I don’t know if it’s gonna knock you off your feet, but the human rights organization is protesting a move to put microchips in HIV carriers in Papua, Indonesia, according to the AFP. I’m not sure where I stand on this, but it’s an interesting test case in whether a human being should be allowed to be an inadvertent murder weapon. It’s kind of the ultimate version of “Don’t Ask,Don’t Tell.”

I admit I have not been following the dust-up at The New Republic over Scott Thomas’ reporting but a post on Right Wing Nuthouse this morning – “Foer Under Fire” – caught my attention. Rick Moran thinks publisher Martin Peretz is letting his editor Franklin Foer twist in the wind. Could be.

What caught my attention in all this is Foer’s claim no to have vetted Thomas’ dispatches very carefully, a sad admission but not an especially surprising one. The New Republic is a small magazine. Things move fast. As I am well aware from Pajamas, it’s hard to keep a grip on everything without a lot of personnel.

That is why blogs are in many ways a superior editorial system. Lots of people are vetting, as Scott Thomas and Franklin Foer I’m sure are now very aware. Sometimes these blog-editors can be seen to be ganging up, but usually the truth outs. We shall what transpires in this case.

Admittedly, there is still dispute about how serious it was. But while Mohammed El Baradei negotiates the “peaceful” use of nuclear energy by the Iranians, he ought – and the world ought – to consider this analysis from the UPI’s Claude Salhani:

What do Japan and Iran have in common? Japan has nuclear power plants and Iran is on its way to acquiring nuclear technology. Japan is prone to powerful earthquakes, and so is Iran. This is where the similarities end.

If a similar earthquake was to hit one of Iran’s nuclear facilities, the consequences could be expected to be far worse, affecting oil production in the Gulf region and sending the price of a barrel of oil skyrocketing.

And that’s the least of it. We can all remember the frightened ineptitude with which primitive Iran has faced earthquakes in recent years, the psychotic ideologues who run the country debating whether to accept aid from the Infidels in the US and Israel. They couldn’t even handle it when a terremoto hit rural villages. Wait until it hits a reactor.

But wait – there’s more…. as we hear ad infinitum on late night television. Iran is run by a clique that believes that chaos will bring forth the Mahdi (Shiite messiah) and save the world for Allah. Not particularly reassuring when you think about nuclear safety. Maybe El Baradei should ask Larajani a a question about that when he next confronts Iran’s chief nuclear negotiator. [Don't hold your breath.-ed. Don't worry. I'm not.]

Despite her procrustean political views and Scrooge-like ticket prices, I think Barbra Streisand’s a more than decent old-fashioned Broadway singer and even a good, but very traditional, movie director. (Prince of Tides is a worthy film even though the star-auteur sports the longest fingernails in the history of psychiatry.)

But I had a good guffaw when I read the following in an Evening Standard review of her recent London concert:

Then, such is the magic of music and music sung by probably (if we forget Ella Fitzgerald) the 20th century’s finest female voice, before she had finished caressing the first line of the opening Starting Here, Starting Now, everyone had forgiven her everything.

Say what?

“The 20th century’s finest female voice”? Let’s be kind to the reviewer – one John Aizlewood – and assume he was referring to popular singers only and disqualify the likes of Callas, Sutherland, Sills, Tebaldi, Norman, etc. The thought of Streisand doing La Traviata sends me into a fit of giggles.

But even in the world of popular music, someone ought to give this British yahoo a giant doobie and make him listen to some music. He should start with Bessie Smith and go to Billie Holiday and Big Mama Thornton and Ruth Brown and Betty Carter and Etta James and Martha Reeves and… and… if he wants to go white, he should jump the channel to Edith Piaf or Melina Mercouri or Nina Pastori or… or… I could go on but you get the point. (What about Janis?-ed. Okay, Janis.)

And if you’re talking about Broadway singers, Streisand never came anywhere close to Ethel Merman when it came to belting out a song.

The problem with Barbra is that her heart often seems fake. (Compare that with Bessie Smith… or, for that matter, Callas… or Judy Garland!) As of now, Streisand’s not on my iPod and it’s an 80 gig one. At some point, maybe she will be. I’ve got a lot of room left to fill. But number two female vocalist of the 20th Century? Number 200 maybe… just maybe.

(What about Patti LaBelle?-ed. Score one for you, dude. Now there’s a potential number 2 to Ella.)

Feel free to post your top female singers below. It’ll be fun to see the list. But please – no Celine Dion. (What about Celia Cruz?-ed. Yes! Celia Cruz. My favorite. How could I forget?)

I am not a religious person like Dennis Prager, but he often makes sense to me (and he has a great voice). His video interview on PJM today is worth a look. He certainly does a good job of eviscerating the self-described Fairness Doctrine whose intention is clearly the selective muzzling of talk radio.

I think Elizabeth Edwards’ comment that her husband would be more sympathetic to women’s issues than Hillary is just dopey electioneering. But the above love-dovey Bill/Hill tripe in response is really an eye-roller. No wonder they turned off comments on YouTube.

She is not the first to do it, but Mariane Pearl is to be applauded for suing the terrorists and their bank enablers who murdered her husband Daniel.

Of course it’s not likely that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and Sheikh Omar will care much about this or have much of net worth to fork over (although… who knows?), but the banks definitely have something to be afraid of. The suit “seeks an unspecified amount of money, whatever the court ‘deems appropriate’, to prevent the defendants from committing similar acts.”

I don’t know how much the Habib Bank has in the US per se (this is a New York court), but the international system now seems to be working together on this.

Go, Mariane! (and lawyers)

That Al Gore is an enviro-hypocrite is not exactly news and I would have ignored the fact that he served Chilean Sea Bass at his daughter’s Beverly Hills (what happened to Tennessee?) wedding – except that I have been abjuring the fish for years, thinking it was endangered. And Chilean Sea Bass is one of my favorite foods! Even so I wouldn’t dream of serving at a party for fear of coming under attack by the Green Harpies. Never mind that it is unclear whether these particular pisces were still endangered – I didn’t want to risk it. But I’m not Al Gore and my noblesse oblige quotient isn’t sufficiently high to ignore public opinion or my own guilty conscience. Maybe I need some fish offsets to go along with my carbon offsets.

CNN’s Political Ticker has the “startling news” today that most celebrities (and some semi-celebrities… Christy Romano?) are putting their money behind Democratic presidential candidates this year. The network has some facts and figures.

As a longtime denizen of Hollywood, what struck me immediately reading them is how little money this is to these people. The big spender is Ben Stiller, who seems to be aping corporate donors by hedging his bets and giving to more than one candidate (Clinton and Edwards) for a total of $11,500, inexplicably going over the legal limit of $9200. But even at the higher number, that is chump change to Stiller (known to be a nice guy, by the way) when you consider that he has gross points in a half dozen or so of the biggest box office hits of all time. A donation of 10K for Stiller equates to at best a couple of dollars to a normal person – maybe fifty cents.

The same can be said for Spielberg and Hanks and some others on the list. These people do not have to dig very deep into their net worths to make a political impact or assuage their consciences or both. They are probably making more in interest at the very moment they are making the donation (or their assistants are).

There are some amusing entries on the list: Baywatch star Alexandra Paul as a Kucinich supporter and Tony Sirico of The Sopranos backing Giuliani (Italian connection?). Actually Giuliani is the only Republican with any listed monetary support from Hollywood at all… and he only has two, two fewer than Dennis K.

Also notable is the support being given by Peter Coyote (a friend of mine from our radical pasts) to John “Two Americas” Edwards of the four hundred dollar haircuts and 28,000 square foot house. Edwards seems to be the radical chic candidate du jour. Oliver Stone, not surprisingly, is supporting him, but only to the tune of $500. Oliver’s recent movies haven’t fared very well at the box office, but you’d think he could do better than that. Oliver himself has quite a spread in Telluride. Whatever happened to “Luxury Home Owner Solidarity Forever?”

Adding to the comedy of yesterday’s post, another perpetual (or semi-perpetual) candidate Chris Dodd has complained that those snotty front runners (or semi-front runners, in Edwards’ case) Hillary Clinton and John Edwards are thinking of practicing “debate elitism” and leaving out the also-rans.

Never mind that Dodd is not even scoring one percent in the latest Gallup Poll (how much would Paris Hilton score, if she decided to run?) – we have to hear from Christopher.

Okay, Senator Dodd, just what is the cutoff and what qualifies you to run for President, especially since your campaign is generating no discernible interest? Oh, yes, you are a US Senator. Okay, good, but so are 99 other people. And there is some question that being a Senator is even an important qualification for the Presidency, which is primarily an executive job. Corporate CEOs have more experience with that.

Actually, I wouldn’t mind seeing Bill Gates or Steve Jobs run for President. They’re vastly more imaginative people than anyone we have had in the White House for some time, possibly since the days of the Founding Fathers. (Gates and Jobs really did found amazing companies.) Also, they are forced to find pragmatic solutions to problems and tend not to bloviate. (Okay, they do preen, but they have demonstrably accomplished something, as opposed to most Senators.)

Anyway, enough of that. The basic question is raised: who determines whose campaign is taken seriously? In the final analysis, of course, it’s the voters. People who have been running for office for a long while, years in many cases – Dodd, Kucinich, Paul, etc. – and are still only getting around one percent in Gallup should do us all a favor and depart from the scene. They arelike television actors with bad ratings, perpetually dreaming of making a comeback.