Gates Leading Nowhere: Okay, just back from NYC last night. Saw "Avenue Q" (very inventive, quick humor, ruthless yet heartwarming), ate at "Asia de Cuba" (easily one of the best meals of my life; just great) and strolled through "The Gates".

Now, as Eno pointed out, there isn't much to this exhibition. I mean, it's impressive in its scope, but in the end, you've seen one window shade, you've seen them all. And, he's certainly not alone in this critique. My take is that Eno and the other "haters" are half-right. It's less an innovation than an invitation. You aren't blown away, and I'd argue, that's a good thing.

Many of the critics rushed out to see the Gates when the exhibition first "opened". Complaints of crowds and "addytude" seem to play a great part in their dislike for the spectacle. Conversely, taken in pieces, say first from on high out a hotel window, at dusk, and then on Valentine's Day morning while walking with the missus along meanering Central Park pathways, you see it for what it is: a fluid, ambitious and beautiful take on the world's most famous park.

I consider myself a minimally-educated art appreciator. Probably like most, I like what I know and know what I like, but don't take the opportunity too often to actually go see "art".

But walking through the gates, which are of varying width to accomodate the pathway, and watching the fabric blow gently blow every which way, you almost become captivated by the maze-like quality of the orange structures. When you walk beneath them, your world takes on this orange glow, that made me happy. The more we strolled, the more we both agreed that this wasn't spectacle, but something more organic, and meant to be interacted with, as opposed to just stared at.

This may all sound all very new agey, but I can tell you the experience of walking through that park will never be quite the same. Usually that park is a bubbling cauldron of diverse activity: dog-walking, sleeping, kissing, eating, arguing. But on that morning, everyones' eyes were on the big orange frames with the billowing fabric. Almost everyone would smile when you caught their eye - this is in New York City! In a town where eye contact is considered a form of visual rape, this may be Cristo's crowning achievement.

So, it's not on the level of his earlier works, but sometimes it's okay for art just to make you feel good, as opposed to forcing you to search for life's true meaning.

Rock On: Now, now, you do no justice whatsoever to my tonsure. Surely, when you call it a "mullet," 99% of readers think "a bowl cut with bangs in back." You know, hillbilly hair salad. Certainly not. It was, even you must admit, a coiff and then some.

Into the pleated breach: How fortuitous that you chose this moment to speak up on fashion, Dear Mr. Eno. I was going to post first-thing this morning upon my return from NYC and Cristo's "Gates" exhibit, but that shall have to wait.

Your timing is indeed fortuitous b/c just last night I was perusing through a sheaf of old pictures that my parents dropped off to my house. These pictures were among other keepsakes from college, and most relevant to this discussion, high school.

Harken back to 1989, Spring...prom time. You may recall, Eno, you attended a pre-gala champagne tasting at my residence, along with our mutual rockstar friend, lets-call-him Steinberger. We three were all decked out in typical rent-a-tux attire, and our feet where clad with Chuck Taylors - oh, we were so witty! But it is not what we wore on our bodies, nor our feet, that I wish to bring up by way of introduction to my repost to your reply on pleats, or as I call them "fan pants". No, it is what you wore on your head...namely a mop of hair that defied not only convention, but description.

Fortunately, today we have a name for that monstrosity: the mullet. Yes, but it wasn't just any mullet, it was a mullet of epic proportions. It was spiky on top, long and straight in the back. It was full, it was blown-dry, it had a lustrous sheen - in short, you embodied the "business in front, party in the back" attitude any true mullet afficionado should project.

You wore your mullet with an aggressive elan, saying, without speaking a word, "You cannot possibly hope to rock as much as me!" No...we could not; we didn't even try. I shall make one or more of these pictures available to the highest bidder on Ebay - for your sanity, I shall excise any pictures of your date. Nonetheless, the publication of these photos will instantly render your credibility on style to ashes.

Now, on to fan pants. First, I would note that flat fronts are not outdated - quite to the contrary. Pleats may indeed be comfortable, but as I am fond of saying in response to those who would have me wear Birkenstocks, I bet wearing peanutbutter-and-jelly sandwiches on ones' feet would be comfortable as well - you just don't see anyone doing it.

Nay, pleats should follow the path of waistcoats, high starch collars, and spats. Each had its merit, but time passed them by. Pleats should be left to Catholic school girls' skirts, and let the men of society walk about without being pulled about by a cross-wind catching one of the creases on our pants.

Paging Professor Fashion: Boy, I have been out of it. I totally missed this Razor post from last week decrying the prevalence of pleats in men's pants:

Why don't you just shove one of those Japanese hand-fans down my pants, and expand? That would look about just as silly as pants with these stupid sewn-in creases in them. What visually-impaired genius came up with them anyway? And try to buy pants without them. Sure, you CAN, but you have to waste so much time finding the pair that you want.

Before I unload, I'm sure I should ask Razor to clarify, since he's popped off about fashion before, only to have to backtrack. So, are we talking about dress pants? They're pleated so that they can be worn with a blazer without looking like some sort of 1970s sans-a-belt number. Khakis? Sorry, buddy, but flat-front khakis went out with penny loafers worn with white athletic socks.

As for your waist/inseam disparity, Razor, I suggest you consider bespoke tailoring to fit your odd shape. (When you gave your virile measurements to our audience, you didn't mention that you are a hunchback with a wooden leg. Slip your mind?)

Anyhow, there's nothing wrong with pleats on a man with a good figure. They serve a purpose -- allowing one to sit comfortably -- which is more than can be said for, say, cuffs, which somehow don't raise your blood pressure. (Furthermore, do you own pants with cuffs? Having cuffs without pleats is like having curled-up collar points -- a sure sign that you don't get it.)

Pleats were once found only in suit pants, where the material of one's jacket hid the pleating. One was secretly comfortable, like that judge you know who wears nothing but socks under his robe. Today, style has eased to allow more comfort in. I doubt your shirt plackets are starched to 2x4 hardness, nor are you likely to wear a waistcoat or a high collar -- or even your suit jacket all day.

Oh, one more thing. Do you dress right or left?

Eason Jordan: I haven't had anything to say on this, though I've been following it with interest. Seems to me that the upshot needs no real explication. The media itself, in fact, told the world the rule, back in the Watergate days: It's not the crime that gets you, but the coverup. Now the media, too, is learning this the hard way. (Or maybe not: Hillary worked on the Watergate team for the House, and still she and her husband lied and stonewalled. Here's hoping the media learns the lesson better.) Jarvis has a good wrap.

Deacon at Power Line posts this follow up, pre-empting charges of McCarthyism.

Also lots of talk about blogs being a cyber lynch mob. Like the McCarthyism charge, this seems ridiculous. Will Collier's apostrophe to the media says it well:

[E]verybody out here has the right--and ability--to fact-check your asses, and call you on it when you screw up and/or say something stupid . . . You obviously don't like that reality, but it is reality, and you'd better start learning to live with it instead of tossing ad hominen insults at your critics.

By the way, is this finally definitive proof of the "power of the blogs" idea? I'm not sure. Having big guns like Hewitt and Kudlow on the story forced CNN's hand, I think. Still, it was citizen journalists who made/scooped/followed this story. And it was solid work. Complaints from the media of lynch mobs or McCarthyism are foolish, given the frequency with which some foolish liberal editorial page agitates for so-and-so's resignation for lesser offenses. This story was smartly and evenhandedly covered by most blogs, the greater number of whom weren't simply saying "Jordan should resign" but saying instead "Jordan should come clean about what he said.

For the record, this may be a real first: a prominent figure shoots his mouth off, is publically embarrassed, and has to resign, and nobody knows what the hell he really said. I don't like that much, since it is the absolute opposite of transparency and accountability in media, but Jordan and CNN brought it on themselves.

Finally, media navel-gazer Howard Kurtz's reputation took a major hit from this one. See Kaus, here and below.

It's Not Art, It's 23 Miles of Window Treatment: Christo's "Gates" opens this morning in Central Park. I find that I haven't all that much to say about this. Yeah, I'm pretty shocked, too, but I've been sick all week, and maybe I'm just not myself.

So, bully for you, Christo. It takes a gosh-darned for-real artist to Christopher Lowell 8,000 tacked-together temporary window frames. Consider me awed by your brilliant use of grand scale to convey the smallness of your ideas.

Failing Upward: Today, HP announced the ouster of Carly Fiorina as CEO, a position she held for the past six years. Predictably, HP's stock adjusted upward with the news.

The last six years of Ms. Fiorina's career reveals an interesting case study in how to succeed without ummm, succeeding.

Ms. Fiorina worked for a long time at AT&T, and then jumped to its Network Systems group in 1996; a move considered high-risk, no-reward by the entrenched long distance people. The Network Systems division was spun off into this little company called Lucent Technologies. She quickly became the head of its North American operations and in 1999, an even tinier company called Hewlett Packard came knocking; seeking to re-engineer itself in light of the tech mania the world was experiencing at the end of the 20th Century.

Back in 1999, Lucent was the end-all, be-all of the tech world. Its stock was through the roof, it had cool commercials, and everyone wanted a piece.

Fiorina was considered a hard-charger and an effective leader; Lucent's stock position was proof positive. It was therefore a natural decision to pick her to run one of the largest and most pedigreed tech companies as it turned the corner into the 21st century. Right?

So, she jumps ship to HP, re-orders the corporate culture, stages a near-coup in challenging the founders' offspring in buying Compaq (arguing the move brought instant heft in the pc market), and positions the company to be a player in the consumer products world. The results? She oversees a 55% stock price decline since her annointment.

HP announced just last month that it was combining its lucrative printer business with the rest of its PC group, to buttress overall profitability. This is what Fiorina said she was going to do when she started.

Oh and by the way, Lucent is trading at under $4/share today, and hasn't been above $10 since 2000. Its wildly-inflated stock price back in '99 of course being no more indicative of its worth than any other tech stock back then.

Timing, is as they say, everything. Importantly, I've presided over a 2,000% increase in the value of FauxPolitik since inception. I'm available for interviews.

Speak the truth!: It is apparent that those in the service portion of the US military (as opposed to the political arm) speak the truth. General Mattis' comments are only the last in a long line.

Varifrank has a few more from other generals in our history.

To continue the meme, I offer you various comments from anonymous and/or lesser known military commanders; some being quite recent. Sorry for the length, but they're all pretty good, even if (I suspect) some are apocryphal. Thanks to my buddy in the USNR.

"The 'L' in CENTCOM stands for leadership

"At this Command, we have written in large, black letters: DNR (Do Not
Resuscitate) on the back of our security badges." Maj (CENTCOM)

"'Leaning forward' is really just the first phase of 'falling on your face.'" Marine Col (MARFOREUR)

"I am so far down the food chain that I've got plankton bites on my butt."

"None of us is as dumb as all of us." Excerpted from a brief (EUCOM)

"We're from the nuke shop, sir. We're the crazy aunt in the closet that nobody likes to talk about ..." Lt Col (EUCOM) in briefings

"Things are looking up for us here. In fact, Papua-New Guinea is thinking of offering two platoons: one of Infantry (headhunters) and one of engineers (hut builders). They want to eat any Iraqis they kill. We've got no issues with that, but State is being anal about it." LTC (JS) on OIF coalition-building.

"The chance of success in these talks is the same as the number of "R's" in "fat chance..."" GS-15 (SHAPE)

"His knowledge on that topic is only power point deep..." MAJ (JS)

"Ya know, in this Command, if the world were supposed to end tomorrow, it would still happen behind schedule." CWO4 (EUCOM)

"We are condemned men who are chained and will row in place until we rot." LtCol (CENTCOM) on life at his Command

"Right now we're pretty much the ham in a bad ham sandwich..." GO/FO
(EUCOM)

"If we wait until the last minute to do it, it'll only take a minute."
MAJ(EUCOM)

"The only reason that anything ever gets done is because there are pockets of competence in every command. The key is to find them ... and then exploit the hell out of 'em." CDR (CENTCOM)

"I may be slow, but I do poor work..." MAJ (USAREUR)

"Cynicism is the smoke that rises from the ashes of burned out dreams." Maj
(CENTCOM) on the daily thrashings delivered to AOs at his Command.

"WE are the reason that Rumsfeld hates us..." LTC (EUCOM) doing some standard, Army self-flagellation

"Working with Hungary is like watching a bad comedy set on auto repeat..." LCDR (EUCOM)

"I finally figured out that when a Turkish officer tells you, "It's no problem," he means, for him." Maj (EUCOM)

"Never in the history of the US Armed Forces have so many done so much for so few..." MAJ (Task Force Warrior) on the "success" of the Free Iraqi Forces (FIF) Training Program, where 1100 Army troops trained 77 Iraqi exiles at the cost of, ...well, ...way too much...

"Our days are spent trying to get some poor, unsuspecting third world country to pony up to spending a year in a sweltering desert, full of pissed off Arabs who would rather shave the back of their legs with a cheese grater than submit to foreign occupation by a country for whom they have nothing but contempt." LTC (JS) on the joys of coalition building

"I guess the next thing they'll ask for is 300 US citizens with Hungarian last names to send to Iraq..." MAJ (JS) on the often-frustrating process of building the Iraqi coalition for Phase IV

"Between us girls, would it help to clarify the issue if you knew that Hungary is land-locked?" CDR to MAJ (EUCOM) on why a deployment from Hungary is likely to proceed by air vice sea

"So, what do you wanna do?"..."I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?"..."I dunno, what do YOU wanna do?," etc. COL (DIA) describing the way OUSD(S) develops and implements their strategies

"I'll be right back. I have to go pound my nuts flat..." Lt Col
(EUCOM) after being assigned a difficult tasker

"I guess this is the wrong power cord for the computer, huh?" LtCol
(EUCOM) after the smoke cleared from plugging his 110V computer into a 220V outlet

"OK, this is too stupid for words." LTC (JS)

"When you get right up to the line that you're not supposed to cross, the only person in front of you will be me!" CDR (CENTCOM) on his view of the value of being politically correct in today's military

"There's nothing wrong with crossing that line a little bit, it's jumping over it buck naked that will probably get you in trouble..." Lt Col
(EUCOM) responding to the above

"Never pet a burning dog." LTC (Tennessee National Guard)

"Ah, the joys of Paris: a unique chance to swill warm wine and be mesmerized by the dank ambrosia of unkempt armpits.." LCDR (NAVEUR)

"'Status quo,' as you know, is Latin for 'the mess we're in...'" Attributed to former President Ronald Reagan

"We are now past the good idea cutoff point..." MAJ (JS) on the fact that somebody always tries to "fine tune" a COA with more "good ideas"

"Nobody ever said you had to be smart to make 0-6." Col (EUCOM)

"I haven't complied with a darn thing and nothing bad has happened to me yet."

"Whatever happened to good old-fashioned military leadership? Just task the first two people you see."

"Accuracy and attention to detail take a certain amount of time."

"I seem to be rapidly approaching the apex of my mediocre career." MAJ
(JS)

"Much work remains to be done before we can announce our total failure to make any progress."

"It's not a lot of work unless you have to do it." LTC (EUCOM)

"Creating smoking holes (with bombs) gives our lives meaning and enhances our manliness." LTC (EUCOM) at a CT conference

"Eventually, we have to 'make nice' with the French, although, since I'm new in my job, I have every expectation that I'll be contradicted." DOS rep at a Counter Terrorism Conference

"Everyone should have an equal chance, but not everyone is equal."

"You can get drunk enough to do most anything, but you have to realize going in that there are some things that, once you sober up and realize what you have done, will lead you to either grab a 12-gauge or stay drunk for the rest of your life."

"Once you accept that a dog is a dog, you can't get upset when it barks." Lt Col (USSOCOM)

"That guy just won't take 'yes' for an answer" MAJ (EUCOM)

"Let's just call Lessons Learned what they really are: institutionalized scab picking."

"I can describe what it feels like being a Staff Officer in two words: distilled pain." CDR (NAVEUR)

"When all else fails, simply revel in the absurdity of it all." LCDR
(CENTCOM)

"Never attribute to malice that which can be ascribed to sheer stupidity." LTC (CENTCOM)

"They also serve, who sit and surf the NIPR." CPT (CENTCOM)

"I hear so much about Ft. Bragg. Where is it?" "It's in the western part of southeastern North Carolina." LCDR and CPT (EUCOM)

"I've become the master of nodding my head and acting like I give a sh_t, and then instantly forgetting what the hell a person was saying the moment they walk away." Flag-level Executive A$$istant

"Mark my words, this internet thing is gonna catch on someday." LTC
(EUCOM)

"You're not a loser. You're just not my kind of winner..." GS-14 (OSD)

"He who strives for the minimum rarely attains it." GS-12 (DOS)

"If I'd had more time, I'da written a shorter brief..." Maj (EUCOM)

"I work at EUCOM. I know bullsh_t when I see it." LTC (EUCOM) in a game of office poker

"You only know as much as you don't know." GO (EUCOM)

"I'm just livin' the dream..." EUCOM staffer response to the question, "How's it going?" or, "What are you doing?"

"I'm just ranting...I have nothing useful to say." LTC (EUCOM)

"Why would an enemy want to bomb this place and end all the confusion?" GS-14 (EUCOM)

"Other than the fact that there's no beer, an early curfew and women that wear face coverings for a very good reason, Kabul is really a wonderful place to visit." LTC (CENTCOM)

"It was seen, ...visually." LTC (EUCOM) during a Reconnaissance briefing

"Let me tell you about the benefits of being on a staff..." "This should be a short conversation." LtCol to Lt Col (EUCOM)

"Hello gentlemen. Are we in today or are you just ignoring my request?" GS-15 (DSCA) in an email to EUCOM staffers

"After seeing the way this place works, I bet that Mickey Mouse wears a EUCOM watch." Maj (EUCOM)

"Your Key Issues are so 2003..." CPT (CJTF-180) in January 2004

"USCENTCOM commanders announced today that they intend to maintain their presence in Qatar "until the sun runs out of hydrogen," thus committing the US to the longest duration deployment in human history. when asked how they planned to maintain the presence in Qatar for a projected length of 4 to 5 billion years, planners said "we're working on a plan for that. We don't have one yet, but not having a plan or an intelligent reason to do something has never been much of an impediment for us in the past; we don't foresee it being a big show stopper for us in the future either."

Among the options that were being discussed was an innovative program to "interbreed" the deployed personnel. "We are going to actively encourage the military members in Qatar to intermarry and raise children that will replace them in the future. Sure, it may be a little hard on some of our female service members, since there are currently are about 8 men for every woman over there, but we expect that to be OBE as the sex ratios will even out in a generation or two. In any case the key to the plan is to make these assignments not only permanent, but inheritable and hereditary. For example, if you currently work the JOC weather desk, so will your children, and their children, and their children, ad infinitum. We like to think of it as job security." CPT
(CJTF-180)

"That's FUBIJAR." COL (CENTCOM), Fu--ed Up, But I'm Just a Reservist...

"I keep myself confused on purpose, just in case I am captured and fall into enemy hands!" GO/FO (CENTCOM)

"Does anybody around here remember if I did anything this year?" LTC
(EUCOM) preparing his Officer Evaluation Report support form

"I'd be happy to classify this document for you. Could you tell me its classification?" GS11 (EUCOM) in an email from the Foreign Disclosure office


"Nothing is too good for you guys...and that's exactly what you're gonna get..." LTC (EUCOM) describing the way Army policy is formulated

"The only thing that sucks worse than being me is being you..." LTC
(EUCOM)

"I have to know what I don't know..." Col (CENTCOM) during a shift changeover briefing

"No. Now I'm simply confused at a higher level..." Foreign GO/FO when asked if he had any questions following a transformation brief at JFCOM

"I'm planning on taking the weekend off...notionally..." LT (EUCOM) midway through a huge, simulated command exercise

"I've heard of 'buzzwords' before but I have never experienced a 'buzz sentence' or a 'buzz paragraph' until today." Maj (EUCOM) after listening to a JFCOM trainer/mentor

"We've got to start collaborating between the collaboration systems." "Our plan for the Olympics is to take all the ops and put it in the special room we have developed for ops." GO/FO (EUCOM)

"Did you hear that NPR is canning Bob Edwards?" "Why? Did they catch him standing up for the National Anthem or something??" COL to CDR (EUCOM)

"Not to be uncooperative, but we're just being uncooperative." CDR
(EUCOM) in an email response to a request for information

"He cloaked himself in an impenetrable veneer of terminology." Lt Col JFCOM describing the Jiffiecom alpha male

"Transformation has long been the buzzword for those that are dispossessed, dispirited and disillusioned..." Chaplain (EUCOM), allegedly.

"There are more disconnects on this issue than CENTCOM has staff officers" GO/FO (EUCOM)

"Is that a Navy or a Marine admiral?" MAJ (EUCOM)

What took them so long?: The US Federal Bureau of Prisons is ending the "boot camp" style of incarceration.

Seems that the basic training mode didn't decrease recividism. No, it only made them really strong, fast and disciplined. Let's see: choice A) put them in small, cramped cells, feed them high-carb food, give them no direction or motivation, and let them kill eachother off through ritualized gang warfare or B) create elite super-soldier criminal who like to get up early in the morning and are very adept at climbing over obstacles. Hmmm, lemme think here...

Aiiieeee!: I hate pleats! I can't stand the fucking things. Why don't you just shove one of those Japanese hand-fans down my pants, and expand? That would look about just as silly as pants with these stupid sewn-in creases in them. What visually-impaired genius came up with them anyway? And try to buy pants without them. Sure, you CAN, but you have to waste so much time finding the pair that you want.

Then, it appears I am either the most popular size or the absolute least. 35 in waist, 34 inseam. Doesn't sound so terribly freakish does it? I'm 6'2", 210 lbs -- you know...similar to Terrel Owens. Anyway, what is the deal??? First of all, it's either 34 inch waist or 36. Fine, I'll wear the 36 - a touch loose, but comfortable. But Nnoooooo. You'll either need to be a dwarf with a 30" inseam, or to get the 34 inseam, I suddenly need a 40" waist. It's McDonalds' fault!! Too many trans-fatty acids. For my sake, everyone...stop fucking eating and start exercising! Or convince the Ecuodorian seamstresses that not all Americans are sized like their husbands. We big giants! No pot belly. No fans in pants!!

Like I said...: ... you can't account for turnovers. McNabb caused too many. If he threw one instead of three, the Iggles probably win that game by 7 or 10. Oh well, that's why the Pats are a "DYNASTY". Excuse me if I don't fellate Tom Brady.

What's in a name?: Heh. Bottom 50 Blog Names. My faves:

PicturesOfMyTaintInLowLightConditionsPlusEssays.com

TheOnlyWayAnyoneWillEverReadMyHorriblePoetry.org

VelvetClad.ChunkyGothGirls.com

Laying it on the line: Didn't see POTUS deliver the SOTU, so as far as commentary, I'm SOL (apparently, I wasn't alone in ignoring W). I like reforming S.S. and the elections in Iraq were a great second step toward stability. Long road ahead, however. Agree that Dems are so lost they need GPS to get out of the rhetorical forest they've wound themselves into.

So, let's move on to what is truly important: the Eagles winning the Super Bowl. Suffice to say if they win, this city will go apesh*t. It will be a simply ludicrous level of celebration, elation and intoxication. The parade will be Tuesday, the 8th, which is also Fat Tuesday - nuff said. My office is right across the street from City Hall, which will be the epicenter of the parade. There will be no work done that day.

Now, can the Eagles win? Well, of course, they can. They are a strong, sound team. But they face the don't-call-us-a-dynasty Patriots, who have their Genius coach, their marquee, undefeated-in-the-playoffs QB, and the team-oriented group of overachievers who play as if possessed. Surely, there is no way for the Birds to overcome this, what with their "running quarterback", their limping WR, and their just-happy-to-be-there attitude.

Accept the fact that anything can happen in a given football game. A random fumble recovery turns into points, which turns into momentum, which wins the day. A freak injury takes out a key player, which leads to pandemonium, which loses the day. A couple of things like this will take all the wind out of mastermind game-planning, and inspired game-play.

So, lets leave out the freak occurrences which no one can account for. Here's how the Eagles can win. First, defense. Philly and NE tied for points allowed this year at 260 - which was nearly the best in the NFL. This defense, since Trotter has returned to the MLB position, has really shut down run offenses, and throw in The Freak and its excellent secondary, plus the great game plans of Jim Johnson, and this is a defense that can make Brady commit mistakes (a la his game in Miami). Either we get key turnovers, or we manage to just shut the offense down, which apart from Dillon, lacks a true stud go-to guy.

Our offense can unfortunately be hit-or-miss. And we don't do so well playing 3-4 defense, granted the two 3-4s we played this year were Pittsburgh and Baltimore. TO is likely only going to be a one-trick pony. If he can't be explosive, that means they can only use him on one play as a decoy where the defense will pay attention to him. The other side of the coin is that he over does the limp and then pulls off one play to the surprise of the defense. Nonetheless, unless he's close to 100% (which he isn't), he will be of minimal use.

Westbrook and McNabb will have to carry the day, and of course, Belichek knows this. Problem is, it's hard to shut them both down. If you key up on Westbrook, say put a corner on him when he's split wide, you leave a safety or LB on a WR (and for all their faults, the Eagles' WR are fast). Still, even if you manage to shut down Westbrook, you have to contend with McNabb, who can evade the rush and make runs on his own. He's not interception-prone, but you can get him to fumble. Still, all-in-all, this was his best year ever, but it's a matter of whether that was b/c of T.O. or not. The games in the playoffs indicate not. McNabb can really shine here, and if so, they will score points. One set-back was losing our starting TE, who except for our game against Atlanta, didn't do a whole lot. His understudy is really quite good, so not a huge drop-off. But, our newly installed (old) TE, Thomason, has considerable rust, and a few missed blocks may cost us.

Special teams. There is talk of Westbrook returning punts - something at which he can excel. The Pats don't have a great coverage team. If Westbrook can put up yards or score, look out. Both teams have great kickers, so I'd feel comfortable with Akers having to win the game.

Still, I choose to believe. This is the best Eagles team in decades. NE is not invincible, and with its iffy secondary, there may be some openings deep. I say low-scoring, but not that close. 24-13, Eagles.

An Observation: I realized something about the current generation of liberals, the ones who came of age in the 1960s, when the establishment/government was "the man," and he was on your back. They talked a good game, but when it came to fishing time, they all cut bait. What they decided was that they didn't want to get "the man" off your back so much as replace him with a sensitive new-age kind of "man": Instead of drafting you, he'd demand that you do volunteer work to get a high school diploma; rather than sending the FBI to snoop around your ass, he'd just hector you on TV about quitting smoking, your brain on drugs, the imperilment of the environment, wearing your seat belt, not beating your children, and taking pride in belonging to a strong and noble race (as long as it was a designated oppressed minority race, since being proud of being "white" is racist).

The 60s ethic was, pretty much, a libertarian one. But the white liberals became the establishment, "the man," and they kind got a kick out of it.

Rambling Thoughts on the Response: I think the Dems are nuts to have Reid and Pelosi sell their version. The first thing that struck me was that, for all the flak Bush gets for being inarticulate, at least he's not unctuous, twittery, condescending, or simply phony, as all the high-ranking Democrats seem to be. The Dems have perfected the art of talking down to the American people. Tom Daschle was a master. Harry Reid seems to be pretty good himself, with his aw-shucks, instant Republican, "simple values" schtick about where he grew up. Yes, Bush's style of speech is halting, repetitive (especially when unscripted), and the very opposite of the Great Communicator's lofty rhetoric delivered with an actor's sense of timing. The Democrats should be so lucky to have as bad a speaker as Bush, because, like him or not, I think he came across to Americans as genuine. When was the last time you watched a Democrat who seemed genuine?

As I said last night, I'm not in agreement with the president on everything. But he won me over anyway. I think his Social Security reform plan is timid, watery stuff. But what did the Democrats offer in return? They sat on their hands when Bush talked about nest eggs that belong to the people who earn them. That sends a message. Then, in their response, the Dems talked about "Social Security roulette." But Bush had already answered that critique in his speech by mentioning the federal TSP withholding option. In other words, for some reason it's okay to play roulette with the retirement funds of federal workers.

Another example. Here's Pelosi:

We must extend the hand of friendship to our neighbors in Latin America. We must work to stop the genocide in Sudan. We must reinvigorate the Middle East peace process. And we must bring health and hope to people suffering from disease, devastation and the fury of despair.

Oh, it all sounds so meaningful, and you can be so sure that she goes home at night and cries over her chicken picatta that she didn't get it all done today. But look at it clearly. Extend the hand of friendship to Latin America? I thought that was the idea of Bush's hemisphere-of-free-trade vision? Oh, wait, you mean give them stuff!

Work to stop the genocide in Sudan? Say, aren't your "multilateral" buddies at the UN in the middle of another head-in-the-sand Rwanda move on that issue? Go ask them if they mind us being unilateral on this one.

How about the mid-east "peace" process? This president froze the biggest impediment to peace, Arafat, out of the process, leaving him to die in metaphoric exile, ruling his kleptocratic little non-state and making sure things got no better for "his people" so that they wouldn't suddenly catch a nasty case of middle-class values and decide that sending their sons and daughters on buses to Jerusalem to explode was a slightly worse idea than sending their sons and daughters on buses to Jerusalem to go to schools, jobs, and businesses of their own.

Bring hope to people suffering from disease and despair? As for disease, Bush ended eight years of empty-gesture politics on third-world AIDS relief. And, for despair, curing that doesn't get much better than a free election. Did you see the young Iraqi woman last night, holding up her trembling hand, making the Victory-sign (those of you who thought she was signaling "peace" need to think again) and the one-finger "I voted for the first time in my life without having to worry that the guy I voted against will arrest and torture me tomorrow" gesture? Bronx cheers to the Democrats (and isolationist Republicans) who look at that and say, "Well, yes, but . . ."

Bush makes Americans feel hopeful. Now, I don't want to see his agenda enacted. (It's full of stuff I think goes either too far or not far enough.) But I'll side with him over the lemon-sucking faces across the aisle. They had two years to sell us the idea that Iraq was a failure, and now they're stuck with a big piece of good news that the media is pretty much forced to report, since it's, er, also kinda big news: possibly the most free, fair, and democratic election the Arab mid-east has ever seen. Thus, I'll stick with the president on Social Security, too. Maybe he can get half a loaf -- better that than the status quo. Screw the "it can't be done" crowd. It can be done. Screw the "we can't cut benefits" crowd. Of course we can. And we can kick the rich old farts off the wagon and raise the retirement age at the same time. Granny deserves a nice, long retirement, but twenty-five years of taxpayer subsidized golf (indexed to wage growth rather than inflation: Granny's a growth fund; who knew?) in Sun City is a bit much. If she's so goddamn "vital" in her golden years, she can keep a part-time job.

Finally, if I may indulge in some cynicysm for a moment: If recent electoral trends are any indication, being anti-reform is the last hope for the Dems to get in on a growing market of voters: old-age pensioners. I don't think there's any other explanation for this kind of political duplicity and cowardice.

SOTU: I don't think I have to agree with all of Bush's proposals to say: great speech. And I don't. And it was. Sure, there was plenty of micropolicy crap. Sure, the gay marriage thing, to my ears, was totally unworthy of this speech. But so what. Kudos to the president on this one.

Best use of SOTU guests ever, by the way. As Jarvis says here, "Who could not be touched by the mother of a son killed fighting for freedom hug[ging] the daughter of a man who died for freedom in Iraq." Or, as Steve says here, "If you're not tearing up a little right now, you're not watching. Again, words fail." Roger Simon has more, too.

More tomorrow.

We're changing our name to "SpinKillHardThrust": The big news in the talking head game is that Tucker Carlson has landed safely (phewww) at MSNBC. Yes, the one-time "Crossfire" co-host, who was ridiculed (rightfully and unmercifully) by John Stewart, is going to head up a new show right after Joe Scarborough's. Yes, it's back-to-back conservative shouting and mocking!

No word on what Carlson will call his show, but it's guaranteed to fit one of two molds: It will have his name and then some pseudo-journalistic tag or alliterative device like "The Carlson Files" (a la "The O'Reilly Factor" - which has its own sub-title of the "No Spin Zone") or "Tucker Tonight".

Alternatively, he'll have to go with a one or two syllable hostile-sounding title which indicates that on HIS show, there will be nothing but hard-hitting questions and no-nonsense analysis like "Countdown", "Crossfire", "Hardball", "SquawkBox" or "Bullseye".

Sure he could go with the populist choice like "Common Sense" (FOX) or maybe scary/official, like "On the Record" (FOX again), but that doesn't seem to fit his bow-tie-wearing ways.

Here's hoping that no matter what he calls his show, he has Stewart on real soon, and that it's off the air within six months.

Could Be Worth Blogging: Hey, there might actually be something left to say, now that it appears Howard Dean will be holding the cigar box for the Dems.

The leading group of [California] Democratic Party officials on Monday backed Howard Dean's bid for the party's national chairmanship, establishing the former presidential candidate as the contest's prohibitive favorite.

"I think the race is over," Art Torres, chairman of the California Democratic Party, said after the decision.

This reminds me of when the Democrats went down in flames in the 2002 mid-terms: Every pundit known to man said the message was clear, that the Dems need to abandon the folly of predicating their entire platform on the failure of Bush's policies. After all, by hook or by crook, Bush has been pretty successful; and, on top of that, the American people tend to see his successes as America's successes (let's say, for example, free elections in Afghanistan and Iraq). In other words, the Dems were looking silly, sitting on the sidelines, praying for bad news in Iraq or a stall in the economy.

Instead, of course, the Dems made shrill Nancy Pelosi their minority leader in the legislative body closest to the people; then, after a brief anti-war fling with the mad Dr. Dean, they nominated the thoroughly ineffective John Kerry (who, on the war, was himself not totally unopposed to those who opposed the opposition of the oppositionists who . . . ah, forget it) for president. And now they're digging screaming Howard again.

Anybody know if a two-term president has ever added to his majority in both of his mid-term elections? Because I foresee the GOP picking up seats in 2006.

Sullivan: Far be it from me to lay into someone who is less than starry eyed about the blogosphere. (I've never been particularly boosterish about the much-bandied influence of blogging, though it sure seemed Sullivan was when Howell Raines was forced out.) It's a good time to give it a rest, I think. I've toyed with the idea myself, though Razor's snippy attitude always brings me back to thrash him a bit more.

To be frank, Sullivan's site dropped off my own must-read list about 5 minutes after he went off the rails over the war/WMD/quagmire in Iraq stuff. For a prominent supporter of the war, he blanched pretty quickly when things turned rather war-like in Iraq. And I have no patience for his Kerry-istic critiques that imply or state that one only had to do this Iraq thing the right way, a way that was, it seems, obvious all along. Hogwash. It was Monday morning quarterbacking, nothing more.

The other thing that gets me is Sullivan's attitude toward the GOP. Now I make no claim to being Mr. Republican, but I'm realistic enough to see that socially liberal, market-minded independents can either assert themselves within the only major party that is not openly hostile to the free market, the GOP, or they can continue to wander in the third-party wilderness. Sullivan must have known how the GOP was going to play a marriage amendment. He's a Republican, after all. He must get the mailings. His attitude was a little too "how dare you" to be believable. Recall that the man Sully ended up endorsing, John Kerry, tried to claim that there was no daylight between himself and Bush on gay marriage.

I have to admit that a small part of my hostility is due to Sullivan's pledge drives. As I've said before, I get analysis as good as his for free, from any number of sharp sites. But if he wants to make money at it, I'd respect him more if he just made his site pay-only, competing with the likes of the Salon (chotle), the WSJ, or soon enough the NYT. Don't drag me through the drama of how hard you work and how much you pay for bandwidth, or any of that public broadcasting guilt trip. It's demeaning, and just not professional.

Oh, well. Good luck, Andrew. I hope you find yourself.

More: I think Razor nailed it: Becoming the darling of the non-religious GOP forced Sullivan into publishing apologetics. (Some of the early ones he wrote about Bush must really embarrass him now.) But part of the problem was that Sullivan did go squishy, did flip-flop. Like I said, the gay marriage thing didn't just come out of the blue, and the Dems sure didn't stick up for marriage rights, preferring to whimper in the corner. His endorsement of Kerry was the last straw. I fail to see how anyone with any sympathy for the GOP could warm to Kerry. In fact, I bet even Razor briefly considered voting for Bush. It may have been just a tiny flicker, but somewhere, deep down, some part of you said, "Am I really going to vote for this Massachusetts clown?"

Blogosphere Ennui: Sullivan has called it quits.

He says he's burnt out, and who am I to doubt him? They guy has probably averaged 5-7 posts a day on a wide range of political and social issues. Plus, he gets regular gigs in TIME, the NY Times, etc. He has reason to be tired.

However, I have a different theory. I think he's a changed man, and he knows it. Back when, starting all of five years ago, he used to be the darling of the Conservative Movement: "A gay British man who hates Clinton - we must embrace him (in a manly, Christian way, of course)!" And Sullivan reveled in the attention; using that notoriety to build up his "dish".

But slowly and surely, Sullivan had to start distancing himself from W and hence from his perceived image. See, it's easy to be a conservative when the bad liberals are in full swing (and especially when their own Dear Leader is such a psychopath). However, when your own side is running things, starting wars, and trying to tell you who you can or cannot marry, it gets harder to be the standard-bearer. You're a small government guy who just wants to be left alone, except your President is expanding the government at an unprecedented pace and trying his hardest to govern your every action, or at least condemn it.

More and more of your time is spent justifying your card-carrying bona fides. More time is spent defending your positions; reasonable though they might be. Suddenly you're being called a flip-flopper, or worse, a liberal in wolf's clothing. The acclaim is replaced by scorn, and your audience starts moving on to a more palatable source.

Balko thinks it's a bad play, only because Sullivan has taken in so much lucre over the years in his fund-raising drives. The presumption is that if you gave recently, you'd feel burned. Well, them's the breaks - he never promised you anything for your money.

But, what is really at issue is that the Blogs are victims of their own perceived success. No longer can you just throw the stuff out there. You're now going to get parsed and picked apart. Even Balko has shut off his comments, and is pretty much narrowed down to his few pet policy issues (remember the days of music, travel and photography?).

The innocence, the hey-it's-just-you-and-me attitude is gone. Bloggers are brands now; hey have to promote that brand or they whither. Sullivan just couldn't drink anymore of his own kool-aid any more.

School of Rawk: This is a little precious, but it is also well-done and funny. I bring you: "Everything I Need to Know, I've Learned from Iron Maiden".

Argument Against Tenure, Part XXXIX: (Note my crafty allusion to the SuperBowl, which I am conscientiously avoiding talking about, given that we Eagles fans are all rather ratcheted up right now). Moving along...

This guy must have a book to sell. Why else would he draft an essay and then give talks centered around the premise that the 9/11 victims were "little Eichmans" and that the terrorists were "gallant"? Okay, he's a loony university professor, and he submits to pressure to resign as the chairman of the "Ethnic Studies" department, but only because "present political climate has rendered me a liability in terms of representing either my department, the college, or the university."

See, it's everyone else's fault! If only our "political climate" would change such that it's laudable to blame 3,000 innocent victims of the worst terrorist incident ever to take place on our soil. Damn Nazi little buggers had it coming to them! Why, all those restaurant employees, secretaries and maintenance people...trying to earn a living! Why don't they all get together on the commune and eat lotus root like every other respectable human being, and stop being the instrument of the devil? Yes, the political climate of today is just completely out-of-whack.

Heeeere's Johnny? Two views duke it out in the 'sphere following Johnny Carson's death. Were his success and staying power a function of his genius, or was he simply too bland, too generic to be superseded.

I dig Terry Teachout, but I disagree with him. Carson was a master of comic timing -- the old-school comic timing. Jay Leno has comic timing that seems like a copy of a copy of a copy . . . you get the picture. It's canned. I suppose you could accuse Carson of being canned, but he put it in the can, of course; it was his product. (That's not meant to excuse him. He phoned it in a lot of the time, and over a three decade ride, I suppose that's bound to happen.) Carson's humor defined what was American television humor; it was quintessentially American, with its puns and gags, but with a viper's tongue for self-obsessed celebrities and preening politicians. Thus, if Johnny Carson leaves a vaporous legacy, why do Dave and Jay still do his show every night? True, Letterman added a (welcome) surreal bite to Carson's canny staging, but he didn't ever drop the canny staging, the knowing smirk, the mock-appeal to the audience following a joke that hits only the groan spot. And Leno has taken the Carson schtick and given it a good bleaching, so that what remains of the Tonight Show is no longer the meant and potatoes of Johnny's thiry years (and, yes, some find meat and potatoes boring) but a sort of predigested slurry, now with 50% more "laffs"!

Here's Johnny's legacy: He built a nascent format into an institution; neither of his predecessors, Jack Parr or Steve Allen, could have done so. For thirty years, Carson was the water cooler man; before Seinfeld and his catchphrases became Xeroxed break-room fodder (lifeless drones repeating "yadda yadda yadda" and "master of my domain" over and over, usually out of context), you came to work with a load of zingers to tell the guy who hadn't watched Johnny the night before.

The format is moribund. But that's not Johnny's fault, or not entirely. True, he didn't take chances; he wasn't edgy. But that wasn't his slot. He was for mass consumption. Is that the problem? Critics are quick to say that broad appeal means bland appeal -- but sometimes it doesn't.

Anyhoo, it's the curse of Carson's long, quiet retirement. The reexamination of his went on while he played tennis in Beverly Hills, and the new judgement is ready immediately, upon his death. Of the icon, the legend in his own time, the most successful entertainer, both in finances and ratings, of his active period, we can now only muster a dismissive "Carson? Meh."

Seems to Me: Let's talk about protesters. The ones who shouted obscenities at Bush's inauguration, for example. Now it seems to me that protesting is a fine enough thing in theory, but it needs to be done with a modicum of thoughtfulness -- otherwise, you send the wrong message. To put it plainly, protesting the inauguration, I think, is equivalent to protesting democracy, or that democracy worked. The people have spoken, the president has been elected, and inauguration is what the constitutional process requires -- that we give the guy the job he won. You may like Dubya; you may not; you may think he's an evil, conniving bastard, fiddling around in the basement of the east wing with test tubes, trying to find a way to turn the blood of welfare chiselers into oil. Fair enough. But shut up for half an hour on January 20th, okay? Protest the man all you want, but yesterday was about the office, the institution. Have just a little bit of respect for that, enough respect to refrain, say, from shouting during the inauguration ceremony. Is it really too much to ask? Will democracy fall apart if we shut up and have a little f*cking decorum (sorry) for about twenty one and a half minutes?

I think not. (And I'm not suggesting we make a law, anyway. "Congress shall make no law . . . except when hairy chicks and dudes who need to bathe interrupt a solemn ceremony.") Let me analogize. It's like football: When a guy on the visiting team takes a serious hit, even the home crowd is supposed to cheer when he walks off the field. Folks, even Eagles fans do this (though not reliably, and they might still assault the guy after the game). Is this really so hard, to sit on your hands for one chilly afternoon, maybe just to thank god (or Wicca, or whatever you dig) that we have peaceful transitions of government, free elections, and another chance in four years to vote the bums out? Apparently, yes; the protesters, the chronically indignent, had to give us their version of cheering when the visiting QB takes a hit, and booing when he's able to walk off the field. They have to prove, all over again, the general crybaby nature of their political outlook: It's all about me, you see, and my guy should have won, see, and would have won if Americans weren't so stupid, corrupt, and bloodthirsty. Thus I will be the essence of the spoiler. If I can't have my way, I will ruin the occasion for everyone else

Look, few people can match me for disgust. You disgusted with Bush? Guess how I felt for 8 years of President Liar Phony Crook Shady Land Deal Cheatin' on the Old Lady Giving Missile Technology to the Chinese for Campaign Cash Clinton? But I still wouldn't have disrupted his inauguration. (Partly because that would make him look dignified, and me like a buffoon. And let me tell you, if you can make Clinton look dignified, you are a buffoon.)

If for no other reason, can we do this just to show that we still have some goddamn manners when it comes to the institutions of high office? I'm not asking anyone to respect the man. Just respect the process that still makes us unique among nations.

What Bush was really thinking:: His 2nd Inaug Speech is begging for some translation. Luckily, my mind-reading machine was on while I watched on t.v. Let's listen in, shall we?

Today it will be my great honor to take the Presidential Oath of Office for the second time. I am humbled by the trust and confidence of my fellow citizens. With that trust comes a duty to serve all Americans, and I will do my best to fulfill that duty every day as president.

And when I say "humbled by the trust and confidence", I mean this is the last bit of lip-service you commie peace-niks are going to get for the next 4 years. I kick ass!

Four years ago, I came to Washington with a commitment to solve problems, instead of passing them on to future presidents and future generations. I have applied that principle to every decision I have made as president, and I am proud of what we have achieved.

And wars in distant countries which were started for no apparent reason, which will kill 1,000 of our soldiers annually, and last into the next decade are not technically "problems". Nor was it a "decision I have made as president". Rummy made me do it (Cheney said to say that if anyone asked).

We worked with Congress to provide historic tax relief for small businesses and families. Now our economy is strong and getting stronger. America has created more than 2 million jobs in the past year. Interest rates, mortgage rates and inflation are all low. And homeownership is at an all-time high.

"Historic tax relief" because it's gonna be history once I tell you how we're going to pay for Iraq. Homo-what?? Oh, "homeownership" not "homoerotic"! Got it. Remind me to cancel those Log Cabin meetings.

We raised standards in public schools and insisted on accountability — and now children are making hopeful progress in reading and math. Parents have real options when schools fail to teach. And the achievement gap is beginning to close.

Soundin' good Georgie-boy. Wish Dick would slow down on his reading though...this ear piece thingamojob doesn't work as good as the one in the second debate. Lucky for this bulky coat, though.

We strengthened and modernized Medicare — and now low-income seniors are getting money to buy prescription drugs. Medicare now covers preventive screenings and offers a free physical for every new enrollee. And next year, the program will offer prescription drug coverage to every American senior.

These accomplishments met essential priorities, and they have made America stronger for future generations. Yet our greatest duties have been those that our country could not have envisioned on Inauguration Day four years ago.

Kids, old people...blah, blah, blah. This domestic stuff is torture...I ... mean ... "non-traditional coercion". Okay, 9/11, yes!

The attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, brought grief to our nation and changed the course of history. Since that morning, America has rallied many nations to our side and fought the terrorists abroad so that we do not have to face them here at home. We have brought our enemies to justice. We have removed terror regimes in Afghanistan and Iraq. And we are working with nations around the world to ensure that the world's deadliest weapons never reach terrorist hands.

Yeah, like when Chirac said "We are all Americans." Now it's like, "We are all freakin' lame-ass UN fancy boys." Bring it on Frency!! Er, I mean, no...don't bring it on. Leave it off. Or...hey there's Colin. Yup, that's what it's going to be like from now on Powell...sixth row, next to some deputy from "Agriculture, Nutrition and Forestry". Heheh. And wherever those WMD Saddam had went to, we're gonna get 'em. Condi thinks maybe South Africa in the diamond mines.

We are winning the war on terror because of the courage, idealism and sacrifice of our military, intelligence and homeland security personnel. They are making America safer and the world more peaceful. And our whole nation is grateful to them and their families.

Brilliant of Karl to put that last sentence in. They can't boo me after that! "Cut 'em off at the knees" - that's Rovey's motto.

In this new war, the wisest use of American strength is to advance freedom. America is more secure because millions of men and women in Afghanistan lined up to vote in a free election — the first in that nation's 5,000-year existence and a landmark event in the history of liberty. America is more secure because free Iraqis will soon choose their own leaders. Freedom is on the march, and it is changing the world.

One lesson of history is that free societies do not export terror. Free governments respect the aspiration of their citizens and serve their hope for a better life. Free nations are peaceful nations. For the sake of our interests and our ideals, this great republic will always lead the cause of freedom.

Gotta keep selling this. Course, doesn't do any good. The liberal media is all like: "Bush, the war monger. He's so reprehensiblous." They just don't see God's hand like I do.

We are also working to expand freedom here at home. Over the next four years, we will ease the burden of the complicated tax code by making it simpler and fairer. We will protect entrepreneurs and workers from frivolous lawsuits and needless regulation. We will make health care more affordable and accessible for American families. We will continue the work of education reform, especially in our public high schools. And we will work to strengthen Social Security for our children and grandchildren.

Simple. Just how I like it. And those freakin' John Edwards wannabes. Suing those poor defenseless entrepreneurial insurance companies. Talk about being reprehensical! Alright, calm down W...getting to the end, gotta look presidential.

These are large goals. They will affect every American, and they do not belong to one politician or one party. Inaugurations are a time to leave behind the partisan debates of a political year and focus on the opportunities that lie ahead. Working together, we can achieve important results and lay the foundation for a stronger, more prosperous country.

In this time of change, some things do not change: the values we try to live by, the institutions that give our lives meaning and purpose. America is stronger because of the volunteer groups and faith-based charities that provide a safety net of mercy and compassion. In our kind and decent society, we have a special duty to protect the weak and the vulnerable. So I will continue to lead this good-hearted nation toward a culture of life.

Tell you what I'm valuin' 'bout now: 200-head dinner at $5,000 a plate! And I'm gone by coffee. Three words: "Freakin'...huge...library!"

For all Americans, these years in our history will always stand apart. There are quiet times in the life of a nation when little is expected of its leaders or its people. This is not one of those times. This is a time that requires firm resolve, clear vision and the deep faith in the values that make our nation strong.

God, it's cold. Hey, didn't Truman die or something from his inauguration? Oh, that's why the buck stopped! Gotta tell Barb about that one - maybe get a "gold star" for that one. heheh

I am optimistic about the future of our country. One of my favorite sayings comes from Tom Lea, an artist Laura and I knew in Texas. Tom wrote: “Sara and I live on the east side of the mountain. It is the sunrise side, not the sunset side. It is the side to see the day that is coming, not the side to see the day that is gone.” I see a bright day coming for America. I am grateful for the opportunity to serve this great nation, and I am eager for the work ahead.

May God continue to bless America and all who call it home.

Mom always told me not to stare at the sun. Artists.

Welcome to Philadelphia: I know I'm guilty of writing too many fluff pieces and too many arguing esoteric ideology that probably interests no one. So, I'm going to remedy that and just link to a post recalling a Sergeant's trip home from Iraq after being "in country" for a year.

What's most interesting, and what takes up a good part of the post, is his trip through the airport, security and onto the plane, and the myriad of reactions he gets from downright hostile (surprise, the TSA employees), to thankful and appreciative (coach class).

The part that got me, and which shows how much we all really have to be thankful for:

“Listen and listen carefully. What do you hear?” said the first sergeant leading a series of redeployment briefings inside an old chapel at Dix. Nothing. “Exactly. There are no mortars. No snipers. No IEDs. Just America, and we will get you home.”

As Stephen Green would say, "a must read".

Game, set, match: Sports Illustrated did a great piece in last week's issue regarding Federer, which I felt was much-needed given how little we still know about the man off the court. Apparently he was a Safin-like rabble-rouser on the court until about two years ago, when he not-so-coincidentally started dominating matches. What may be more amazing is that he's doing it all now pretty much without a coach - although he does rely on some old hands as advisors. Playing without a coach is not so incredible; even winning some Slams without a coach is not beyond compare; but so utterly dominating the game (See U.S. Open, 2004, Hewitt) while playing a style of game that has never been seen is truly amazing. Pick any of the great mens' players - they were all reliant on two to three skill sets which they perfected to carry them through (Sampras - serve, and serve and volley; Agassi - return of serve, footwork; McEnroe - net play, intimidation; Lendl - groundstrokes, tireless pressure).

But Federer does it all. Now, that's not to say he has the hardest serve (he doesn't) or the fastest feet (nope), but that he has the complete game. He is never out of position, he can poinpoint his serves, returns, passes, and basic groundstrokes. He's adept at the net or he can hang back and tire you out with placement. And, he does it all with this graceful aplomb that is such a welcome change from the plodding cannon-armed serve specialists (Roddick, Hewitt et al), or the wimpy, touchy boys (see Spain, France, hell even Germany).

I think the only thing that stops him is injury, which he has struggled with at times. I think he masters the French Open either this year or the next. He's simply too talented to be another Sampras in that regard.

That Time Again? The Aussie Open has early round action this week. I predict some new names making big splashes. The women's game finally opened up last year beyond a Williams/Henin/Capriati chokehold, with four different grand slam winners. On the men's side, Federer took three of four (the miss being the French, which became an optional stop for non-specialists, starting with Sampras, in the 90s).

If anyone can continue to dominate men's tennis, it's the suprememly talented Federer. But I think the next generation of tennis players has seen that a wide open game is necessary, and that big serves don't win matches on their own anymore.

Social Security: Viking Pundit has been Johnny on the spot lately on what passes for policy discussion in Washington. Here he is parsing Rahm Emmanuel, whom the Dems sent forward to spin on the subject this weekend.

My take on this is pretty simple, and it might surprise you. The GOP says, let's do private accounts. I'm for it, but the tiny amounts they're proposing to "privatize" are insulting. Meanwhile the Dems say that any privatization will result in unfunded mandates (which we have anyway, but I see their point) so we should, at the most, go for a typically Washingtonian and meaningless "reform" package based on accounting sleight of hand, maybe with a split-the-difference adjustment to the cost of living increase.

As I said, this may surprise you, coming from a libertarianish conservative, but what we need to do is raise taxes. Raise the payroll tax by a point. Raise the level at which payroll taxes cut out, too. (With an automatic sunset provision, by the way -- something that should be standard in every spending bill.) But -- and it's a big but -- raise payroll taxes only in conjunction with real reform. By which I mean the increase would pay for significant privatization. Second, we've gone long enough without means testing benefits like Medicare and Social Security. Remember all the rich and famous waterheads during the election who thought it was politically astute to say, "George Bush gave me a tax cut. I don't need a tax cut!" Well, why the hell aren't they saying, "Congress gave me generous Social Security and Medicare benefits. I don't need those!"

I'm not deaf to the several good points being made on the left -- and there are several, even if they're not being made very often. So I'll put my money where my mouth is: Raise my taxes. I'm unlikely to see benefits from Social Security, and I'm a little old for microscopic privatization measures to make any difference, really. So as long as I'm eating Tender Vittles in my golden years, I might as well advocate the idea that I be the last one to do so. While my desire would be to kill the program entirely, I know that's not going to happen. As long as it exists, it should, to the greatest extent possible, exist as a choice. The only road to that is to stop lying about how we fund entitlements.

Pay for it honestly, or kill it.

Lighten Up, Sweet Cheeks: Larry's in trouble over at Harvard. Here's a snip:

The president of Harvard University prompted criticism for suggesting that innate differences between the sexes could help explain why fewer women succeed in science and math careers.

Lawrence H. Summers, speaking Friday at an economic conference, also questioned how great a role discrimination plays in keeping female scientists and engineers from advancing at elite universities.

The remarks prompted Massachusetts Institute of Technology biologist Nancy Hopkins — a Harvard graduate — to walk out on Summers' talk, The Boston Globe reported.

(Love that "-- a Harvard graduate --" parenthetical to describe Mme. Hopkins. Is that to excuse? To explain.) So, interested? Go read the rest. I'll be here.

Done?

You know, there is a certain kind of person (and they tend to appear on the left -- sorry, Razor) who, though nominally educated and open minded (soi disant, anyway), will stand for only so much of the obvious before storming out in a huff. Or pinning her ears shut and shouting, "I can't hear you. La la la la la la la la la." And this is at Harvard, too. I'll be sure to archive this link for the next time someone needs to make a snide comment about creationist educators in Kansas. Because, let me tell you, over yonder Harvard-way, there are folks who (honestly) believe (really and truly believe) that the only differences that exist between boys and girls are socially constructed. (Of course, this same type of person is apt to get weepy and all Pulitzer/Oscar nuts over movies or books in which a boy/girl raised as a girl/boy fights his/her social assignment to live as she/he pleases. Go figger.) In other words, Larry Summers is not in trouble for being a sexist pig, though that is what it seems like madame is having corset strangulation over. No, Larry's backpedaling because he said that not everything about men and women is socially constructed, which to the elite womyn of Harvard's feel-good-about-having-ovaries police is the same thing.

There is work being done right now, some of which I have seen first hand, on this very issue (i.e., Why do fewer women become scientists and engineers?). If you can't take it seriously enough to look at all the possibilities (including the possibility that, yes, men -- on average -- perform better spatially and mathematically) you don't deserve to get upset about it. Here's a small tip to some of Harvard's so-called scientists. Rejecting theories because of how they make you feel is not science. Demanding that the answer to an investigation of cause and effect necessarily be non-threatening to your worldview is not science. It's religion. And it's just as kooky as the flat-earthers, faith healers, UFOlogists, creationist schoolteachers, and every other dogmatic yutz with a "scientific" interest in protecting his or her little psychological coccoon.

Jesus Unavailable for Comment: Fun weekend in the NFL - all the top-seeds (but not necessarily all the favorites) won. Only one game was close, and that involved a team whose offense scored 3 points, being twice in a position to seal the deal, only to come up woefully short. Hmmm, was there something else at work? The Steelers' players seem to think so: "God gave us another chance."

But, I mean, it's just a game right? Apparently not:

"God had His hand in that game. Nobody misses field goals like that, having opportunity after opportunity to win a game. We had no chance. It wasn't even in our hands. When that happens, you thank Him and move on."

"I hate using that word miracle. Miracles are when you heal the blind and the crippled can walk, but this was the closest thing to a miracle that it gets."

I think you can more accurately chalk the win up to bad coaching decisions (kneel on 3rd down just to bleed two seconds off the clock??!) and a choke artist kicker who was thinking too hard about his 47-yard doink just minutes before.

Or is it Destiny? Eno?

One for Razor: Will Collier details his 2004 in memo form, dropping the bomb in Item 15, very casually, about how he met the boys from Rush this year. Now, of the the 40 items he addresses, which one do you think is getting the most feedback in the comments? Ah, Rush fans, you're a predictable, innocently geeky, wonderfully loyal lot, god love you. An Israeli and a Palestinian, at each others throats in full-blooded rage, could be made like brothers should a common acquaintance mention that they both dig Rush. 2000-year-old blood feud? F*ck it, baby. "Hey, Husseini, Schlomo and I were just talking about the big fat sound Geddy honks out of his Rick on Farewell to Kings."

I might just dust off (koff, koff) my old vinyl copy of Caress of Steel tonight and spark up a big one in your collective honor.

By George: Howard Fineman's latest Newsweek piece is their variation on the current "Whither the Media?" theme. (Two things come to mind immediately. First, we're through the looking glass when the media begins pondering itself so aggressively. Two, anytime the media ponders anything this aggressively, it means that the story was over last week/month/year. In many respects, this was true even in the antedeluvian pre-new media age.)

Anyhoo, Fineman takes on the state of the so-called MSM, which he dubs the AMMP (American Mainstream Media Party -- which beats MSM for accuracy in labeling, if you ask me), and the take is good if not exactly earth-shaking. I think he hits it particularly squarely with this point:

Bush doesn't hate the AMMP (indeed, he likes his share of reporters on a personal basis). He just refuses to care about what it's up to.

Between total disdain and total lack of interest, which do you think galls the media the most? I'd bet that more than half of the media's anti-Bush sentiment comes from the recognition that the guy just won't jump through their hoops.

Sidenote: This can certainly be a bit of culture shock, particularly when recalling that Dubya's predecessor used to call up the media at home, late at night, and ask them, "Could ya come on over? And could ya bring yer hoops?" To give the metaphor a real Razorian working-over, their hoops were as predictable as his jumps, and as predictable as their praise of his jumps. (When was the last time any reporter wrote anything about Clinton that didn't use some sort of "troubled, but brilliant" formulation?) Clinton wasn't that skilled, that brilliant; he simply had a brilliant (and sociopathic) synergy with the media: the needed each other in a pretty sick way. At any rate, if you think about it, all the Dan Rather kind of shit is really nothing more than the media mooning for a guy who could give good soundbite and great scandal, the two things they love, and come back to them, begging to be kicked again.

These symptoms are all in the DSM-IV, if you care to look.

Second sidenote: Fineman is also right to note that the party that will play the Republicans to the MSM's Whigs is, naturally, "the Blogger Nation."

Lovely: "Talk of the Town," in the New Yorker, is always a great cheap read at Barnes and Noble. Here's a good example of how they put a more complex twist on what everyone else would play off as a two-paragraph "News of the Weird" story. It's about how living in Brooklyn and having a nearly famous name changed one man's life.

Russell Jones is a forty-four-year-old art director who lives in Park Slope, Brooklyn. In the early winter of 1996, he and his wife began to receive some unusual phone calls late at night. They would pick up the receiver and a voice would shout "Yo, Dirty!" or just "Dirteee!" and then hang up. Jones was mystified; he thought that maybe his number had been written down in a bathroom stall somewhere.

Interested?

I wonder if Bjorn has read this yet: Michael Crichton has a new novel out: "State of Fear", which takes on, no not some new killer virus, no not Japanese businessmen (a laughable concept today), no, not even dinosaurs, but rather, environmental extremists. His purpose this time is to show how science loses its power once it becomes tied up in the political arena; where objective findings are used more and more for one-sided purposes, and often delivered in a way to create fear in the minds of the listeners.

A brief interview with my hometown paper, the Philly Inquirer (free sign up required) reveals that HIS fear is that we ignore the fact that we don't know everything, and instead rely on half-baked theories and the panic they induce to arrive at mis-guided conclusions, and then create government policy on those conclusions. He notes that we're just not able yet to realistically calculate what our impact is on our world (although he certainly acknowledges that we are doing something to the planet), and that we need for the technology to be in place first, before we come to conclusions. Given our present limitations, wouldn't it be better to use our time and energy to address the problems we CAN solve or at least impact, like poverty, disease, etc.? He says to keep funding the search for environmental change and its causes, but to clamp down on the unregulated fear-mongering, so that we don't move suddenly in one direction that we may later regret (remember the "absolute" pending doom of overpopulation and a new ice age - anyone, anyone?).

Crichton gives a shout-out to Lomborg as an example of someone who has received ad hominem attacks simply for expressing a truly objective viewpoint about a subject that is crying out for a balanced analysis. All we hear, Crichton would say, is either the Sierra Club accusations or the Big Business denials. Both have valid points, except that they're drowned out in the rush to grab headlines. People like Lomborg can't even be read without the political undertones rushing to the fore, and smearing his carefully crafted position.

Anyway, it's refreshing to see that Crichton, someone who has "sold out" to Hollywood, has retained the objectivity and creativity for which he is rightly praised.

Taking on the Myths: The Atlantic takes a timeout from its overhaul (which has apparently consisted of hiring the entire JV squad of the New Republic) to throw a couple of political/policy curveballs. First up, Chuck Todd offers a takedown of triangulation, and how the Democrats (via Clinton's famous "political skills," which, Democrats are coming to see, benefited only him, often at their expense) triangulated their way into a pretty weak tea, policy-wise. The implied praise for Dubya: You may not like his ideas, but at least he has some.

Next, Ben Wittes makes a compelling case for cutting loose Roe vs. Wade. Says Wittes,

By removing the issue from the policy arena, the Supreme Court has prevented abortion-rights supporters from winning a debate in which public opinion favors them.

Since its inception, Roe has had a deep legitimacy problem, stemming from its weakness as a legal opinion. Consevatives who fulminate that the court made up the right to abortion, which appears explicitly nowhere in the Constitution, are being simplistic -- but they're not entirely wrong.

Later, he says that he'd feel different "if the right to abortion . . . were unambiguously protected by the Constitution."

But let's be frank: it isn't. The right to abortion remains a highly debatable proposition, both jurisprudentially and morally. The mere fact that liberals have to devote so much political energy to pretending that the right exists beyond democratic debate proves that it doesn't.

My italics.

Finally, Jon Rauch goes in search of Red America, or Blue America, or whatever that whole two Americas thing is. He only finds one. Way out on the fringes, political partisans are getting louder and more shrill. No wonder, he says, that American voters tend to think that "the Democratic Party [is] to their left and the Republican Party [is] to their right."

Sorry none of the links gets to more than an excerpt. It's worth buying the issue. Hold off on the subscription, though. The magazine shows many symptoms of a return to its former self: a left-center exercise in yawning and page turning. Cait Flanagan has departed for the New Yorker, David Brooks for the Times; P.J. O'Rourke has been relegated to short, almost purposely unfunny policy explications each month, while Mark Steyn mans the graveyard shift. Rauch hangs on, writing the best of the rest. Cover stories fall to Jim Fallows, Bill Langewiesche�������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������������

Why I Didn't Post Today -- Number 227 in a Series: "The morning comes with such pain," said Dan Hicks. At 6:15 I barely knew who I was, let alone where. I did know, however, that I had rolled into day three of a shitty little cold that was making me (and my family) miserable. My wife had left for work an hour before, at least, and I was stretched out across the width of the bed. A voice from the bathroom reminded me why I had woken up at this horrid hour in the first place: "Da, I'm pooping!"

Five minutes later, we're headed back into his room. I squint into the light on his bookcase and throw the hail mary: "You could climb into bed and read with your flashlight," I suggest. Miraculously he takes the pass and heads for the end zone. I have bought myself 15 minutes.

Flash forward. The boy is at school. I say to myself, foolishly, "This might be a good time to set up the router that has languished beside the desktop for weeks." Flash forward again. I have five minutes until I absolutely HAVE to be at the school door to get my son, and the tech support guy on the other end of the line is still speaking as though I have to check the manual to find the Start menu. God bless these people; after all, they spend 90% of their time with the people who just want it to work, dammit, and they must habitually drift into micro-step speak, even with their dogs: "Roll over, boy. Now click 'OK'."

Naptime, and I'm ready for one myself, but I waste five minutes on a cigarette (they always taste terrible when I'm sick) and end up still awake and alert enough to answer the phone. My boss. Another in a long string of multi-part projects with "short fuses" and "quick turnarounds," as he would put it. As it turns out, I have, according to the budget, 37 hours of work to do. By Thursday . . . morning. I yell and scream; to his credit, my boss takes it like a man, but he doesn't really back down on the deadline. Sure, I can give him half on Thursday and half on Friday. Of course, driving to work (67 miles, each way) on both days will eat away almost all of my non-childcare-related waking hours, so it ain't really a compromise. After I hang up, I stop myself from calling his boss to ask why it is that however much we fall behind in the delivery schedule comes out of my time in the end. Yep, that'd make me a prick. Officially.

Steam Wars: I like to pride myself on how infrequently I reveal my geek roots on this blog, but rather present only a strong, intelligent, manly and let's face it, wildly attractive, image. But it's true, as a teenager, I collected comic books, got heavily into D&D, and at one point, was pretty convinced I was a ninja. I eventually got over these issues, but parts of my heart have kept them just barely alive, on a sort of statis, only to be revived at certain times.

Well, this site/concept got the blood pumping a bit. The idea is an alternative reality of the late 19th and early 20th century -- if nations could have engineered these giant steam robots to conduct military operations with. Sort of like having the great ironclads on land. This site is only one of the many out there, but its creator seems to have had this concept rolling around for decades. The artwork is way cool, and he has thought out the whole history of that world ... making a very interesting tableau.

Now, whether the idea will ever see itself on the big screen or even in a graphic novel remains unknown, and given the relative lack of success seen by "Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow", it may only remain an un-realized idea. But still, I certainly applaud the creativity, and my inner geek is just hopping about with joy. Oh the battles I could have led...

After all, Lenin was bald: Not content with merely controlling the speech, movement and thoughts of its citizenry, North Korea launches an aggressive plan to limit the length of its people's hair. Long hair, it is explained, is not only unruly and not so hygenic, it drains the vitamins from your body. Flat tops and shaved sides are more in line with the "Socialist lifestyle". Ridiculed were actual citizens who were growing their hair high to cover balding.

Okay, fine. But what about this guy? "Do as I say, not as I do." Repeat.

Straight from the horse's mouth: Over at DailyKos, an internal White House memo is reproduced on the Admin's policy for overhauling S.S. and how to convince the American Public it's the way to go. Here's the "meaty" part:

We will focus on Social Security immediately in this new year. Our strategy will probably include speeches early this month to establish an important premise: the current system is heading for an iceberg. The notion that younger workers will receive anything like the benefits they have been promised is fiction, unless significant reforms are undertaken. We need to establish in the public mind a key fiscal fact: right now we are on an unsustainable course. That reality needs to be seared into the public consciousness; it is the pre-condition to authentic reform.
***
The Democrat Party leadership, the AARP, and many others will go after Social Security reform hammer and tongs. See today's silly New York Times editorial (its only one for the day) as one example. But Democrats and liberals are in a precarious position; they are attempting to block reform to a system that almost every serious-minded person concedes needs it. They are in a position of arguing against modernizing a system created almost four generations ago. Increasingly the Democrat Party is the party of obstruction and opposition. It is the Party of the Past.

Kos is up in arms about the memo, and views it as chicanery. Even this liberal-minded pundit, however, sees it simply as the position of the administration with some added language on how to "sell" that position. If Kos believes that W is the first president to sell a policy on fear, then he is woefully misguided (see, e.g. Hillary's National Healthcare stump-speeches).

Anyway, here you have it. This is the W agenda. It's hardly earth-shaking in either its substance or its delivery. And regardless of your take on the issue, the current system is broken. The Dems will no doubt force concessions, but one hopes that the compromise solution doesn't resemble either the quagmire of campaign finance reform, or the ineffectual tax relief plan that was eventually conceded to Bush in the early part of his first term. Real change is needed - only the AARP would argue to the contrary.

Death and Taxes...Graphically: For some, conceptualizing where tax dollars go is difficult. For others, there is no illusion. For them all, there is this visual depiction. Somewhere, George W. Bush is smiling....er smirking.

It Ain't Just Me: Viking Pundit grapples with the existential questions of blogging.

It's been a good run, but it it might just be over. On the right, want to see Krugman kicked again? On the left, want to hear the illogical (and rather ungrammatical) echo chamber at work on Social Security? (Yes, in this entry Josh Marshall is actually agreeing with a reader who says that our national debt is interfering with our ability to balloon the national debt to cover the funding gap on Social Security.) Want a plague on both houses?

Help yourself.

A Review, of Sorts: I did make time to watch Robert MacNeil's "Do You Speak American?" on PBS. I was a fan of his "Story of English" series many years ago, and as an English major I specialized in the history of the language Middle English literature. But I got excited for nothing. The show (a series of three one-hour episodes, really) was very short on information, contained very little technical discussion of dialect (as opposed to accent), focused almost exclusively on vocabulary rather than syntax or grammar (aside from one decent segment on black vernacular), and showcased MacNeil's nearly non-existent interviewing skills. I can't remember him asking a single decent follow-up question in the whole thing.

Perhaps the PBS viewer has gotten dumber in the past 20 years, but there was almost no meat to chew on in the whole program, other than a nod to the quasi-controversy of making English the official language. Yawn. The funny thing is, they're even hawking a "companion book" for the series (PBS stations will sell anything for a little extra do-re-mi). How they stretched it beyond a three-fold flyer is beyond me.

Oh Yeah? I may not post a lot, but . . . well. I'm sexy as the day is long. Anyway, without getting too Lileksian on you, the boy has been out of school for two weeks (an alarmingly long Xmas vacation, if you ask me -- which you didn't) and the wife has been busy like you read about, now commuting two hours plus into Boston once or twice a week, on top of the hour-plus to go see her main client in Worcester most other days. If I've had a spare moment, it has been spent catching my breath, trying to think of something new to make for dinner, or setting up/taking down seasonally appropriate decorations. (You can't say Christmas in this town.)

But still, not much to write about, is there? Yet another comment about the tsunami disaster? Redundancy squared. A friend of mine was in Sri Lanka when it hit, so I'm well aware of how awful it all is. Enough, though.

There was this piece in the Weekly Standard recently that looked at how a federal ruling may put an end to minority set-asides in government spending.

Masked by evasive terminology and justified by tendentious studies, minority business set-asides persist. Politicians know that lawsuits against such programs are costly and time-consuming, and they are not above retaliating against firms with the temerity to sue. And if the government loses after years of litigation, the taxpayers cover the legal fees.

Now that calculus may change, because a federal judge in Miami has just given the victims of preferences an important new tool. On November 10, the governing board of the South Florida Water Management District ($792 million budget) recommended ending its two-decade-old contracting preference program, even though there was no pending litigation. Board members had become worried about being held personally liable for implementing the program.

I'm of mixed feelings on the matter. I'd like to see preferences and set-asides (read: quotas -- those things that we officially don't use in America) demolished and repudiated as unconstitutional (which they are, prima facie -- right, Razor?), but I think this method lets the country off the hook. It begins the process of bringing down the color code, clearly a step in the direction of MLK's "dream." But it skips the difficult debate on the merits of a government that ceases to care what color its citizens are, for any reason. Not to get all touchy-feely, but there is something to be said for closure. This is one of the reasons that the "reparations" movement, as repugnant as it is philosophically, has not been categorically rejected in Washington. There is a real attraction to the idea of making a single payout -- as long as it clears the books of any supposed debt owed to today's black Americans. I don't much like that logic, and I'd rather see reparations (and, in the same way, preferences) fall on the merits; but I do understand the attraction.

100 Oldest ".com" domain names, in order: Find them here. I never would have guessed these names were being snapped up in the mid- to late-80s. It is telling though to see the companies that were aware of ICANN, and who made sure to reserve their names, thereby stopping the cyber-squatting that was to become such the rage in the mid-90s: Intel.com; Apple.com; HP.com; Xerox.com. All companies that had and have a strong tech presence and presumably enough geeks to know that the domains were coming on line for registration.

I wish I had known this before setting my time machine to 1993. I was hoping to snap up 3com.com or UNISYS.com. Oh well. At least I can get in on the whole Enron deal...

5 Things: A great website with a simple idea: lists of "5 Things". Here's my favorite so far: "5 Terrible Fake Names for James Bond Women":

1. Cunnalingua Fränka
2. Bosomy Flava
3. Badonka Donk
4. Felacia Von Succulent
5. Uterus Jones

And we can now put this to rest(?): We all know now how much pride and credit the blogosphere took for foisting Rather on his own font-petard regarding the alleged National Guard reports on Bush's service. Whole websites have been created whose only point is to make fun of Rather - which as Danny might say is "like shooting a barrel full of monkeys in a pond, on a hot summer night that makes tight underwear uncomfortable."

However, the charm of bloggers is that we're all more or less amateurs - we have day jobs that keep us in clothing and fed, while we just use the keyboard as a hobby. Some are better than others; some post more frequently (AHEM!); some are shoddy. Point being, if you're going to attack a professional journalist and his big time news organization, you should be careful to tread carefully in your glass house, lest you stub your toe of indignity against a clear pane (I can abuse metaphors like a horse drinking from a cart he was lead behind).

Here's one view on why the anti-Rather bloggers were just as guilty of rushing to judgment as Rather. Remember, "MSM" doesn't have to be a bad thing. I don't think anyone would want to rely solely on bloggers for their news, unless Top 10 lists, and bad poetry are what keeps our nation running.