State Farm Isn’t There Mississippi, that is. The insurance company, the state’s largest, will stop writing home-owner policies there because of post-Katrina claim problems, including a ‘flood’ of settlement lawsuits. Yet another legal tussle looms for State Farm as Mississippi’s Attorney General gears up to force the insurer to continue writing policies. Note to homeowners: KNOW YOUR COVERAGE.

363 Tons of Cash! That’s right, CASH, $12 billion, bundled up by the Federal Reserve Bank in New York and loaded on pallets and flown to Baghdad where L. Paul Bremer III commenced to throw it around like a drunken sailor on shore leave ostensibly to kick-start a broken economy. (Gee, I wonder who broke it.) Meanwhile, Louisiana and other Gulf States (our gulf, not the Mid-East’s), particularly the beloved Big Easy, haven’t found it easy to get FEMA and other government assistance to kick-start its broken economy. Naturally the politicians - federal, state, and local - are throwing around blame like politicians throw around blame when what they should be doing is lobbying for a big cash swashbuckler like L. Paul Bremer III.

A Pear of Pears PEAR, the Princeton Engineering Anomalies Research laboratory has, since 1979, being trying to prove that thoughts can alter the course of events. Well, this week it finally succeeded; it got shut down due to lack of funding (it spent $10 million over twenty-five years, money largely provided by private donors, some of them crackpots with money, others leading industrialists) and broad skepticism that seemed as much as anything to be the dagger through its ESP heart. Robert Jahn and Brenda Dunne, the movers and shakers since PEAR’s inccption, and founding members of the highly secretive PEAR Society (ooooooooh) are packing everything away and leaving their years of research to a fresh batch of paranormalists whose identities and expected time of emergence are known, I’m certain, only to them.

Putin Put In His Two Cents Remember the good old days when all we had to do was hide under our desks and blame the Russians for everything. Well, now it’s the Russian kids turn. This week, Vladimir V. Putin, Steely VV to those who know him well, accused the US of provoking a new nuclear arms race by developing ballistic missile defenses geez, haven’t the Russians got any yet), undermining international institutions (would that be the USSR) and making the Middle Ease more unstable through its clumsy handling of the Iraq war. OK, we’ll give you the last one but come on, Vlad, haven’t we got enough problems without this type of piling on?

Hale Yale Tale No, not the former Taliban diplomat attending Yale, not the Yale a capella Baker’s Dozen getting gay-slurred in San Francisco, but two students using showers for other than their intended purpose rendering bathrooms unusable for ninety minutes. Conservative Elis, pointing the penis at the moral vacuum created by Yale intellectuals, are screaming for a tableau of basic guidelines for proper and decent behavior. Hey, unless they were taking a dump, I say leave the sanctity of shower sex, hetero, homo, or multi, alone.

Score Card – Progress Iraq Non-binding Congressional resolution to not support the President’s Iraqi troop surge. The Senate votes tomorrow amid bluster and talk of filibustering. Meanwhile, Bush marches on with his head firmly stuck in the sands of fantasy land. BRING OUR TROOPS HOME. CONTINUING THIS WAR IS THE DISASTER.

Truth lasts but a moment…lies, forever. . Allan McLeod, Oct 2006

That’s all for this week, my friends