Pookie Monster

Update, after Johnny Damon's jack.

2004-10-20T20:39:00.000-05:00

Never mind.

but the Cardinals are just going to kill 'em.

It's that time again

2004-10-20T18:57:00.000-05:00

Red Sox fans are so cute when they get their hopes up this time of year. Again. As thir team steps up and makes them think that THIS IS GOING TO BE THE YEAR! Again. Right before it all comes crashing down like the Taliban's vaunted plan to disrupt the Afghan elections. Again.

Yeah, ARod's a cheater, and yeah, a comeback from 0-3 to 3-3 is unprecedented, and yeah, Curt Schilling demonstrated tremendous guts. But Schilling's not pitching tonight, the curse is very real, and it's midnight for Cinderella.

The only way the Red Sox will ever win again is for them to make a trade to Steinbrenner for the rights to Babe Ruth's decaying corpse.

I feel sick. And angry.

2004-09-20T21:54:00.000-05:00

I will no longer be sticking up for John Fucking Kerry.

"The president claims it is the centerpiece of his war on terror. In fact, Iraq was a profound diversion from that war and the battle against our greatest enemy, Osama bin Laden and the terrorists. Invading Iraq has created a crisis of historic proportions and, if we do not change course, there is the prospect of a war with no end in sight."

It's one thing to disagree with Iraqi democracy as a WoT strategy. Leonard Peikoff and Orson Scott Card both honestly so disagree, for example. It's something else entirely to pretend that the strategy doesn't exist, and that Iraq is somehow not part of the WoT.

This is so off the wall that some pro-Kerry media toned it down for him. He's morphing into Howard Dean, and betraying the truth, the best interests of the country, and the reality-cognizant liberals who delivered him the nomination against Dean.

Asheville's new motto:

2004-09-17T13:01:00.000-05:00

Glub Glub Glub

Last week: Floods shut down the water.

This week: Wind shuts down the power.

Next week: Locusts eat all the weed. Then we see The Great Hippie Riot of 2004.

I've avoided almost all the trouble so far. Yay me!

I was right.

2004-09-17T12:06:00.000-05:00

Vladamir Putin is what partisan Democrats only pretend President Bush is.

Short story long: Previously, Russia's legislature was split 50/50 in terms of the members' manner of election. Half were elected from districts, the way we do it, and half were elected by Russians nationwide voting for their party, in a proportional representation systemwhere the party has previously submitted a list of candidates. If the party gets enough votes for 20 seats in the parliament, the first 20 names on the list get in.

Putin's party is dominant in the proportional-rep system. He won reelection last March in a landslide. The local-district elections, along with the independent elections of provincial governors, provided balancing power centers which can serve as stepping-stones for the rise of an opposition party.

Vlad's new reform: The district elections are abolished. and the provincial governors are now appointed...by Vlad. This makes it more difficult for an opposition to break in and establishes loyalty to Putin among regional officials. The new centralization means that Putin is now an elected dictator.

Next, he'll decree campaign-finance laws.

This disturbs a lot of people. If Pu-poo head is as heavy-handed in his foreign policy as in his power grab (and let's face it, autocrats are not known for passive foreign policies), he could deal significant setbacks to the War on Terror by stirring up more hostility to the West (vide Grozny) - and you can bet that Islamist propagandists will blame America.

Likewise, if V.Pu is more concerned with his own grip on power than in fighting the WoT, he's unlikely to get on board for Bushite democracy promotion. That only retards our own fight.

Likewise, if Russia enters a new Imperial era, what do we do when our allies in New Europe who showed such loyalty in Iraq - Poland, the Baltics, and Ukraine, for example - call on us to help protect them from Russian adventurism? We can't French out and abandon them, but we can't afford an all-out war with the Ruskies.

So this is bad for us, and could get worse. And I don't see a blessed thing we can do to stop it.

Thatcher's 'Statecraft', Part II

2004-09-08T21:17:00.000-05:00

What I found interesting is her account of how the EU bureaucracy's attempts to meddle in the internal politics of its members. The EU is not an international organization; it is intended to be a new federal government for all Europe. (This goal evidently has some public support; on a message board last week, I read a post from a Greek extolloling the number of Olympic medals that the 'EU' had won, and calling for a unified EU Olympic team. They really do want to get rid of national autonomy.) Thatcher attributes much of the support for British affiliation with the EU to the belief that it's joining an organization, not being subsumed into a new Eurogovernment.

In condemning the EU as anti-democratic, she places great store in the absence of a 'pan-European public opinion'.

"No matter how many attempts are made to create links between the political parties of different European countries, those parties know that they have to campaign upon, and that their fortunes will be determined by, national programmes (sic) and issues."

She points up the national differences: "...no fewer than twelve main languages are widely spoken among the present [EU] members...[a]nd it is still the case that for the great majority of Europe's population, 'home' is to be described in national, or local, not Continental terms."

However, she also notes that large fractions of younger Euros, ranging from 25% to 40%, think of themselves first as European, and only second as citizens of their nation. The Greek of whom I wrote earlier is evidently not alone.

Thatcher also bases her claim that the EU is undemocratic on the habit of Euroenthusiasts of disregarding national prerogatives in favor of the Federal program. She notes that Joschka Fischer and the other Eurosupporters in Germany ignored a 75-25 public opinion split against giving up the Deustch mark when they accepted the euro. Of course, that could also be described as dedication to principle without regard to opinion polls.

More worrisome is the " left-dominated EU Council of Ministers...imposed political sanctions on Austria in the hope that the Austrians would be prepared to put the left back in power. "EU's imposition of "political sanctions" against Austria when they elected a coalition the EU people didn't like - a conservative one, of course. In that context, Chancellor Schroeder of Germany threatened "to the effect that similar action would be taken to stop the right winning power" in Italy. Then, during the Italian election, "[a] concerted Europe-wide media campaign of vilification, the like of which I have rarely seen in politics, was launched against Signor Berlusconi to intimidate the Italian electorate into backing the left.

This narrative makes me think: How much of the EU is really a taxpayer-funded mutual aid society for leftish parties around Europe, much as the UN sometimes is for leftist activists? (Thatcher also complains about the use of 'human rights', Kyoto, and other treaties to commit our national government to courses of actions that our electorate is too conservative to accept.) A lot, I should think. Of course, the existence of sufficient affinity among Euro-leftist parties for that undercuts the idea that there is no Continent-wide public opinion. Even if Maggie's wrong about that, though, as a conservative, the use of an international bureaucracy to use tax money to support one side in elections disturbs me. A lot. And that, as a reason to oppose the EU, is compelling.

Incedentally, I wonder if a (non-taxpayer-funded) conservative-party alliance would be useful. Our Republicans, Britain's Tories, Italy's Italia Forza, India's BJP, Hugo Chavez's opponenets in Venezuela--even France has Sabine Herold and a Libertarian Party, however small. However, I wonder what sort of aid could we provide, aside from expertise and ideas, which I'm sure are already widely shared. Using office in one country to aid like-minded parties in another country places party above national interest--which is precisely what the Deanyboppers do. Bad idea. Foreign policy needs a certain level of deference to foreign electorates' choices of officeholders.

Thatcher's 'Statecraft', Part I

2004-09-08T20:22:00.000-05:00

'Statecraft' is a very broad-based book, taking in at a gulp the lessons of the Cold War, Russia, Asia, the War on Terror, the use of 'human rights' to advance a leftist program, the interventions against Serbia, and the unification of Europe. Much of it, therefore, lacks detail, but is tied together by her familiar unflinching advocacy for individual liberty.

She recommends the autobiography of Akio Morita, founder of Sony, entitled ' Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony'. It's on my 'to read' list, which is just getting more and more backlogged as time goes by.

Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng provides entertainment during her 1991 visit there when she brought up the bloody Cultural Revolution. "Li Peng then repeated another standard line - namely that the Communist Party had subsequently addressed those mistakes. Mao had acknowledged that there were excesses. I said that Mao ought to know: after all he was himself the archpriest of the Cultural Revolution. This, I knew, was something that even today's Chinese communists are not prepared to admit. Li Peng at this became altogether incoherent."

On the International Criminal Court: "Major international interventions are doomed unless the US is directly or indirectly involved. [Earlier she speaks highly of the Balkan intervention, criticizing it only for not being assertive enough against Serbia.] But if American politicians, officials, and servicemen are to be put at risk of arrest and prosecution, the United States will be more reluctant to act in order to curb aggression or prevent genocide."

On modern democracy: "Political leaders have never mixed so much with their own kind and so little with others. There have never been so many international gatherings; the democratic restraints of parliamentary accountabilty have never been weaker; and the temptation to forget one's roots and abandodn one's principles has never been greater. Presidenta and Prime Ministers have to struggle as never before to keep their feet on the ground, and the risk is that many will give up the effort altogether. National electorates should be alert to this."

She is at her best, though, in the two chapters about the ever-tighter European Union. In brief, she's against it and persuaded that future generations will consider it a "folly".

texttext

Vladamir Putin mounts up.

2004-09-05T17:58:00.000-05:00

"Putin went on national television to tell Russians they must mobilize against terrorism. He promised wide-ranging reforms to toughen security forces and purge corruption. "We showed weakness, and weak people are beaten," he said..."

This could be very good or very bad.

On the one hand, it would be great to have Russia acting less French, and the icy-eyed ex-KGB spook is one of the last guys in the world I'd want pissed at me.

On the other hand, the Putin Peace Plan in Chechnya over the last few years has consisted chiefly of carpet bombing random Chechens until the terrorism stops. (contra Iraq and Afghanistan, both holding elections next winter)This plan has been less than entirely successful, especially since imported jihadists began to supplant the native Chechen rebels.

Meanwhile, Putin has shown a disturbing authoritarianism as leader of Russia. This from Mikhail Khordokovsky, Russian industrialist/philanthropist and libertarian activist, imprisoned last year on probably politically motivated income-tax charges:

"It is the Singapore model, it is a term that people understand in Russia these days. It means that theoretically you have a free press, but in practice there is self-censorship. Theoretically you have courts; in practice the courts adopt decisions dictated from above. Theoretically there are civil rights enshrined in the constitution; in practice you are not able to exercise some of these rights."

Putin is not, in short, the kind of man who would find Bushian democracy promotion an attractive war on terror strategy, although he'll no doubt be sheer hell on al-Qaeda and suchlike in terms of a direct seek-and-destroy work. My guess is that Putin's promised show of strength and law-enforcement 'reforms' will actually be what partisan leftist whackjobsenjoy pretending President Bush's policies are.

Putin's getting more aggressive and I welcome it, but he doesn't shift strategy at the same time, he's a potentially very counterproductive loose cannon.

A little learning is a dangerous thing.

2004-09-01T20:25:00.000-05:00

I've just been listening to a local talk radio show featuring people competing to see who could be stupidest in public. Half of them were hippies who had heard something at some pot-fueled rap session to the effect that the Russians had historically mistreated the Chechens, and so denied that the Chechen act of terror in Ossetia had anything to do with terrorism and that the child-killers are freedom fighters, or at least excusable. The other half were blissfully unaware of the previous existence of a Chechen conflict and thought it was just odd that the terrorists chose to target an Iraq-liberation opponent like Russia.

Permit me to clear this up a bit.

There's a pattern developing here. Daniel Pipes and Bernard Lewis teach us that Islamism is a faction within Islam seeking to unify the Islamic world under their leadership, caliphate-style. They use jihad the way the Pope in Rome used the Crusades to liberate Jerusalem to rally Europe behind his leadership after he and the Archbishop of Constantinople excommunicated each other.

The Chechen conflict began in the 1840s when the Russian Empire tried to roll in and found that heavily armed Islamic hillbillies (a)live in some of the ruggedest mountains in the world, and (b)don't like the czar's revenuers. In its modern incarnation, it dates from the collapse of the Soviet Union. Chechens, who never thought of themselves as Russian, wanted independence, same as neighboring Azerbaijan and Georgia had. Russia needed to keep access to the lucrative Caspian Sea oil fields, so Yeltsin ordered the rebellion put down. General Alexandr Lebed put it down, the hard way. Putin has stuck to this course.

This makes the Chechen cause sound sympathetic, and it is, as far as that goes. Over the last decade, however, foreign fighters (read al-Qaeda and like-minded groups, probably including Iran) have moved into the area to "help" the beleaguered Chechens and then and there began the suicide bombings and the civilian hostage crises. (The August 2002 issue of Maxim magazine-the one with Beyonce Knowles on the cover-includes the story of one of those bin Laden-trained fighters: Aukai Collins, of Honolulu. In 1998, he also went to Bosnia.) It seemes to me reasonable to assume that the terrorists have also been recruiting in Chechnya.

This is like Afghanistan, when Egyptians, Syrians, Yemenis, and Saudis, including bin Laden, all flocked to Masud's anti-Soviet resistance, and wound up calling themselves the Taliban and taking over the place after the Russians pulled out. They even assassinated Masud himself in August 2001. They never gave a fuck about the Afghans. Or the Chechens. They only care about their own power.

Accordingly, we aren't facing Chechen nationalists anymore. The muderers of today's headlines are simply al-Qaeda trying to gain prestige in the Islamic world by posturing as champions of Muslims. Just like Afghanistan. And Bosnia. And if they get their way, an independent Chechnya will become a Taliban-style theocracy.

That also means that Russia can't crush the 'rebellion' by military means, any more than we can 'win' the war on terror as a whole in conventional terms. We win when we can make the terrorists unwelcome in Chechnya like we have in Iraq. We will probably do that by abandoning the Chechen aspirations and supporting the Russians' Tacitean tactics, because I don't think its possible to liberate and ally with Chechnya (like we did Iraq), at least not without fighting a full-scale war against Russia, up to and including the sack of Moscow.

Pity the poor Chechens. They have the Russian jackboot on one side and the Islamist dynamite vest on the other, and no way out.

A look into the bubble.

2004-08-29T18:26:00.000-05:00

As a man of the right, that which most disturbs me about the left is not so much their ideology as their reality; more specifically, the distortion of information as it passes though the liberal media and their insular little worldviews which make Ann Coulter look like a model of broadmindedness. From inside that left-wing bubble, the world looks, let us say, different.

I need look no further than my local paper's letters to the editor page for expressions of shock and wonder that anyone could actually believe in conservatism, since that's exactly the same thing as choosing to be stupid, racist, "anti-intellectual", "corporate", theocratic, mean-spirited, and several other sorts of evil. I have quite literally punched two holes in my walls in sheer rage after being blindsided by unusually obtuse examples of such ignorance in local pubs.

David Adesnik of OxBlog is a genuine left-of-center intellectual who spends of lot of column-inches skewering other liberals who inhabit the Bubble, and debunking many of the unfair and irrational anti-Bush and anticonservative memes. He sounds almost like Coulter sometimmes. It's interesting, then, to read the following two comments from him the other day:

1. "Well, the fact is that no one I know and/or respect relies on Fox or Rush or the Washington Times for their news.

Now, that statement is intended as an explanation for why he's fisking Jon Stewart as an unbiased news source instead of the folks he mentions. But what's interesting is that, even if a case can be made for bias at the 'Good Times' or at FoxNews, no one - no one - in Mr. Adesnik's circle of acquaintances reads the Times or watches the nation's highest-rated cable news channel. (Full disclosure: I haven't watched Fox, or hardly any other TV, for a coule of years, but I use foxnews.com more than any other single news source.)

Rush is a different case. I don't know anyone who treats Rush as a fair and balanced news source, either, including Rush himself--and the indictment of Jon Stewart, I gather, depends on him presenting himself as a non-ideologue. Absent that, from what I read of Stewart, he may be closer than anyone else to the liberal Rush Limbaugh that they've been seeking all these years.

2. {In reference to Cheney's comments on homosexual marriage] "When Dick Cheney's right, he's right. Gay Americans are not second-class citizens. On the other hand, I'd appreciate it if more Republicans who didn't have gay children came out against the No Gay Marriage Amendment...Dick Cheney is selfish, not compassionate.

Let me preach on this for a minute. What Dick Cheney actually said was that citizens should be able to enter into any kind of relationship they wish, but that the issue was what sort of "sanction" they should get from the government. That's as succinct a statement of the opening links of my own argument against gay marriage that I've ever heard.

The point is that the government's nonrecognition of certain relationships does not prevent anyone from forming any contracts among themselves as they like. Therefore, the government's neutrality toward such contracts involves no discrimination or second-class citizenship. This holds true even in contrast with the ready-made marriage contract, with all its implied terms, that is offered for the convenience of couples that could, in legal theory at least, have children. Government, after all, has a legitimate interest in the welfare of children.

That's an argument for the conservative position on gay marriage. (Others exist, as do counterarguments.) My point here isn't that its right (although I believe it is). It's that it exists, and is legitimate, and is evidently held by Dick Cheney.

The idea that gay marriage is about ceasing to discriminate against a minority is the liberal position, or at least an argumant therefor. Cheney's comments only sound like an endorsement of gay marriage if viewed through the assumption that opposition to gay marriage is necessarily grounded in a desire to deprive homosexuals of some incidents of "citizenship", or restrict their "freedom". That's not the case.

It is true that Cheney prefers that gay marriage be dealt with on the state level. So does John Kerry, who's endorsed state constitutional amendments against it. I happen to agree with them. But that's a matter of 'how' and 'where', not 'whether', gay marriage should be forestalled.

On the other hand, it is fortunate for serious minds that a bias realized is a bias neutralized. (I'm quoting someone, but I don't know whom. Emerson? Whomever it was, Mr. Adesnik posted more recently a magnificent Roger Simon post (read the comments too) about coming out of this same phenomenon, under the title 'Me in a Nutshell'. That's fair (and balanced); no one is completely free of preconceptions, except me, [Ahem. -Ed.] and Oxblog remain my favorite liberal commentators because they do make an effort to disagree with conservatism, instead of straw-man neofascists.

Hooters!

2004-08-27T10:16:00.000-05:00

A Hooters(tm) restaurant is coming to Asheville! And it's about bloody well time.

It should open in late fall, too late for NASCAR, but with plenty of football season left. I wonder if they'll have a trivia night?

I hate being into two books simultaneously.

2004-08-26T20:57:00.001-05:00

I was, though, until yesterday: Margaret Thatcher's 'Statecraft' (discussion will be forthcoming) and Part II of Harry Turtledove's WorldWar series.

I've finally finished them both now, and am proceeding on to my "Been meaning to read" list. I finally found a Bernard Lewis book -- 'The Crisis of Islam', published last year. I also got Hayek's 'Road to Serfdom' for afterward.

Next on the list, is if I can get hold of it, but not until I get another escapist novel or two in there.

UPDATE: Barnett has a blog! And addenda to the book! And a new daughter!

UPDATED UPTATE: 'Emergency Sex' is looking like it should be ahead of Barnett on the list.

Anticlimax

2004-08-26T20:34:00.000-05:00

So I didn't get the dramatic Muqty Smackdown out of Najaf I'd hoped for. Sistani showed up, they chatted, Muqty gave in and agreed to pull his people out of the city in exchange for essentially nothing.

Muqty still wins: He got to posture on international TV, had the Hawza sit down and parley with him as if he mattered, and made the govenment look powerless against him. And he got out with his skin to go back, Jack, and do it again.

This isn't the end of the story. Muqty has to go down at some point, no one will mourn him (except maybe Khamenei and the downtown-Asheville types who relish thinking of him as the leader of a popular uprising), so get it over with already.

Najaf is about to come to a head.

2004-08-25T21:29:00.000-05:00

A.Y.S. has obtained eyewitness accounts from Najafi refugees. It pretty well confirms our picture of the situation; the Sadrites have the population terrorized. What's surprising is this:

"AlSadr's criminals are writing on the walls of AlSistani's and the houses near saying "You are an American agent" and "We will kill you"

Add to that the largely unreported kidnapping of the son of Hawza cleric al-Hakim and the rumors swirling around that the Sadrites have looted the treasury of the Imam Ali shrine, and evidently Muqty has irrevocably broken with the orthodox Shia leadership. It is beyond me what purpose they could hope to serve now, beyond making every enemy that they possibly can and subsequently getting shot.

And now, as has been widely reported, the Ayatollah al-Sistani has climbed out of a hospital bed and is on his way back to Najaf, even calling for followers to join him and travel there en masse. I have visions of Jesus casting the moneylenders from he temple.

Perhaps Tehran is using Muqty to force a clerical showdown and portray the Hawza - and other traditionalist Muslims - as American puppets. But after so many centuries that the institution has edured?

Or perhaps the Sadrist plan is only to make the Allawi government appear weak and undercut its legitimacy. If so, they have been remarkably successful.

I but speculate. For now, let us watch Sistani. I don't know what he has planned, but he's a wily old wizard, and I feel confident, whatever the insurgents' game is, that when the marja hits Najaf, Muqty will wish he hadn't.

The Final Word on the Kerry Scandal

2004-08-22T19:22:00.000-05:00

Karl Rove must think he's the luckiest bastard this side of hell.

He's President Bush's campaign manager, you see, and according to John Kerry, the recent revelations about Kerry's Vietnam service are all a big lie that Rove is orchestrating.

Now, look at that from Rove's point of view. There can't be all that many people he's trust to fabricate a huge lie about Bush's opponent, write a book, and start a 527 just for a partisan smear campaign. Imagine Rove's shock when he went down the list and found over 200 SWIFT Boat Veterans who just happened to be among his partisan attack dogs! And all of them from the same unit, at that! And as if that weren't enough, it just happens to be the same unit that Bush's opponent served in!

Looked at the other way, who would've thought that over out of one solitary SWIFT boat unit, over 200 guys would just happen, 35 years later, to all be Republican Party operatives charged with slandering Bush's opponent, who turns out to be--John Kerry, from their old unit? I mean, what were the odds?

OK, let's be serious. I haven't heard of any reason that the SWIFTies would have to lie, no one can take seriously Kerry's notion that they're all motivated by pro-Bush partisanship, even if they had been coordinating with the campaign, which I don't believe Karl Rove would be stupid enough to do. Especially considering that the best 'evidence' of Bush campaign involvement that Kerry
and his proxies can come up with are, respectively, that a flyer put out by the SWIFT vets was once present within the walls of a Bush/Cheney office in Florida, and that one of the political activists who are financing the SWIFT vets' campaign, a Bob Perry, knows Karl Rove. (Mr. Perry is likely motivated by support for Bush. Of course, I support Bush, too, and that doesn't make me an agent of his campaign.) Especially especially in light of SWIFT vet John O'Neill's admission that:

"I am not a Republican. I tend to support the Democrats more than the Republicans at home in Texas, and in this election I would have voted Democrat. I would vote for John Edwards for president. But I will do everything I can to stop John Kerry."

Besides, if they were going to lie, they could have come up with stuff a lot more damaging than what they're saying. First, according to the vets from his unit, Kerry shot a 17-year-old in the back, but that was a possibly-armed communist soldier. He burned down a village with a Zippo, but the communists were using it as cover from which to fire on the boats. Nothing to be ashamed of there. Go Kerry!

Second, he exaggerated his achievements when applying for medals, and managed to get himself awarded a Purple Heart for a band-aid-sized scratch which he accidentally inflicted on himself, and that he pursued medals so hard because he wanted a war record that would help him politically. This only shows that Kerry is a sleazy politician, which is surprising to precisely 18 people in the world, mostly in Tibet and the Kalahari, and so, is not that big a deal in terms of voting decisions.

Third, Kerry has claimed it to be "seared" into his memory that, on Christmas 1968, he was five miles over the Cambodian border, on a secret mission with a CIA agent who gave him a hat, that on that date, he listened to South Vietnamese soldiers shooting in the air to celebrate Christmas, and that at that time, he reflected on the dishonesty of President Nixon in claiming that no Americans were in Cambodia. Douglas Brinkley, a Kerry biographer/sycophant who has had access to Kerry's records, admitted that Kerry was 50 miles away from the border on Christmas, but that he did go to Cambodia a month or two later. If Brinkley's telling the truth, and we have no evidence that he is, then Kerry being in Cambodia on tet instead of Christmas would explain the celebrations by (typically non-Christian) Vietnamese, and his reflections on Nixon, who had become President in the meantime, rather than Johnson. That leaves only one unequivocal lie in Kerry's story--the date. Kerry's campaign retracted the story when challenged.

Finally, against the newest ads, about his contemptible slander on Vietnam veterans after returning, even I can't defend him, but that was already a matter of public record.

Long story short: While I can understand why the vets were so upset with Kerry for presenting himself as a war hero when they know that he was a mediocre soldier, and why they're going to all this trouble to set the record straight, there's little news in their story that really shows Kerry for a villain. If I were a Kerry supporter before the revelations, I still would be afterward. What really makes Kerry look bad here are his rather lame attempts to claim that the SWIFT vets are lying and/or coordinating with the Bush campaign.

I caught a shirt!

2004-08-22T16:58:00.000-05:00

After a couple of dozen ball games over a period of years, I finally got a souvenir. Previously, the closest I'd come was overlooking left field at a Durham Bulls game, when I got a brief glimpse of a foul ball coming very fast toward my face before it curved a fraction further away from the field to impact two seats to my right. (wherein sat a little girl whose father, next to me, didn't react quite quickly enough to block the ball. Fortunately, she only sustained a bruise.)

At McCormick Park (Go Tourists! Beat the Visitors!) a week ago Thursday, I had a t-shirt land on me. I made first contact, but it being Thirsty Thursday with the $1 beers (YAY) I was drunk, and so were the guys reaching over me who knocked it loose. I hopped the railing in front of me, but succeeded only in toppling over backwards on my landing while some woman came along and picked up the shirt. Oh well.

Then it turned out that she didn't want it, and, after, offering it to me (I declined because she was the one who gained possession, and by Ballpark Law, had a claim good against all except children.) she tossed it to the guy who had knocked it from my grasp. By that same Ballpark Law, he was required to offer it to me, and he did. This time, I could and did accept.

Never before have I been so excited about a cheap promo shirt with a radio station logo. But its MINE, ALL MINE MUAHAHAHAHA!

Soy Sauce: The Republican Condiment

2004-08-01T16:57:00.000-05:00

Because, if you watch this Flash movie closely, you will see that Kikkoman beats the tar out of Heinz-Ketchup-Monster. He just can't spell it.

Besides, The Bush administration is resolved to spread liberty across the world just as Kikkoman now spreads soy.

YAY KIKKOMAN! YAY ENGRISH!

Watch the movie now!

(P.S: No disrespect intended to the founders of Heinz, which is still the world's best ketchup. The current owners shouldn't reflect on them any more than, say, Conrad Hilton should be judged by his spoiled, irresponsible great-granddaughters Paris and Nicky.)

Where I rip off someone else's whole post.

2004-07-29T20:02:00.000-05:00

The following post is not mine, but was written by a poster known to me only as spottedeagleboy(SEB), from certain conservative message boards. While I do not believe that a sob story, however sympathetic, is an adequate argument for completely closing the borders, as SEB advocates, SEB's story also implicates part of the problem of present illegal immigration, and the extra-legal commerce that inevitably arises from the residence of illegal persons. Legals couldn't run such fly-by-night operations.
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Stark reality of illegal labor in New Mexico
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I've been spending more time than I like on the board, lately. The reason why is there hasn't been too much work for my contract painting business. I had bid a number of jobs for the government, and we have done them. Government jobs typically pay 30-90 days after the work is accepted. To fill in the times of waiting for the government check to come in, I bid several residential jobs to keep the bucks coming in.
I bid the jobs competitively, knowing that I would also be bidding against unlicensed and uninsured labor coming across the border from Mexico. Residential customers will not sign a contract, here in NM, as if they know they might luck out and find a crew from Juarez that will do the job much cheaper. Case in point: I bid two residentials two weeks ago. The customers liked the prices and gave me an indication that they would hire my company to do the work. The total for these two jobs would have been $6800.00. That's about the norm for what my company needs, weekly, to pay material and keep my people employed. I try to exceed that amount, weekly, but sometimes it just doesn't happen.
I went public with my company in March of this year. That means I split off from an informal partnership with a general contractor. No hard feelings or financial dispute. The general contractor wasn't getting the work he had bid on either. It's very competitive here, and add the influx of illegal labor into our state. I'm a licensed, bonded and insured contractor. I pay for that expense. I lease a building and an office, and hire an accountant for my business. The goal of this business was to succeed, of course, and pay for a building and to start a force protection business, and bring "trike" in on this new deal.
What I have found is, as I leave a job site to go bid another job, typically a residential, I am followed by the same old yellow beat up Ford pickup with Juarez plates. I see this truck in my rear view mirror everywhere I go. I arrive at a residential site, meet the owner, measure the house, and give them a bid to paint their house.
I have no proof, but I am sure that the guys in the yellow pickup, then contact the owner and bid the house, after I leave. Case in point: I bid an interior, 1700 sq feet, of heatable floor space, for $1500.00. The owner liked the price and said he would call me back. The owner called me back, angry, and informed me he had just hired a Mexican crew who are going to paint his house for $500. I've gone back to these houses and have found the Mexicans painting the structure. What will happen is, the illegals do a terrible job and the home owner is ripped off and pissed. I can't compete with that. It's against the law in NM to bid construction jobs without a license or insurance. This is the third week in a row that I have lost over $6000.00 in bids to illegals from Mexico. I have one signed federal contract left, a small job, at Holloman AFB. I'm only about 3000.00 in debut from my business. Probably, within the next week, I will close my doors and attempt to sell off the assests of the business to pay my debts.
My type of sub-contracting business does not report to the Dept. of Labor. When I pay my taxes every quarter, my total labor expense is reported, but not the number of people I employe. I have the attitude to fight on through. I have one more residential bid out there, which I could start tomorrow. I will do it entirely myself, if I get it, so I can eliminate my debt.
Yesterday I met with contracting at Holloman AFB. If I can do it, I will take my business off the streets and deal solely with the government.
I didn't post this to get sympathy from the board. I just wanted to share the experience with you to illustrate how porous borders effect small business in America. As I'm sitting here, venting, I'm hoping the phone will ring as I have walked all over town, trying to generate business. The reason I walked is because I am finally down to my last 1/8 tank of diesel in my truck, I have no money in the bank, and I'm not going to let this thing beat me. So, I walk to my appointments, and do business. Meanwhile, the yellow pickup truck from Juarez is parked outside of Jerry's bar at 10AM in the morning.

Primary elections are hard...

2004-07-11T19:50:00.000-05:00

...because you have to pay careful attention to the candidates.

Voting in November is simple; you should already know which party you support, so all you usually need to do is flip one lever, unless you're like a friend of mine who prefers to flip the lever for each individual Republican separately, just for emphasis.

I believe that party loyalty is essential to controlling a democratic government. For over 200 years in this country, parties have been the system by which we work out millions of different sets of opinions into one compromise platform acceptable a majority of voters. Non-partisanship undermines the parties and contributes to politicians running on personality instead of issues, including attack ads and other smear tactics.

As Robert A. Heinlein wrote in '46, "The only justifications for not voting for your party's candidate are serious moral turpitude or a consistent refusal to support party measures."

Anyhow, North Carolina's primary is July 20th, and I'm working on my sample ballot, which means I'm looking into every dipshit who thinks that crossing the state on foot is a good way to become governor. Or the would-be Senator Hendrix who wants to "enact legislation that requires the President to LEAD the armed forces into battle, NOT SEND them in" and wants to personally "jump in with the 82d Airborne." In fairness, he is qualified for that; he's an ex-paratrooper, and since Rep. Richard Burr will certainly be our Senate nominee anyhow, I may vote for Hendrix just as a radical-libertarian statement--and for the "What Would Gandalf Do?" banner on his homepage.

I particularly feel that I ought to know what I'm talking about in the state Court of Appeals Judge's race, having a law degree and all. That's a strong argument for appointing judges for nonrenewable terms instead of electing them; most people just don't have the training to evaluate them effectively.

On the other hand, since would-be judges have ethical restraints on what they can say. especially regarding actual issues, there's little enough for even me to go on. I'm voting for Marvin Schiller based on his very long experience practicing in the appeals courts and the fact that he works for Womble Carlyle, one of the state's top prestige firms.

Pookie Monster resurrection

2004-07-11T18:18:00.000-05:00

I let the blog go for a while; I'm back.

Found this at Sasha Castels' (hat tip to Oxblog), by Alan K. Henderson, anticipating the Vice Presidential debate in a few months. An excerpt:

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Koppel: What, if anything, should be America's role in political reform in the People's Republic of China, and how should this reflect on our trade policy?

Edwards: Halliburton.

Cheney: Trial lawyer.
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And yes, that's probably pretty close to what we're going to hear, which is unfortunate for two reasons. One is Henderson's point: Scandalmongering gets in the way of serious ideological debate in this country, and not only among the WaPo/NYT/NPR lemmings. Beyond that, though, its interesting that both featured 'scandals' here aren't even real.

The normally fair-minded Rush Limbaugh went off the other day on how Edwards is supposedly one of the sleazy lawyers responsible for stratospheric malpractice insurance rates, and brushed off callers who defended Edwards as "reciting the Democratic Party talking points." Talking point it may be, but I think he's being unreasonable here. A civil trial lawyer's job is to get as much for his client as the law allows, and it is as right and proper that he do so as it is for candidate's campaign ad to focus on the positive about himself and the negative about his opponent.

Do Edwards' clients have overbroad rights under the law? Should there be restrictions on jury awards in some cases? Maybe. But blaming Edwards for that is like blaming county district attorneys for not prosecuting abortionists while Roe and Casey are the law of the land.

And of course, we've all heard the vitriolic allegations about VP Cheney, and if anyone has produced an iota of evidence that Halliburton recieved any favorable treatment through any influence by the Vice President, I've yet to hear of it. In his place, I'd be telling them where to go and what to do when they get there as well.

A political campaign based on personal attacks is bad enough; but now we're getting into spurious personal attacks. Let the games begin. I guess.

Today's important news.

2004-05-19T19:44:00.000-05:00

Not India. Not Iraq. Not the latest manufactured scandal(high gas prices, this week.)

This dude built a space rocket.
Government space travel is all well and good, but the exploration of the New World didn't take off untill the monopoly of kings and queens was broken and private citizens began taking private trips on a regular basis.

Bombay Boomerang.

2004-05-15T14:05:00.000-05:00

Long story short, some prominent bloggers think I'm full of crap.

Josh Chefetz thinks the Indo-Paki detente is endangered, not boosted, by the defeat of the Indian nationalists:

"I'm also wondering about the future of Vajpayee's peace initiative with Pakistan, given that a lot of it seemed to be based on personal trust between Vajpayee and Musharraf (and between their aides)."

Did it seem so? I didn't know that.

Meanwhile, Dan Dezner gets all Nixonian on us, pointing out that only Vajpayee could go to Pakistan. That makes a lot of sense; Vajpayee & Co. aren't going to just disappear, and their Moslem-baiting is liable to push Congress into a more hardline stance than they want or India needs.

On the other hand, Pakistan is now a major non-NATO ally of the United States, and Congress's traditional anti-Americanism can enable Sonia to feed the Hindustani beast by bashing Pakistan's "patron" and the relationship, without necessarily slowing the peace process, ie, blur the distinction between anti-Paki and anti-American prejudice, and direct it all at America. Would that strategy tend to drive a wedge between Pakistan and the U.S., or push us together? Push us together, by my reckoning. Pakistan's fire-breathers, part of Musharraf's coalition, will likely warm to anybody that New Delhi hates, giving Musharraf a free hand to pursue his cooperation policy with our War on Terror. I hope.

Finally, Oxblog gives us a letter from its Indian correspondent decrying the BJP for being less than fully committed, to say the least, to free markets regarding books, movies, and religious ideas, and refusing to shed any tears for its passing.

Mumbai to be Bombay again?

2004-05-13T17:22:00.000-05:00

My first impulse was to think that this is a bad thing, in War on Terror terms, because the liberal faction defeated the conservative one. Then I thought, no, tooo simple. Way too simple. This isn't Spain here.

I now think its exactly the opposite. With the Hindu nationalists playing the religion card for electoral purposes, a certain detente has already begun. That can accelerate now with them out of power. Over the next few years, I expect a decrease in Hindu-Zionist conspiratorial activity. Less border tension = less Paki fear = more Paki cooperation = more likelihood of Osama in a cage or a box. Which is what Martha Stewart would call a Good Thing.

In other news, look for the overhyped outsourcing of tech jobs to decrease as India becomes less commerce-friendly in the name of spreading the wealth. I don't expect any radical socialism, but leftist parties are essential to the Congress coalition, so Sonia will have to throw them some bones. In the long run, this is probably bad for the U.S. economy.

Finally, in case you don't know, when it comes to power, the Gandhis make the Kennedys look like J.D. Hogg.

Link party!

2004-05-02T09:38:00.000-05:00

Here we have before and after pics of Ryongchon, the N. Korean town that recently got blown up.

This is an interesting way for women to show their patriotism. But perhaps not so odd; from what I hear it was done in WWII, just not talked about. The same was no doubt true of the ancient Babylonians, too.

Law professor Eugene Volokh discusses the criminalization of witchcraft, reminding me of the recent X-Men movies, in which i thought that the putative villain--a Senator Kelly--was the only character in the film who actually was willing to be serious about the problems posed by the appearance of superpowers in random 13-year-olds. In the movie, he sponsored a "Mutant Registration Act", which seems a sensible precaution, given the difficulty of extending the rule of law to people who can walk through walls, stop bullets, and control minds. This was universally reviled by the heroes (and sympathetic anti-heroes) and compared to Auschwitz. The bottom line: All of our moral characters are immensely improved by the fact that society is stronger than we are. If some people happen to have supernatural powers, then instilling respect for the rights of others in them (especially young'uns) is a more difficult task, and requires something like Kelly's Act. If power corrupts, surely powers corrupt.

Space travel fun with the solar wind.

David Adesnik of OxBlog takes on idiotarianism regarding Israel. Kudoos for intellectual honesty; he's a leftist, so calling his fellow-travelers when they go off the deep end can't be easy, especially since they're much more numerous and influential than their right-wing opposite numbers.

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Google Bombing

2004-04-24T14:05:00.000-05:00

Jost doing my part.

Miserable failure

Jew

Waffles