ANOTHER DAMN DISASTER. I have nothing to say about it, not yet. (Except only this: it's not terrorism. Let's try to keep the conspiracy theories under control for a change, shall we?) A good friend raises this excellent point: the Columbia disaster: When will see the footage of Palestinians dancing in the streets at reports of a dead Israeli astronaut? It'll happen, wait and see.

A REQUEST FOR THE GOVERNMENT: If you're going to use $15 billion of our tax dollars to fight AIDS in Africa, can you possibly set it up in such a way as the money actually gets to those who need it? Is that too much to ask? I'd guess that for every dollar spent on food aid -- to keep the third world from starving -- another five bucks is used in bribes, or is stolen. (And a 1:5 ratio is probably a very generous estimate.) How many times do we have to learn that simply throwing money at a problem will not make it go away? Isn't this supposed to be among the very core principals of the Republican party? I'm not saying we shouldn't do it -- hell, we give God-knows-what to Egypt every year, and for what? At least in Africa we can potentially heal the truly ill. But don't think the job is done just because you wrote a check. That's a nasty habit the government really must break. Whenever the president stands in front of the country and says, with great pride, "And we will spend $400 billion to fix such-and-such a problem," the first question everyone should ask is: "HOW? How will you spend that money?" Details! We need details!

AMERICAN MOVIE CLASSICS has been showing Raiders of the Lost Ark repeatedly over the last couple of months, and we were watching the bar fight scene. Indy is being strangled by a big galoot when the German Toht says, with an evil hiss you can reach out and touch: "Shoot them. Shoot them both." Indy gives a priceless look of surprise, and the galoot and Indy temporarily join forces -- they've been struggling over a firearm, and now they use it to shoot the henchman who was about follow Toht's orders. Then the galoot and Indy go back to their little melee. At this point Janinne turns and asks a question that had not occurred to me in three thousand viewings of this movie: "Why do they go back to fighting? Why isn't that guy on their side now?" She has an excellent point. Put yourself in the galoot's place. Yes, you're a BAD GUY -- says so right on your SAG membership card -- but when the creepy German guy you've been travelling with suddenly, casually, hands out your death sentence, doesn't that make you rethink your priorities? Yes, the guy in the fedora is also trying to kill you, but only because you are trying to kill him. If you turn around and attack the other members of your party, that may signal to this Indiana fellow that you've had a change of allegiance. Is Toht paying you so well that you would continue working for him even after he gives the order to have you killed? Holy crow, of course not! What a crappy movie.

I USUALLY START TUNING OUT when I hear the phrase "tax breaks for the rich." How does one give tax breaks without giving them to the rich? They do, after all, pay the vast majority of taxes in this country. But this elimination of the dividend tax really does seem micro-focused to affect only the richest possible Americans. And calling it a "double taxation," as Bush did in his address last night, seems to me like a bit of mumbo-jumbo. I'm no financial genius, but isn't this the way it works? A corporation pays off its expenses, including governmental taxes on its income. This results, one hopes, in a company's net profit. That profit is then spread around -- reinvested back into the company, delivered as bonuses to the employees, and/or given to the stockholders in the form of dividends. Right? When the money is given to stockholders, it becomes income for them. In this country, there is a tax on one's income. Toot finis. Nobody is talking about rescinding the tax on employee bonuses, and that money comes from the same place as the dividends: Corporate profit. What's all this nonsense about double taxation?

THE NEW REPUBLIC'S JOSHUA KURLANTZICK on Bush's State of the Union address, which he deemed to be "largely a failure:" Bush is in some sense guilty of self-sabotage, neglecting to mention Iraq until more than halfway through the speech. If, as this magazine believes, Iraq's weapons of mass destruction pose an imminent threat, and if an overthrow of Saddam's regime could lead to a sea change in Middle Eastern politics, why didn't the president make Iraq the first topic on his agenda? Surely America's justification for sending its men and women to die in a foreign invasion should take precedence over plans to prevent forest fires, eliminate the marriage penalty for taxpayers, or provide mentors for middle-school children--all topics Bush mentioned in the first half of his speech. By the time Bush got to Iraq, it seemed like just another item on a laundry list. Jeez, Joshua, haven't you ever had to give a speech? By placing Iraq last in his address, he in fact gave it the strongest possible emphasis. In a business meeting, yes, you start with the biggest, most looming issue -- you want to get work done on it before everyone starts doodling on their notepads. In an important speech, however, you build up to the big stuff, and issues don't come much bigger than the coming war. What, Bush should have ended on the note of providing mentors to junior high students? Talk about dullsville.

I AM NOT VERY GOOD AT DEBATES. I read the political blogs, but I feel no particular need to jump in to the non-stop bustle. First of all, who even reads this? Anyone? No. A handful of people. Even if I were capable of making the leakproof argument as to why we should be invading Iraq right now, there is no one to hear it, and even if there was someone to hear it, you've already made up your mind anyway. You either agree with the notion that Saddam must be toppled, or you fall into one or more of the following camps: 1) Bush! He's a moron! He couldn't lead us in a round of Row, Row, Row Your Boat! 2) Iraq doesn't have nuclear weapons and North Korea does! But we're attacking Iraq! DUH! or 3) We're only attacking Iraq for the oil! And/or because we failed to capture Al-Qaeida! Now, with Hans Blix's report, what more is there to say? Blix, from what I can see, desperately wants to avoid war. And yet his report is nothing but bad news for Saddam. As Andrew Sullivan summarizes: The critical elements of the report are: that Saddam's December 7 dossier was riddled with unacountable gaps and omissions; that there are tons of unaccounted for VX gas, anthrax, 6500 missing chemically-armed bombs, SCUD missiles, and the like; that Saddam has neither shown what happened to these weapons and chemicals nor has he publicly destroyed them; that no Iraqi scientists have been granted immunity in order to talk to UN inspectors alone and without fear of retribution; and that documents related to uranium enrichment have been found in scientists' private homes, suggesting a policy of deliberate concealment of critical documents related to chemical and biological weapons. Any one of these is a material breach of U.N. Resolution 1441. All of them represent a hole the size of a tank in the credibility of Saddam. Blix also reports that inspectors found, in an Iraqi lab, a precursor to mustard gas. You know what that's called? Chemical weapons. Of the kind Saddam claims he doesn't have. So? What else do we need here? If you are against the war because you don't think Saddam is aggressively trying to acquire WMDs, you have Blix himself telling you otherwise. If you are against the war on purely moral grounds -- the Sheryl Crow philosophy; it'll harm our nation's karma -- then you are dooming the Iraqi people to further existence under a cruel despot. (What's that? Our economic sanctions were even more cruel than Saddam himself? I dunno, the sanctions didn't seem to prevent him from building 37 palaces.) And if you are against the war because Bush is a moron, then I don't know what to tell you. I don't agree with everything he's done in terms of foreign policy: Including North Korea in the "axis of evil" was like poking a gorilla-sized hornet's next with a stick, and I don't know if he knows what to do with Iraq after we have liberated it. But all in all I think he's done a fine job, and he's on the right track. I was amazed to read on Andrew Sullivan's site that he feels we should give Iraq yet one more last chance. How many more should there be, and why should we offer them? Countries like France and Germany won't be swayed by the fact that we offered a lastlast chance. They won't want to take action under any circumstances. Ditto for the doves in this country. No, Bush did what the world asked: He went through the U.N. He got the inspectors into Iraq. They found nothing but obstinance and the occasional chemical weapon. Not to sound like Ah-nuld, but the time for talk is over. Now it's time to finish the job.

WELL, THAT WAS RETARDED. I wrote a long entry and then hit "Sign Out" on Blogger, instead of "Post." So now it's all gone. Grr. Back to square one. Three questions about the Super Bowl: 1: Anybody else notice that one of the Raiders involved with the coin toss was named "Lincoln Kennedy?" This is a man destined to be part of a football coin toss! 2: How did Anheuser-Busch, maker of Bud Light, come to the conclusion that commericials prominently featuring the human posterior will sell beer? And I'm not talking about the attractive female variety. A couple of years ago, they began subtlely, although it seemed grotesque at the time: Two young men who choose Bud Light over toilet paper when they run out of money at their local supermarket. (They request their groceries bagged in paper, please.) This year, a true horror show: A man in an upside-down clown costume -- it looks like he's walking on his hands, but he's not -- enters a bar and asks for a drink. When he drinks the beer, it looks like he's doing it through his, uh... well, you get the picture. The rest of the bar looks on in horror, as does the television viewer. (Final moment: The same man asks for a hot dog, and the bartender refuses to sell it to him.) Yucch. Anheuser-Busch has been the sole beer sponsor of the Super Bowl for a long time now, and each year they present the commercials you are most likely to revile the next day. This is a marketing strategy? 3: By the way: Every year, there are numerous contests where the prize is "two tickets to... The Big Game!" The NFL does not let just any old schmo have the rights to use the name "Super Bowl." Why? I have no idea. I understand the need of a corporation to protect its trademark, but the Super Bowl trademark is about as watered-down as it gets at this point. It's in the dictionary for criminey's sake. Tribal chieftains in Botswana know what the Super Bowl is. What possible harm can come from letting advertisers use the phrase? I know -- it's a money thing. You want to use the phrase "Super Bowl" in your radio spot? Pay the NFL. The problem for the NFL is, so many companies now use "the Big Game" instead that it has become synonymous with the Super Bowl, and costs nothing to use. Better for the NFL to release "Super Bowl" into the public domain so that... well, what. So that it can receive even more publicity? Right, the Super Bowl's been suffering from a lack of hoopla in recent years. Never mind, forget I said anything.