Smog and Mirrors

An interesting analysis of the larger picture of the first days of the Bush administration. Trying to build up several victories on issues to make us forget that he actually lost the election. Didn't work during the campaign (although insiders probably think it did since he was sworn in) with the populace, so why will it work with hardened and bitter partisan politicians? I don't know.
- posted by levinson @ 1/31/2001 08:58:00 AM

 
Joe Conason

Conason asks one extremely important question in this column that has been lost on the national media and on most mainstream democrats since the election. Where the fuck are all the idealist Naderites now? They compared their movement to that of Gandhi's and swelled themselves up with so much righteous indignation that their egos allowed few others in the room. I know, I had to sit with many of them. So now that we have a full frontal attack on abortion, gay rights, environmentalism, and civil rights in the form of the Attoney General, Health and Human Services, Interior Secretary, and now, lest anyone actually believe what Ashcroft said in his testimony before the Senate, Solicitor General, Thed Olson. Where are all the Nader-ites now that Bush's grossly corporate driven initiatives are threatening everything from civil rights to environmentalism? Oh wait, I forgot, school's back in session. I guess his "grass-roots" support has gone back to the quads of Brown and Hampshire and can't really be bothered to do something about the current president. After all, that would entail admitting that they may have had a hand in this whole mess, and if they had a hand in it, then it would behoove them to speak out. Pass the bong, I'll speak out against whatever I think politics is in four years. Until then, I have more important things to do, like hoping Phish will tour again soon. What's a gamehendge again?
- posted by levinson @ 1/30/2001 08:03:00 AM

 
KRUGMAN!! - Power and Profits

Here he comes again. Paul Krugman has been issuing many statements on the various problems that face the economy in the early days of the Bush administration. Here he takes on the California power problem. His no-nonsense economic analysis is refreshing especially since the only economic information we get on the issue comes from pundits (or blithering idiots, whichever term suits your fancy). The power suppliers (read: massive polluters) with their new-found b-line to the white house are making an all out assault that says a price cap will make things work. Krugman takes this on directly. In his conclusion, he addresses the immediate retort of the power companies that anyone opposing price caps is out of touch or just a liberal hack. "Nobody to the right of Ralph Nader denies that prices have to be allowed to serve a role as "signals" of shortage or abundance, that the profit motive is what makes our economy run. But even now the public rightfully draws a line, fuzzy but real, between profits and profiteering. Natural gas prices that rise in a cold winter are acceptable; $10 a gallon for bottled water after a hurricane is not." It is this kind of common sense addressing of the issues while cutting through the cobwebs of political deceit that will be esepcially necessary as the country fights the downturn and the tax cuts as we wait for the Fed's most recent cuts to turn things around.
- posted by levinson @ 1/24/2001 07:22:00 AM

 
WSJ.com - Prep Schools Buff Images To Boost College Admissions

I went to Middlesex and this story is disturbing on two levels. First that the reason behind Tom's death was caused by college admission standards. Second, not wholly unrelated, is that the school liked to keep its average for the student body at a C+, all the while assuring us that colleges were aware that we had tougher grading standards and were able to "translate" that on our transcripts. Of course when, like me, you went to apply with solid B's and a few A's throughout your career and were told that the Ivy's were beyond your reach, it was a little prepelxing since they were supposed to know that my school didn't inflate GPA's and would look at me accordingly. That those two factors caused Tom to, in however minor a way, falsify the school's record in a publication and later commit suicide is truly tragic. It would seem that both Tom and the school were torn between the fact that it was in some way dishonest to inflate grades the way some of their competitors did and the fact that the students were being penalized for that practice in terms of acceptance to "worse" schools. To me the moral for the larger world is that the standardized tests (the SAT in particular) and the US News need to be abolished (in the case of the SAT) and forced to be accountable for their rankings (US News) and disclose exactly how it is they rank schools. All of it has gone way too far.
- posted by levinson @ 1/23/2001 08:10:00 AM

 
Boston.com / Latest News / Washington

Funny. Sad, but funny.
- posted by levinson @ 1/23/2001 07:22:00 AM

 
U.N. Report Warns of Global Warming

Well we had a Vice President who felt there was, "no controlling legal authority." Now, we have a President who feels there is, "no scientific proof," that global warming exists. Isn't that refreshing in this day and age that old W. wants to drill for yet even more oil and pollute yet even more air. Won't this be a fun start to the century.
- posted by levinson @ 1/23/2001 06:46:00 AM

 
Bush To Block Abortion Funds

I just love this. Really, I do. This isn't duplicity, and he doesn't have nearly the rhetorical skill to explain how he campaigned as both a moderate, uniter, and compassionate while all-the-while being pro-life. Funny, I didn't see or hear and pro-life campaign ads, speehes, statements, or press releases. "Read my lips" these guys just don't get it. When does he plan to start uniting? Did he campaign as a right wing fanatic as well? How about as a shill for the oil companies? A war hawk? I can't wait for these four years. Note to W., don't remind us of what you think you campaigned on, we can look it up on the net.

I found it. He did "campaign" as a pro-lifer. Click on the link and then scroll all the way to the bottom and then click on "life issues." There it is, buried like pork spending on a campaign finance reform bill. Speaking of which, there above the "life issues" is the campaign finance plank of his platform that we heard so much about during his campaign. I'm just sorry I missed his speeches on these issues. I'm sure they were riveting.
- posted by levinson @ 1/22/2001 01:36:00 PM

 
My First Presidentiary : A Scrapbook by George W. Bush

God love Moder Humorist. They're actually publishing this thing. It's on their website today and the book comes out in March. These guys certainly have enough talent to put out something even better than The Onion's "Our Dumb Century."
- posted by levinson @ 1/19/2001 01:28:00 PM

 
Bush Vows to Fight 'Huge Energy Crisis'

I like how George wants to fight our current energy crisis with "exploration." Um, I think we need to fix the problem a little sooner than that. It's great that he wants to look for other energy sources, but by the time they are found and able to be used, he'll be out of his first term. Great, thanks for the help Shrub, but, like your tax cut ideas, this doesn't help either the short or near long term issues. Just got to hunker down and make it through 18 months.
- posted by levinson @ 1/18/2001 12:31:00 PM

 
OPEC Members Agree Production Cut Amounting to 1.5 Million Barrels a Day

That ripping sound is Clinton's orders to preserve Alaskan national forest being tossed out by Bush.
- posted by levinson @ 1/17/2001 10:41:00 AM

 
Salon.com People | A bland antidote for Bill 'n' Al fatigue: George W.

Whenever I want to remind myself just how far gone the democratic party was before Clinton saved it from total irrelevance a la the green party and the like, I just have to read Ms. Paglia. It's not that I find her too left, too lesbian, too nasty or any of these things. What I object to is the constant whining that everything sucks, and that had just this one thing, whatever that is on any particular day, gone the right way, the world would be rosy. She has developed a particular ire for Clinton in recent years. That's understandable, but when she lashes out about all the time that was lost, and had he resigned, Al Gore would have spared us two years of scandal and legislative paralysis, I have two questions. First, what does she see as having not passed solely because of Clinton. Second, has she totally forgotten the battle being waged in parallel to Lewinsky against Gore with the Buddhist temple? Does she think that had the fanatical right succeeded in ousting Clinton would not have gone full steam ahead with a hanging jury against Al Gore? The short-sightedness is astonishing, and is indicative of why the democrats floundered so often before Clinton. By constantly looking backwards at past defeats and dwelling on them rather than keeping focus on the job at hand, the democrats were too easily distracted and taken off message until they lost any coherent message beyond far left ranting.

Clinton tried to show that the way to move past problems, whatever they may be, is to focus on the job at hand. Let the American people see that you're focused and undeterred from doing their business, and they'll reward you with four more years. Gore too often got distracted with recanting, over and over, misrepresentations of his past deeds, rather than showing the country over and over how hard he's worked and is working for them. That is worth, at least, 600 votes in Florida.
- posted by levinson @ 1/17/2001 10:30:00 AM

 
Secrets and Truths

There was a similar report on Greenspan's overtly complex language in the New Yorker. Here Krugman goes further than the Talk of the Town to let the public know that all Greenspan has is a good staff and a talnt for crunching numbers effecively. These seem like bland traits that would make anyone shrug and ask "so what?" Convinced, they are, that there must be something more behind the wily workings of the mysterious Fed. For a long time I was under the same impression, but upon listening to Greenspan I found his rhetoric no more confusing than Shakespeare, Locke or any of your more stringent translations of Latin. Not a walk in the park, but if you pay attention, look up the words and data you don't know, it becomes fairly easy to read. It's vague, but then again, this is economic analysis and basing influential policy on it every quarter. Interestingly, Greenspan has been more open about his decisions and the data that influenced them than any past Fed Chairman. To that end, I think we that are interested in monetary policy should keep our ears open, because the next Chairman may not be so open with his thoughts. In that event, we would be wise to have a store of info of what data influenced Greenspan and how it shaped his policy. It's no Rosetta Stone, but it's a start.
- posted by levinson @ 1/17/2001 07:44:00 AM

 
A Woman's Work
This is a really interesting article by the wife of the man who wrote baseball's first comprehensive histories. The story, to me, rings of one that is probably extremely pervasive in this and other male dominated societies. Although I don't always agree with their decisions and I detest the way in which the system is abused, our courts have at least learned to reward women with assets comparable to their work in marriages that are not universally recognized as economically valuable. Anyway, I want to pick up the books just to support her as she gets into her twilight years.
- posted by levinson @ 1/12/2001 10:46:00 AM

 
Someone tell Mike Kinsley to hold on to his post as editor of Slate and not to try and take up a career in sarcasm. Setting aside for one moment why he bothered to critique what will undoubtedly be a flop of a movie (I have a rule about movies; if you only see the same preview on television ads, it sucks. Unless they can throw together two or three different previews showing different parts of the movie, you've got a bomb on your hands.), this opinion lacks any kind of wit or satirical insight. Can you imagine a letter writing campaign from the heads of Skull and Bones to the Washington Post to belittle "The Skulls"??

An opinion piece of this kind says many things that are infinitely more telling about the environment the person writing lives in than the object of criticism. Either Kinsley was induced to write something on this movie by his superiors at Microsoft or he wasn't, either way the implication is the same. I'm inclined to believe that he wrote this of his own accord, as he always seemed to me (last time I saw him, though, was before he started Slate) level headed. Unfortunately, I think it is more sad that he wrote this drivel independently. What it says to me is that the general demeanour at MSFT is one of total self delusion and complete denial of reality. There's an almost Nixonian obsession to lashing out at a suspense movie that dares to cast your company as the bad guy. Kinsley's opinion represents a new low for the totally self absorbed and egomaniacal atmosphere around Gates's company and the (Star Trek: Next Generation reference coming, inquiries as to its meaning are welcome) Borg-ian attitude of the MSFT employees to His word. Truly pathetic from a man I used to respect as a newsman. I may stop reading Slate all together ("I may stop reading Slate") now. Break the company up just to shake these deluded fools out of their trance.
- posted by levinson @ 1/12/2001 08:09:00 AM

 
Yet another in a long series of priceless entries by the (frankly pretentious) druids over at Modern Humorist. This one harkens back to the beauty that was "Skinny Domicile" way back in May of last year.
- posted by levinson @ 1/11/2001 09:42:00 AM

 
So much about this story is so sick as to not be believed. Any industry in which employees are jealous of another because they are less than 100lbs. when full grown needs to question its business practices. And I'm not talking about the set of Ally McBeal. I can't imagine being a smash hit in the fashion industry because I'm a cancer survivor and my hip bones protrude through my clothes. I think the fashion industry needs to enact some internal reforms.
- posted by levinson @ 1/11/2001 07:44:00 AM

 
This is a fairly damning op-ed fairly early in the game, especially when we're entering a difficult economic period. Krugman sums up the state of the current Bush economic policy fairly well, I think. That is to say, he takes what was said and let's the rest of us know what was true and what was purely spin for a tax cut. Also, I really liked the brief discussion of Monetarism and how Bush's economists have backed away from it while they're trying to hammer through their tax cut. Anyway, my brother has advocated Krugman in the past and this op-ed shows just how valuable a mind like is will be in the years to come as we're exposed to endless trains of economic double-speak.
- posted by levinson @ 1/10/2001 08:01:00 AM

 
Looks like, now that Linda Chavez has ducked out of the way of the red-hot bullet of Democratic anger, it's all on John Ashcroft. Apparently, the People For the American Way has received a box from the Carnahan campaign on Ashcroft. They have posted a 23 page report on why they are against Ashcroft. It looks as though the fight will center around, among other things, abortion and women and race and crime and .... just about everything he's ever done. If he tries to stick it out with the fierce backing of the far right wing, we could be in for an ugly beginning to the Shrub presidency that will make Gays in the Military, NAFTA and National Health Care look like a walk in the park. I don't think it will, but this has the potential to be a very long and very ugly confirmation.
- posted by levinson @ 1/09/2001 04:09:00 PM

 
I wonder if this is good news or bad news for John Ashcroft. I tend to think bad especially considering a coalition of organizations has been formed to fight "tooth and nail" against his nomination.

Back to Chavez, I guess the GOP felt that the whole "rule of law" argument wasn't going to work too well this time, given her harboring of an illegal alien could more clearly violate said "rule."
- posted by levinson @ 1/09/2001 01:32:00 PM

 
Governor Pledges to Save California From Power Crisis -- The California Governor is apparently really angling for the democratic nomination in 2004. Reports are that he is ferociously moderate. He certainly understands that it's hard to make a case to be leader of the country when your state has no electricity. You can win without education or environmental protections, but everyone needs electricity.
- posted by levinson @ 1/09/2001 06:58:00 AM

 
This is giving me a nice morning chuckle.
- posted by levinson @ 1/09/2001 06:50:00 AM

 
You can always count on Steve Dunleavy to play the right wing tune note for note. Reading the Salon article : "The record shows that as a justice on the Missouri Supreme Court White voted 41 times to affirm death penalty cases, and 18 times to reverse execution sentences. In many of those 18 rulings White joined the majority with justices appointed by Ashcroft. Five of those 18 decisions striking down death sentences were unanimous ... [j]ust three times in nearly 60 death penalty cases did White write solo dissents urging death row prisoners be granted new trials. And in none of White's decisions did he argue the death penalty was unjust or unconstitutional. ... White never suggested Johnson was innocent or that his crimes did not warrant the death penalty. 'If Mr. Johnson was in control of his faculties when he went on this murderous rampage, then he assuredly deserves the death sentence he was given,' White wrote. 'I find it is reasonably likely that a jury that had not seen the defense destroy its own credibility would have been sufficiently receptive to the expert diagnosis of a mental disease or defect to permit a reasonable likelihood of a different result.' White wrote that opinion in April 1998. Sixteen months later in August 1999, Ashcroft held a press conference to criticize it." Now, almost 3 years later, Dunleavy has as well, "[t]he fact that White tried to overturn the death sentence of a man who shot dead three sheriffs and a sheriff's wife was judicial insanity." It seems the thrashing Ashcroft gave White over one dissent will be the same dissent used to defend Ashcroft's assault. I don't think it will hold up very well.
- posted by levinson @ 1/08/2001 12:22:00 PM

 
Looks like the hot political issue for while is going to be John Ashcroft. People seem to think he'll get through the nomination process in the end. A quick aside, David Horowitz makes me almost tear with laughter whenever I read his column. He reminds of the one guy in everbody's office to whom no one wants to speak. Anyway, it seems most of the questioning regarding Ashcroft will center around his blocking the nomination of Ronnie White. White seems more than ready to skewer his old foe before the country in much the same way Ashcroft did when he levied what are now seen as baseless and exaggerated claims in an effort to rally the republican majority in the Senate to block the nomination. The vote went down party lines. The Salon.com article covers the whole thing pretty well, and I've yet to see and info from either side greatly contradicting its report.

I think the most troubling aspect of the debate will range around people trying to levy charges that Ashcroft is a racist. Given his record of supporting minority nominations to various levels of government, I don't think this one will stick. Someone may know that he is, personally, a bigot, but his public life does not seem to clearly indicate that he is. Upon reading the Salon article, it seems pretty clear that Ashcroft's opposition went back a long way and centered almost solely around abortion. Apparently Ascroft has fought in the past with White and the late Missouri Governor/Senator-elected-post-mortem Mel Carnahan over abortion. Ashcroft seems to have felt that by stopping his nomination he could get back at both while at the same time setting himself up as a conservative leader in the party. Of course, hindsight tells us that he's now only propped up in his party by far right anti-abortion zealots and may be savaged by both moderate and liberal democrats alike.

The question seems to be, was his opposition to White a raical one? How could he levy charges of being soft on crime based on one dissent out of a flood of votes in favor of the death penalty? If he gets through these two questions (which I think he will) honestly, he'll be left in an awkward corner of having violated the Senate's in-house informal policy of not opposing or supporting nominations solely on the abortion issue. Moreover, knowing that he was violating this policy, what does it say about his political ethics that he would wait until he could railroad White on the Senate floor (instead of in committee where he could simply have blocked the nomination and had it die there) to settle an old grudge on a lawful act? This is quite a fire-storm, especially if handled deftly. If it is, I don't know that he will be confirmed. I think all of this has more legs that "nanny-gate." Of course, I'm biased.
- posted by levinson @ 1/08/2001 11:56:00 AM

 
Wondering how that conversation between Bush and Greenspan went. No confirmation, but I bet Bush's side sounded something like this. Could he sound more like his dad circa 1992?
- posted by levinson @ 1/05/2001 01:20:00 PM

 
Have to give credit to the GOP on this one. Unlike most things in politics, they set an agenda six years ago to impose term limits on the most sacred of cows in congress, committee chairmen, and this week they made good on that promise. I'd like to see the Senate do something similar. Also, it struck me recently that the President is the only branch of government that has a constitutional term limit. I'd love to see a legal argument about the policy of checks and balances and whether or not we should place constitutional term limits on the houses of congress. Given its recent conduct, the question of limits on Supreme Court justices is worth noting, but I think it is much more sacred that the justices are appointed for life/good behavior to insulate them from the political process. Then again, someone hand me the questions from justices O'Connor and Scalia again...
- posted by levinson @ 1/05/2001 11:41:00 AM

 
This isn't the usual format for these guys, but they are one of the few comedy sites I read that's not on vacation (looking at the (frankly pretentious) druids over at Modern Humorist) right now. Suck has a funny piece on presidential humor. Suck has apparently been appointed by Dick Cheney to be the official standard-bearer of national humor. Congrats guys!
- posted by levinson @ 1/05/2001 10:47:00 AM

 
A bit of truly old world politics today. Strom Thurmond, the almost totally senile 98 year old senator from South Carolina is poised to nominate his son to the post of US Attorney for the state. It is a general practice that a senator of the same party as the president can nominate people and they will be approved with a rubber stamp.

All seems kosher right? Strom's son is 28. I'll type it again: 28. No typo. (I'll do it for you, Strom was 70 when his oldest son from that marriage was born.) He graduated from law school in '95. Has spent "some time" in private practice and for the last two years has been a prosecutor in Aiken County solicitor's office. Basically he's tried 6 cases in two years (won five of them), and did nothing appreciable in his "time" in private practice upon graduating from law school. Why am I wondering about his qualifications for the job of managing a statewide office of 50 lawyers? Why do I think he'll run for office in 3 years when his papa steps down from office?

Being from Massachusetts I'm familiar with nepotism in politics. It's just that I have trouble seeing how people in SC aren't a little put off by this. Hey, I'm 24 and a paralegal, can I be a Circuit Court Judge?
- posted by levinson @ 1/05/2001 08:05:00 AM

 
Have to do a turnaround from the post yesterday regarding the Fed's action. I've just had a lengthy discussion with my brother who disagreed vehemently with what I said in the post. He felt the decision both necessary and substantially supported by any and all relevant data. Upon further review, mostly facilitated by his rambling off of the data used by the Fed and the dire outlook of said data, I have to say the decision made tremendous sense.

However, I then went on to belly-ache that I hadn't been given all the info to make an informed decision. He said, go to the report. I countered that my belly-ache was not that I felt the Fed's statement incomplete, but rather the CNN reporting of that decision left something to be desired. I felt that if a popular (not financial) new source was going to report on every move the Fed makes (as they've done over the past few years) it is their responsibility to provide the popular reader with a greater depth of information in their stories than just saying "Fed Shockingly Slashes Interest Rates!!!" Rob countered that the article had not only precisely, but exhaustively done just that. Using the link on my previous post, I returned to the story and found that he was correct.

I also found that the CNN story had been updated 3 hours after my post.

Two things I like about this. One. Having done a complete turnaround on both the Fed and the CNN issues, I find the blogger to be a facinating way to follow the emotions of myself as I react to certain issues as they're reported. Then, as I get more information, I tweak or (in this case) totally reverse my initial thinking. Second. I must commend CNN and their web service. More than any of the major papers or other web news sources, they've made a consistent effort to provide exceptional web based news reporting with both links to other news sources and their own subsequent features on many issues. Tremendous praise for their web work on both this story and their handling of the election court battles. In a class all their own right now.
- posted by levinson @ 1/04/2001 09:20:00 AM

 
Just about everything about the Middle East bewilders and disturbs me. I know that I know almost nothing about it, and I know that no one is completely right. The thing I find most difficult is finding an objective account of what has and is happening. The emotions behind everything involved with such a small sliver of land. I need to find a good objective source on the whole thing so I can formulate my own opinion. Salon.com News | The fraud of American "peacemaking"
- posted by levinson @ 1/04/2001 07:11:00 AM

 
Well the naysayers of the internet generation be damned. In a display that shows people really are willing to pay for the services they care about on the internet, the population of Bloggerville has turned out to support their free community. I believe there will be much the same reaction when Napster starts charging for their service.

The comparison is not the stongest given the difference of the two services, but I think the i-net community understands that the world is not free and it will pay for those things it cares about.
- posted by levinson @ 1/04/2001 06:43:00 AM

 
It's a nice effort at re-correction, but one that, to me, strikes of the kind of governmental tinkering with the economy that Macro Economists like Milton Friedman warn policy makers away from. Do we need to continue at the gangbusters pace of the past seven years? No. Do we need to have a tech heavy Nasdaq surging ahead of where the Dow was not six years ago? I don't think so. I'm not sure how long the slow-down would have lasted, but I'm just more comfortable when the Fed makes more deliberate moves rather than "surprising" the financial markets in this manner. The CNN report says that some experts had expected something before the FOMC meeting in late January. I'm not sure what, exactly motivated this aside from some poor economic data. It seems like the Fed has started reading USA Today a little too much in recent weeks. Unless the Fed has some figures that show the recent economic turn as being far more pervasive than has been reported, I don't think there was a need to act merely 27 days early. Especially if it was in response to financial markets.

My Dad is going to think this was politically motivated in order to make the people feel good about the Bush Presidency by the time of his inauguration. To me that's a little narrow especially with regard to a Chairman who has repeatedly shredded the economic ideas Bush and other republicans on the hill have advanced.
- posted by levinson @ 1/03/2001 11:16:00 AM

 
Looks like the guys down at Blogger need a little Help to Make Blogger Go Faster!. Hopefully this is something people will get behind (I did, in a rare bout with altruism) and I think this is one of those informal litmus tests to see what users of the net are willing to "pay" for.
~*~
I have a belated f-you that goes out to Rage Against the Machine, and a retraction of the f-you. Rage had entered a state of living irony (the second case a heretofore thought impossible condition) when it was reported that they had instituted a ban on all Napster users that downloaded songs from their new album. Good to see though that the band has not actually entered the ultra-hypocritical world of Metallica and Dr. Dre. Now, who's the genius at Q Prime that thought a band named "Rage Against the Machine" would like to stop people from subverting that machine? I guess given the penchant for other music "rebels" to take this stance, it's a forgivable offense. "Rage Against The Machine apologise to Napster users"
- posted by levinson @ 1/03/2001 09:59:00 AM

 
Credit scoring. The newest way to fuck the consumer. Now, instead of bait and switch, they're playing games with data about your life to which you have no access. This is among the most contemptible things I've read about in recent years. This is one of those areas that needs federal intervension simply to force these companies to disclose and explain the data they've collected and exactly how it is used and to what end. Moreover, Experian and the like, along with Providian, Capital One and every other consumer credit company should be subjected to the most severe, invasive and ruthless investigation into business practices and an uncompromising audit of their entire financial history. These people fuck anyone and everyone and try to get you as early as 16 years old. Their methods are without ethics and are on a par with the kind of marketing that tobacco used before it was ruthlessly assaulted by this and every other government in the world. Consumer credit firms are not nearly as influential or vital to anyone's lives as tobacco. Along with a few choice insurance companies, they are the swine of the consumer world and should be treated as such by the authorities. A little data for the masses after this rant.

The current issue of Consumer Reports has a longer article on this, but I don't know if it's offered free on their website. This report on MarketWatch from almost a year ago gets to the crux of the issue, although the two reports differ on what the best way to boost your rating is. I normally look for ways to subvert companies that make people pay for their online services, but Consumer Reports is one of the more noble companies out there, so for access to the article (if it isn't free) please either buy the mag or subscribe.
- posted by levinson @ 1/03/2001 08:39:00 AM