Author Archives: floegel

Pepsi Needs Coke

7/22/2004 – 2:23 pm

I was flying from Philadelphia to Orlando one evening in May, during the National Hockey League playoffs. As it happened, the Philadelphia Flyers were playing the Tampa Bay Lightning and Tampa Bay was getting the better of Philadelphia. The Florida-based flight crew periodically announced game developments, razzing the Philadelphians gently, at least at first. The […]

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Duty Now for the Future

7/15/2004 – 1:48 pm

This week’s news features a British government report that says her majesty’s intelligence service grossly misinterpreted and overstated the threat posed to Middle Eastern stability by Saddam Hussein. There were, they now admit, no weapons of mass destruction and what the analysts thought was evidence of WMDs, well that was just wrong. The report goes […]

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Getting Layed

7/8/2004 – 9:30 am

Reading the news this week, it occurs to me that not only does history repeat itself, but the intervals between repetitions are growing shorter. It was announced Wednesday that an indictment against former Enron CEO Kenneth Lay is due to be unsealed. Mr. Lay – “Kenny Boy” to George W. Bush – was one of […]

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Cloth Can Be Very Important

7/1/2004 – 9:41 am

When I was in high school, Mr. Chadwick the gym teacher once sentenced me to 50 push-ups saying, “I never heard President Ford use that word.” I don’t know if Mr. Chadwick is still teaching, but if he is, he’ll have to look beyond the highest level of the executive branch for examples oratory decorum. […]

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On the Bus

6/24/2004 – 8:48 am

Two or three times a week, I commute from my house in Burlington to the state capital Montpelier, 40 miles away. It takes about an hour each way and the hours I spend commuting are among the most relaxing I spend all week. I ride the bus. I know, I know, I’m not supposed to […]

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Humiliation, Revisited

6/17/2004 – 8:30 pm

In 1995, I was among a number of Greenpeace activists arrested in a non-violent protest at the French ambassador’s residence in Washington, DC. We’d embarrassed the Secret Service, so when we got to jail, they gave us the treatment. We were strip-searched, placed in handcuffs with restraining belts and leg shackles. We were rousted from […]

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Reagan Lives

6/10/2004 – 9:33 am

George W. Bush recently told Bob Woodward that history’s judgement of his presidency doesn’t matter to him, because he’ll be dead. If he’s right, history can commence judgement of Ronald Reagan’s presidency, but Mr. Bush is wrong, at least in Mr. Reagan’s case. He may be dead, but it’s too soon to draw a complete […]

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