I knew it was too good to be true

Last week, it looked like French voters might reject the European constitution.

The latest poll is going the other way, after intensive campaiging from leaders from across France's political spectrum, from socialists to McDonald's-bulldozing farmers to anti-soap Greens. I should have known the French would never reject such a stupid idea. The driving force behind the opposition was a racist opposition to Turkey joining the E.U., but if French voters have to choose between socialism and racism, they'll take socialism.

The E.U. has been referred to as a "United States of Europe," surprisingly, as the U.S. doesn't sell well in many of the more backward and insular countries such as France. A more appropriate name, though, would be the "Union of European Socialist Republics," or UESR.

Fortunately, the sensible British will probably vote down the EU constitution. They don't want to take orders from Frenchmen and Germans in Brussels.

Why don't wild animals smell as bad as hippies?

Mrs. Varones and I were sitting around the pub in Sydney this evening with our good friend Helen when we stumbled upon an apparently insoluble enigma:

Why don't wild animals smell as bad as hippies?

You know what I'm talking about. That rank body smell of the unwashed. But many wild animals don't wash, so why don't they smell as bad as hippies?

One proposal was that wild animals washed themselves, as cats lick themselves clean. This doesn't explain coyotes and wolves, though, which don't lick themselves clean.

A possible explanation for the canine family smelling better than hippies is that canines sweat through their tongue and nose, so don't build up the stench that hippies create sweating through armpits and other pores. This seems quite plausible.

Other explanations for why wild animals don't smell as bad as hippies are quite welcome. Please post them in the comments section.

Memo to Verizon: Walk Away!

As a Verizon shareholder, I hope management and the board do the right thing and walk away from the silly bidding war for former criminal enterprise MCI.

Verizon had negotiated an arguably reasonable purchase price for MCI (formerly WorldCom), which it wanted for its lucrative long-distance business. MCI has strong competitive positioning in the business, largely due to the fact that its balance sheet was wiped clean by the bankruptcy fairy (memo to other companies: an easy way to gain competitive advantage is to perpetrate massive fraud, wipe out the shareholders, send a few bozos to prison, then file bankruptcy and emerge debt-free while your competitors still labor under mountains of debt).

Then Qwest, an under-financed former near-bankruptcy candidate itself, started a bidding war. Qwest is paying a huge premium, and expecting the synergy fairy to deliver unimaginable mountains of treasure. Not going to happen. Qwest will have to add more debt to its already smelly balance sheet, and the size of this purchase will be an anchor around Qwest's neck for years. It's a truism in business that synergies rarely amount to what the acquirer expects, and huge acquisitions rarely work out well.

Verizon should walk away, and take the $250 million break-up fee as a lovely parting gift. Qwest's stock will sink, burdened by massive debt and the failure of expected synergies to emerge. Verizon will be able to buy parts or all of MCI when Qwest is forced to sell to service debt -- or maybe Verizon will just buy all of Qwest at lower prices.

OpinionJournal: servin' up some tasty burgers!

OpinionJournal has plenty of good stuff today, including Noonan on Bolton and a profile of Ted Hayes, the "Rasta Republican."

Noonan is great on Bolton. The whole piece is worth reading. An amusing quip at the end, though not representative of Noonan's main argument, is "But the U.N. is a china shop in need of a bull, isn't it?"

I remember Ted Hayes from fifteen or twenty years ago, when he was "Ted Hayes, homeless advocate," not "Ted Hayes, Rasta Republican." I seem to recall that he made some headlines with some ludicrous claims about the number (millions, maybe?) of homeless Americans.

It's still fun to see the left go nuts when members of racial or ethnic minorities go off the reservation. I hope Hayes riles them up -- and I can't wait to see the Janice Rogers Brown confirmation battle!

UPDATE: Hayes is featured in this Arianna Huffington book promo -- I wonder if she'll remove it now that he's been outed as a Republican.

UPDATE2: Shocking new first-person revelations that Ted Kennedy, like John Bolton, has yelled at someone!

Changing the tone in Washington

Ken Salazar was supposed to be one of the more reasonable, moderate new Senators.

Sen. Ken Salazar said Wednesday he regrets referring to Focus on the Family and its founder James Dobson as "the Antichrist" - a term among the worst slurs in Christianity.

I can't wait to see what the immoderate Senators do!

HT: Instapundit.

Bush speech

I'm listening live right now via Internet radio.

Bush is making a good case for Social Security reform. Appropriately, he's using words like "option," "choice," and "voluntary." You'd have to be an idiot or a partisan to oppose even a limited, voluntary, optional, personal savings account.

If a tree falls in a forest of idiots...

Al Gore to moveon:

"The rule of law depends, in turn, upon the respect each generation of Americans has for the integrity with which our laws are written, interpreted and enforced."

Well, moveon and the Democrats sure do a lot to foster respect for the integrity of our laws when they claim every election they lose is stolen! Florida? Democrats told to vote on Wednesday. Ohio? Evil Republican voting machine company rigged the election! Bush 2000? Partisan Supreme Court.

By the way, does moveon rhyme with Foveon, the camera chip company? And if they were founded in 1998 to get Congress and the American public to "move on" from little things like perjury and obstruction of justice so that the President could get on with his important agenda, what is the meaning of "move on" now?

HT: Anklebitingpundits.