KICK ‘EM WHILE THEY’RE DOWN: I just read how a UCSB researcher scored a grant from the Department of Defense for a couple million bucks to study something known as “robust uncertainty management.” While I love the sound of this, I admit I have no clue what it actually means.
Joe Wilson will never get his wish to watch President George W. Bush’s longtime political advisor Karl Rove “perp walked into jail” for telling reporters that Wilson’s wife, Valerie Plame, was an undercover CIA operative.
It was one of those weird, mysterious moments when players accustomed to butting heads and locking horns stumbled accidentally into a state of agreement that could add decades to the life of the South Coast’s landfill, produce enough clean energy to power 3,000 households, keep methane out of the atmosphere, and increase recycling and diversion by about 75 percent.
OF BABIES AND BATHWATER: The folks at City Hall should know by now it’s not polite to gloat. But sometimes it’s impossible to resist, and such was clearly the case this Tuesday afternoon.
HARD HITTER: Billy Connell, it seems, was born to fight. First, it was with Sister Agnes, his sixth-grade teacher at the Catholic school he attended back in New Jersey. When Sister Agnes made the mistake of smacking Connell with a ruler, he reciprocated by snatching it away and smacking her back.
Former ambassador Barbara Bodine is hardly the first to itemize the many U.S. policy failures in the Iraq War, but she may be one of the most qualified such critics, having been placed in charge of reconstruction efforts the month after the invasion.
A classic cautionary tale played out at this week’s Santa Barbara City Council meeting, where a cadre of Los Angeles consultants gave city councilmembers reason to be careful what they wish for.
The beginning of last Saturday’s chamber jazz concert by Dave Holland and Jim Hall, titans of the bass and guitar, respectively, started out bumpy, and the opening number, the Benny Goodman blues riff “Six Flats Unfurnished,” seemed like it might be a sadly accurate description of their playing.
Months after the closing of Jimmy’s Oriental Garden, Santa Barbara City Councilmembers debate the merits of turning the now-vacant building into a museum dedicated to the history of the city’s Chinese-American residents.
Now that her party controls Congress, Representative Lois Capps wasted little time shedding her reputation as a rhetorical wallflower during last week’s lengthy congressional debate on a nonbinding resolution opposing an increase in the number of troops deployed to Iraq.
