Kerry? Who cares?

A friend responded via email to my post admitting that if I lived in a tossup state, I'd vote for Kerry. I'm going to post my side of the exchange in order to make more explicit what was implicit (but I thought, perhaps incorrectly, still clear) in my previous ones on Kerry. Note as you read this that I'm excerpting from and thus not doing justice to my friend's argument since my purpose here is to "revise and expand" my own thoughts rather than to argue for them as a course for others to follow. My friend's remarks are italicized.

You still see Kerry as an option to Bush? Ya gotta love the Gucci and Pucci set. They have the election cornered. I think the ABB crowd has lost its way. The system is broken beyond repair. There's so much hot air from all corners, that it, like more advertising, makes one turn away with contempt and disgust.

Actually, I didn't say that. I said, as near as I can quote from memory, that the only hope I had for a Kerry administration was that things would get worse a little more slowly, giving a little more time to organize opposition. In that sense, yes, I think a centrist corporatist Democrat would be "better than" - read "not as insanely bad as" - a sociopathic wingnut.

Put another way, under Kerry most everything would get worse on any scale we could agree on. Bush would actively press to make those same things worse. Kerry is a product of a corrupt system and demonstrates that corruption well. Bush is a whole new system of corruption.

Put a final way, I see them both as debilitating diseases, neither of which you would choose but one of which, bluntly, will happen to you - but one offers somewhat better chances for long-term survival or at least a course of decline that will take longer, offering some slightly better chances for developing effective treatment.

That's why, if I lived in a tossup state, I'd swallow my pride (and a good deal of antacid to keep from upchucking) and vote for Kerry.

In one sense, however, I don't know if it matters because I'm afraid we're screwed either way. Bush wins, he consciously and deliberately seeks to undermine what remains of our freedoms and turn us into vassals of the corporate state. Kerry wins, he doesn't try as hard and frankly probably not consciously, he just lets it happen because that's where his background, including his political career, points him, it's what seems natural - and it turns out every bit as bad because we stop trying as hard to resist because too many of us think "oh, we've got a Democrat in there now, things will be okay," just like we did with Carter, just like we did with Clinton.

So no, I don't see Kerry as an "option to Bush." I see electing him strictly as a tactical move, nothing more. I also said something like "the work doesn't end in November, it begins."

PS: The ABB crowd hasn't lost it's way. As soon as your stand is "anybody but," you're admitting you have no such way to lose.

As your closing statements alluded to, I do not believe that a Kerry presidency would gain any extra time for anything. The person occupying the White House is a subject of the paymasters.

I don't know that it will, either. I just have more hope that it will than the alternative. And I gotta keep taking my hope where I can find it.

If at first you don't succeed...

...lie, lie again.

The Pentagon continues to insist that the anti-missile-missile system to be deployed in Alaska and California is not only effective against an "accidental or unauthorized launch" of a ballistic missile against the US, it would in fact be "irresponsible" to do otherwise.

This is despite the fact that even in tightly-controlled tests, the Pentagon succeeded in only five of eight tries against dummy missiles that used no countermeasures whatsoever.

The latest blast against the idiocy came on Thursday:

Washington (Reuters) - The multibillion-dollar U.S. ballistic missile shield due to start operating by Sept. 30 appears incapable of shooting down any incoming warheads, an independent scientists' group said on Thursday.

A technical analysis found "no basis for believing the system will have any capability to defend against a real attack," the Union of Concerned Scientists said in a 76-page report titled "Technical Realities." ...

Overstating the defensive capabilities was irresponsible, said the report by the Cambridge, Massachusetts-based group. It cited past Pentagon statements the capability was limited only by the number of interceptors.

"If the president is told that the system could reliably defend against a North Korean ballistic missile attack, he might be willing to accept more risks when making policy and military decisions," the report said.

"I actually worry that it's worse than useless, that it's really dangerous," George Lewis, a report co-author who is associate director of the security studies program at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told reporters at a briefing.

The General Accounting Office, Congress's nonpartisan investigative arm, said last month the system's effectiveness would be "largely unproven" when it becomes operational.

What I find so fascinating about the whole this is that this system keeps coming back to life, like Jason. Every time you think it's good and dead, it springs up again with a new rationale for the same old crap. This time, believe it or not,

[t]he initial goal is to protect all 50 U.S. states against a limited strike from North Korean missiles that could be tipped with nuclear, chemical or biological warheads.

You read that right. The new bogeyman is North Korea, replacing unnamed "rogue states," which replaced China, which replaced long-time champ the USSR.

All the old technical arguments against this stupidity are still valid, as are all the old political arguments, with one exception: We used to say that a false feeling of invulnerability could cause us to act rashly and brazenly in a way that would damage the possibility of peace and increase risks faced by others as well as ourselves.

Shelve that argument; it's hard to imagine us acting more rashly and brazenly than we already are.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is blackjack?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $2000

A small type of wasp, it normally builds its nest underground.

Hail Mary becomes Hey! Merry!

In what critics had called a "Hail Mary" attempt to prevent the beginning of same-sex marriages in Massachusetts on Monday, a coalition of bigoted state lawmakers and conservative wackos petitioned the federal courts to issue a stay to block county clerks from issuing marriage licenses to same-sex couples.

The state's Supreme Judicial Court determined in November that banning same-sex marriages violated the state constitution's equal protection clauses because a definable group of people was being denied rights and benefits available to others. The right-wing boobs' argument was that even though such interpretation is the Court's purpose, by doing so, it had somehow violated the principle of separation of powers.

Their motion for a stay lost at the District Court level.

It lost at the Appeals Court level.

And now,

[t]he Supreme Court refused Friday to block Massachusetts from allowing gay marriages beginning Monday, removing the last legal impediment to what will be the nation's first state-sanctioned same-sex weddings.

The motion was declined without comment.

Let the issuing begin!

Footnote: On the downside, the Appeals Court agreed to consider the demerits of the nitwits' claims at a hearing set for June. The slimebucket lawyers representing the creeps are already talking about arguing their so-called case before the Supreme Court.

Footnote to the preceding, Life Goes On Dept.

Again from the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 13, this time quoting the London-based Asharq al-Awsat:

The Iraqi Olympic football team has qualified for the finals of the Olympic Games in Athens from 13-29 August, after beating the Saudi team 3-1 in Jordan. Iraq leads the group by getting 9 points against 8 points for Kuwait and 6 points for Saudi Arabia.

It may seem silly, but it just gives me a little hope - my magic word - that in the midst of all the pain and destruction going on in Iraq there are still people thinking about sports and the Olympics. It's a reminder that people are still living their lives, going to market, cooking their meals, playing with their children, dreaming of the future; that even as the blood flows, so does life.

Another sign that Iraq is joining the civilized world

First there was mad cow disease, now this, from Azzaman, a London-based Arab language daily newspaper, via the Iraqi Press Monitor for May 13:

Three hundred people of the al-Madain district in south-east Baghdad were poisoned yesterday because of drinking polluted water. Chairman of the District Advisory Council Hameed Husam said poisoning was the result of drinking water supplied by the Diala river which is full of pollutants from sewage and industrial waste.

Can toxic waste dumps be far behind?

A double-headed tale

Follow the money, they say.

Seattle (Reuters, May 14) - Two Portland, Oregon, DJs were fired for making jokes as they aired a recording of American Nick Berg's beheading in Iraq, station management said on Friday, calling their actions "beyond comprehension."

The DJs, named only by their on-air personas "Marconi" and "Tiny," and their producer were fired from their morning show on Thursday after the pair laughed and played background music while repeatedly airing Berg's screams as militant Islamists decapitated him.

Yet Rush Limbaugh, who likened the tortures at Abu Ghraib to "anything you'd see ... Britney Spears do on stage" and said the soldiers were just "blow[ing] some steam off," and having "a good time," who called reaction to the torture pictures "an example of the feminization of this country," rolls merrily along.

Just a reminder...

...that there are places outside of Iraq. A few dispatches from less-attended parts of the globe.

Sudan
A horseback Arab militia known as the janjaweed, believed to be acting at the direction of the Sudanese government, has been embarked on a "reign of terror" in the Darfur region of western Sudan, according to an official report to the UN Security Council, reported the BBC on May 8.

After briefing the council, UN Commissioner for Human Rights Bertrand Ramcharan spoke of a "scorched earth policy" and "repeated crimes against humanity".

He described aerial bombardments as well as systematic attacks on villages by Sudanese government forces and militiamen who killed, raped, and looted.

Ramcharan said that more than one million people have been driven from their homes in the attacks, in what human rights groups have labeled a campaign of ethnic cleansing designed to drive African peoples out of the region.

The Security Council said it would "monitor the situation" but would take no action at present.

I guess there's not enough oil there.

Meanwhile, the violence has spilled over into Chad, whose army has had battles with the janjaweed after the militia attacked villages in eastern Chad, according to Chad's defence minister, Emmanuel Nadingar.

Sudan to Democratic Republic of Congo
Again from the BBC (don't expect too much international news from US media, folks), for May 7:

Poachers linked to the Sudanese SPLA rebels are killing elephants for ivory in the Democratic Republic of Congo, say national park authorities.

A spokesman said poaching began for meat two years ago in the Garamba National Park near the border with Sudan, but the object now was ivory. ...

He estimated only 14,000 elephants remained in DR Congo compared to 90,000 before the country's war began in 1997. ...

The BBC's Arnaud Zajtman says that, despite an international ban, at the main tourist market in the Congolese capital, Kinshasa, ivory is still being sold.

The SPLA is the rebel band in Sudan whose activities are the justification for the brutality of the janjaweed.

The government of DR Congo had hoped to use the elephants and the parks in which they are found as a tourist draw to bring much-needed capital to the country now that a bitter and unusually bloody five-year civil was has come to an end.

Or has it?

Democratic Republic of Congo
Writing in the May 10 International Herald Tribune, Mvemba Phezo Dizolele, co-chair of the advocacy group En Avant Congo!, charges the UN peacekeeping mission is failing its job.

In eastern Congo, where rape and insecurity are the daily lot of hopeless civilians, the mission has, in fact, become the symbol of impunity.

The UN troops were sent to Congo in 1999, in the midst of a civil war that killed more than 3.3 million people. ...

In a 2002 agreement that established a power-sharing government in Kinshasa, the foreign troops were supposed to withdraw while the UN and Congo pledged to send home the insurgents.

Rwanda, however, saying that Congo hasn't held to its part of the agreement, has repeatedly violated the agreements with impunity, sending troops in and saying they are searching for rebels that stage raids on Rwandan villages. A run-in between UN troops and hundreds of Rwandan soldiers in eastern Congo last month underscores the mission's ineffectiveness.

In the confrontation, on April 21, the Rwandan Army ordered UN troops to withdraw from the area, and in a shocking reversal of roles, they complied - even though under their mandate they can use force to protect the peace. ..

[T]he UN seems reluctant to disturb the status quo.

But the trading of accusations about insurgents is merely a front for the real issue at stake, Congo's natural resources. ...

Rwanda and Uganda have no incentive to stop the financing and arming of their proxies. ...

The United Nations must take an active and forceful role in its Congo mission. Their passive presence has become a mockery of peace.

India
As reported by the May 13 Toronto Globe & Mail,

[t]he ruling party of Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee conceded defeat Thursday in parliamentary elections, opening the way for Sonia Gandhi to become India's prime minister in one of the most dramatic political upsets since independence.

Unofficial results indicate that millions of rural poor people abandoned Mr. Vajpayee's Bharatiya Janata party believing they had been left behind by the country's economic boom. ...

It was an embarrassing defeat for Mr. Vajpayee's Hindu nationalist-led government, which had called elections six months early because it felt confident of winning an even bigger majority in Parliament, based on a booming economy and prospects of peace with Pakistan.

But Congress focused its campaign on the country's 300 million people who still live on less than a dollar a day. It hammered away at the lack of even basic infrastructure, electricity and potable water for millions of rural poor. ...

Ms. Gandhi has pushed for a secular India in contrast to the BJP's Hindu nationalist message.

South Korea
From the Toronto Globe & Mail for May 14:

Seoul - President Roh Moo-hyun regained power Friday in a historic court ruling that overturned an opposition-led impeachment vote, giving him a fresh mandate to seek more latitude from Washington in negotiations with North Korea.

Roh had been impeached in March on minor charges in what around 70% of South Koreans saw as politically-motivated move by conservatives angered over his intention to seek reconciliation with North Korea. The Constitutional Court had to uphold the impeachment for Roh to be removed from office; instead, it dealt an embarrassing defeat to the conservatives by ruling that of the three charges against him, he was innocent of two and the other was too minor to justify removing him from office.

Mr. Roh will be working with the first liberal National Assembly in four decades, one that supports him and wants a foreign policy less dependent on the United States.

That was as the result of last month's general election, won by the pro-Roh Uri Party in an apparent rebuke to the conservative parties that impeached him.

Footnote: Following the decision, Reuters says, Roh apologized to the nation for his part in causing the constitutional crisis, saying "Even though the impeachment was overturned it does not mean I have escaped political and moral responsibility." He pledged to let the new parliament take the lead in making reforms.

Notable quotable

This from Sidney Blumenthal, writing in the Guardian for May 13:

William Odom, a retired general and former member of the National Security Council who is now at the Hudson Institute, a conservative thinktank, reflects a wide swath of opinion in the upper ranks of the military. "It was never in our interest to go into Iraq," he told me. It is a "diversion" from the war on terrorism; the rationale for the Iraq war (finding WMD) is "phoney"; the US army is overstretched and being driven "into the ground"; and the prospect of building a democracy is "zero". In Iraqi politics, he says, "legitimacy is going to be tied to expelling us. Wisdom in military affairs dictates withdrawal in this situation. We can't afford to fail, that's mindless. The issue is how we stop failing more. I am arguing a strategic decision."

There is the well-known story of how Lyndon Johnson's advisors were dejected when Walter Cronkite came out against the war in Vietnam. "If we've lost Walter," the thinking went, "we've lost middle America."

What does it say about Bush when he's lost the support of people at the Hudson Institute?

Set the date and get out.

Jeopardy!

Jeopardy!
YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is the Green Room?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $1200

This card game is also called Twenty-One or Vingt-et-Un.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
Who was Michelangelo?

DOUBLE JEOPARDY!
Fun with Colors for $400

Before they appear on shows like David Letterman, guests are sequestered in this waiting area.

"It's not what you say that counts...."

Is there anybody else here who remembers the old TV game show "You Don't Say?" The idea was to give your partner hints to a well-known name or phrase by making a statement but leaving off the last word ("That's the word you don't say," as the show's slogan had it.), which was supposed to sound like part of the answer.

It's not the same thing, but I'm repeatedly reminded of that idea when I listen to statements by politicians, governments, and the like and notice that despite the attempt to create a certain appearance, what they're not saying is as important as what they are saying.

Case in point: I'm sure you've heard about the pictures published by the Daily Mirror purportedly showing UK soldiers, among other things, urinating on hooded, bound prisoners. From today's news:

London, England (CNN) - Dramatic pictures said to show British troops abusing Iraqi prisoners were not taken in Iraq, the UK government has said.

Armed forces minister Adam Ingram told MPs Thursday an inquiry by military police found the truck seen in the photos published by the Daily Mirror newspaper "was never in Iraq."

The predictable result was trashing of the newspaper, demands for heads to roll, shooting the messenger, the whole nine yards.

The Conservative opposition asked the Mirror's publishers what action they intended to take against [Daily Mirror Editor Piers] Morgan.

"Those who connived with the production of those photographs and those who published them did a great wrong," said Conservative defense spokesman Keith Simpson.

Uh, huh. Sure. Right. But explain something to me first: What part of the government's statement said that the pictures were faked?

In fact, no such assertion was made. Even if the government is technically correct, the pictures could still portray real abuse, just somewhere at some facility outside Iraq where UK soldiers are involved.

Of course, this does not mean the pictures weren't faked - in fact, I have real doubts about them; when I first saw them, as a photographer they just didn't look right to me - but rather that the government hasn't shown or actually even claimed to have shown that they were. But the usual suspects are taking it as a complete refutation, as the rest of us are supposed to.

Personally, what I think Tony Blair & Co. should do is tell everyone how they identified the particular truck (and how they know it's that truck as opposed to any other truck), how they know it was never in Iraq, list every place it has been (so we have a list of potential sites where the pictures were taken and which they must have in order to know it was never in Iraq), and discuss what it means to have what they seem to have admitted is a UK Army truck appear in pictures of abuse of prisoners, regardless of whether those pictures were taken in Iraq.

And even that, of course, still doesn't answer the question of if the photos are real or not.

Update May 14: The Daily Mirror has conceded that it fell victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and the pictures were indeed faked, the BBC reports. Editor Piers Morgan has been fired.

At a news conference in Preston on Friday afternoon, the regiment demonstrated to reporters aspects of uniform and equipment which it said proved the photographs were fake.

The regiment's Brigadier Geoff Sheldon said the vehicle featured in the photographs had been located in a Territorial Army base in Lancashire and had never been in Iraq.

Fine; I'm not even surprised - I said the pictures didn't look right. But - assuming that there is a way to show the truck in the picture and the one in Lancashire are one and the same - I still wonder how a UK army vehicle wound up in the pictures.

My heart isn't the only thing you stole

Another tip from another blog, this one from Eric, aka "The Hamster."

The Western Prison Project has some interesting numbers about crime as opposed to the perception of it. You should go directly to the site to see it laid out in detail graphically, but what they show in a nutshell is that the risk of being a victim of burglary drops with rising income. That is, the richer you are, the less likely you are to be burglarized.

These were the numbers:

Burglaries/1,000 households, income <$7,500: 67.0
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $7,500-$14,999: 44.2
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $15,000-$24,999: 38.9
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $25,000-$34,999: 37.1
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $35,000-$49,999: 30.9
Burglaries/1,000 households, income $50,000-$74,999: 24.1
Burglaries/1,000 households, income >$75,000: 23.1

Just like every other way, it's the poor who get screwed and the rich who get all the fawning attention.

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is "Red Dawn?"

JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $1000

On the Medici tomb he designed, he had nudes representing dawn and dusk under the seated Lorenzo.

Feelings, woe woe woe feelings....

Have you wondered why, if the economy was improving so much with all those brand new jobs, it feels no different on the street? That even though things might be looking up for the bosses, it doesn't seem to be any better for the rest of us? There may be a reason for that feeling beyond your own shameful lack of good old American forward-looking optimism.

Atrios tips us to this column by business writer John Crudele in the May 11 New York Post:

Don't get too excited about all those new jobs that were supposed to have been created in April.

I'm not going to waste a lot of my precious space on this, but the bottom line is that most of the 288,000 jobs that the Labor Department says were created last month may not really exist.

The problem, as Crudele explains, is that the government uses a standardized "birth/death model" that makes unverified (and unverifiable) assumptions about seasonal changes in employment through the creation of new businesses. For example,

in the March employment report, the government added 153,000 positions to its revised total of 337,000 new jobs because it thought (but couldn't prove) loads of new companies were being created in this economy.

Then for the April report, the Labor Department assumed an additional 117,000 such new jobs came into existence.

In other words, of the 625,000 jobs supposedly created in March and April, as many as 270,000 of them - 43% of the total - may not exist.

Back to the want ads.

Just to say it

I will just say this now. I may have more to say later, but I want to say this now.

I have seen the video.

The video of the beheading of Nick Berg. And it's every bit as gruesome as you might have imagined. Every bit as - words just don't do justice. Our normal language is not designed to describe such as this. And frankly, those who commit such acts don't deserve the "big" words we often apply, words like heinous, monstrous, inhuman. They are, rather, petty, cheap, sordid little cowards skulking behind their ski masks while talking tough and needing five of them to deal one man bound hand and foot.

Of course, the conspiracy theories are already spreading, suggesting it was actually the work of the CIA or some other US agency to distract attention from the torture of US-held prisoners as Abu Ghraib and, it is apparent, other places as well. The big talking point seems to be that Berg was wearing a "Guantanamo-style" orange prison jumpsuit. Exactly why US spooks would be that incompetent at making a fake is unexplained.

I don't have any trouble believing that the beheading was both real and carried out by small t terrorists (that, as opposed to capital T terrorists like nation states). But I do have my own questions about it. One is that, as news reports have noted, based on the time stamp on the video, there is an 11 hour gap between the time they force Berg down and the time they start to actually cut. (There are a few other jumps of a few to several seconds earlier; perhaps there were a few second takes of parts of the speech.) What happened during those 11 hours?

Another thing is that when the actual beheading starts, there is a momentary closeup of Berg's face in which he appears to be grimacing but the quality of the video is so poor it's hard to tell. What struck me is the blood. It flowed and flowed freely - but you would have thought Berg would be terrified, his heart pounding, his blood pressure skyrocketing. You would have thought the blood would spurt, gush, when his throat was cut. And it didn't. It flowed on to the floor, but none, it seemed, got on his murderers anywhere except their shoes. Which just makes me wonder: Was Nick Berg killed during that 11-hour gap? And did they behead a dead body?

That doesn't make it any less an evil thing and may in fact make it worse since I'm told that beheading is a quick way to die - so if he was killed earlier in a different way it might have been more painful. It's more a matter of what struck me watching it and if the beheading was meant less as a means of execution than of desecration.

One other thing struck me and I wonder if it surprised the killers: The head did not come off easily. They had to struggle, cut repeatedly, twist the head. I remember Alfred Hitchcock in one of his movies showing a couple trying to kill a man. It was a long slow struggle and Hitchcock said later that he wanted to do that because it's actually not easy to kill someone. We tend to think of it as quick, one thrust with a knife, a quick shot from a gun and poof it's done. But life is tenacious, our bodies sturdier than we sometimes realize, and the soldier - or civilian - shot may lie in agony for hours before death comes.

I don't know how to wrap this up cleanly, so I'll leave it at that for now. I may come back to this later, I may not. We'll see.

What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part three

From Newsday:

It was [Specialist Joe] Darby, an automobile mechanic in his civilian life, who became deeply troubled after looking at a CD that included dozens of photographs [of torture and mistreatment of prisoners]. ...

Because of what he did, seven members of the 372nd now faces charges of abusing detainees at the Abu Ghraib. ...

In nearby Cumberland, Md., where many of the 372nd members live, Darby is now a controversial figure.

"Darby's going to be shunned," said Tanya Vargas, 29, a former weekend reservist with the 372nd. "He's going to be blackballed. His life is in jeopardy, because he's a snitch. I hope they have protection for him."

Meanwhile, AP quotes his sister-in-law Maxine Carroll as saying

the family is concerned some people will view Darby's decision to turn in fellow soldiers as traitorous, rather than heroic, especially in Cresaptown, Md., where he lives and where the 372nd is based.

"It scares you a little," she said.

"Some people" like Tanya Vargas, for example?

The price of decency.

What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part two

ABS-CBNNews of the Philippines notes that before his report on the horrendous conditions at Abu Ghraib prison, Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba was known pretty much only for "being the second Filipino American to become a general in the U.S. Army." Now, however, he is

being spoken of in hushed tones as someone who may have written a death warrant to his career.

The price of truth.

What's wrong with the US in a nutshell, part one

From the Christian Science Monitor for May 6:

Jackson, WY and Asheville, NC - In this famously beautiful Wyoming valley, where world leaders come to relax in trophy homes behind big picture windows, a mountain view of the rugged Tetons can do far more than inspire.

In fact, those awe-inspiring views of "God's country" sometimes cause overzealous landowners to break the law - by firing up the chain saw to topple trees that block the grandiosity. ...

From the Tetons to the Blue Ridge Mountains, the phenomenon of felling trees for personal enrichment and financial gain is known as "vanity logging." ...

Vanity logging is hardly widespread. But land use experts say it's more common as Baby Boomers flock to mountain nests, changing culture, economies, and privacy attitudes. Often, logging comes after permission is denied, and clear-cutters move in under cover of darkness.

Case in point: In the well-to-do mountain hamlet of Highlands, N.C., near Whiteside Mountain - a slab of granite in the southernmost Appalachian highlands, a newcomer challenged local customs and understandings when he took matters - and a chain saw - into his own hands.

"There was this very nice house that was built in an area where it would have a great view of Whiteside Mountain - if only the neighbor's trees weren't there," says Martin Reidinger, a lawyer in Asheville.

So the owner - a wealthy Atlantan - made some calculations and came to a decision: Cut 'em anyway. After finding the acre's worth of his trees chopped down during a long walk through the woods, the neighbor sued - and won $40,000. But experts estimate that the Atlanta man still came out on top: He increased his property value by at least $100,000. "It happens fairly frequently," says Mr. Reidinger. "Sometimes the cutting is innocent, but other times I think it's very purposeful.

"What's mine is mine and what's yours depends on if I want it or not."

Jeopardy!

YESTERDAY'S QUESTION
What is dishwashing liquid? (Acceptable: soap)

JEOPARDY!
Dawn for $600

This film with Patrick Swayze and Jennifer Grey was about a Communist invasion.