Lolita Lewinsky
Subject: Mo-ni-ca,
Lo-li-ta
From:
Andrew Solovay
Re: ""
Date: Wed Dec
15
"In fact, Masters said, she could think of only one
other word that featured such an exquisitely pleasing articulatory progression
in the mouth: 'Monica.' " Let's not forget Nabokov's exquisite progression in
the other direction: "Tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to
tap, at three, on the teeth: Lo. Li. Ta."
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Subject:
Peanuts Metaphysics
From: Ed Anger
Re: ""
Date: Tue Dec
14
Charles Schulz need not fear death. He already has
immortality. My favorite strip was when Lucy fell ill and sent Rerun to hold
the football for Charlie Brown. Lucy stayed home. Rerun arrived home a short
time later. Lucy screamed, "I've got to know. Did you pull away the football or
did you let him kick it"? Rerun smiled and said, "You'll never know!"
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Subject: What
Papers Was Chancellor Reading?
From:
Clark Parsons
Re: "
Date: Thu Dec
16
I just wanted to briefly contradict your
characterization regarding how the German press supposedly ignored or
downplayed the story of the recent monetary settlement agreement for victims of
Nazi slave-labor and forced-labor programs. It was the lead story in every
paper I saw yesterday. It was the lead story in every national newscast I saw
yesterday.
The story touches on everything from the nation's
most shameful chapter to the business community's potential bottom lines.
Believe me, it has been one of the top stories here for the last six months.
And for the average citizen, it has become a subject as inescapable as the Nazi
past itself.
Witness the present controversy surrounding an
artist's idea to stage what looks like a really cool light show on New Year's
Eve in Berlin. Everyone, from new Nobel Prize winner Günter Grass to
politicians to local artists, say the show must not go on. Why? Because
Hitler's architect Albert Speer staged lightshows. Say what you want about the
Germans and their past; they are the third-most obsessed nation on earth when
it comes to the Nazi era as a story. (England and the U.S. are, of course,
numbers one and two.)
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Subject: Re: What
Papers Was Chancellor Reading?
From:
Alexander Chancellor
Re: ""
Date: Fri Dec
17
My sincere apologies. I must assume the subject
dominated the German papers a day earlier when I didn't see them.
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Subject: Gore
Was Present at the Creation
From:
James W. Brosnan
Re: ""
Date: Wed Dec
15
I'd like to help set the record for
Slate
. The Gore quote from Time magazine was:
[Bradley proposes] the
expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit. I was the author of that proposal. I
wrote that, so I say, welcome aboard. That is something for which I have been
the principal proponent for a long time.
Clearly Gore was referring to a proposal to expand
EITC. On Feb. 7, 1989, Gore and Reps. Tom Downey, George Miller and John Lewis
introduced a bill to expand the EITC by $34 billion by raising taxes on people
earning more than $200,000 a year. Much of that proposal was incorporated into
the 1993 Clinton-Gore tax increase. I wrote a story about the tax proposal for
the Memphis Commercial Appeal .
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Subject: Re: Gore
Was Present at the Creation
From: Jodie
Allen
Re: ""
Date: Fri Dec
17
Mr. Brosnan has added
another small footnote to the long history of the EITC. He notes that then-Sen.
Gore co-sponsored one of many EITC expansion plans, though not one that made it
directly into law. As the House Ways and Means Committee's authoritative
"Green Book" notes, there were several expansions to the
EITC:
The earned income credit
(EIC Code sec. 32), enacted in 1975, generally equals a specified percentage of
wages up to a maximum dollar amount. … The income ranges and percentages have
been revised several times since original enactment, expanding the credit (see
table 13-12). In 1987, the credit was indexed for inflation. In 1990 and again
in 1993, Congress enacted substantial expansions of the credit. …
So what Vice President Gore might have accurately
said was, "I was the co-author of one of numerous proposals to expand the EITC,
though the one I co-sponsored wasn't the one that was enacted into law in that
period." That's not what he said.
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Subject: Not
Campaign Finance Reform--Cynical Politics
From: Pat
Johnson
Re: ""
Date: Mon Dec
20
You are too quick to brush off the dubious motive
behind Al Gore's offer to forgo radio and TV ads in the Democratic primary.
Gore had everything to gain and nothing to lose by the offer. Gore went on the
air with both TV and radio commercials almost two months before Bradley did.
Bradley saved his money and went on the air just before Thanksgiving. Bradley
has already bought up airtime to use during the last several weeks of the Iowa
caucuses and the New Hampshire primary. To pull TV ads now only helps
Gore--he's already been on the air a lot longer than Bradley. Gore has outspent
Bradley by a wide margin and is close to hitting the spending caps.
In terms of Gore's offer for debates twice weekly,
where was the offer back in April, May, June, and July? There was no offer
because Gore ignored him. Now that Bradley has made it a race, Gore wants to
dictate the pace of the campaign. Bradley and Gore have now met three times and
will meet four more times in January.
Bradley is not a hypocrite on campaign finance
reform for refusing Gore's grandstanding offer. TV and radio are a reality in
modern campaigns. Bradley has to build up his name recognition to beat a
sitting vice-president. Bradley's ads, which are paid for by "hard" dollars,
help get his name and message across to people who are not familiar with him.
If you noticed, Gore didn't offer not to spend the money that would be saved by
not purchasing TV or radio ads. His campaign is in danger of running out of
money early in the primary season. By not paying for ads in the Democratic
primary, that would allow Gore to pay for ads in the period between the
primaries and the convention. Again, the offer benefits Gore because his
earlier spending spree has backfired on him.
Gore has grandstanded in the past and he will in
the future. If he was serious about the offer he wouldn't have sprung it on
Meet the Press --he would have talked to Bradley about it behind the
scenes first. To offer deals that only benefit you isn't campaign finance
reform--it's cynical politics.
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Subject: B2B Need
Not Equal B2C
From: Eugene
Huang
Re: ""
Date: Tue Dec
14
Mr. Surowiecki says that the success of
business-to-business (B2B) Internet sales depends on consumers ultimately
buying the stuff (B2C)--certainly a valid point. But Mr. Surowiecki misses one
crucial point: B2B can exist without B2C, since consumers can purchase
goods in the offline world.
If you take most large industries (and automobiles,
to use Surowiecki's example, are no exception), businesses purchase a lot of
goods--on parity with consumers in some industries (like automobiles), but also
in far greater quantities in others (energy, telecommunications, office supply
goods, construction goods, etc.). Furthermore, the economies of scale you get
by focusing on B2B are enormous: To take the example of the automobile, while a
consumer may make a single purchase, amounting to $20K in net revenue, when the
City of New York (or Philadelphia, or LA, etc.) makes a purchase for a fleet of
cars, it's a one-time sale amounting to $20K * large number of cars = very
large number. As you can see, making the business sale is probably more
cost-effective than making the consumer sale. Take, for instance, the oil
industry: Marketplaces for petrochemicals can be established online between
businesses, but it would be illogical for a Web company to try and sell
gasoline to a single consumer pumping gas.
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