Let It Be Known: If I'm brain dead--kill me. If the only justification you have for keeping me alive is that I twitch whenever you play "We're Not Going to Take It" real loud--kill me. If a bunch of people who don't know me start lobbying Congress for a law to keep pumping me with fluids and some sort of nutritional gruel--kill me. If Hillary Clinton should start giving speeches as to how she's in favor generally of the "concept of people having the choice to die with dignity" but that she wants to work to reduce dying overall--kill me.

However, if my vegetative condition is the only thing keeping Eno from turning this Blog into a tribute to obscure Irish folk guitarists or some sort of Ayn Rand quasi-porn site--keep me plugged in at all costs.

First Word/Last Word? I haven't posted on the circus involving the Schiavo woman. Basically, I'm stunned that it's even got this far, but no one seems ready to rest until this poor woman goes on and off her life support about fifteen billion times. I feel like I'm watching the right-to-die sequel to Alexander Payne's rather smart abortion film, Citizen Ruth.

Honestly, what about this is so hard?

This is fun: Try it out for yourself.

Expert, Textpert: The FauxPolitik Assignment Desk nominates Doctor Razor to abstract David Foster Wallace's cover story in this month's Atlantic. True to DFW form, the Atlantic prints this note before the online version of the article:

Editor's Note: In the print version of this article additional commentary from the author appears alongside the main text. (Subscribers may scroll down this page for a link to an Adobe PDF version of the article.) In the version below, click the phrases within the colored boxes to read the commentary.

I have to admit, hypertext is an inspired medium for the footnote king. Make it all live and clickable, and voila! -- no more crick in the neck from zooming up and down the page to read the notes along with the story.

Anyhoo, we all know I haven't the patience to read it.

How to throw a case: Please, learn from my mistakes. I've been a litigator for going on seven years now. Not an eternity, but long enough to have committed some blunders in the courtroom - much to the chagrin of my clients. But, if you're hell-bent on losing, then you could do worse than the following:

1. Ask the judge if he's one of those penis-pumping judges.

2. Insist on conducting the entire trial as if you're Jim Carrey from "Liar, Liar".

3. Open your case with: "Since we know the Jews control everything, let's not pretend this whole case isn't just a sham..."

4. Mark your exhibits with Yu-Gi-Oh stickers: "Your Honor, I'd now like to show the witness a document which I've marked for identification purposes as "'Mokuba Kaiba'."

5. Wheel around to the jury as you whip out a realisitic-looking toy gun, screaming "I told you to stay away from my wife!!"

6. Remind your witness, when he's on the stand, to just "tell the story like we rehearsed it yesterday."

7. Repeat everything your opposing counsel says in a mocking, sing-songy tone.

8. Refer to the judge as "Your Holier-Than-Thou".

9. Ask for that cute juror's number during your closing argument.

10. Ventriloquism.

Ten Years Can Seem A Lifetime: Two guys in a garage and their website called "Yahoo!".

Ljubicic!: Ljubicic...Ljubicic. Cursed be thy name! What/who is Ljubicic, you say? Why he is none other than the man who nearly single-handedly defeated the U.S. Davis Cup team, comprised of none other than Rddick, Agssi, and the Bryn twins (all spelling in honor of our Croatian daddy) ... on our home soil - the first time in 105 years of play.

Sad, but this is the way of American involvement in non-paying sporting events. See our sad efforts in basketball in Athens last summer as a prime example. Want more? Go watch the Ryder Cup. It's not enough to send the best players anymore...they have to want to win. And, let's face it, Rddick isn't about to stress a hammy going for a wide shot in a Davis Cup match...despite Pat McEnre's exhortations.

Nay, these international tests are the domain of the small, vowel-less central European nations, and their vowel-plenty S. American bretheren. These teams (and indeed, they are teams) play for pride, because their hometowns actually give a crap. Please, all who actually knew Davis Cup play was going on right now, raise your hand....I'll wait....thought so. You were all glued to the latest development in the Martha Stewart or Michael Jackson saga.

Nonetheless, Ljubicic Croatian Daddy would be a great name for a rock band. H/T Dave Barry.

Your tax dollars at work: Let's see, you win the Kentucky Derby on a relatively unheralded horse, then you go on and win the Preakness. You fall short of legend status by a couple of strides in the Breeders' Cup so you don't take home the Triple Crown.

Still, a pretty decent year, if you're Stewart Elliot, jockey for Smarty Jones. Well, what a difference a year makes.

Yes please, keep our country safe from such a felon! Who knows, this year he might rescue a child from a burning building or something.

Oh, Danny Boy: Not worth the time, however, is Ken Auletta's three-hanky farewell to Dan Rather, who creeps off to the CBS's Shady Acres Retirement Home (commonly known as 60 Minutes) this week. It's not online, but that's no great loss. I nearly vomited every time Rather 1) choked up, 2) reminisced about when he was a boy, 3) made some inane comment about the responsibilities of journalists, or 4) did all of the above simultaneously.

The only entertaining part of the article was Dan attempting to impress Auletta by attempting to be "in charge" in the newsroom. It quickly becomes clear that everyone's ignoring or humoring him. Auletta hears one side of a conversation when Dan snaps up a ringing phone in the newsroom with a terse, "CBS News, this is Rather." Pause, for the inevitable Who the hell is this? from the caller. "This is Dan Rather." Pause. "Okay, I'll tell him." Even better, this same farce happens again later.

Auletta's a good writer, but he can't seem to bring together the strings in this story. Rather is an icon of self-parody, so there's no chance of anyone taking his sermonizing, hymn singing, or football-coach quoting terribly seriously. Auletta's profile turns, naturally, into an sad, pointless portrait of a dinosaur.

Coincidental parallel: Hunter Thompson, also once a young lion, also parodied mercilessly by Trudeau, also hanging on for the past twenty years, hoping to bring his "A" game one more time. Alas.

Back to the Senate: An issue we haven't mentioned in a while -- the filibustering of Bush's judicial nominees -- is making a comeback. Jeffrey Toobin's New Yorker article this week was excellent and quite fair. It's worth the time.

I've noted before that the Dems obstruction plan was altogether dumb -- note Bush's nearly unprecedented gains in Congress in his first midterm, along with moderate coattails last fall. But the GOP's "nuclear" option (curtailing filibusters on judicial nominees) is just as self-defeating. It has always been this way: the majority can't get everything it wants with no cost whatsoever. (Every majority forgets this fact.) And soon enough, the shoe will be on the other foot. I have no doubt that senators on both sides of the aisle will begin to mouth the erstwhile arguments of their opponents, much as both sides have been for, against, and then for (again) the independent counsel statute that blessedly expired without renewal.

Our Autos, Our Selves: Razor, your comment below about Subaru-driving folks of a certain age reminds me of something I noticed this past weekend driving through Maine. When I lived there, fifteen or so years ago, the Subaru was the Volvo of Maine. Now the Volvo is the Volvo of Maine. Just saying.

Cover Girls? I mentioned to a friend the other day that a lot of anti-Syrian protesters in Lebanon are very attractive. Every story I looked at had at least one picture of a woman who could send a supermodel home to cry in her push-up bra. I'm not the only one who noticed, apparrently. Glenn rounds up some newsmags who are catching the "hotties for democracy" trend. Even the Connie is on board!

More: I have a friend in Beirut (a young, handsome, Westernized Muslim, and a bit of a ladies' man) who I'm sure saw some of these pictures and decided to, er, go out and agitate for freedom. Sound mercenary? How many of us would not have been born if dad hadn't been just a little on the make when he first met mom at MLK's 1964 march in DC?

If you go slow, they notice you: Much ado about the "Italian Job" in Iraq recently. The U.S. story has been that Sgrena's driver was moving too fast approaching a checkpoint, and so brutal force was used to neutralize the potential threat.

The Italian position, when stripped of the emotional rhetoric, is that no one saw a checkpoint, and when in Iraq you better be moving fast, especially on the highway to the Baghdad airport.

Which then makes for a good article on what these "checkpoints" are really like. Of particular interest is that the U.S. checkpoint will usually come after an Iraqi security force "checkpoint". Main difference? The Iraqis sit idly by, smoking as they wave you through - not bothering to warn you that a few hundred yards up ahead, there's another checkpoint; this one manned by armed-to-the-teeth soldiers who actually will do their job. So, you speed up to get from A to B as fast as you can, only to see a cadre of Marines, tanks and large guns pointed your way, shouting in a language the driver may or may not understand. Now, couple that with the adrenaline and fear that must have been coursing through Sgrena's car post-escape, and you can only wonder how anyone made it out of that car alive.

Union Dues? I read, for the first time, Inc. Magazine while I was getting my oil changed this morning. I think about business a lot less frequently than Flyer does, but I did used to be in the construction/real estate racket long ago, and I tussled with the unions on occasion. Thus, an article titled "Why the Unions Can't Win" caught my eye.

I've been thinking a lot about rank-and-file union members lately, and I have to say it's a shame how the guys at the top have let them down. Union leaders must be the only people on the planet who haven't figured out that if you want to get anywhere today, you have to think and act like a businessperson. You have to market yourself. You have to make the case why someone should purchase your services. If what you want are jobs for union members, you need to treat employers like potential customers, not like adversaries you're going to force into submission. In a competitive economy, nobody buys because they're forced to. They buy because they want to.

The author, Norm Brodsky, goes on to tell a story of his own union/non-union woes. There was a time, obviously, when business in America was the realm of robber barons, sly oil swindlers, and billionaire stock waterers. It's interesting that the one part of the American business environment that hasn't come along into the 21st century is the unions. It's true that unions were, at one time, the enemy, shut out on principle by so-called capitalists (cronyists is more like it). True, too, that today some big companies (like Wal-Mart) opt to run without unions -- which would have been a big deal 30 years ago. Unions are simply more and more irrelevant, thanks partly to such archaic tactics. Wal-Mart isn't run by specie barons lighting cigars with c-notes. It's run by a board of stockholders who just don't see any benefit from unionizing. I mean, why bother when affirmative action rules, minimum wage requirements (which are higher than the fed minimum in many states), and legal precedent has set in stone much of what unions (theoretically) represented?

The only growth area for unions these days is service occupations (let's see Upton Sinclair write a story about customer service reps being turned into sausage) and government employees (not a famously competitive field; plus, the last time the fed got tough with a union was when Reagan -- thought to be a union-friendly Republican based on his SAG days -- bitch-slapped PATCO). There are reasons for this, a lot of which I hadn't thought about until I read this piece. It's interesting stuff. I wonder what kind of success would/could be had by unions treating an open shop as an RFP? A little bit of "Look what we can do for you" might go a lot further than a lot of "Nice store/company/restaurant you got here; it'd be a shame if anything happened to it."

Call it "The Relative Effectiveness Quotient": Steyn, again -- naturally.

The other day I found myself, for the umpteenth time, driving in Vermont behind a Kerry/Edwards supporter whose vehicle also bore the slogan 'FREE TIBET'. It must be great to be the guy with the printing contract for the 'FREE TIBET' stickers. Not so good to be the guy back in Tibet wondering when the freeing thereof will actually get under way. For a while, my otherwise not terribly political wife got extremely irritated by these stickers, demanding to know at a pancake breakfast at the local church what precisely some harmless hippy-dippy old neighbour of ours meant by the slogan he'd been proudly displaying decade in, decade out: 'But what exactly are you doing to free Tibet?' she demanded. 'You're not doing anything, are you?' 'Give the guy a break,' I said back home. 'He's advertising his moral virtue, not calling for action. If Rumsfeld were to say, "Free Tibet? Jiminy, what a swell idea! The Third Infantry Division go in on Thursday", the bumper-sticker crowd would be aghast.'

But for those of us on the arrogant unilateralist side of things, that's not how it works. 'FREE AFGHANISTAN'. Done. 'FREE IRAQ'. Done. Given the paintwork I pull off every time I have to change the sticker, it might be easier for the remainder of the Bush presidency just to go around with 'FREE [INSERT YOUR FETID TOTALITARIAN BASKET-CASE HERE]'. Not in your name? Don't worry, it's not.

Publice Service Announcement: Make sure to mark your calendars and tell your wives/girlfriends to save the date!

KISS Song Titles If KISS Was Made Up of the Guys from REO Speedwagon:

1. I Want to Rock and Roll All Night Unless You Feel Like Staying In.
2. Bang, Bang You Made My Heart Beat So Fast!
3. Uh! All Night I Slept On My Arm So As Not to Wake You.
4. Rock Me, Baby and Let's Fall Asleep, Spooning.
5. Let's Put the "L" in Sweet, Sweet Love.
6. Love 'Em and Leave 'Em is Something Those Other Guys Do.
7. Burning Up With Fever, Cause We Stayed Out Too Long Talking.
8. Fits Like a Glove…You Give the Sweetest Presents.

(If neither you nor a family member were a part of the KISS Army, then you may have some trouble with this.)

Synergy is Dead (revised): Remember that word, "synergy", say back in 1997/1998? Everything was done to create synergy and to shift paradigms. If you didn't have synergy, heck boy, you better go get some.

I heard the siren call. At that time, I was seriously considering throwing away my legal education in order to find one of those hot "dot com" jobs everyone was talking about (you know, with the foosball tables and keg parties?). I didn't know what the word meant, but it seemed everyone else did, and the hell if I was going to get stuck in an old-world job like providing legal advice and fighting in a courtroom over ancient concepts rooted in Roman tradition. Nope, synergy was the name of the game. And it continued to be just as we crept into the 21st century. What happened next is well-documented: failure of corporate cultures to mesh, too much overhead, and not enough of a bump from the cross-marketing to justify the massive cash, stock and personnel outlays/upheavals.

But, it's clear that companies just couldn't help themselves. Take Gillette, a well-established company that dominated market share and had only one competitor. "Too easy," said the highly-paid business school graduates. So, it branched out into highly competitive markets, like tooth care, batteries, and deoderant. Naturally. And nature took its course via a sinking share price, customer dissatisfaction, and a bloated corporate structure. All the vibrating razors (!) in the world can't make up for that.

What we've learned in just the past 6 or 7 years, is that business should be about core markets, about the tried-and-true. It's about building, maintaining, and gradually improving your single business model. It's boring, and it makes it harder to justify all those Ivy League MBAs, but very few blockbuster deals, merging previously separate worlds have produced shareholder satisfaction.

And, it is being revealed today that merging previously separate UNIVERSES is even harder (and by companies that are otherwise very successful) and hence, synergy is dead.

Now, companies can still use diverse holdings to their advantage, but as is well-described in this article (and I came across this piece as I was searching for articles containing "synergy" and "media" - oh well), the s-word effect is best achieved organically, i.e. Nickolodeon feeding CBS (both owned by Viacom) morning cartoons. But to artifically smash together say a soft drink company with a movie company so that you can, I don't know, have Dracula knock back a ginger ale ("I'm giving up blood for that fresh sparkly taste of Canada Dry...ah, ah, ah!"), just doesn't make any sense.

But there is hope. Some companies are seeing the light. First, streamline. Get back to your core market. Then, abandon the old and embrace the new. Best example? Eastman Kodak. A few years ago, the company was in the crapper. The company had branched out into microfiche, copiers and the like. It had also recently sunk a ton of money into developing (pun intended) a new form of film cartridge - perhaps you heard of the Avantix film system? Just as that was being launched, digital imagery was rearing its virtua head.

Now, it's true that Kodak was investing substantial money into digital as far back as 10 years ago, when digital imagery wasn't profitable, but Kodak is a film company (like the adage about shaving companies: "give away the razor, sell the blades"). And even today, it gets more income from film than from digital imaging, even as the market moves more and more to digital. However, the share prices has rebounded significantly, and it appears the company is on the way to at least a mild recovery. All from putting its focus into what it has always done best: let people look at their family vacation photos, albeit in a new-fangled format.

Fortunately, I have the next best thing: tulips. They're going to be huge in 2005. It's a whole new paradigm...trust me.

Of course, he's married to a left-wing media operative: Greenspan has not been shy of late of sounding the warning bell regarding the impact of Bush's no-tax and spend mentality. True to his Conservative bona-fides, he came down on spending as opposed to not enough taxation, and certainly we'd lose respect for him if he said otherwise:

"Addressing the government's own imbalances will require scrutiny of both spending and taxes," Mr. Greenspan told members of the House Budget Committee. "However, tax increases of sufficient dimension to deal with our looming fiscal problems arguably pose significant risks to economic growth and the revenue base."

The Fed chairman emphasized that his own preference was to reduce deficits by cutting spending rather than raising taxes. But he said the "overriding principle" was to reduce the deficit, making compromise essential.

My point is this: here is arguably the most influential man in government regarding our economy as a whole, and inarguably, one of the most intelligent and least partisan person in a town raft with stupidity and hackery.

Further, he's not just giving a fireside chat on interest rates. He's explaining, in no uncertain terms, that we're headed for a fall, unless we change our ways:

"When you begin to do the arithmetic of what the rising debt level implied by the deficits tells you, and you add interest costs to that ever-rising debt, at ever-higher interest rates, the system becomes fiscally destabilizing," he told lawmakers. "Unless we do something to ameliorate it in a very significant manner," he added, "we will be in a state of stagnation."

The President's response?

"The president does have a substantial deficit-reduction package," said Trent Duffy, a White House spokesman. "His budget is a continuation of that policy, and he looks forward to working with Congress in cutting that spending down. Likewise, the president agrees that the long-term budget is the issue, which is why he's trying to lead a national discussion and reform movement to save and strengthen Social Security."

As with all things Washington, the truth lies between the words. Bush's budget may indeed have a "deficit-reduction package". However, as with all politicians, it's not the budget, it's the reality. SEE Bush's Prescription Plan; Iraq spending. SEE ALSO Bush creating new bureaucratic offices at the drop of a hat. Further, Bush doesn't want to go back to "pay as you go" restrictions from the Clinton years to apply to any tax cuts, only future spending packages. Dr. Evil would nod and say: "Riiiiight."

I know Bush has his mandate and all, but that was just to keep gays out of the bonds of marital bliss. Whatever happened to the fiscal responsibility platform of the GOP? Well, at least we have a strong currency and low oil prices...

Weird Post-Oscar Thoughts: First and foremost, why do hot women tie themselves into these seemingly ill-fitting dresses that cause their breasts not to bloom, but to ummm, like melt over the tops of their bodices?

Chris Rock - not particuarly funny. He's just not well-suited to a PG-13 broadcast. Plus, a lot of his humor needs some build-up. His 5 or 10 minute rants on a controversial subject taken as a whole, are much funnier than 1-2 minutes on some lame Hollywood subject. I mean, he tried to be honest and poke holes in celebrities' images, but it fell flat I think.

Sean Penn - can the man get any more irritable? It's like he's some 75-year old crotchety grandfather on the porch complaining about the "kids nowadays". Has his life really been so hard?

Marketing on the Red Carpet - why do we NEED to know the designer of every bauble and lookalike gown? Why does Joan Rivers have such clout that she can dictate public opinion? Has anyone taken a close look at her? NO, don't...just asking. In ten years I predict the attendees will be wearing either company slogans on their outfits (a la British football teams), or temporary tattoos (like boxers).

Let them fucking walk up to the stage - it's the biggest night of most movie-makers' careers, and they have to scrunch up in the aisle to receive an award. I mean, sure, it's for make up, but without make up...well, have I mentioned Joan Rivers. Or look here. I'd say make up is the MOST important category.

Beyonce singing in French - next year let's have Fred Durst sing the theme to one of the Chinese entries for foreign language film. I know 90% of the audience had no idea she was butchering the material, and that 98% didn't care, but come on. Was anyone tuning in just to see Beyonce do this?

No more "Mulligan Oscars" - if you get robbed one year, don't "make it up" next year. Morgan Freeman could have gotten one for Shawshank or Daisy. He didn't. I don't know that he was the most deserving this year. Same with Eastwood. By all accounts, the Aviator was the better movie event. $1MM Baby was just the most controversial. But Clint got robbed last year for Mystic River (as he put it, he was "Hobbitized"), so they make it up this year. At this rate, Scorsese's home films of his dogs running on the beach will give him the long-coveted Oscar some time in 2014.