many are the voices on the right denouncing Rumsfeld as incompetent. So, let us move to religion. Among the many benefits of living in Anguilla is that one has the time to reflect upon and connect seemingly disparate events. As you may have noticed, there was a huge media alarm about the hapless character in Afghanistan who had converted to Christianity, and the uniform judgment of Muslim clerics that the only proper punishment was death. That you saw on TV. What you may not have noted is the Bush Administration attitude towards politically inconvenient science, as documented in an excellent article by Michael Specter in The New Yorker ("Political Science"). [Again, in the good old days, The New Yorker printed comic brilliancies by Thurber; now it is a respected journal of record and thought. We move on.]
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Today's subject has been promised you Faithful Readers for many weeks, but has been preempted by urgent world events. We are at last ready to contemplate the subject of progress (or no progress) on Anguilla, in the United States, and in the world at large. As usual, we see a common thread in what is happening everywhere. We start with Anguilla, and we regret to inform Readers that Anguilla is rapidly developing and is losing its quiet charm of old. Some 13 years ago, when the OO first set foot on Anguilla, he opined [it's a habit] that the island was good for some 15 years before becoming developed, over-developed, and subject to the many, many ills of civilization. Well, it was a good estimate. Huge new projects are going up, we have a golf course (and a handsome one) in the last stages of completion, we have one small Mall, and an expansion, and a first large movie theater in construction, and great big homes being built, and condos, and a more than active real estate market. That's all good for employment: you can't get a work person without connections. But it's bad for traffic, which is clogged, and for wild driving on the roads, and, alas, we must report, for gangs, guns and crime, all thriving. It's not the old, quiet, safe Anguilla that was. And that's truly depressing. Of course, what is loosely called "Civilization" often is.
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Readers, the OO and several high Staff have returned from Atlanta via the broken U.S. airline system. We fully realize that for several weeks we have promised you Patient ones a column reporting on Progress (or Progress vel non, as stuffy lawyers say). But, again, we need to make an urgent report. The problem is not at all with Atlanta, whose people are most polite and helpful, nor with Atlanta's famous restaurants. Indeed, while Atlanta has fine museums and an Aquarium of national note, and much shopping, and even movie theaters, the local pastime, at least in the classy Buckhead neighborhood and environs, seems to be going out to eat. Do you know another such locale? Right! It is Anguilla. The OO went to his favorite small restaurant, called Brasserie Le Coze, only to discover it closes at the end of this week, because Neiman Marcus is expanding its neighboring store, which isn't necessary at all. The OO, always on the lookout, tried to get the proprietor to visit Anguilla as the site of a possible expansion. [By the way, if you don't speak French, a Brasserie has nothing to do with the female "bra". Au contraire.] On to the review of air transport.
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Patient Readers, the Secretarial Staff here has spent the week in the toils of bureaucracies, from Government and business to non-profit. Our mental health requires a rant. The first dysfunctional subject is the Citibank credit card monster called Visa AAdvantage. The OO has held such a card ever since coming to Anguilla, and used it daily, always paying up instantly. But, apparently, someone “compromised” a batch of card numbers (all on the Citibank staff say “we do not have that information”) so Citibank decided to change the OO’s card number . The first message was a rapid and unintelligible voice on the ‘phone machine that sounded like a scam – we get a lot of these. Then, suppliers began to e-mail the Observatory saying the old card was no good. After about two weeks a rapid recorded message arrived and said the old card was now invalid. We swung into action.
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This was, of course, the week when all TV newscasts consisted of reports that the Bush Presidential approval ratings had dropped like a stone, below 35% on one survey. It seems that the decision to allow the Emir of Dubai to buy the port services in the six major East Coast U.S. ports disturbed what is always called the "Base". It's not clear whether the Katrina Botch, the Medicare drug "benefit" Botch (see below), the 13 million or so illegal immigrants in the U.S., or the terrible deterioration in Iraq (the "Big Botch in Iraq") have contributed to the Base defecting. We here are rather clear that the problem is managerial: no one incompetent is ever fired in the Bush Administration – they get medals. But, we are pleased that the American public seems to be waking up from its stupefied slumber, where the words "Trust us, we're strong on terrorism" don't match with the proved incompetencies. [Note to our spellchecker: we mean "incompetencies", not "incompetents". Stop the nagging.]
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Both in Washington, on Anguilla, and at the Objective Observatory (hereinafter, "The ObOb"), it has been one of those bad weeks. Anguilla is mobbed with visitors, American Airlines has decided to provide no convenient service to or from the States, and for some reason the Customs and Immigration at the ferry terminal here has decided to take some one and a half hours to process Visitors coming in, including three kids and two female attendants who were a bit ragged when they emerged. Then, there was news of yet one more attempt to change (retroactively) the terms of the "Alien Landholding Licenses", a solemn document signed by the Governor and the local Government under which all Expats hold land titles here. The idea is to jack up the fees for an Expat renting his house beyond the US$1200 a year stipulated in the License when issued and the Government took 17 ½% of the purchase price as a fee for permitting the house purchase. Many Expats feel tricked. Yet, this is Anguilla and all is not lost.
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It is high season for Visitors here at the Objective Observatory, and the question they all ask is: What do you do on Anguilla? We are tired of this inquiry, and devote all space today to answering for The OO and the entire Staff. Since Anguilla has no current daily newspapers, the OO, as well as the Staff Ethicist and other specialists, have to monitor the TV news (mostly on CNN) as well as reading The New York Times and The Washington Post web sites, with all vital columns and the text of all White House evasions. The Revered Investment Guru has to follow the markets on CNBC, read the Wall Street Journal headlines and, on Saturdays, Barron’s on the web, and listen to a curiously noisy stock grader named Jim Cramer most nights on CNBC. The R.I.G. is also constantly getting option quotes on the web, and supervises the Observatory endowment.
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Just to start things off by teasing our Readers in the U.S. Northeast, we quote today’s weather dispatch to the blizzard belt:
“All of you enjoying the bracing early spring weather in the Boston-Washington corridor will be distressed to hear that temperatures in Anguilla fell to as low as 74 degrees (Fahrenheit) last night and this morning, although sunny, was 'seriously balmy'.
"In sympathy with whatever all the whining is about in the U.S. Northeast, power was out for four hours yesterday here. After many attempts, the Steward at The Objective Observatory was able to reach Anguilla Electric, where a surly fellow said the problem was 'with distribution'. Fearlessly dealing with the crisis, the OO and brave visitor whose flight to Washington was canceled immediately went out to dinner.
"Power is back and we are listening to non-stop weather reports on all news channels, awaiting declarations from either Pat Robertson or some Mideast crazy to the effect that the situation is caused by cartoons. Fear not! We shall carry on, even if the temperature drops to 72 tonight. – The OO and the Entire Staff”
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Super Bowl [it’s two words] Sunday is upon us at the Objective Observatory, but while the Famous Hot Dogs Poached in Beer are, er, poaching, our Staff is gloomy, and wrapped in sad contemplation. Of course, we had the President’s State of the Union speech, now officially referred to as “SOTU”, but we are an hour later than Eastern time here in Anguilla, and the OO fell asleep somewhere in mid-platitudes. Given the messy state of Iraq, where roadside bombings doubled in 2005 over 2004, this measure of a strong Iraq Gross National Product was not cheering, nor was the much more dangerous nuclear ranting from Iran, nor was the mess in New Orleans, nor the huge Federal deficits, and so on and on. The U.S. needs more than platitudes from both parties, but it isn’t getting anything worth sneezing at. How about a little bipartisan work on the real problems with simple, though painful, answers? How about some competence for a change? Isn’t Rumsfeld looking tired? Time for him to retire? Chances are zero. As for the Prez discovering science instead of creationism, here is the headline story that ran on the Front Page of the (Internet) New York Times the morning after SOTU:
“ Scientists Find Gene That Controls Type of Earwax in People”
Doesn’t that cheer you up?
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You know, Readers, a pattern is beginning to be discernible. First there was the botched WMD “Intelligence” [note the sneering quotation marks], followed by a medal to the author of the “Dead Wrong” Intel. Then we have the badly botched invasion of Iraq, with Rumsfeld on the air at all times telling us the Army is not stretched or stressed, and things are dandy, despite all that trivial killing and kidnaping . No medal yet for Rummy. Then there was the total botch of the hurricane responses; the FEMA Director is gone, but the agency’s functioning as if he were still there. Next, the ideal of “Rule of Law” in the very temple of democracy was trashed by flouting the Constitution and the law declaring that wiretaps need warrants. And then, this week, the wonderful idea of creating democracies in the Middle East has worked a treat, with the election of the terrorists in Palestine. And then, and then, we also have the total screw-up of the Medicare Drug program. We cannot testify to what it’s like in Iraq (though we can look and listen and read), but we have some direct experience of Medicare. It’s the bureaucratic equivalent.
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Look you, Readers, the column about “Numbers”, twice promised you, was going to lament the numerical illiteracy of many voters, with the results you see. If there are ten workers in a study, and one makes a million dollars a year, and nine make $12,000, then the “Average” income is $110,800. This is a nice non-round sum, but it doesn’t make the fellows with the smaller pay any happier. You will find certain Administrations which shall be nameless figuring out such averages, and saying the voters don’t understand how well off they are. Similarly, sometimes the word “average’ is [wrongly] used to mean the number where half the sample is higher, half lower, and sometimes [wrongly] used to mean the most common number in the sample. While ignorance of such manipulations is bad, ignorance of statistics is worse. When patients take some drug and the death rate doubles, this may mean a major threat, or it may mean that if you take the pill your risk is increased to one tenth the chance of being struck while crossing the street. Either way, you have to watch out.
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Magazines from abroad arrive here sporadically. This week, the December 19, 2005 issue of Newsweek came. On the last page there was George Will's article about the depressing U.S. political performance in 2005. Now, George Will is considered: (a) very smart, and (b) very much a "Conservative". Our Senior Counsel remembers going across the street from his Georgetown office to a small restaurant where George Will and Nancy Reagan would often lunch, complete with pairs of obvious safeguarders at nearby tables. As our Readers know, we strongly support intelligent debate, and we hate debate by names (like "Liberal") which imply that the debatee can't think for himself. Well, George Will said of 2005: (1) the Terry Schiavo case involved "gross overreaching by by the federal government", (2) the Harriet Miers nomination involved "indifference to competence", and (3) Katrina [the hurricane] "displayed the consequences of incompetence". Then came this zinger: "Abroad, Iraq illustrated one, two and three." Well put, George.
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It is high Tourist season in Anguilla, and The Objective Observatory is humming with Visitors, as are all villas and restaurants. Hey, what with Anguilla being so famous these days, it's hard to find a decent bottle of wine under $90. It is also apparent that the material from which ladies' bathing suits are made has become more and more expensive, so many maidens on the beach are thrifty and hardly use any cloth at all in their garments – if you call those garments. Further, the whole island is one construction site, but in accord with ancient local tradition, no job is completed. The influx has stimulated new restaurants, and we are ready to put up Anguilla's restaurant list against any other island or political entity of similar population. Recommendations available to you belovéd Readers, but only under strict seal of confidentiality. A cash bond must be posted.
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It is high Tourist season in Anguilla, and The Objective Observatory is humming with Visitors, as are all villas and restaurants. Hey, what with Anguilla being so famous these days, it's hard to find a decent bottle of wine under $90. It is also apparent that the material from which ladies' bathing suits are made has become more and more expensive, so many maidens on the beach are thrifty and hardly use any cloth at all in their garments – if you call those garments. Further, the whole island is one construction site, but in accord with ancient local tradition, no job is completed. The influx has stimulated new restaurants, and we are ready to put up Anguilla's restaurant list against any other island or political entity of similar population. Recommendations available to you belovéd Readers, but only under strict seal of confidentiality. A cash bond must be posted.
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At the end of year, all columns are required to review the year past, and to offer predictions. If you want it, we have it. To the OO and Staff, the low mark of 2005 in Washington was the Vice President’s campaign to permit torture of captives. This is after the Abu Ghraib disgrace, and was followed by revelations of domestic spying in direct, but direct, contravention of the Fourth Amendment and an explicit statute. A new Reader just sent the OO a wonderfully crisp summary of the perils to the world’s greatest democracy. We quote: “... [T]his from a person who had been a staunch Republican for many of my years: What Bush has done to the Republican party and worse, to the country as well in the eyes of the world, will take years to be repaired. He and the vice president are disgraceful...” Thank you, for frankness, Sir Staunch.
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It's the end of the year, our feelings about current politics in Washington are known to all Readers, and it is time to think about the blessings of Anguilla and to plan for the coming year. This is your official notice that in 2006 the OO will be giving out a new award, called the TSOF. That stands for Ted Stevens Old Foop, so named because the Senior Senator from Alaska most certainly is. He distinguished himself among the Old Foops of the U.S. Congress by insisting on a pork appropriation of close to a quarter billion to build a bridge to nowhere, thus saving airport commuters seven minutes of ferry ride. He then pitched a public fit when it was suggested that hurricane victims might make better use of the money. Then, just this week, he attached his favorite rider to the defense appropriations bill in the Senate, calling for drilling in his state's wildlife preserve. This caused a terrible end-of-session spasm in DC, which is much given to such spasms. Now, this column actually supports drilling (with due safeguards for the sex life of the moose), but thinks the rider was ... er ...non-germane. Stevens is certainly the very perfect model of an Old Foop, and we predict a glorious future for this award.
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KingsGeorge [OO #624]
The gloom was thick in the Staff Room of the Objective Observatory. News of more evil-doing in Washington had broken (again), as the President admitted repeatedly “authorizing” wiretaps without warrants. Our Senior Counsel was showing the Staff Ethicist a copy of the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, part of the Bill of Rights as Readers well know. It says, rather clearly:
“Amendment IV. The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.”
While there has been much debate about various ways of interpreting the Constitution, this plainly means that the President’s authorization of domestic wiretaps without warrants is unconstitutional. No wordplay, it’s illegal.
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The announced subject for today was Change, but on looking around the capitals of both Anguilla and the U.S., we have detected little or none, so we turn to more urgent matters. First, though, we wish to say a word for the wisdom of the Greeks and the Romans. They knew. Last week, you recall, we advised the Democrats in the U.S. not to phrase the question of Iraq as “Cut and run” versus “Keep on trying”. Instead, Gov. Dean said, correctly but unwisely, that we could not win. That was politically wrong: he should have said, we can’t win with the crowd that already has botched the war over and over. That’s the winning posture. And the Romans? Well, we ran across the fine old Latin tag “ Asinus ad lyrum”– the ass at (trying to play) the lyre. And the deep wisdom? Well, our Chambers Dictionary explains the word as: “One unsuited to an occupation”. Is that Rummy, or what? The Romans knew.
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We had planned to discuss Change with you. Yet, a more urgent need arises: the need to dispense advice. Yes, Anguilla and the United States are two places where advice is not wanted and is almost always disregarded. In the U.S., true, there is a thriving business in books about how to change yourself, in all respects from top to ... er ...bottom. The books sell, but a glance at the average U.S. butt reveals the books are ignored. This sad truth shall not prevent us from dispensing some sound but unrequested advice. We start with politics in the U.S.
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