Our Man in . . . oblivion, it seems. Sorry I've been a lousy correspondent. Bad news, too: I'm just weeks away from another sabbatical, since I am beginning rehearsals for Much Ado About Nothing. It's a bit of a wake up call to look in the mirror and think, "Yeah, I could play Don John," only to have the director say, "You can play Leonato." No matter. It's a fine cast, a great crew, and, as with everything in serious theater for the last 5 years, it will be the director's allegorical indictment of "the Bush regime." Sigh. What will liberals do with their time when Bush leaves office?

Er, what's that you say? That I never actually returned from my last sabbatical? I suppose you're right. But it has been the Worst. Winter. Ever. I've been sick at least once a month. And when I wasn't sick, someone else in the family was. Plus, it looks like I might have to (gasp!) get a job! After two fine years staying at home with the boy (that's Little Enobarbus), I am facing the fact that he is now enrolled in full-day preschool and will begin kindergarten in the fall. By gad, man, I've almost forgotten how to work, if I ever knew.

So I see that the Iraqi document declassification project is starting to accord quite nicely with the Volcker Report.

Two Iraqi documents dated in March 2003 — on the eve of the U.S.-led invasion — and addressed to the secretary of Saddam Hussein, describe details of a U.S. plan for war. According to the documents, the plan was disclosed to the Iraqis by the Russian ambassador.

(Editor's Note: The Russian ambassador in March 2003 was Vladimir Teterenko. Teterenko appears in documents released by the Volker Commission, which investigated the Oil for Food scandal, as receiving allocations of 3 million barrels of oil — worth roughly $1.5 million. )

Perhaps I don't fully understand the nature of the oil graft in Iraq, but on what planet does oil go for $.50/barrel? Anyhow, more to come, I'm sure. In most totalitarian regimes, there's a real need to write things down, if for no other reason than to pass the buck when dear leader gets angry and wants to shoot some underling: "See, Excellency, I signed this project off to Habib last Thursday. Allah be praised, his is the head that should roll!"

In passing, I note that Viking Pundit is back on line. Okay, Blogger, you don't suck as hard as I thought, but you still suck TKE house bong water.

Finally, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court (the Council of Guardians for the, er, secular theocracy here) has ruled that "local health authorities can restrict smoking inside private clubs." From there, it's a short, short step to criminalizing smoking in my house.

Report from Mardi Gras: Matt Labash tells a great, and long, story of visiting New Orleans during Mardi Gras. And he gets tours from all the right people. Not just anybody can ride in Zulu and party at the Rex ball. That boy's got some pull, or they're really depserate for bodies this year.

Via Vodkapundit.

Canterbury Blog Entries: Put this in the "should have seen it coming" category: Chaucer hath a blog.

Bonus: He's offering an advice column:

Ich have herde of thes "adyce columns," and I woot much of counsel and wysdom, and wolde helpen peple spede in their affaires.

Sende worde to me on myne friendster accounte of youre troubles, and Y shal advyse yow. Yow shal remayne anonymouse, like moste of the politicale poetrye in my period. Yow may signe yowr queries wyth an amusyng acronyme if it pleseth yow.

Those funny Brits: From The Weekly Round-Up, silicon.com's Friday newsletter (subscription required):

Moving on, one established online brand, lastminute.com, found itself thrust
into the spotlight this week following a ruling by the Advertising Standards
Agency relating to some of the company's promotional material.
Everybody's favourite travel and entertainment website recently ran an advertising campaign
publicising special offers on children's tickets for shows in London's West End.
The problem was they chose the slogan: "Like Gary Glitter in a sweet shop, you too can have your pick of kiddy treats in London's theatre world."
No really, they did.
Since launching the ad in one of its popular HTML emails, and enjoying some subsequent conversations with the ASA, lastminute.com has admitted there is a line in the sand and the company has accepted that on that occasion it crossed it.
Mentioning the name of a registered sex offender in order to advertise children's theatre tickets,
lastminute.com conceded, was a bit much.
You don't say.
A statement from the ASA said: "The ASA noted the ad played on contemporary, tasteless humour... We considered the reference to a registered sex offender in conjunction with
images of children in an ad for children's theatre was likely to cause serious or widespread offence."
The Round-Up raises an eyebrow at the slightly nonchalant tone of: "The ASA noted...". As though they were perhaps sat around, sipping coffee, shooting the breeze when one of them said: "Hang on a minute... that lastminute.com email with Gary Glitter... does anybody else think that's a touch close to the bone?"
The ASA said lastminute.com had expressed regret that the email had caused offence and added: "They said their aim was to create advertising which stood out."
And they certainly did that.

I mention it only because I know how fauxpolitik likes to follow everything Gary Glitter.

Cheney "targets" Spratt: I love it when headlines write themselves. For once, though, the Charlotte Observer spurned the easy gag headline. Obviously, I can't resist.

In related news, traffic on I-77 and I-485 is a complete nightmare, and I'll be reduced to going home via underground tunnel. Oh well.

Piece o' Shit: Looks like Blogger has f*cked over our buddy Eric at Viking Pundit. I hope he can recover some of his archive of fine posts.

Blogger, you suck.

Isaac Hayes is intolerant of satire: Isaac Hayes, who was famous a couple decades ago for having sex with a lot of women, or something, and had his career resurrected by two funny white guys who draw two dimensional pictures of children flinging poop and making anal sex jokes, no longer thinks their brand of humor shows enough tolerance for delicate sensibilities and devout religious beliefs. And, who knew, his religious flavor is of a particularly satiriizable nature (sorry if I'm making up a word there).

Hayes, who has played the ladies' man/school cook in the animated Comedy Central satire since 1997, said in a statement Monday that he feels a line has been crossed.

"There is a place in this world for satire, but there is a time when satire ends and intolerance and bigotry towards religious beliefs of others begins," the 63-year-old soul singer and outspoken Scientologist said.

"Religious beliefs are sacred to people, and at all times should be respected and honored," he continued. "As a civil rights activist of the past 40 years, I cannot support a show that disrespects those beliefs and practices."

Nice to see, though, that Stone and Parker are having none of his shit and won't kiss his ass with some "respectfully disagree" pablum.

"South Park" co-creator Matt Stone responded sharply in an interview with The Associated Press Monday, saying, "This is 100 percent having to do with his faith of Scientology... He has no problem - and he's cashed plenty of checks - with our show making fun of Christians."

What civil rights activism and religious satire have to do with each other, I'm not sure, but I bet it helps Isaac Hayes convince young women to have sex with his droopy, sorry, pathetic ass so I say congratulations and enjoy pretending to be relevant.

Deck Chairs, Titanic? Howard Dean, late of the Democratic wing of the Democratic Party, is rushing to fill the leadership vacuum in his party by . . . well, by trying to drag the racial spoils system into the presidential primaries.

Minorities have been pushing for more of a voice in the early voting, noting that Iowa and New Hampshire are overwhelmingly white. The new early states could come from the South and West to provide regional diversity as well.

If black people want to vote earlier, let them move to Iowa and New Hampshire, I say. At any rate, this will do nothing to help the Democrats' chances. (All they can hope for is that the GOP nominates a corpse or a criminal in '08 -- though with the Republicans, either one is better than an outside shot.) At best, it will merely be a furniture shift, perhaps intended to hold onto the loyalty of minority groups. (At worst, it could be a signal that the Dems fear minorities defecting to a charismatic Republican candidate.) As I've argued before, the Dems are so in thrall to their splintered pressure groups -- minority groups as much as any -- that a Democrat nominee ends up straitjacketed before the general election even begins. Pushing for minorities to have "more of a voice" in the process is like pushing for labor unions to have more of a voice. It just drags them further off center.

I may be wrong, but it seems to me that 2004 was the Dems' perfect storm. The base was fired up, the incumbent was on the ropes in the media, and every Democrat but Hillary wanted to run. Then they let a knucklehead like Dean drag them down the back alley of intraparty conflict, and they ended up sacrificing the old DLC platform (and Joe Lieberman, the best of their candidates) on the altar of the fair-trade-and-nose-ring crowd, who rewarded them by staying home in droves on election day. Afterward, the party punishes Dean by making him their leader. This is crazy thinking.

Best of luck to you, Howard, in your efforts to push the party further left. And give my best to Rove when he stops by with your next check.

Tomasky's LQ Test: Piffle. Tomasky's quiz is the very type of inside baseball info that progressive journalists and think-tank types believe is meaningful to governance.

The economy didn't zoom because Clinton knew obscure French political philosophers, as Tomasky admits. "But," Tomasky says, "his knowledge of that and 500 other things like it informed the decisions that made the economy zoom." Typical technocratic socialist wet dream, that trivia-minded bureaucrats create good economies. The economy zoomed because technology increased productivity steadily throughout the 90s, which (as most of us will recall) led to an optimism that made the economy zoom a little too fast at times, claiming gains based mostly on an "irrational exuberance" (and no, you don't get 500 points for knowing who said that) that said that the internet could make us all millionaires.

If the economy was influenced to any extent by policy matters, which it surely was, I would give that credit, in order, to Greenspan for keeping inflation in check through solid monetary policy (remember when libs all thought monetary policy was bunk?); GOP House budget chief John Kasich for being an arm twisting sonofabitch and the closest the House leadership has had to a fiscal conservative since Dick Armey called Barney Frank "Barney Fag"; and, finally, Bill Clinton for getting himself into so many scandals that he was unable to gain any momentum on his big progressive ideas (like his health care "reform," which would have dicked up the economy but good) and had to govern as essentially an incrementalist moderate.

Finally, what some wonk at a liberal mag thinks is essential to the intellectual life of American politicians is in no way dispositive. That John Edwards doesn't know who James Q. Wilson is, is not the same as George Bush not knowing, say, that FDR let Sidney Hillman make trade policy decisions. At least James Q. Wilson is relevant today, given that he is one of the leading social scientists in the country, while FDR and Hillman are both dead.

Anyway, I got 14 correct, which I think is pretty outstanding considering the foolish questions he asks.

For our resident geniuses: Which I so totally am not. A quiz from The American Prospect's Michael Tomasky. My score was unmentionable. Even by Jonah's "d'oh. Of course!" standards I wouldn't have done so hot, though I would have at least cracked double digits.

I Guess I'll Chime In: My favorite line from John Stewart was shortly after the "Mafia" won for best "song": "For those keeping score: Martin Scorscese -- 0 Oscars; Three-6 Mafia -- 1." I hate Oscars that are given in one category so as to apologize for not giving an Oscar elsewhere.

The Pimp song. The voters must have had a collective attack of white guilt for not giving Hustle & Flow any real accolades, so they vote in this god-awful droning to show that the Academy is down with flow. It's like the make-up nomination. Giamatti gets robbed for Sideways (not even an nomination!), and then they throw him into the mix for Cinderella Man, even though he was just very good in that movie.

Brokeback Mountain was a good first draft as Mrs. Eno put it. But it was still quite moving. As for the controversy, I mean, could there have been a less graphic movie depicting gay sex? I suppose that's the problem with casting straight actors (so they say, anyway!) -- they'll do the kiss and pantomime some other activities, but when it gets down to the fast and furious, well, let's just throw in some stirring guitar riffs and cut to the next morning of sly smiles and stiff walks.

See, I thought Crash was a piece of high art junk. I mean, I didn't mind watching it, and thought there were some good moments, and certainly excellent acting, but I hate these movies where everyone is magically inter-connected, and everyone learns their lessons at the end through overly contrived plot devices. It's more like a piece of video art than a movie -- I felt like I needed thick black glasses and a beret.

For best picture, I don't see what was wrong with Munich, which I thought did about as good a job trying to show humanity in the face of terrible violence as you're ever going to see. That movie had me at jump street. I think that the Academy is just sick of Spielberg -- or maybe it's a punishment for The Terminal. Speaking of which, what is wrong with Tom Hanks' hair? I hope it's just for some serial killer movie -- I didn't think The DaVinci Code had any mysteries hidden in the protagonists's hairline.

Reese Witherspoon was deserving, but the field was very weak. Felicity Huffman is a t.v. actress -- and I say that as praise. She's great in doing shorter scenes, and has a wicked sense of humor. I just don't know that I can stomach her for nearly two hours dressed as an ugly man in drag. Dame Judy -- it's time to well, it's time to stop. I mean, keep acting, but no more nominations. She plays the same character each time.

Clooney is both insufferable and yet damn charming -- I suppose that's why he doesn't get married -- what's the point? By the time the charm wears off, he's moved on. I do applaud him though for really caring about his movies -- I mean, the guy had to get spinal surgery from acting too hard! Not something you'll see Keanu doing anytime soon.

Well, I could go on (and I know you want me to) -- but I must get back to billing clients for my time.

As for Eno's distaste for Pirates -- well, there's two sequels being filmed right now, so there's room for it to grow on you. Snob.

It's hard out here for an unintelligible rap artist with nothing to wear. But not too hard, I guess, to steal the Oscar for best song away from Dolly Parton, whose song "Travelin' Thru", from Transamerica, was the only one of the three nominees that I could even accurately identify as a song, let alone make any judgement along the lines of good or bad. For a song to win an Oscar it ought to be something that you would actually listen to outside of the context of the movie itself. I find it hard to believe anyone would listen to four minutes of moaning by some broad they've never heard of, from a movie they've never seen. And I haven't understood a single rapper since Snoop Dogg. No master of locution, at least when Snoop said something was fershizzle, you could pretend to know what that meant, even if you were as geographically and culturally removed from West Coast rap as possible without actually being an Eskimo.

I mean it, Three 6 Mafia, what the hell are you saying.

Here We Go: Why did "Brokeback" lose? Must be the gay thing, right? Even though George Clooney already told us that Hollywood is so far ahead of you on the moral goodness curve that you can only hope to one day be that . . . um, good.

Plus, Hanks got the nod for "Philadelphia" years ago. And Swank got dykey in "Boys Don't Cry on the Side" or whatever and still took home the gold. So, please, no jive about those famously socially conservative members of the Academy slamming the closet door.

We Like Us, We Really Like Us! The wife (that's Mrs. Enobarbus) and I watched the Oscars last night. Long, long ago, many years B.K. (before kids), we were movie buffs, particularly favoring the Ritz in Center City, so Oscar night was always a tradition. For several years, though, we've really only been able to glance at the show, and we usually haven't even seen all the nominated "Best Picture" films.

Anyhow, I didn't think it possible for Hollywood to become more full of itself, but last night, listening to George Clooney and that sawed-off Academy president, you'd swear that the movies killed Jim Crow, fomented Stonewall, and might cure cancer next week. Who knew?

I liked "Crash." In its own way, it's a bit right-wing in that it offers no easy answers, no formulas, no monochromatic morality, no easy redemption. That's kind of refreshing, I think, in the bubble that is L.A., to have an artistic statement that consciously shuns the "let's all hold hands and sing" liberal panacea.

My comments on "Good Night, etc." are already on record. Good flick, but one-sided fiction.

I didn't see "Brokeback," but I think the controversy is overhyped, and I don't believe it lost because of queer characters. Mrs. Eno saw it and called it "the first draft of a good movie."

I didn't see "Memoirs of a Geisha" since I haven't read the book, and I don't want a cheesy movie to spoil it.

And "Walk the Line"? Jon Stewart was right, it was "Ray" with white people, and I liked it for what it was -- a glossy biopic. But it surely wasn't in the same class as the other nominees.

One question: When is Don Cheadle going to get his due, after being snubbed for "Traffic" and "Crash," then robbed for "Hotel Rwanda" (losing to Jamie Foxx, for god's sake)? Wake the hell up.

Bonus movie note: Netflix sent "Pirates of the Caribbean" last week, so I threw it on right away based on Razor's glowing review. What a piece of unmitigated crap! It was fully twice as long as it needed to be, with a plot overloaded with and overcomplicated by reversals and twists. And Johnny Depp (who is quite overrated in most things) was actually painful to watch in an overmannered performance; even his shambling, loosey goosey physicality seemed stiff and contrived. The typically charming Keira Knightly was wasted entirely, while looking far more masculine than her beau -- that elf guy from that trilogy thing. A failure. Walk the plank, indeed!

What did the AP know and when did they know it: The newly discovered video of Pres. Bush looking clueless in a video conference the day before Hurricane Katrina is all over the news today. It's the smoking gun that everyone's been looking for, proving once and for all that Bush hates black people and likes sending hurricanes to major U.S. cities then laughing away while they await their precious FEMA and National Guard. Interestingly, Michael "Heck Of A Job" Brown, who people wouldn't have let take care their goldfish after the ineptidtude displayed for about four solid days by his agency, is now the smartest guy in the room, or so it seems if you listen to the MSM. Every time he criticizes Bush, Chertoff, DoHS, or the entire administration at large his credibility, and hat size, goes up 50%.

I wondered why it took so long, though, for this video to be released. The transcript has apparently been available since September, but who reads those, right? And the public had a right to know. The press corps needs to be alerted in a timely manner, too. Why was evidence kept under wraps?

Why to sell advertising, of course.

The Associated Press (AP) has officially launched its AP Online Video Network in the U.S. after two months in beta. Powered by MSN Video and using AP
content, the ad-supported service will allow some 4,000 AP newspaper and
broadcast member websites to offer a free breaking-news video content to their
audience, initially totaling 45 million unique visitors.

Only nine hours after the launch of the network, paidContent points
out, the AP posted video of President Bush, Homeland Security chief Michael
Chertoff and other government officials being warned about Katrina, a day before
it struck.

Launch an investigation! Call David Gregory!

Update: Scratch that, don't call David Gregory. He's sleeping it off. Via Jeff G.

I (Heart) Libertarians: A few months ago I was noodling around the Web site for the Mecklenburg (NC) County Libertarian Party. I don't remember why, but it resulted in me subscribing to their email list. There were some Libertarian candidates on the local level in the last few elections and I voted for some of them, but the party doesn't have much of a voice in Charlotte. No surprise, but I thought I'd see what they were writing about.

I don't know how many people are in their circle-jerk but all I receive are emails about why the next meeting can't be at this or that restaurant because of location-price-noise-smoking policy etc. and whether they should have a table at a gun show next month. The occasional letter to the editor, but not much else. It's a Yahoo! email address that I don't even look at every day, so even though it wasn't what I was hoping for, like some rational debate or comment, I didn't bother to unsubscribe.

I've now unsubscribed. The final straw was the unbelievable rudeness shown to the one outside-the-club individual to open his mouth.

Several emails had been sent over the weekend about a press release the party had been crafting for several weeks opposing a new bill to use some public land/funding to build the local minor league baseball team a new downtown stadium (they're going bankrupt in a little town just over the border in South Carolina and could probably make a go of it if they moved closer to town. The city is turning the land under debate into a giant public park anyway, so the team and its supporters have launched a final effort to do a stadium deal). The text of the press release was a little amateurish and contained a typo or two and some obviously fake quotes, attributed to quasi-fictional people. They were simply first name only versions of other people on the list who are active in the group. They fall under the heading of "fake, but accurate" and none of the people "quoted" objected, at least not strongly (although there was much serious discussion of whether this issue should be discussed at the next meeting - discuss amongst yourselves, indeed). Today a response comes from a guy who had "only been subscribing for a short time" who pointed out that maybe fake quotes weren't such a good idea and that frankly, their overall level of debate was "unimpressive." Wow, talk about throwing a sack of cats in the bathtub. Here is a represntative response.

Who is this Idiot and why is on our list? Is he a supporter of our principles or
not? And which qoutes does he claim are made up?Lastly, our goal of this list is
not to impress you.

I think it's time I backed away slowly.

For the record, I'm opposed to the baseball stadium deal, as I was to the two basketball arena deals, one of which passed.

Crappy day: I've been lucky enough to have one relative and once good friend serve tours in Iraq over the last couple years and come home safely. Not everyone's so lucky.

From today's email:

Subject: Ben

My brother Ben was killed in Iraq yesterday. I amheaded up to Buffalo
tomorrow to be with family.

This was from a good friend here in Charlotte. His brother had been in Iraq about 10 days. He was about 20 years old. I met him once, but didn't know him other than that and don't know much about how he died, except that he may have been shot.

In case you had any doubt: I know we've hashed over how little anyone cares about the new James Bond movie, or any of them since Godfinger really, but in case some part inside you was holding out hope that Daniel Craig could breathe new life to the role, sorry. He's now officially less qualified than The Skirt. Pathetic.

Fun with physics (?): This is strangely addictive. Don't know what to make of it really, but you have to play with the combinations to get more pieces...

See, we brought them terrorism: When I heard about the explosion of the golden dome in Iraq yesterday, I was wondering how this would get blamed on the U.S. since it's obviously a Shiite vs. Sunni issue. Well, thank goodness, I didn't have to wait long (courtesy of the BBC -- natch):

Protesters in several cities took to the streets following the bombing, some shouting anti-American and anti-Israeli slogans.
"Death to America which brought us terrorism," they chanted in Samarra.

Yes, but we also brought Wrigley gum, Lucky Strikes, and nylons, so I think fair is fair.

Outsourced blogging may be as bad as outsourced national security, but I'm forced to do so. And Peter King and Chuck Schumer can blame it on my tin ear and cold, capitalist heart.

And so I present to you my take on the Dubai Ports World flap, as written by the Wall Street Journal editorial board.

Preview: Michael Totten is interviewed at NRO today by Stephen Spruiell. It provides a glimpse at what is, hopefully, to come on his blog as he reports on his trip to Iraq.

A Small Point . . . But it has been bugging me. All the media outlets have been talking about these cartoons that depict "the prophet" Mohammed. Who says Mohammed is a prophet? Did the media convert to Islam whilst I wasn't watching? Do you suppose that cartoons lampooning Jesus would be described by the media as depicting "the Lord and Savior Jesus Christ"? Yeah, I didn't think so either.

A man's hybrid: Finally Hollywood libs who want to show their commitment to going green but don't want to pull up to the club in a freakin' Prius have something to drive. The all EV version of the Mullen GT. Not bad.

Via Vodkapundit.

Cheney, The Shootist: When I saw the headline "VP shoots lawyer" my assumption was that the Bush administration had finally gotten serious about Tort Reform.

Whew, had to get that out of my system. Now that I've had my fun, Andrew Stuttaford gets the last word:

And please, please, please, spare us the sanctimonious hell of national "teaching
moments", teary apologia, and sermons on gun safety.

Harry Smith in an orange hunting vest, "walking up quail" with a pushbroom in a New York parking lot this morning, preaching proper hunting safety and etiquette, was enough to make me drop my Honey Bunches O' Oats.

Now You Know: All this while I thought Totten's blog was quiet because he was gearing up to go to Iraq. Turns out he's there and back already.

Sorry for misleading everyone about my travel schedule. For those of you who forgot...a few weeks ago I said I was beginning my Iraq trip today.

At least one organization on the U.S. terrorist watch list already monitors my Web site, and a Lebanese friend of mine convinced me that it would be smart not to advertise to the entire planet when I would be in that country. That’s why hardly any new material has been posted on this Web site lately.

He's already got his first piece up, about arriving in Kurdistan. Click on over and read the blogosphere's best reporter.

Fashion Man Attacks! Steve H. channels Razor.

More U2: Steve Green doesn't get them. I had always assumed that because they were sort of a straight-laced "message" band, and because they were Irish, that they went best with a good drunk. (Every band has its own recreational-chemical synergy, you realize.) Songs like "Gloria" and "I Will Follow" sure sound that way. But U2 isn't a booze band; Unforgettable Fire and Joshua Tree made me realize that U2 requires marijuana. Problem is, by the time I'd figured that out, Achtung Baby came along -- suddenly U2 was an Ecstasy band. I learned to like Achtung Baby, and tolerate Zooropa, but only after hearing "Zoo Station" at a rave.

And REM? Maybe Tylenol with codeine for everything up to Life's Rich Pageant, and then wine coolers.

Moon Over My Grammy: So I watched a bit of the Grammys last night. Just goes to show you that no real music has been made in quite a few years. U2 won, even though Coldplay's very U2-ish album was better than U2's actual album. There was a time when the Grammys were flavor-of-the-month. Now they're just flavor-of-last-month. U2? Mariah Carey? Green Day? Linkin Park? Didn't I see these same awards five years ago?

Well, John Prine won his annual folk award, which brings up two points. First, calling Prine a "folk singer" is like calling the Beatles a "pop band." Perhaps technically accurate, but wholly inadequate. Second, it is likely that he was branded as folk music since no actual folk music is worth giving a Grammy to. And Alison Krauss won the country album award. She's a wonderful musician, but you never hear her, since you have to switch off the country station as soon as Big & Rich come on. (Roughly every 12 minutes.)

Speaking of folk, loved the lifetime award for those old folkies, the Weavers. Tom Hanks (apparently played by Kevin Nealon this year) couldn't even remember their names. But those nasty old anti-commie blacklists ruined their career, which, based on the clip we saw was largely built on making money off honkified Huddie Ledbetter tunes. Wanna bet that they made a little extra cake by listing themselves as co-composers or arrangers? And along the lines of theft, Springsteen really thinks he's Dylan now, eh? With the bed-head hair, looking like he slept in his clothes, and the idiotic anti-war shout-out, "Bring 'em home!" Okay, Bruce, we'll just all hold hands instead and try to figure out why they hate us. That worked well for the Europeans in the thirties, too, I hear. And there's nothing much more socially patronizing than the millionaire liberal dressing and grooming like a homeless man. Reminds me of the way white liberals have hijacked the civil rights movement and attempted a moral equivalency argument for lifestyle rights, like the right not to get AIDS from your own stupid behavior, or the right not to have to "choose between" groceries and prescriptions. I think I like that argument, actually. I mean why should I have to choose between groceries and hookers. Surely Uncle Sam could pick up the tab on some of this.

Sorry. Ranting off topic.

The White Stripes won for best "alternative" album. Alternative? Two things: 1) If the music industry is giving you a major award, you are not the alternative to anything. 2) If you create a widely played, critically slobbered-on single by ripping off a 40-year-old Otis Redding riff, you are not the alternative to anything.

Oh, and Sly showed up, shuffling on to stage like the burned-out husk of a genius that he is. Look, Stand! is one of my favorite albums ever, and Sly belongs in any Hall of Fame you've got, but he's clearly in Syd Barrett territory now.

And that was that. I'm unimpressed. When I peek through the list of awards, the first thing I want to listen to is "Masters of Hawaiian Slack Key Guitar" (which won for best Hawaiian recording, not a heavily contested category, I figure). After that maybe "Shake, Rattle and Polka!" (why are polka album titles exclamations?) by Jimmy Sturr and his Orchestra. Sad.

Side splitting: Dusty Scott is one of the funniest writers, online or off, that I've ever read. His Atlanta Illustrated blog is funny as hell, but his personal blog, Pork Tornado, is where the best stuff comes out. Sadly, it's updated with all the regularity of, well, me after the Super Bowl Taco Dip Fiasco I'm try to forget ("How much cheese can one man consume? Flyer's inside look at 11").

Today's entry is particularly good. Don't read it will eating lunch at your computer.

Here in the Bible Belt: The Charlotte porn industry happens to be thriving, in case you were worrried.

Charlotte is known for religious fervor, NASCAR and banking. But what some
may not know is that the Queen City is also home to the largest distributor of
mobile porn and all of those video iPods sold this holiday are creating an
explosion in the porn industry.

Fourteen million video iPods were sold in
the first two months of their holiday release. A couple of days after they
took the market by storm some users started loading them up with
pornography. A Charlotte company called Xobile corners the market on
providing it. The traffic on their site just for iPod content was eight
million hits, which ultimately brought their server down and illustrated just
how big the latest porn boom is.

Needless to say, there are plenty of people in town who are a tad miffed by this company's presence in good ol' Charlotte. Me, I say there are just some jobs I don't want going overseas, free trade be damned. Tax breaks are the least we should do; maybe a parade in their honor.

Seriously, this company is a bunch of computer geeks who figured out early on the one thing that was sure to make money on the internet, and they've been very successful. The pay their taxes, create jobs and are doing nothing that wouldn't get done anyway, just in a different city/state. As the article goes on to state, they don't produce anything, just code it and sell it, though my feeling wouldn't be any different if they were shooting it next door to City Hall or a Baptist Church. Legal is legal, folks, your delicate sensibilities notwithstanding.

Full Disclosure: I have several friends, though not close ones, who work for Xobile's parent company, AEBN, Inc. And by not close I mean, no, I can't get free porn for myself or any of you.

More Super Bowl: The Super Bowl is not exactly a big deal in my house (we watch tennis and figure skating -- and f*ck you, I like figure skating!), but I did tune in last night. I was well pleased with the outcome. Cinderella story, homecoming for Bettis, etc. Lovely.

A lot of folks are crying this morning for taking a four-point spread, which was just nuts. The Steelers played dummy offense for about 19 minutes of that game and still kicked the crap out of Seattle. I thought the over/under was high (at about 46), but if you figure all the red zone situations both teams blew, it was pretty close to correct.

More Proposals of Modesty:

Age, it seems, has mellowed the Rolling Stones, who agreed to have their half-time performance at Sunday's Super Bowl censored twice for lyrics deemed too sexually explicit for family viewing.

The NFL said Monday that the British rock and roll legends had been consulted about the cuts prior to their appearance . . .

In an apparent compromise, Mick Jagger actually sang the offending lyrics, but the NFL, which produced the show, switched off his mike so that they went unheard in the stadium and on the broadcast by the ABC television network.

Shades of "Let's Spend Some Time Together" perhaps? The Stones, far from being edgy bad boys, are simply still willing to suck it up for the establishment, even if it means bowdlerizing their act. I mean, do they really need the money that badly? Cause nothing says "edgy" less than toning down your act for a paycheck.

A Modest Proposal: Please, please, please do away with the "[Insert Corporate Sponsor Here] Superbowl Halftime Show, presented by [Insert Secondary Corporate Sponsor Here], featuring [insert over-the-hill, disinterested vanilla Brit rocker here]."

We went from a non-sensical, briefly titillating, but mostly smoke-and-mirrors halftime show with Janet and Justin in 2004, to Macka (or was that just a Fidelity Investments commercial??) in ought-five, to now, the Creaking Stones. They were just awful. From the I-could-have-predicted-it-last-week playlist (Satisfaction, Start Me Up and second single from new album [which, after that performance, is just a SURE THING to rocket up the charts!]), to the awful sound, to the complete lack of cohesion and any sign of genuine interest, it was a debacle from jump street. The only fun part is seeing whether Keith is still breathing.

No more halftime shows that don't feature marching bands and drumlines (they have proven adept at getting on and off the field in the supposedly alotted 15 minutes). I mean, I know ABC wants to justify selling airtime during halftime, but really, isn't eighteen million a second enough during the rest of the game? No one cares about halftime -- that's when you get seconds on chili and hit the "turlet" (sometimes at the same time). At my Superbowl watching venue, only one person was interested that the Stones were on, and she's from Austria -- a place not known for its discerning taste (well, not since the 1700s).

I thought Dr. John, Ms. Aretha and Mr. Neville did a decent job with the National Anthem, as even though Aretha appears to have eaten a couple of The Supremes on her visit to Detroit, she can still belt out the notes. I didn't think the Star Spangled Banner was particularly well adapted to Aaaron's warbling, but all-in-all, a fine job, and since sporting events are for some reason required to start with the Anthem, that's a fine a place as any to "showcase" yesterday's hottest stars.

Halftime should not be an event -- it's an intermission. I think talking hotdogs and popcorn boxes would do just fine really.

Business cliches: Here's something my fellow bloggers will get a kick out of. Last week I went to the Charlotte launch of Microsoft's new version of CRM software. We are considering partnering with a company as a reseller of the service and wanted to check it out for ourselves. Microsoft has a gazillion companies who sell add-ons and custom features for CRM and they were all their hawking their wares. I got cornered by one guy and got his pitch about their product. All great. Told him to send me an email. Here's what he sent (edited to protect the guilty):

Hi (flyer),

It was a pleasure meeting you at the Microsoft CRM launch
event in Charlotte, and thanks for stopping by our table.

To remind you, our products are designed to extend the functionality and industry focus of MS-CRM. Our products enhance Core functionality, as well as Sales and Service productivity. Visit our website at *****.

I know you guys are focused on the Marketing module, so there may be some synergy to partner on deals. We have just begun live, interactive webinars for our v3 products, and our SDK which is now available. You can register now at *****.
We also have free, 15-day evaluations of our products. You can register for these at *****.

Pricing has been reduced significantly from v1.2, creating an even
faster ROI.

Please let me know if I can be of any assistance.
Thanks, and I look forward to the opportunity to work with you.

This is like a Where's Waldo of business buzz words mixed together. If he'd just worked in "paradigm shift" he'd win the stuffed bear. Keep in mind, I probably got chatted up by a haf dozen of these guys and I can't remember what any of them do. If you're going to follow up with me, how about giving me a clue as to what you and your product do.

Actual thoughts on Boehner: It's easy to be a reformer when you're new in town. Once you are the establishment it gets a lot trickier (that pretty much sums up the entire Republican Party at this point). Not many congressional lifers calling to throw the bums out. That's one reason I was a big fan of another Ohio Rep., John Kasich. Too bad he's squandering his talents on Fox News, but at least he realized you can only be an advocate for change in one place for so long and retain credibility. Eventually you have to move up or out.

That's not to say Boehner won't be an improvement over DeLay, or that he can't be a capable leader. In fact, I think he'll be a much better advocate for the Republican Party than DeLay because he doesn't have the baggage from having been the Whip. He chaired, if memory serves (too lazy to Google, how sad) Ways and Means so he knows how to reach a compromise without breaking kneecaps. I'm just not sure he would have been elected if wholesale reform were really what the party is after. Incremental change may be possible, though, and that may be the best we can hope for.

Color me baited: If only to to quell the uproar that will ensue the first time somebody at DailyKos Googles "Boehner, hookers" I'll jump into the fray. There were NO HOOKERS involved. The Congressman tips all girls $500 for lapdances and provides sugar bowls of coke in the limo as matter of course. No strings attached.
Just kidding, it was Kennedy's party; John and I mostly sat in the corner smoking Camels and drinking Wild Turkey the whole night, talking about the heady "Gang of Seven" days and how the movie deal never worked out (Santorum wouldn't sign off due to the excessivley violent vision proposed by then unknown director Quentin Tarantino - apparently it called for John Doolittle to debut the "Five Finger Exploding Heart Technique later worked into the Kill Bill 2 screenplay).
Okay, maybe not. But he did speak to my Poli Sci class at UD and he bummed a light off me which I figured made him much cooler than any other Republican dork in a suit. It's amazing how college kids brains work, eh.

"C" is for Castration, Calamnity and Chaos: You never know what will pop over at Opinion Journal. Comes now an article on death metal and the unique vocal stylings of the lead singers who practice that craft. Apparently, according to those in the know at the Wall Street Journal, the singers invoke what's known as "Cookie Monster Singing" to spell out (in an indecipherable manner) their thoughts on dismemberment, death, torture and pain.

The author even got Frank Oz to comment, which is just fantastic as far as I'm concerned.

Boehner: I don't know much about the new guy. Sounds like the usual, though:

Boehner has a strong conservative voting record, winning a perfect score from the American Conservative Union in 2004 and a "0" from the liberal Americans for Democratic Action. Conservative groups rallied behind the choice.

"John Boehner has a solid record of support for pro-growth principles and a history of ... (enacting) those principles into law," said Pat Toomey, president of the Club for Growth.

Boehner is also pro-business. He was president of a plastics manufacturing company in Ohio before coming to Congress. The National Association of Manufacturers called him a "longtime friend."

But he also has ties to Washington lobbyists, a fact that worried some Republicans hoping to put K Street scandals behind them.

Actually, I respect the Club for Growth's opinion, if only because their conservatism is economic, rather than social, making them the leaders of the libertarian wing of the GOP. Still, they're an advocacy group, thus inclined to put lipstick on the pig.

I do wish Flyer would chime in here, since he is the only blogger I know who scored hookers with Boehner. No, wait, I'm misremembering -- it wasn't hookers. What was it Flyer?

Uhh, Mr. President, ExxonMobil on Line 3: We should all know better than to hold W to his word when he is speaking about "addiction" or ummm, "math". Apparently, when W said he wanted the U.S. to cut its "addiction to oil" by replacing "more than 75 percent of our oil imports from the Middle East by 2025," what he was really saying was

''This was purely an example,'' Energy Secretary Samuel Bodman said.

He said the broad goal was to displace foreign oil imports, from anywhere, with domestic alternatives. He acknowledged that oil is a freely traded commodity bought and sold globally by private firms. Consequently, it would be very difficult to reduce imports from any single region, especially the most oil-rich region on Earth.

Asked why the president used the words ''the Middle East'' when he didn't really mean them, one administration official said Bush wanted to dramatize the issue in a way that ''every American sitting out there listening to the speech understands.'' The official spoke only on condition of anonymity because he feared that his remarks might get him in trouble.

Now, I can certainly understand how some speech at a VFW might get taken out of context, or if W was doing one of his new Q&A's, he might use bold examples to sell his overall message, but uhh, wasn't this language in the State of the Union Address? You know, the one that is Constitutionally mandated (well, in one form or another)?

Listen, I think all SOTUs are so much balderdash, and I wish we'd go back to the Jeffersonian ideal of handing in a written list of "stuff I'd like to git done in the next year or so," as opposed to displacing "Fear Factor" or whatever was on. But, if we're going to have this farcical "speech" with 60 breaks for applause (and scowls), then let's at least try to say what we mean, or maybe agree to wait say, 72 hours before we go about spinning the words our speechwriters spent weeks putting together.

Two Names: Eleanor Rigby. Stanley Jordan. Put the two together, and you get something pretty awesome.

More Superbowl Coverage: Here's a look at the distilled truth over at the Worldwide Leader in Sports.

As for me? I'm taking the Hawks, 24-17.

Just in case I bought a box of Worrisome Washcloths to wave around...what's that? Oh sorry, Horrendous Hankies, you know, to wave around whenever the Ste....hmmmm? Towels? Oh dear...I feel I've been deceived. Who would have thought that guy selling the Official Superbowl Merchandise from his shopping cart was in fact nothing more than a low down counterfeiter?

Uh Oh: Google misses analysts expecatations. After hour trading does not bode well:

GOOGLE (RT-ECN)
Symbol: GOOG
Last Trade: 359.42 4:51PM ET
After Hours Change: Down 73.2401 (16.93%)
Today's Change: Down 67.40 (15.79%)
Bid: 359.35
Ask: 359.83

Obligatory Pre-Superbowl Post: Decent story here about the brothers Courson, Steve and Bruce. Steve played for the Steelers during the heady days of the steel curtain, when the terrible towel was something that hung from Bradshaw's belt. He became an anti-steroids crusader after his health was destroyed by them. Bruce, never much of a football fan, still roots for the Steelers, his late brother's old team. (Steve died in an accident last year.) I like the part about how he taught himself German and Russian to better study history. I'm sure that happens all the time in the NFL, eh?

Annoying NPR Trait; No. 14 of 38: Listening to Sunday's Weekend Edition and there was a report by the ubiquitous and, per NPR's mission statement, oddly-accented, Sylvia Poggioli [Note: despite her not quite-Italian-but-what-the-hell-is-it accent, as her own bio admits, she was born in the good old-U-S-of-A -- Providence, RI to be exact (and to be clear, while put-upon accents are bad enough, at least she doesn't suffer from one of the various speech impediments that seem to afflict about 1/5 of the staff at NPR)]. I don't even remember the story at the moment, but she was quoting from various European newspapers about the subject. First up, what Sylvi-dahling called (if memory serves me) the "Viennese Daily" which I believe she meant the "Wiener Zeitung" which translates into "Viennese Newspaper". I could be wrong -- the exact paper is not important to my point, what follows is:

Then she prattles on for a while in her up-and-down accent, coming to her next paper, which I cannot recall here because...yes, she said it in Italian -- her "native" tongue (to my ear, it sounded like approximately 27 syllables thrown together into one, maybe two words).

See, I got two beefs: 1) She didn't dare try the awkward germanic title of the Viennese newspaper, but [it's my suspicion that] 2) she picked an Italian newspaper as her second source, just so she could show how good her Italian is.

Too good for the Adolphs of the world Sylvia? And you're telling me you couldn't find a perfectly decent article in the Des Moines Register [pronounced "dess moynes"] regarding the fall of the Euro or how strikes by railway workers in Kosovo save lives? Bahhhh.

Live or Memorex?: I don't know how long it must have taken to get the video game to sync with the video, but in any event, kudos.

What am I talking about? Well of course it's a side-by-side simulation using Grand Prix 4 of (what appears to be) a time trial at Spa in a Jordan F1 racer.

Pretty amazing. You'll not want to use a dial up to watch, of course.

Aussie Oh How Wrong: That'll teach you to bet my card. Henin hangs on to beat Sharapova, and Clijsters injures her ankle and gives Mauresmo the spot in the final. I may be continuing my streak of lousy predictions, but in a Mauresmo-Henin final, you gotta like Henin.

Update: Or, you know, not.

A Terrorist Organization Grabs the Levers of Power in a Dictatorial Quasi-State: So Hamas is now officially in charge at the Palestinian Authority. This is probably worse than them being unofficially in charge, when Arafat was their hostage. Note the "world reactions" part of the article:

Reactions to the Hamas victory streamed in from around the world. Italian Premier Silvio Berlusconi, according to news reports, called it a "very, very, very bad result." But Benita Ferrero-Waldner, the European Union's external relations commissioner, said Hamas must be "ready to work for peace" with Israel if it joins the Palestinian government.

U.N. Secretary-General Kofi Annan congratulated the Palestinian people on the peaceful elections, which he views as an important step toward a Palestinian state.

President Bush told The Wall Street Journal on Wednesday the United States will not deal with Hamas until it renounces its position calling for the destruction of Israel.

Kind of tells you all you need to know. Bush and Berlusconi disapprove; oh, but they're both part of the Axis of Cowboy, after all. Kofi sends flowers and a mash note.

More: Click here to find out why Laurence Simon says

Dig a six-foot hole in the lawn at the Carter Center and lay a trail of peanuts from the airport to it's edge.

Boot meets ass, shovel meets dirt, Cartner meets destiny. Film at 11.

BB&T: A big financial player from Flyer's neck of the woods comes out swinging against eminent domain.

BB&T, the nation’s ninth largest financial holdings company with $109.2 billion in assets, announced today that it "will not lend to commercial developers that plan to build condominiums, shopping malls and other private projects on land taken from private citizens by government entities using eminent domain."

Via Volokh Conspiracy's Tyler Cowen, who has lots more in his comments section, including some nuggets like this one.

Google F.U. (that is, Follow Up): You know I used to be a big fan of Google, and I defended them when economic know-nothings made them the latest windmill in their campaign against successful American companies (Microsoft, Walmart). But I'm not naive, and I don't buy into corporate philosophies. Everyone's got a price.

Remember the old joke about the man and the woman in the bar?

Man: Sleep with me for a million bucks?

Woman: Sure.

Man: How about for a sawbuck?

Woman: Whaddya think I am, a whore?

Everyone's got a price, and today Google's the whore.

You want irony??: I got your irony right here. Otherwise known as Google's "10 Things" under the "Our Philosophy" banner. Go right to number 4 folks, which reads: "4. Democracy on the web works."

May I suggest a new title? "Democracy on the web works, unless you're kowtowing to a totatalitarian regime in exchange for market share, in which case, you know, there are alternatives to democracy that are just fine, really."

Oh, and item 8 is a real hoot too if you think about it for even one one-googlieth of a second.

And let's not even bother with number 6...

*sigh*

Google This: Thus sayeth the Hog, to Google:

I hope your founders enjoy spending their blood money.

Amen.

More: Want a second opinion? Here's Will Collier.

Blood money isn't worth it.

Hey, Google, get with the program or I'll . . . I'll . . . I'll stop using your crappy blogger front end, goddammit!

Long Absence: I've been painting woodwork, helping the boy set up his first fish tank, and driving all over creation, plus cooking some kick-ass meals nightly. (That KFC night this week was not my idea.) Tonight is pork vindaloo with sauteed spinach and lentils, by the way.

Down to business. I see that Miss Hingis wowed her critics this week, getting bounced in the quarters by the world number 1. Not too shabby. Granted, she didn't have to go through either of the Williams sisters on the way, but she made Big Kim go three sets. She still has an awful lot of work to do, but I think she can make a respectable claim to comeback success. And she's still the closest thing to cute on the tour. The women's draw looks pretty strong at the end, here, with the 2, 3, 4, and 8 seeds still in it. I like a Clijsters/Sharapova final, with Clijsters winning that.

On the boys' side, the draw looks weaker, which benefits Federer. He should have no trouble with the 21-seed Kiefer, who needed a mythopoetic journey to the land of darkness to get past that wily frog Grosjean. Don't-Call-Me-Davey Nalbandian may have more trouble with the streaking Baghdatis, who has knocked off a top-ten seed in each of his last two matches. (Although, let's be frank here: one of them, the 2-seed, was Andy Roddick, and beating Andy these days is like getting naughty with Madonna in the 80s -- just being in the same zip code means you stand a decent chance of it happening.) But if Nalbandian survives, he stands a good chance of winning his first slam. His game has not progressed as much as Federer's in the past 2 years, but he knows the Maestro's game well and was, during Federer's years on the rise, his bete noir.

That said, smart money's still on Federer.

Near Miss: Was in NYC this weekend for some cultur-izing. Whilst strolling down 5th Avenue, arm in arm with the Missus, trying to come to terms with my gin hangover, I was nearly struck down mid-stride by John Bolton's mustache. Thing had some serious 'tude.

I didn't see it coming, as it was incognito, in a windbreaker of all things, but while I can't swear to it, I'm fairly certain I saw a small Iranian envoy enveloped protectively beneathe the salt-and-pepper whiskers - off to some safe house no doubt, to hammer out some pre-arranged sanction language for the on-again uranium enrichment program. Anyway, as I was about to rear back and accost the accursed follicles, I was thrown against the glass of a Bergdorf show window by an unhappy man wearing an earpiece, and by the feel of things, a 10mm. I allowed discretion to be the greater part of valor and moved on ... sheepishly, all the while vowing to shave as soon as I got back to the hotel.

New York == what a city.

Wilson Pickett: A great loss. I grew up listening to "Land of 1000 Dances" and "Mustang Sally," and my understanding of rock and roll (and music generally) would be the poorer without him.

Last night I was reading this book, and the author spoke about reviewing videotapes of old soul revues with the legendary Sam Moore, who began to cry while watching his peers, so many now dead, strut their stuff, so young and alive and full of power.

Jeff Goldstein, winner: of my unofficial "Longest Sentence I've Seen Today" contest.

After all, if Star Jones can overcome that desire to stuff her ignorant maw with
Godiva chocolate and entire Hickory Farms gift baskets, then surely the
Islamists—who want to kill all infidels, or else force them to submit to
dhimmitude and Sharia law; and George Bush, who just wants to act all Shaft-like
baaadaassss, like Bufurd Pusser with unmanned drones and helicopter gunships
instead of a big slab of hickory—can simply solve this whole “global war on
terror” [read: men not properly conditioned by the carefully-designed cultural
fixes for manly bluster and excessively violent acting out detailed by Christina
Hoff Sommers in her The War Against Boys] by slapping their war cocks on the
table, measuring the things, handing out a ribbon to the winner, and getting on
with the important business of 1) universalizing health care and curing breast
cancer (US); and 2) making sure women are properly covered and beaten for
stepping out of line (which includes being raped); religious apostates summarily
executed, and homosexuals crushed beneath giant stone walls.

It really wasn't even close, actually.

Progressive Dog Sitting: Heheh -- Jon Anderson, front man for Yes, gives instructions to his dog sitter.

Money Well Spent: It only took 10 years and $21MM for a special prosecutor to determine that Cisneros underreported his income by doling out some of it to his mistress. I mean, for crissakes, this was a Clinton appointee! You think that just maybe he was doing shady things with a mistress?

The spin is that the special prosecutor had to take extra time because of a massive cover up by Cisneros' former friends and colleagues, and so then, more time and money had to be spent to investigate the cover up itself. By that logic, could the investigation ever end?

Oh, and the outcome of all this? A $10,000 fine by Cisneros with a guilty plea to a misdemeanor -- all other charges dropped because the mistress was an untrustworthy witness. Imagine that! But still, the "investigation" continued for another six years so that the cover up could be adequately "investigated".

The most important question is of course, how do I get one of these jobs? I think I should be appointed special prosecutor to investigate special prosecutions -- a lifetime appointment, don't you think?

Three Amigos: For what it's worth, the three GOP yahoos running for majority leader in the house had op-eds in the WSJ this week. Golly, wouldn't you know it, they're all, each one of 'em, shocked, shocked, at the kind of reckless spending that's been going on the the branch of government that their party controls. They are, to a man, opposed to pork, lobbyists, and whatever else you hate this week, goddammit.

I rest easy tonight knowing that one of these sawed-off bastards will be there to continue to ride the GOP into minority status. Hell, they'd be there already if the Dems weren't led by that halfwit Pelosi, who's starting to channel Newt, in politics if not policy.

I give up. Who wants a beer?

iPOD Zen: Much like your typical zen koan, one's iPod can provide deep, yet whimsical inspiration. Here's how: 1) Grab your iPod, 2) enable the shuffle feature for your songs, 3) randomly pick your first song, then, 4) advance to the next song, and 5) put the two titles together to see what you get. Here's a few good ones off of mine:

* Be Yourself; Lose Yourself / (AudioSlave); (Eminem)
* Everybody Knows; The Boxer / (Leonard Cohen); (Chemical Brothers)
* Blackout; Remind Me / (Muse); (Royksopp)
* Baby Did a Bad Bad Thing; One of These Days / (Chris Isaak); (Doves)
* Love and Longing; Optimistic / (Stellastarr); (Radiohead)
* Knives Out; Machine Gun Funk / (Radiohead); (Notorious B.I.G.)

And my favorite, because it's four in a row, and amazingly follows the storyline (for you Shakespeare fans) --

* She is Beautiful; You Choose; Romeo and Juliet; An Honest Mistake / (Andrew WK); (Pet Shop Boys); (Dire Straits); (The Bravery)

Anyway, not mind-blowing perhaps, but amusing and sometimes insightful.

Aussie, Aussie, Aussie: Oy.... Well, my brief foray into the suicide pool ends rather ignominiously. Out with Henman on day 1 (as Eno was so kind to point out), and on day 3, Elena Likhovtseva stabs me in the back. I tried to show my usual bravado and not pick the "easy" ones -- instead, my creativity was punished. *sigh* See if I ever expose my heart again -- it's not easy trusting others, I just want to be loved, but NOOOOooooo.

Well goodbye cruel world, back to the bottom of the bottle for me.

Some Quick Hits: How I feel about my commonwealth, expressed quite well.

I think Radley's analysis is right on. But I'm happier about it than he is. Go Steelers!

Aussie O? Haven't watched a whipstitch of it yet, but no real surprises yet despite the "upset" headlines after day one. (Beating a Williams sister is no longer an upset, and early exits by ranked clay courters are expected.) Razor, your Henman pick in round one was bold. Bold, I tells ya. Adios.

Golly, That'll Fix the GOP's Wagon in a Hurry: The latest big thing making the rounds among the bloggerati is this "Appeal from center-right bloggers." It looks like one of those moronic e-mail petitions that made the rounds a decade or so ago.

No political party is going to reform itself when most of its congressional members are well insulated in their incumbency by gerrymandered districts and the McCain-Feingold incumbency protection act. Twenty years ago, an Abramoff scandal might have flipped the house to the minority party. Even the professional congress watchers think that pretty unlikely in 2006.

Power corrupts, and bureaucracy entrenches.

Best Po' Boys ever: James Glassman of Opinion Journal writes about the conditions in New Orleans. Good areas and bad, as we all know. He also has some thoughts on the city's rebuilding and who should take charge. But none of that really matters right now, because I'm overjoyed with this bit of news.

Some live oaks have toppled, and many magnolias have died, but all the way to
the French Quarter, the shops and restaurants are open, and people have come
home.

There are crowds taking a number for po' boy sandwiches at Domilise's on Annunciation, locals lunching on shrimp remoulade and trout amandine at Galatoire's, and browsers examining the silver ice buckets at Lucullus Antiques on Chartres Street.

I can't possibly express what a run down little hole in the wall shack this place is. It's the front half of an old house that sits on the corner of Annunciation and who knows what street (I had to find it anew every time I went there, maybe once or twice a month. I would drive to to where I thought it was and be wrong every time, then have to drive a few block on Ann. till I found it.).

Dom's was quintisential New Orleans, in a sense. Amazing, huge po' boys, loaded with shrimp, oyster (or both, the Peacemaker), soft shell crab or hot roast beef. A really small bar that served draft beer in big, iced fish bowl glasses or ice cold Barq's Root Beer (sorry to disappoint Eno, but not every lunch in NOLA was an excuse to booze). And Zapp's chips, the best in the world. Dom's smelled like 75 years worth of fried seafood and cigarette smoke (not a bad smell, actually, but tough to get out of a sportcoat) and attracted a diverse clientele of white and black, blue collar and suits. You ate fast and didn't linger long, or they'd start eyeing you like a thief for taking up a perfectly good table (there was only seating for about ten people at tables and another few at the bar and at lunchtime there could easily be twenty people in line to order).

Enough memory lane blather. Just really glad to hear they survived, both the storm/flood, which isn't that surprising given the location, and the ensuing dearth of business. Next chance I get, I'll be there. Large oyster. Dressed.

Don't Knock It: Via Drudge, this story: "Some Of Nation's Best Libraries Have Books Bound In Human Skin"

Actually, I have one of those in my collection. A small volume, bound in human skin, that contains the Oxford English Dictionary in tiny print. Actually, I had it bound in foreskin, so if you give it a good rub, you increase the type size.

Thanks, I'll be here all week, ladies and germs.

Wingnuts: Lileks.

Likewise the Little Red Book affair: okay, it didn’t happen. Granted. But if
Bush eavesdrops on people calling Al Qaeda cells in Pakistan, you know he has
plans to deport the Nation magazine’s subscriber base to labor camps in Kansas
and make them sew covers for Gideon Bibles. Sometimes a lie reveals a greater
truth. Just because “King Kong” is a movie doesn’t mean there aren’t monkeys,
somewhere. The lunatic right went through this in the 90s. Bill Clinton, as it
turned out, did not tie small children to railroad tracks in Mena, Arkansas to
cover up his world-wide cocaine-distribution syndicate. To the Clinton foes,
however, it was true in the macro sense. Somehow. It had to be. In the 90s these
people were marginal cranks, and no one listened to them. Today they’re on Air
America. So nothing’s changed, in other words.

Heh.

Aussie Suicide: No, I'm not writing to lament the self-inflicted death of the former INXS frontman, I'm talking about the John Wertheim (of Sports Illustrated [in this case, dot com]) suicide pool for the Aussie Open. No cash will exchange hands, but the winner gets some free SI swag (probably left over football phones from their subscription drives). Anyway, I'm in -- I'll register under some pseudonym bearing the "razor" marque.

I'll detail my picks later.

Some Alito Thoughts: Listening to the hearings when I can, some things are quite clear. First, and most obvious, is that Ted Kennedy's questions were written for him by a staffer. Anytime he tries to go off the board, it's clear he has no real understanding of the underlying concepts. (Much like his collegiate study of Spanish.)

Pat Leahy is a giant blowhard. If he spent any more time talking about himself, we'd have to bring down the houselights and cue the piano music.

Chuck Grassley sounds like he's in a hostage video. But at least his questions are short and to the point.

Alito's membership in CAP is a problem, considering he's pulling the old "no recollection" excuse. Other than that, if you think this guy's out of the "mainstream," you're living in a box somewhere, likely either in your own filth beneath an interstate overpass or at a teaching post at a major university (filth optional).

One more thing: Since I'm not watching, I'm not sure what the hell's going on in that room, but could someone pass around some f*cking cough drops?

Hingis v. Henin-Hardenne: In her first match against a top 10 player, the Swiss Miss fell well-short of the mark. Hardenne beat her soundly, 6-3, 6-3 -- breaking her on her first service and then pretty much toying with her from there.

What makes this match so interesting (and to be fair, it's only the third or fourth match Martina has played since resuming her career), is that of all the top 10 players out there, Hardenne is physically and game-play wise the most like her ... shorter, slighter, more angles and placement than power and brute strength. Granted, Justine is probably the best at those tactics, and Hingis has a ton of rust to shake off, but if Hardenne can handle Martina this easily, one shudders to think of Sharapova or one of the Williams girls (when healthy and interested) might do to the little thing from Switzerland.

My prediction is that Martina keeps a game face on into the French. If she gets wiped out there, on a surface that plays to ALL of her strengths, then it's quit-time and into a broadcast booth.

Hoist: Gene Shalit's in dutch.

The veteran Today show critic has been taken to task by the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation over his negative review of the gay cowboy western, in which he referred to Jake Gyllenhaal's character, Jack, as a "sexual predator" who "tracks Ennis down and coaxes him into sporadic trysts."

The group claimed that Shalit's statements, delivered during his "Critic's Choice" segment on Thursday's Today show, promoted "defamatory anti-gay prejudice to a national audience," and criticized NBC News for providing the eccentric critic with a platform from which to air his views.

I'd love to hear from Goldstein on this, if he isn't dead yet, but it seems to me that the academic left, particularly the queer theory left, has spent years living off radically deconstructing literary and/or historical relationships. You know, Tom and Huck are gay, or Tom and Jim are, or Jesus and Judas are and Judas betrays him for making eyes at young Mark, or Holden Caufield is a repressed homo, or Abe Lincoln was with his bed-buddy Josh Speed, or Cap'n Ahab is driven to obsession with the whale because his society won't let him have some sweet, sweet man-love. That sort of thing. (The broader gay community [like GLAAD] loved it, too, mainly since it was "transgressive" but mostly because it made straight people, especially straight religious people, uncomfortable, I think.)

Well, look at 'em now, shoouting "no fair" at Gene Shalit.

At least one person in my family has been sick since Thanksgiving, and we've had a non-stop parade of in laws coming through for the holidays, so no, I haven't seen the movie yet. But I have a hunch that Shalit's take is not wildly off the mark. No matter what, it's a work of art, and once out of the auteur's hand, it is open to any and all interpretation that can be supported by direct reference to the text. Hope Shalit says something like that instead of the usual chickenshit fold in the face of a designated victim group.

Razor's Next Governor? Via AP:

Former Steelers star Lynn Swann declared his candidacy for Pennsylvania governor Wednesday in the city where he made his name in professional football.

He told The Associated Press in an interview Wednesday afternoon that he made up his mind to run in the fall, after spending months weighing support at events around the state.

And he's a Republican, too.

Swann said Wednesday that he hopes to convince blacks that he is a better candidate than [Ed] Rendell, the former Philadelphia mayor. The Democratic Party has "taken the African American vote for granted," Swann said.

As a commenter here notes, anyone aiming to give Swann the treatment Maryland's Michael Steele got should make sure to be at least in Harrisburg.

Journalism 101: Good to see that the mainstream media learned absolutely nothing in 2005, since they blew the first be story of this year (and doubled the tragedy for the families) by running pure unsourced rumor as "news."

In one of the most disturbing media performances of its kind in recent years, TV news and many newspapers carried the tragically wrong news late Tuesday and early Wednesday that 12 of 13 trapped coal miners in West Virginia had been found alive and safe. Hours later they had to reverse course.

. . . It is unclear why the media carried the news without nailed-down sourcing. Some reports claim the early reports spread via cell phones and when loved ones, and the governor, started celebrating most in the media simply joined in.

Real solid, professional reporting from solid professionals.

In a word: PANEXA! The drug for YOUR lifestyle....

A Late Christmas Gift:

Once-powerful lobbyist Jack Abramoff pleaded guilty Tuesday to federal charges of conspiracy, tax evasion and mail fraud, agreeing to cooperate in an influence-peddling investigation that threatens powerful members of Congress.

Because, you know, where n = a number of U.S. congressmen being led away in cuffs, n is never so low that I can't manage a smile.

"Poor" as a Relative Standard: A wonderful article from The Economist on how poverty is very much a subjective word. The article uses a comparison of a back-woods ex-miner from the mountains of Kentucky vs. a doctor in Kinsasha, Congo.

Done with typical British aplomb, it refrains from any explicit judgments while showing that what we consider poor is a far cry from a true dearth of material wealth. Tellingly, our backwoods ex-miner is far better off, materially, than the respected Congolese doctor, yet when comparing their contributions to society, one finds that material wealth is a misleading indicator of worth.

I'm sure he means well: I think I know what Bush's legacy is going to be: fear. Fear of everything and everyone (except our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ who speaks soft words into our ears as we sleep). Look at his recent comments upon the Patriot Act getting a six-month reprieve in the Senate:

"No one should be allowed to block the Patriot Act,"

and then

"The terrorists still want to hit us again," Mr. Bush said Wednesday morning, as he was leaving the White House to make a hospital visit to wounded soldiers. "There is an enemy that lurks, a dangerous group of people that want to do harm to the American people, and we must have the tools necessary to protect the American people."

He's like a third-rate Stephen King, pulling out the bogeyman whenever times get tough.

Same with the NSA issue -- if you're doing what's right, then explain it to us in terms we can understand. Show us the laws, show us the interpretations, explain why it's in our best interests. Simply saying that if we don't spy on domestic communications without warrants, "the enemy will win," makes me doubt that precious sliver of my mind that says we should have faith in him.

But seriously, looking back, we won't remember his "compassionate" conservatism, and certainly not his fiscal responsibility. No, we're going to remember how scared we were of the lurking enemy, ready to pounce at any time from out of our closet, or grab our uncovered toes from under our beds. I know 9/11 changed everything, but you never heard Reagan lamenting how Ivan was in every airport waiting to convert us to a collective agarian society. He talked about Victory (and not just using the word for its own sake, a la the Iraq problem), he focused on hope and on possibility -- he inspired. Bush does the reverse, he wants us to cower, to shake, to put our heads into the sand and let ol' Uncle W take care of them, and would we mind letting him check out our mail while we're at it? It's for our own good.

Sad news: James Dungy, son of Colts' head coach Tony Dungy, was found dead in his Tampa apartment. Man, that's just plain awful. Foul play does not seem to be involved, thankfully, but not many details are available.

Via Radley.

This doesn't look good: Shockingly, the election in Iraq doesn't seem to have come with quite so hitchless as many had hoped.

Dozens of Sunni Arab and secular Shiite groups threatened Thursday to
boycott Iraq's new legislature if complaints about tainted voting are
not reviewed by an international body.

A joint statement issued by 35
political groups that competed in last week's elections said the Independent
Electoral Commission of Iraq, which oversaw the ballot, should be disbanded.

Interesting coverage at Iraq The Model, that includes some amusing, and troubling examples.

The results “after counting 89% of the votes in Baghdad showed that the UIA won 1,403,901 votes, the Accord Front won 451,782 while Allawi’s list won 327,174” said a spokesman of the election commission.

Lawyer Abdulwahid al-Lami is from the Lami tribe, the biggest in a province that is run by tribal relations. This candidate won 5 votes, yes 5 votes!This means
this man didn’t even get the votes of his own family…it doesn’t make sense. It
is as if the man paid 1 million dinar for each vote since the registration fee
for candidacy is 5 million dinars. Heh.-Sheikh Raheem al-Sa’idi was also running
from Maysan and he’s a local sheikh of a big tribe that has many thousands of
members in the south. This sheikh won 17 votes only!A usual sheikh is married to
at least 3 wives and has dozens of children, brothers and cousins and this one
won 17 votes only!The reason why such numbers are totally ridiculous is because
for any party or candidate to register, the commission asks them to bring 500
signatures from supporters!

Well, nobody ever said this would be easy.

I'm sure there were attempts rigging and intimidation, and some were no doubt successful. Could the effect have been enough to give the UIA a 1 million vote advantage, though? That would show some serious incompetence, largely on our part if we couldn't detect the smuggling of all that paper over the border from Iran.

More on Kitzmiller: I'm slogging my way through the 140 page opinion and while not yet done, have some commentary (in true FP form [don't need to be informed to have and express one's opinions]): First, Judge Jones carefully builds his treatment of the case through extensive citation to precedent, not only for the legal tests and burdens, but to show how courts have historically treated and described Establishment Clause cases. While this is hardly ground-breaking for a judge [umm, yahh - Ed.], he is nonetheless craftily insulating his opinion from the attack that he is letting his own feelings get in the way (please note this is a 2002 Bush appointee). For example:

After a brief recitiation of the parties, he gets to the Supreme Court tests for evaluating church-and-state matters, noting that the precedent clearly shows that the Court prefers a "belt and suspenders" approach to these cases of utilizing the "endorsement" test, and then further refining the issue by using the device created in the Lemon v. Kurtzman (the "Lemon Test"). Quickly, the "endorsement test" is the smell test; would the average outside observer find that the law or school board ruling in question perceive it to be endorsing a religion or religious dogma in general. (Emphasis mine). Courts love to assume the "reasonable person" stance, and it's a time-honored straw-party argument, but nonetheless, comprehensible. If endorsement is perceived, then you use the Lemon Test to find a constitutional violation.

Jones layers in stratum after stratum of historical cases to show how courts across the country have dealt with creationism in schools and government, and how the Dover school board deserves the same treatment. He never once tries to editorialize -- he simply keeps piling on with the stare decisis to show how he is falling squarely in line with those that came before him.

Second, and more interestingly (for a case of this type of magnitude), he relies on the parties' own testimony -- meaning he doesn't forget he's a trial judge -- he knows he's writing for appellate review (and possibly posterity), yet he is not hesitant about using the multiple inconsistencies (and yes, lies) against the proponents of ID to show that they are disingenuous about their intentions -- and in this type of case, intention means a whole lot (is it your real intention to teach science [to the extent that it is], or are you just pushing gospel?). Since a trial court is the master of the facts, appellate courts are loathe to, and greatly restrained in their ability to, overrule the trial court's rendition of the facts -- when the facts are strongly portrayed, the avenues for attack are greatly reduced.

Last, he directly confronts his critics -- noting that in today's environment, when you deny the fundamentalists (of every stripe) their way, you are accused of being an "activist" -- telling them they'd be sorely mistaken to confuse his bent with some California nut-job jurist who thinks owls should have more rights than unborn fetuses (for example). He takes a lot of wind out of their sails.

This post focuses mostly on the stylistic, as I couldn't possibly do justice to the actual substance in this space -- but here we find an example of style equaling the importance, and indeed heightening the effect of, substance.

Snoopgate: Yes, that's what they're calling it.

Radley points to this George Will column that says this:

In peace and in war, but especially in the latter, presidents have pressed their institutional advantages to expand their powers to act without Congress. This president might look for occasions to stop pressing.

To which Radley says:

Will is nothing if not principled. He's one of the few conservative pundits out there who hasn't let red-blue cheerleading or knee-jerk anti-leftism blind him to the corruption, overreach, and lust for power shown by this Congress and this president. Wish there were more like him.

I agree with Radley that George Will is principled, and I agree with Will that just because a Republian is in the Oval Office, conservatives should not become blind to abuses, or overreaches, of power. For those of us who are "knee-jerk anti-leftists" defending Bush against hyperbolic attacks becomes a matter of reflex and due consideration needs to be given whether Presidential authority has been stretched beyond its reasonble boundaries.

That said, lets keep in mind the atmosphere in which Bush was operating in during the course of this NSA program. There's a pretty fine group of "knee-jerk anti-Bushies" and conspiracy theorists, not to mention plenty of "respectable" critics of the administation and its ability to defend the country from terrorist attack. Would any president in that position have been willing to give up any intelligence gathering means that could prevent a legitimate threat? I doubt it.

I think it's pretty easy to justify the NSA program in the weeks and months immediately following 9-11, especially as we began to learn just how badly our intelligence organizations were failing. After that it's time to fix the system and make it work within the letter and spirit of the law. We ought to be producing enough data in a timely manner that Bush can get his (or Gonzalez's) ass in front of a judge.

Pennsylvania: Neither Intelligent Nor Designed: Well, my fair Commonwealth took its second step back toward sanity (the first was when the school board proponents were voted out of office in November) as a District Court judge for the Middle District of Pennsylvania ruled that PA schools may not teach "Intelligent Design" as a viable scientific theory in biology class.

The Court held that the

citizens of the Dover area were poorly served by the members of the Board who voted for the ID Policy

and noted that it was

ironic that several of these individuals, who so staunchly and proudly touted their religious convictions in public, would time and again lie to cover their tracks and disguise the real purpose behind the ID Policy.

As I've (and I'm sure many others) said, ID is not a scientifically-tested theory, but a religious philosophy. Saying that because things are complicated, they must have been designed by some higher being is as simplistic as noting that God must love puppies or else why would he make them so darn cute?

A theory states that there are repeated actions or reactions, that there is a consistently explainable cause behind those actions or reactions, and that we're going to give you a test to show how it all makes sense. We may some day be wrong, but for now, it's both scientifically plausible and demonstrable.

What annoys me the most is how this argument got into a liberal vs. conservative, or monotheisitic vs. atheistic argument, as if Darwin himself wasn't a great proponent of a Christian god and admitted that neither he nor his theory could answer every question. Taking the Bible literally has caused more problems in this world than can be recounted. It's an inspirational parable people -- it illustrates certain truths and gives us guidance, but to take every word as well, the Gospel, leads you into certain logical, not to mention moral (ever stone someone for wearing cloth of mixed fiber or eating shellfish??) dead-ends.

Like it or not, school is for educating the mind, not necessarily about building strong moral fiber -- believe it or not, that's what parents (and your church/synagogue/mosque/mountaintop) are for.

I'm not sure we're qualified: Annika's starting a new blogging association.

Nose In The Air Media is not a club.
You don't have to join Nose In The Air
Media to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to be invited into Nose
In The Air Media. Just like some other hoity-toity blogging cabals, you might
find yourself waiting forever.
If you are reading this, and you want to be
in, you're in.
And you'll want to be in. It's that cool.
You don't have to
be a "big time" blogger to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't have to get
linked by any "big time" bloggers to be in Nose In The Air Media.
You don't
have to have been interviewed by Time Magazine to be in Nose In The Air
Media.
You don't have to be remotely interesting to be in Nose In The Air
Media....

Tire monopoly: Michelin is bailing out of the Formula 1 tire wars, leaving Bridgestone as the sole provider. So they'll all use the same tires and i think they should go back to the old, skinny tires. Combined with engines putting out 1000 hp or so, that could make F1 worth watching again.

Iraq vote blogging: I have nothing to add to this.

Via Ace.

Update. New link that may work better. Download the 15 second .WMV file.

King Kong: I only mention this to piss off Razor, but I haven't any interest at all in seeing this movie. I know it's film school heresy, but I didn't even like the original very much. Yes, it was quite astounding for its time. And it is a cinematic Moby Dick (in black instead of white), in which thematics are up for grabs, sort of a Rosetta stone for reading the politics of any reviewer. But three hours about an ape? Help yourself; I'll pass.

What the Hell, I'm Feeling Partisan: George Will, in full Manichean mode, on modern liberalism:

The unending argument in political philosophy concerns constantly adjusting society's balance between freedom and equality. The primary goal of collectivism -- of socialism in Europe and contemporary liberalism in America -- is to enlarge governmental supervision of individuals' lives. This is done in the name of equality.

People are to be conscripted into one large cohort, everyone equal (although not equal in status or power to the governing class) in their status as wards of a self-aggrandizing government. Government says the constant enlargement of its supervising power is necessary for the equitable or efficient allocation of scarce resources.

That's very nicely put. The rest of the piece is pretty good, too.