Scrapbook
Scrapbook "Encouraging" News for Al Gore? Remember that "encouraging" news for Al Gore a few weeks ago? A Pew Research Center poll showed Gore gaining on George W. Bush in a head-to-head race:...
...Based on current trends, the advisory group reports, aid to North Korea could top $1 billion next year...
...But in the October survey, the partisan breakdown was 40% Democrat, 28% Republican and 28% Independent...
...Not so...
...All this according to a report issued by the congressional North Korea Advisory Group, which was set up by House speaker Dennis Hastert to review U.S...
...Over the past five years, the Clinton administration has buttressed the world's last pure Stalinist dictatorship with some $645 million in aid, supplying half of North Korea's heavy fuel oil needs, provisioning it with nuclear reactors, and feeding a third of its population...
...That will benefit students, which is why the proposal has the support of liberals like Bill Clay and Matthew Martinez, both senior Democrats on the House Education and the Workforce Committee...
...And how is the Department of Education going to stem defections...
...Is it our impoverished, long-time ally, the Philippines...
...Prompted by a question from the vice president of Harvard Right to Life (yes, there really is such a group), Beatty recounted running into Drudge locked in conversation with Dustin Hoffman at a Beverly Hills gathering...
...The administration wants to lift economic sanctions on North Korea, too...
...Ignatius pouts as the fur is torn from his shoulders, "It will be weeks before I can even look at a candle without cringing...
...So, there is only one mathematical way for Al Gore to have improved—a dramatic increase in the number of Democrats in the sample...
...It was then, Beatty said, that Drudge asked him, " 'Now that you have three kids, how do you feel about abortion?' I said, 'It really makes you think.'" Then Beatty stammered a bit and looked uncomfortable (as he did in response to numerous questions) but recovered in time to conclude with the unflinching reaffirmation, "I'm pro-choice...
...In the September survey, the partisan make-up of the sample was even: 32% Democrat, 31% Republican and 32% Independent...
...We think our policy is leading in the right direction," says State Department spokesman James Rubin...
...Apparently, by breaking the law...
...No kidding...
...More Notes on the Hairless Man David Ignatius devoted his Oct...
...31 Washington Post column to the increasing narcissism of the American male...
...Newsflash: Beatty Still Pro-Choice Rumors of Warren Beatty's pro-life sympathies turn out—small surprise—to have been greatly exaggerated...
...The Clinton approach, from day one, has been that the Department of Education can lend to students more cheaply than banks do...
...And thanks to the agreement negotiated by the administration in 1994, the North Koreans will be able to produce enough plutonium to make 100 weapons per year when these reactors come on line...
...Reporting from the health spa of a Beverly Hills hotel where an attendant is stripping the hair from his back, Ignatius says he can't "help thinking that something bad is happening to men in our culture...
...Matt Drudge reported in September that since the birth of Beatty's three children with Annette Bening, the man who was once the inspiration for Carly Simon's "You're So Vain" had become an unlikely pro-lifer...
...The Education Prez...
...The department has also been trying to discredit a study, released by its own inspector general, showing that the government spends 31 percent more than private lenders would spend if they administered the program...
...Shortly after Bill Clinton was inaugurated, he promised to make college more affordable by reforming the student-loan program...
...A Pew Research Center poll showed Gore gaining on George W. Bush in a head-to-head race: Bush's 54-39 percent September lead had shrunk to only a 51-44 percent advantage in the poll's October tally...
...The Vermont Student Assistance Corporation, a non-profit lender, was offering a more attractive loan package than the federal government, so the university took the paper's advice...
...But as representative Ben Gilman, advisory group chairman, points out, North Korea can easily use the plutonium produced by the nuclear reactors supplied by the West as fissile material for nuclear warheads...
...But here's a tip for future reporters wanting to do the first-person angle on male vanity: You don't need wax...
...The Pew press release even implied that "Gore's more assertive campaign" might be making a difference...
...Guess that's why Clinton calls himself the education president...
...Not true, Beatty explained to students and faculty last week at Harvard's Kennedy School of Government...
...Pop Quiz_ Quickly now: Which nation in East Asia receives the largest amount of UTS...
...Furthermore, Bush actually improved his standing among Republicans (+5%) and Independents (+9%) from September to October, while only falling off 3% with Democrats...
...The congressional plan would tinker with the formula used to calculate loan rates...
...The Burlington Free Press, hardly a conservative paper, began publishing editorials earlier this year calling on the University of Vermont to withdraw from the Clinton direct-lending program...
...The correct answer: none of the above...
...policy toward North Korea...
...swing voters) than he was in September, and he has not improved beyond the margin of error among Democrats...
...It might even be cheap at the price if the policy were achieving that end...
...Is there an emergency relief package in the works to help East Timor create a viable, independent democracy...
...The largest recipient of American aid in East Asia is a nation fanatically hostile to the United States, North Korea...
...The likely effect would be to attract more banks to the private-loan market, creating greater competition, and, in turn, lower rates...
...But the Clintonistas cling to the idea the Department of Education is the supreme lender...
...But in June, the department announced it was lowering its fee to 3 percent, so it can undercut other lenders...
...Now, the administration is opposing a bipartisan proposal that would reduce interest rates on student loans, and do so in a way that both the Congressional Budget Office and the Office of Management and Budget have said would save the government millions of dollars...
...This supposed surge for Al Gore is attributable to one single factor: a significant increase in the percentage of Democrats in the October sample...
...In a memo to clients last week, researchers Hans Kaiser and Bob Moore of Moore Information in Portland, Ore., revealed the particular devil in the Pew poll's details...
...As Kaiser and Moore note, this was "actually bad news for Al Gore...
...War-torn Cambodia...
...Too bad Ignatius missed David Skinner's prescient report on male vanity in these pages, "Notes on the Hairless Man" (June 21, 1999...
...This represents a major shift in overall party identification in the sample...
...Federal law mandates a 4 percent fee when students take out a loan...
...Dubious as this proposition sounds, hundreds of institutions of higher education were persuaded to enroll in the Education Department's so-called direct-lending program...
...A mirror will do just fine...
...No doubt raising such a question makes The Scrapbook a knuckle-dragging isolationist...
...Other schools are likely to follow suit...
...The Clinton administration interprets such developments as a call for increasing the payoffs...
...North Korea, lest we forget, is also developing ballistic missiles capable of reaching much of the continental United States...
...Is the unsuccessful propitiation of a despotic and dangerous regime the "right direction" for American foreign policy...
...He is doing worse with Independents (i.e...
...The aid money, not to put too fine a point on it, is a bribe to get the North Koreans to halt their nuclear weapons program...
...Now some are rethinking...
Vol. 5 • November 1999 • No. 9
