TAPped recently printed this excerpt from a dreadful Cal Thomas column:
On the eve of our great national birthday party and in the aftermath of Sept. 11, when millions of us turned to God and prayed for forgiveness of individual and corporate sins and asked for His protection against future attacks, the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco has inflicted on this nation what many will conclude is a greater injury than that caused by the terrorists.
You read that right: Cal Thomas believes that the recent 9th Circuit Court ruling about the Pledge of Allegiance is a greater injury to America than the 9/11 attacks.
Putting aside the fact that the death toll from this ruling was considerably lower than that of airplanes flying into buildings, Thomas seems to verge awfully close to saying that the attacks were somehow the result of those individual and corporate sins that we were supposed to be asking forgiveness for. Does anyone want to bet that if there is another attack, Thomas will write a column that mentions this ruling as a contributing factor?
I'm not going to waste too much time on this drivel. Cal Thomas is a predictable right-wing shill in the David Horowitz/Ann Coulter mold. He's a modern day Pharisee who writes tirelessly about the virtues of people like himself. There's no starting point for engaging in debate.
TAPped says that the blogosphere "ought to get itself whipped into a frenzy about this one." I agree, but for liberals like me and some of the others who have responded to TAPped's call, it's shooting fish in a barrel. Thomas may have grooved one for us here, but let's face it, we could randomly pick any one of his columns and find something that we consider reprehensible. There's no challenge to this.
So what I would like to know is where are the denunciations from conservatives? This is easily the equivalent of any stupid thing Noam Chomsky or Ted Rall has said. I know perfectly well that the vast majority of conservatives, even those who I find appalling, would disagree with what Cal Thomas has written. I want to see some examples of conservative pundits and bloggers taking Thomas to task for this. Otherwise, given that more than one conservative writer has attempted to make hay by tarring all liberals with the Chomsky/Rall brush, many of those freestyle Fiskings of the loony Left were really nothing more than scoring points.
Please feel free to use the comments to point me in the right direction. I will happily give credit where it is due.
By the way, Thomas begins the last paragraph of his hit piece as follows: "The overwhelming majority of Americans have been forced to stomach a lot of garbage in recent years". You can add your column to that garbage heap, pal.
Houston's new "fitness czar" is using the city's weight-loss Web site to push a diet that nutrition experts say is potentially harmful and that promotes protein powders and other nutritional supplements he sells.
Larry says it best:
If [Mayor Lee] Brown wants to promote fitness, he can loosen taxes on fitness centers, provide incentives for employers who allow their employees access to a weight room or motivate employees to take time to exercise, quit tearing up the bike paths with short-term construction projects, etc. and so forth. Standing on the sidelines and cheering with rah rah rah go Houston while letting his buddy sell something that's contrary to what the USDA recommends isn't going to work.
Amen.
George Parker Young, a Fort Worth lawyer who represented the family, said the jury was outraged by evidence that Cigna's medical director and utilization review nurse received bonuses for reducing inpatient stays."It was clear that Cigna put cost-cutting ahead of patient safety at a time when the patient most needed care," said Young.
[...]
In addition to finding Cigna was grossly negligent, the Dallas jury said that the company caused serious bodily injury to Pybas, a violation of the state's criminal law against elder abuse. Young said that finding negated otherwise applicable caps on punitive damages.
According to the lawsuit, [Herschel] Pybas was in and out of the hospital from Oct. 6, 1998, until his admission to the skilled nursing facility on Dec. 31, 1998. He was forced out of the facility on Jan. 22, 1999.
Dr. Nathan Watson, who was treating Pybas, testified that he wanted to keep his patient in the nursing facility but Cigna was pushing to get him out.
Pybas suffered from congestive heart failure and progressive renal failure as well as a bedsore. He had a history of stroke, anemia, upper respiratory infection and malnutrition.
Young said evidence showed that Cigna officials never reviewed Pybas' medical records before deciding he should be sent home. Although Pybas required oxygen, he was not provided any when an ambulance took him home from the nursing facility.
This is the first such jury award in Texas, which was the first state to allow people to sue HMOs. The bill became law without then-Governor Bush's signature. Bush vetoed the earlier law, refused to sign this one, then crowed about his achievements in health care reform on the campaign trail in 2000.
About 20 to 30 lawsuits have been filed since the Health Care Liability Act was passed in 1997 over the objection of conservatives who swore that it would lead to a flood of such suits. That's four to six filings per year in a state of 20 million people. Some flood.
To all those who have come by lately looking for pictures of the Women of Enron or Shari Daugherty, I have one question: You do know that Playboy has, like, a web page, right? Just checking.
The Katy Corridor Coalition has taken its first steps towards challenging the proposed widening of I-10 west of Loop 610. The notice, which you can read here, focuses on the lack of any high-occupancy vehicle (HOV) lanes, which allegedly violates the federally-approved clean air plan for Houston. There are plenty of other concerns, such as noise, flood control, and the need for rail, but this is a good place to start
Naturally, the cronies who pushed through this plan pooh-pooh the opposition:
County Commissioner Steve Radack, in whose precinct the freeway lies, called it "a shame that a few people would get together and conspire to inconvenience hundreds of thousands of people because of their own selfish beliefs."Funny, I was thinking exactly the same thing. I have a proposal for you, Steve: Let's use the patented Tom DeLay Transportation Solution and vote on this. If it's good enough for light rail, it's good enough for the Katy Freeway.
The [defendants] were involved as outside players in some of the complex and controversial partnerships set up by Enron Chief Financial Officer Andrew Fastow and his aide Michael Kopper that critics have said eventually helped sink the company.[...]
According to the Justice Department's charging document, the three bankers used a series of intricate financial transactions involving an Enron entity called Southampton LP to defraud the British bank they worked for.
The fraud occurred when the men secretly invested in Southampton, eventually reaping $7.3 million in profits that belonged to the bank that employed them, the Justice Department charged.
[...]
Southampton has been under scrutiny by federal and congressional investigators almost from the outset of the Enron debacle because of huge profits made by executives of the company and others from relatively tiny investments.
In early 2000, Fastow and Kopper each turned a $25,000 investment in Southampton into a $4.5 million gain within a few months, according to a special report released earlier this year by the Enron board.
Others, like former Enron treasurer Ben Glisan and lawyer Kristina Mordaunt also reaped huge cash payments from investments in Southampton.
I really hope they plead out in return for testimony against Fastow and Skilling. The only thing that's keeping me from taunting Mickey Kaus right now is the lack of Ken Lay's name anywhere in this article. Maybe he really was totally clueless about what was happening under him. Amazing.
A nice little article in the Chron about community participation in the debate over widening I-45 north of downtown. Neighborhood groups, including my own, were there to oppose plans to widen I-45 beyond its existing right-of-way, as this would require the demolition of many houses. The story covers one of three meetings that Metro is holding to discuss transit options, including rail.
The meeting that address concerns inside the Loop was one of three organized by the Metro team to gather comments on the highway study's progress. Their work is focused on an area that runs about 30 miles from downtown to The Woodlands along I-45, and between I-45 and the Hardy Toll Road. About four miles of I-45 and U.S. 59 segments south of downtown are included.As part of the study, Metro is analyzing a variety of advanced high-capacity options such as light rail or high-speed bus, as well as highway improvements.
[...]
Located near Houston's largest and busiest airport and a north Houston business district, and surrounded by several growing suburbs, the Greenspoint area should serve as a mass transit crossroads, said many participants at Metro's Greenspoint/IAH planning session.
While the majority agreed that a light-rail system running through the area is a must, many ideas surfaced on what route that train should take and where and how many stops it should make.
"Is there any reason we can't ask for all at the same time?" said Houston Police Department Sgt. Corby Weber.
Some common themes that emerged from the meeting, Smith said, included the need for light-rail access from Greenspoint along Greens Road and the Hardy Toll Road, a stop at Greenspoint Mall, a light-rail line that serves local residents, and a line continuing north with stops at FM 1960, FM 2920, The Woodlands and Texas 242.
Eager for a high-speed alternative to lengthy and congested road trips to downtown Houston and points beyond, Woodlands-area residents and business owners voiced strong support for a light-rail line down I-45.
That last bit is especially encouraging, since it's so often the folks in the far-flung suburbs who push for road widening because they can't get to work fast enough to suit them. Compare to the recent announcements about widening I-10 west of Loop 610, which was pushed through without any real consideration of other options, led by westside Congressman John Culberson. There is organized opposition to this plan, but unlike the I-45 corridor folks, these people are starting out behind the eight ball.
The Chron uses its whimsical puns quotient in this front page story on the Women of Enron, then gets all metaphorical on the editorial pages:
It's blushingly appropriate for the times, some would say, that on the same day WorldCom was making headlines for having overstated its cash flow by more than $3.8 billion, "the women of Enron" were making a splash and some cash by baring their personal assets in Playboy magazine.Had the same level of transparency applied to WorldCom, the nation's second-largest long-distance carrier, to Enron and to a growing host of other corporate giants, investors and employees might not be losing the proverbial shirts off their backs and the fig leaf of corporate ethics wouldn't be in the media mulcher.
These things just write themselves sometimes, don't they?
The University of Houston is apparently going to disregard a court order that allowed an anti-abortion group to display large photos of dead fetuses in the heavily trafficked Butler Plaza area.
U.S. District Judge Ewing Werlein Jr. ruled last week that UH must allow the student group Pro-Life Cougars to put up the controversial display this fall in the heavily trafficked Butler Plaza, near UH's Hoffman Hall and M.D. Anderson Library. The judge concluded that UH violated the group's First Amendment rights to free speech and 14th Amendment rights to equal protection last October by not permitting the display in the plaza.UH spokesman Mike Cinelli said Werlein's order is moot because it only applies to a previous university policy on regulating speech. He said a new policy enacted Tuesday will allow UH to restrict the proposed display to one of four so-called "free speech zones" in less visible areas of campus.
"This whole issue is really a case about where free speech will occur as opposed to the ability to express free speech," Cinelli said.
I'm as pro-choice as the next guy, but I think the Pro-Life Cougars are being shafted. As long as they are not aggressively confronting passersby, UH's attempt to restrict them to a more remote area of campus is a restriction on legitimate speech.
The same exhibit was allowed on Butler Plaza in March 2001, leading to student protests and partly causing UH to form a committee that summer to re-evaluate its free speech policy, Cinelli said.The exhibit also caused the University of Texas and Baylor University to re-examine their free speech policies after controversies erupted in those universities last year.
What these schools should have decided about their free-speech policies is that, y'know, free speech is a Good Thing, and that the protests against this exhibit are a demonstration of how it should work. I'll quote Penn Jillette again: "The cure for bad speech isn't no speech, it's more speech." Isn't college supposed to be a place where people encounter ideas that maybe they don't like? How can you argue against someone's position on an issue if you don't know the details of that position?
Owen links to this article about a backlash against these so-called "free speech zones" on campuses. I wish them well.
And right now everyone's happy about this pick, including his new teammates and the ever feckless Chron sports columnists.
Not that anyone outside of Houston noticed, but the Rockets also appear to have gotten a steal with their other first round draft choice, Slovenian player Bostjan Nachbar. Nachbar, who could fill a largish hole at small forward, is happy to be here:
For weeks, the Rockets had targeted Bostjan Nachbar with their second first-round pick. Then Nachbar put on a show that left the Rockets concerned only that he would be gone before they were up with the 15th pick.But as impressive as Nachbar's performance was to the Rockets, he was more sold on the Rockets.
He checked flight schedules from Houston to his home in Slovenia. He imagined himself filling a wing with Yao Ming sending an outlet pass and Steve Francis handling the ball on a break. He penned a letter to general manager Carroll Dawson and coach Rudy Tomjanovich to thank them for considering him, the first letter of its type they had ever received and the only one he sent.
[...]
"After one day in Houston, I fell in love with Houston," Nachbar said in a phone interview from New York, where he attended the draft. "I love the team, the personnel. Everyone was great to me. I had four workouts (in Charlotte, Indiana, Houston and Washington). Houston was something special. From the beginning, I knew this is where I wanted to be."
Take that, Randall Patterson!
A more reasonable assumption is that the white to nonwhite ratio at universities is about 3:1 or 4:1. Under those conditions, the gender gap for whites is about 5:4, or 55.5% to 45.5%. The greater the ratio between white and nonwhite, the closer the white gender gap will come to the overall 57:43 ratio.
(I'm skipping the math because it basically boils down to the kind of related-rate word problems that most normal people hated in high school algebra. And it's late and I did a bunch of back-of-the-envelope calculating in my head. If you insist on making me show my work, let me know in the comments.)
The bottom line is that the larger nonwhite gender gaps have a small overall effect. A better line of inquiry is the one that Fritz raised, which is the effect of the larger incarceration rate among men. If, for example, the ratio of college age black women who are not in jail to college age black men who are not in jail is 60:40, then the gender gap for blacks is merely reflective of the general population. I don't have the time or the gumption to look into this right now, but maybe I will later.
Whenever someone makes a possibly foolish general statement about colleges, I always ask myself "Would that be true at Texas A&M?" A&M, for those not familiar, is a true bastion of nonliberalism, and with their legendary reverance for the Corps of Cadets, it's quite friendly to the Y chromosome. As it happens, A&M is a rare Texas public school with more men than women, though a closer look at the numbers indicates that the entire difference and then some is accounted for by the College of Engineering, which in Fall 2000 had 7800 men and 1900 women. The overall enrollment figures would tend to support Reynolds' thesis that men are avoiding college environs which are hostile to them, though I note that A&M still has a higher attrition rate and lower graduation rate for men than women.
I was going to compare A&M's numbers to those of California-Berkeley for grins, but I couldn't find them for Cal. You can find all sorts of data about the graduation rates of the various racial groups, but I failed to locate any such data broken down by gender. For what it's worth, the notoriously PC Berkeley is only slightly majority female.
In any event, thanks in part to people like Sommers, more attention is being paid to the growing disparity between boys' and girls' academic acheivements. Whatever is causing this trend - and as Fritz notes, there are a number of factors - it does need to be understood and dealt with.
Alert reader (I've always wanted to say that) Frank writes in to say that he recalled seeing news articles about bacteria being a cause of the rash of deformed frogs. I did a little more Googling, and found that bacteria has in fact been suspected as a cause of the Minnesota frogs' deformity:
[A] parasite called a trematode may be involved in some frog deformities. Trematodes burrow into the limb buds of tadpoles and can, in fact, cause at least one of the deformities seen in Minnesota frogs.
A study by Gee Chow, "Pesticides and the Mystery of Deformed Frogs," JOURNAL OF PESTICIDE REFORM Vol. 17, No. 3 (Fall 1997), pg. 14, was cited as the source of that information. However, others have disputed this. A pesticide called methoprene, used for mosquito control, is considered the leading contender for the deformities, but researchers have not fully ruled out parasites and pathogens. So stay tuned.
UPDATE: Paul Orwin informs me that trematodes, though classified as microorganisms, are not bacteria. Read the comments for a fuller explanation. Thanks, Paul!
This Enron model highlights one of the great things about Houston: You can be nekkid outside almost any time of year and not freeze your keester off.
Enron worker Shari Daugherty, 22, who grew up in nearby Richmond and graduated from Fort Bend Baptist Academy, told reporters that it was "a big fantasy" when she posed in the raw in front of Enron's downtown skyscrapers.She said skin show was fate: "I (posed nude) because it was there for me to do."
God bless America.
So says the 9th Circuit US Court of Appeals, in ruling that the phrase "under God" violates the Establishment Clause.
"A profession that we are a nation 'under God' is identical, for Establishment Clause purposes, to a profession that we are a nation 'under Jesus,' a nation 'under Vishnu,' a nation 'under Zeus,' or a nation 'under no god,' because none of these professions can be neutral with respect to religion," Judge Alfred T. Goodwin wrote for the three-judge panel.The appeals said that when President Eisenhower signed the legislation inserting "under God" after the words "one nation," he wrote that "millions of our schoolchildren will daily proclaim in every city and town, every village and rural schoolhouse, the dedication of our nation and our people to the Almighty."
The court noted that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students cannot hold religious invocations at graduations and cannot be compelled to recite the pledge. But when the pledge is recited in a classroom, a student who objects is confronted with an "unacceptable choice between participating and protesting," the appeals court said.
"Although students cannot be forced to participate in recitation of the pledge, the school district is nonetheless conveying a message of state endorsement of a religious belief when it requires public school teachers to recite, and lead the recitation of, the current form of the pledge," the court said.
Hoo boy. That sound you just heard was the fundraising arm of every religious organization in America jumping into action. The hyperbole is gonna get thick in a hurry.
Many moons ago, when I was a freshman at Stuyvesant High School, the ruling came down from the school board that the Pledge of Allegiance was to be read over the loudspeaker every morning. This was not a popular decision among the students, but it was ameliorated by a policy that no one was actually required to stand and recite the pledge. In the case of my very loosely run homeroom, I can't recall a single instance of a student reciting along. Most of the time, you couldn't even hear it over the din of the room (we had a very disinterested homeroom teacher).
You could certainly make the case that "under God" would be counter to quite a few people's religion at Stuyvesant. I knew quite a few classmates who were Muslim, Hindu, and Buddhist, not to mention the Conservative and Orthodox Jews who are forbidden to say words like "God". They have a very strict interpretation of "thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain", which basically says that since we cannot know God, we cannot know the proper way to say His name, and so we may be profaning Him by addressing Him by name. When they refer to God, they use the Hebrew word "Hashem", which means "the name of God", or simply "the name". In computer scientist terms, it's a pointer.
Those of us who remember the shameless way that Bush the Elder used the Pledge of Allegiance to flog Mike Dukakis will find a certain irony in the fact that this ruling came down during the reign of Bush the Younger. I've no doubt that Dubya will use this ruling to whip supporters into a frenzy, especially when he's out on the campaign trail. As I've noted before, we should bear in mind that not all those who oppose public displays and declarations of religion are themselves nonreligious or even non-Christian.
It will not surprise me if the Supremes overturn this decision. As my friend Matt has noted, this was a three-judge panel's ruling, so it may not even survive the 9th Circuit en banc. The same court has twice ruled that "In God We Trust" on US currency is not unconstitutional, after all.
Wasn't it Republicans who used to campaign on pledges to run government like a business? We sure live in some strange times.
But the Republican governor rebuked Sanchez for claiming that he could use businesslike efficiency to milk enough money from the state budget to pay for extensive educational improvements.
Seriously, though, Goodhair has a point when he says that Sanchez's promise to find more money for schools by eliminating "waste, fraud, and abuse" is hot air. Of course there's fat in the state budget, even in a low-tax, low-service state like Texas. The problem, as any national politician who ever tried to eliminate things like the mohair and ethanol subsidies can attest, is that one man's waste is another man's vital program. It's easy to get a license to hunt sacred cows, but good luck bagging the limit.
Some good news for those who dislike or distrust school vouchers:
The Laredo businessman scored one of the biggest rounds of applause from the audience when, answering a question, he reaffirmed his opposition to private school vouchers, which are widely disliked among public school officials.Silence, in contrast, greeted Perry's call for a limited, pilot voucher program to enable some low-income children to use tax dollars to pay tuition at private or parochial schools.
Looks like the path has been cleared for the Rockets to draft Yao Ming. Here's a statement from the Rockets web page:
Rockets general counsel Michael Goldberg issued the following statement today: “I received a letter early this morning from Chinese Basketball Association Chief Executive Xin Lancheng confirming that all of his concerns had been addressed. We are looking forward to drafting Yao Ming with the first overall selection in the 2002 NBA Draft. The fact that we arrived at such a mutually beneficial understanding in such a short period of time illustrates the spirit of cooperation and trust that existed throughout these discussions. There were many rounds of congratulations exchanged this morning with Chief Executive Xin, Yao Ming’s representatives and officials from the Shanghai Sharks.”
And a few photos of Rockets coach Rudy Tomjonavich and his new player. I sure hope that's Yao's game face in this picture and not his opinion of the new coach.
Soup Nazi rules will be in effect Thursday when the "Women of Enron" autograph their pictorial in Playboy magazine at the SuperStand in Uptown Park.Here's the drill: Buy the magazine, open it to the pictorial and step sideways to the table. You may chitchat briefly with the women, but cheesy pickup lines are discouraged (like they ever work, anyway). The scribble session will run from 4:30 to 6:30 p.m.
The Enron issue of Playboy will be available everywhere else on Friday. In case you're wondering, 300 past and present Enron women volunteered to pose for the magazine. Ten made it.
Jonah Keri lays out a reasonable plan to help the Expos win ther NL East. Stranger things have happened, and lesser things have been worth rooting for. Go Expos!
Times are tough for Anna Kournikova, who was bounced from Wimbledon in the first round and drew criticism for her behavior in a postgame interview.
Mac recently had some fun with this article about giant bullfrogs which are terrorizing Germany. Mac notes that these are introduced species. As funny as a plague of frogs in Germany is, it's unfortunately the case that bullfrogs are causing havoc in other places, such as in the Vancouver area. The Vancouver Aquarium has a whole exhibit on frogs, including the invading bullfrogs. The problem there is that in addition to competing for the same habitat, bullfrogs can and do eat other frogs, a factor which is threatening the survival of several native species.
Frogs are apparently somewhat of a canary in the environmental coal mine. This is because their skin offers little protection against toxins, which makes them sensitive to changes in their surroundings. A recent rash of deformed frogs has led some people to wonder if it's an indication of rising levels of chemicals in ground water. Whatever you may think of that, it's hard to look at some of the deformed frogs and not worry about it.
There's been a fair amount written about the use of racial and ethnic profiling by airport security, and it's more nuanced than I had thought it would be when I went Googling for blog entries. What I saw at SeaTac was what you'd want to see - security personnel following strict procedures, and taking extra measures when they were called for. It felt like a charitable reading of Norman Mineta's infamous comment about 70-year-old grandmothers, since the security folks were only concerned with who was setting off the metal detectors. I'm not denying the potential value in taking a longer and harder look at passengers of Middle Eastern heritage - to paraphrase Willie Sutton, that's where the terrorists are. still, I couldn't help but think that such screening wouldn't have weeded out Richard Reid or Jose Padilla. No single method will be the best solution.
On Friday we headed north to Vancouver. To those who say that the Canadian border is a sieve, I can tell you that if you try to enter or exit Canada via I-5, you'll need to show proof of citizenship to the customs agents, and you may have to answer a bunch of questions about who you are and what you do for a living. We saw at least one vehicle get denied entry into Canada on our way in. We really did need our passports.
The Hertz Never Lost system got rather confused on our way in to Vancouver. After exiting highway BC 99, we took a wrong fork in the road (due in no small part to the road being very poorly marked) and spent nearly 15 minutes going in circles trying to find our way back. We later found out that the map database for Vancouver was a relatively new addition to their system.
We stayed in a hotel in downtown Vancouver, about a mile from Stanley Park and a half-mile from the convention center. Once we'd checked in we took a stroll around the place, winding up at Stanley Park before walking back. It was nice to stretch our legs out, and the weather was gorgeous, perfect for walking.
We had dinner at a sushi bar on the way back to the hotel, then changed for an all-wedding-guests party that the bride and groom were hosting that evening. The wedding party was about 120 people, most of whom were at the Friday night get-together. It was a fun and loose event in which the groom's brother-in-law emceed some silly bridesmaids-versus-groomsmen and bride-versus-groom games. The guests entertained themselves by decorating caricatures of the happy couple and taking a rather challenging quiz about Canada. I got about half the answers right, and I'm pretty good at this sort of thing.
Saturday was another beautiful day. The bride and groom led a small but hearty group of guests for a dip in the chilly English Bay. Helena, the bride, announced this outing on Friday night and specified that swimsuits were necessary, so I assume they didn't go here. We hadn't packed swimsuits, so I didn't join them. Instead, we took the car to Stanley Park this time and visited the excellent Vancouver Aquarium. Among the cool things that they had there are Beluga whales, sleepover programs, and a walk-through butterfly exhibit. We then had lunch at an outdoor restaurant which overlooked the Lion's Gate Bridge.
The wedding was held in the St. Andrew's-Wesley Church, which has apparently been used in various episodes of The X Files as the place Scully goes when she's having a crisis of faith. The ceremony went off without any aliens or ectoplasm getting in the way, then the guests were transported via shuttles to Brock House, a historic mansion on Jericho Beach. As with pretty much everything in Vancouver, the view and backdrop were spectacular. Best of all, they had a fine selection of beer. A good time was had by all.
We returned to Whidbey Island on Sunday for our niece Vanessa's third birthday party. The Never Lost got confused again as we left town, but this time we were able to recover without too much agita. One thing that really amazed me during all the driving we did was that from Whidbey to Anacortes to Orcas to Vancouver we were able to pick up Canadian rock station CKKQ. If you're ever up in that part of the world, tune your radio to 100.3 FM and leave it there. That was the best radio station I've listened to since the heyday of New York's 102.7 WNEW back in the 80s.
We spent a few hours in Whidbey helping Vanessa celebrate her birthday - with both sets of grandparents as well as two aunt/uncle pairs, she had plenty of help - then saddled up again to head back to Bellevue where we would once again crash at Manu and Jenny's house. The last thing we did before we left town was a stop at Pike Place Fish Market for some dungeness crab to go. They packed it for travel, and we wolfed it down at home with some help from Tiffany's parents, without whom we'd not have been able to cross the border in the first place. Today, after putting the passports back in the safety deposit box and profusely thanking the BankOne employee who helped us out with that, I will rescue Harry from the kennel on my way home from work, and all will be back to normal at home. Just in time for next weekend's housewarming party...
One of the benefits to travel, in my opinion, is the opportunity to look at another city's newspaper(s). I find it moderately annoying that Seattle, a city which is much smaller than Houston, has two daily papers while we're stuck with one. In any event, today's Seattle Times had a couple of interesting pieces in their Business section, about a universal remote that might actually simplify the TV/cable/VCR mess, the possibility that Peru might ban Microsoft products from their government offices, and how evil popup ads are starting to be tolerated by web users.
Looks like there's been some spirited discussion in my absence. I'm back now, so I'll try to get into some new and improved trouble. Look for a final trip report and some thoughts on airport security tomorrow.
I've read Owen and Josh's defenses of the alliance between American Christians and the Organization of Islamic Conferences (OIC) on matters of abortion and gay rights. Owen points out that the OIC is made up of over 50 countries, mostly "moderate" Islamic nations, and has been a strategic ally in the War on Terror. Josh notes that agreement on some points between Christian conservatives and Islamist nations does not imply agreement on all points, and that we're worked and voted with mortal enemies in the UN any number of times in the past when a matter of our national interest coincides with theirs.
The OIC is surely comprised of nations which are mostly at least non-hostile towards us. I suppose this argument would ring less hollow to me were it not for the quote about how Sudan helped prevent abortion rights language from entering a UN statement, or the bit about how US officials conferred with Iranian officials. In other words, if the Christian conservatives were merely dealing with a large organization that happens to include a few bad apples, it would be more believable if they avoided dealing directly with those bad apples.
Then there's the question of which values the two groups actually share. I suppose it was the Moroccan official's use of the term "family values", an expression that can cover quite a bit of territory, that got my antennae humming. The thing about strategic alliances is that you often find yourself going along with things you wouldn't normally in support of an ally, possibly in return for something that ally wouldn't normally do. Will the US officials turn a blind eye to, say, honor killings in order to maintain this alliance? I'm sure any number of OIC nations would file such a thing under "family values".
As for national interest, it's a bitter pill for me to swallow, but when we have a Republican in the White House, opposition to abortion and gay rights are going to be classified as being in the national interest. (And may I pause for a moment here to say once more: Thanks, Ralph!) Fine. I still question the priorities of an administration that would put this agenda ahead of such things as freedom, democracy, and open markets. I still say that working with even a small number of hostile nations in opposition to things that our real allies support undermines our relationship with those allies in the War on Terror. I still say that what we're doing here is objectively wrong.
Finally, apart from the Bush Administration, I question the values and priorities of the Christian activists themselves. As the Bull Moose noted, Sudan practices slavery against its Christian population. In many OIC nations, from hostiles like Iran to "moderates" like Saudi Arabia, Christians are not allowed to openly practice their faith. Freedom of worship is a foreign concept. There was a time when American Chritian organizations concerned themselves with issues like that. I suppose it's more important nowadays to ensure that slowing the spread of AIDS does not include making condoms available. Let's not hear anything more about "moral authority" from this crowd, shall we?
Orcas is a small island off the Puget Sound. To get there, we had to drive to Anacortes and take a ferry. There are quite a few ferries that run out of Anacortes, not all of which go to Orcas. We were aiming for a 10:15 AM ferry there and a 7 PM ferry back. In each case, since the next Orcas ferry was several hours after that, we had to make sure we were there early enough to ensure that there was room for our car.
With that in mind, we headed out at 8:30 for the 40 minute drive to the ferry terminal. We had some problems with the Hertz Never Lost, as it didn't appear to have an entry in its database for the ferry terminal. We finally found a ferry terminal and pointed ourselves in that direction. Once we hit town, it became obvious we were headed for a different terminal, and we were able to follow signs to our destination.
Orcas Island is small and largely uninhabited. There are a couple of small towns - East Sound, Orcas, and Olga among them - and one main road that winds a horseshoe path around the bay that juts into the land. We had some directions from Jenny, the kind that go by landmarks because there's nothing else to go by, and we followed the main road because there's nowhere else to go. The Never Lost didn't even list Olga, the nearest town, and cellphone service was spotty at best, but after one or two wrong turns we arrived.
Jenny, her sister and sister-in-law and their combined 6 kids and two dogs were staying in their great-grandfather's Victorian farm house, which was built in the 1880s. It has no electricity or running water - they pumped water from a well, and used either the wood-burning stove or a camp stove to cook. It was a great place for the kids, as there was a ton of open and wooded space to explore. After getting the grand tour of the house, I was shown around the grounds by five-year-old Marina and six-year-old McLean. Other than ten-month-old Peter, McLean was the only boy there, so I pretty quickly became his best buddy. He showed me his Star Wars handheld video game, and we talked about Spider-Man and exploding robots (you had to be there).
We packed a lunch and hiked a well-worn path through some woods to a small patch of rocky shore, where the kids hunted for crabs and threw sticks into the water for the dogs to fetch (the dogs never once got tired of this, and barked if we weren't holding up our end of the game sufficiently). We ate sandwiches and cookies, threw the leftovers to the dogs, collected "beach glass" (pieces of broken glass that had smoothed out after awhile of being beaten on by the tide), and the adults encouraged the kids and dogs to wear themselves out.
After making our way back to the house, this time with most people piled into Jenny's sister's VW Vanagon, we said our goodbyes and drove back towards the ferry, stopping in East Sound for a little shopping (Tiffany has been using opportunities like that to restock the gift closet) and a bite to eat. We had plenty of time to catch the ferry home.
Tomorrow we head off to Vancouver for the wedding. We'll be there until Sunday, when we come back for Vanessa's third birthday party.
Josh Trevino and Owen Courreges respond to the condemnations of the UN alliance between American Christian conservatives and Islamist states. Both make good points, and I recommend that you read what they have to say.
Andrew Sullivan asks why the Bush administration should want to ally itself with Islamist states on issues like women's rights and gay rights. The Bull Moose practically echoes my sentiments:
Haven't these folks heard the President's "axis of evil" speech? After all, they are working with two of the three rogue state miscreants. One of their ranks even stated, "We have realized that without countries like Sudan, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a U.N. document." Hello! Sudan is the notorious state that still practices slavery against its Christian population. Freedom for the unborn, but chains for the born?[...]
What's next? A strategic alliance with Satan? A religious right conference on Hezbollah family values?
Off the Pine makes a good point that I'd been thinking about but hadn't said:
This issue also gives Dems a golden opportunity to wrest the monopoly on flag-waving currently enjoyed by the GOP. There are a large number of liberal/libertarian hawks who disdain religious fundamentalism but see the Dems as soft on foreign policy. The Dems need to become the party of exporting liberal values (first and foremost gender equality) abroad. The question is whether they will be able to shed their own culture warriors' instinctive relativism to do so.
I can sure imagine an effective ad campaign to take the GOP to task for this. I can't imagine my GOP-leaning friends would be too happy to see such a thing.
All links via Matthew Yglesias.
Today after a hearty breakfast of hash browns and eggs, we packed up the minivan and headed off to the historic town of Langley, on the other end of Whidbey Island. Langley is another small older village on the coast of the island which makes a big part of its living these days off the tourist trade. We poked around in more antique and gift shops, had some rather good pizza at the Village Pizzeria (even my folks, who have often complained about the lack of good pizza on the Left Coast, are known to like the pizza at this place), and generally enjoyed the sunshine and beautiful scenery.
After Langley we headed back, stopping at the Greenbank Farm wine seller for a tasting. They offered four tastes for two bucks, which we gladly took them up on. All wines were indigenous to the area. We wound up buying a couple bottles of pinot gris.
It's been a lot of fun spending time with Vanessa, our soon-to-be-three-year-old niece, and Jack, our seven-month-old nephew. They're quite the opposites in many ways. Vanessa was a small baby and is still quite small for her age. Jack is a bruiser - he's only ten pounds lighter than his older sister. Vanessa doesn't like to be picked up, except by her parents. Jack is generally fussy unless he's being held. He doesn't care who holds him, but he fusses if you're sitting down while you're holding him, so most of the time you have to stand up and walk around.
Vanessa is very excited about her birthday party on Sunday. She chatters on about how both sets of grandparents, as well as her aunt Bernadette and uncle Sean, will be there. She loves being the center of attention, but only when she wants to be, for otherwise she can be shy. I suspect if we spent more time around her she'd be more open to us. Sometimes I wish we could all live closer together, but that's the way it goes.
We took the ferry to Port Townsend for a little shopping and sightseeing this morning. The road signs refer to it as the "Pt. Townsend Ferry", so naturally when I first saw one of them as we were driving in I said to Tiffany "Hey, look! It's the Pete Townsend Ferry!" (Yes, I know that's not how Pete Townshend spells his name. Work with me here.)
Our passports arrived today, thus ending our brush with diplomacy. We can now enter (and more importantly, exit) Canada in a hassle-free manner.
I've gotten some flak in the comments on this post regarding US Christian conservatives and their newfound alliances with fundamentalist Muslim nations over questions of abortion and homosexuality. That probably means I didn't do a good job of expressing why this story so disgusted me. Let's try again.
I'll stipulate that my outrage is kicked up a notch by the fact that the assorted theocrats are ganing up to oppose things that I favor, but that's only a contributing factor. What outrages me is that any US government official would look to countries like Iran, Libya, Sudan, and Iraq for just about any kind of alliance.
During the course of John Gotti's battles with federal prosecutors and again after his death, people (usually from Gotti's neighborhood) would talk about how he was a good family man who took care of the people he cared about. That may be true, but when you write up a list of John Gotti's qualities, "family man" and "good friend" should come about 500th, with "murderer" and "thug" being right up front. The most generous thing I can say about someone who would insist on talking about John Gotti's good qualities is that such a person is engaging in an extreme form of moral equivalence. At the worst, such a person is completely morally bankrupt.
I say that talking about Iran and Iraq in terms of their commitment to the traditional nuclear family is the same thing. There are only two things we should be saying to countries like that:
- Are you for us or against us in the war on terrorism?
- When will you be holding free and open elections?
Doing anything else takes our focus off of what's vitally important to us, now more than ever. Right now the government of Iraq is preparing to give thousands of dollars to the family of the man responsible for this. How can you talk to Iraqi officials, let alone make nice with them, about anything else?
That's what pisses me off about this. Since the immediate aftermath of 9/11, President Bush has equivocated in many ways about his "for us or against us" rhetoric. Some of them were understandable acquiescences to realpolitik. This is not. This is putting one's personal beliefs ahead of the interests of America and its allies, and it's disgusting.
Sadly, Rice's season has come to an end, thanks to a ninth-inning rally by Notre Dame. Congrats to the Irish for the hard-fought win.
This was a great season for Rice baseball, and it's a little hard to take its sudden end. These things happen, and there's no point dwelling on it. Get 'em next year, fellas. Meantime, football starts in about 10 weeks. Go Rice!
Britney Spears will star in a NASCAR-themed movie, which is currently in development. Here's all you need to know:
With such a stellar track record so far in her moviemaking career, I'm sure Britney will make a flick to make NASCAR proud.
"Britney herself has a lot of the values that represent NASCAR and her dad is a big NASCAR fan," said [NASCAR vice president of broadcasting Paul] Brooks. "She is close with her family, she's from Louisiana and represents true Americana."
We're here at my brother and sister-in-law's house on Whidbey Island. We landed in Seattle yesterday, hung out there and stayed overnight with a friend in Bellevue, then drove out here this morning. Our rent car has a Magellan "Never Lost" GPS system in it, which has indeed gotten us everywhere we've needed to be. Next time you're on the road in a strange city, pay the extra five bucks a day for your rent car to have it.
Today has been adventurous because of a little problem we discovered late Saturday night. It suddenly dawned on me that later this week we're crossing the border into Canada - the wedding we're attending on Saturday is in Vancouver - and our passports and birth certificates were snug and secure in our bank's safety deposit box. As we were taking off on Sunday, this meant we couldn't get to them before we left. Fortunately, we were able to reach someone at our bank today who faxed us a form to fill out and have notarized that would grant permission for my mother-in-law (to whom I gave a key as she drove us to the airport) to get into the box. I just got a voice mail from her saying that the passports are on their way to us, so we're far less likely to cause a diplomatic incident on Sunday when we return than we were 24 hours ago. Whew!
Today has mostly been about getting reacquainted with our soon-to-be-three-year-old niece Vanessa, and meeting her seven-month-old brother Jack. Vanessa warmed up to us after a half hour or so, and since then has peppered us with questions and demanded lots of attention. It's been loads of fun.
We get to do some touristy stuff over the next couple of days before we head to Vancouver. I'll post further updates as I can.
Conservative Christian organizations, with the support of the Bush administration, have hopped into the sack with theocratic and despotic Islamic countries like Iran and Iraq (two-thirds of the Axis of Evil, for those keeping score at home) to halt the expansion of sexual and political protections and rights for gays, women and children at United Nations conferences.
"We look at them as allies, not necessarily as friends," said Austin Ruse, founder and president of the Catholic Family and Human Rights Institute, a New York-based organization that promotes conservative values at U.N. social conferences. "We have realized that without countries like Sudan, abortion would have been recognized as a universal human right in a U.N. document."
When you're finding common cause with Sudan, you really ought to consider recalibrating your moral compass.
The alliance of conservative Islamic states and Christian organizations has placed the Bush administration in the awkward position of siding with some of its most reviled adversaries -- including Iraq and Iran -- in a cultural skirmish against its closest European allies, which broadly support expanding sexual and political rights.U.S. and Iranian officials even huddled during coffee breaks at the U.N. summit on children in New York last month, according to U.N. diplomats.
Once again, the Bush Administration's famed moral clarity comes through. If I was ever thankful that these guys for their leadership since 9/11, I officially take it all back.
Story via TAPped.
Tiffany and I are leaving this morning for a week in the Pacific Northwest to visit family and attend a wedding. I will have some access to a computer during this time, but expect posting to be light for the week.
Texas defeated Rice 2-1 yesterday, which means the Owls will have to survive the losers' bracket for a shot at the College World Series championship. They play Notre Dame, a 4-3 loser to Stanford, on Monday for the right to keep playing.
Clay Robison discusses the Kirk-Cornyn matchup, for which early polls show a tight race.
Even the Chron takes a shot at the NYT for the Houston hit piece. The Chron is routinely derided for its Houston cheerleading, but they got it right in this piece. I like they way they wrapped it up, too:
After the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, the world was generous with its support and sympathy for New York. The decision by the editors of The New York Times to publish an article sneering at Houston as it reels from a devastating flood and business reversals in the energy sector betrays an unbecoming, unperceptive snobbery from which most Houstonians -- even the most outlandish residents -- are blessedly free.
Well done.
A new survey shows that the number of people who express no religious preference doubled to 14% during the 1990s. The increase comes from people who do have religious faith, but who may be turned off by the link between religion and politics.
The state Democratic convention is underway this weekend in El Paso. Gubernatorial candidate Tony Sanchez fired a few choice shots at Governor Goodhair:
"I am going to restore respect, integrity, honesty and decency to the governor's office," Sanchez told the Texas Democratic Convention, paraphrasing a line that President Bush used in the 2000 presidential campaign to link Democrat Al Gore to the scandals of the Clinton White House."Insurance companies, HMOs, electric utilities, favored real estate developers in Austin ... have lined up, paid the freight ... and turned the governor's office into little more than a checkout line at the grocery store," Sanchez said.
I've expressed a number of reservations about the Democratic candidates trying to sound too much like Dubya, but the irony here is pretty amusing.
Meanwhile, a smallish group of state Dems pined for the good old days when Texas was Democratic territory and the party was more liberal. I have sympathy for these guys, and I'm certainly glad that they've stayed in the party rather than join Ralph Nader's band of merry anarchists, but there's a reason they've been marginalized: Like it or not, most people here don't agree with them. I wish them luck in working to change minds, but I'm not going to hold my breath waiting for results.
He seems to think that we should just shrug it off when someone insults our city. I'm perfectly happy to do so when it's a comedian or an obscure publication saying silly things, but when it's written someplace that will affect a lot of people's perceptions of who I am and where I live, I don't think it's overreacting to get upset. Of course, I'm just an ignorant-claims-making kind of guy, so what do I know?
Chicago Boy Jonathan Gewirtz quotes Robert L. Bartley in Monday’s Wall Street Journal:
When the government fails in its most basic functions -- say, protecting our citizens from foreign enemies -- no one at the FBI or CIA loses his job, we all gather around to salute the flag and Washington gives us yet another bureaucracy. But if business stumbles -- say a minor recession and the collapse of stock values many had thought inflated -- businessmen are hauled into court and the air is full of proposals for "reform."
I agree that there should be consequences when government fails, and indeed one of the many reasons to be skeptical of the Department of Political Cover Security is the fact that no one has been made to fall on his or her sword for the myriad of screwups that have been uncovered so far. However, it's a bit disingenuous to suggest that businessmen suffer where bureaucrats don't. You can oversee large losses and a dive in your stock price, get investigated for illegal market manipulation which causes your stock to fall farther, leave employees with the specter of layoffs and yet still stand to walk away with 33 million dollars. Dynegy and its employees and shareholders may take it in the shorts, but Chuck Watson, who also still owns 15 percent of the Houston Texans, will retire in style. I say that's more the norm than the exception, and I challenge the WSJ to prove otherwise.
Al Gore was twice pulled aside for random security checks while flying Midwest Airlines between Washington and Milwaukee. Gore apparently took the indignity with good patience.
Via my buddy Drew on the RoundTable list. I saw him drop a hint in comments on Karin's blog that he's considering getting his own blog. Go for it, dude! Say the word and you'll be on my blogroll.
Rob Neyer does the math and concludes that contraction in 2003 or beyond is increasingly unlikely.
why no one in blogdom has commented on the new visa rules, in which people from certain countries, but not Saudi Arabia, have to get fingerprinted and interrogated in order to enter the US. He wonders if it's because Robert Fisk has spoken out against it.
I could have sworn I'd seen some commentary in my recent blogrolling, but the only one I can find now is from War Liberal. I figured if anyone would speak to the no-Saudi part of this proposed plan, Little Green Footballs would, but this is all he's had to say about it. Can anyone address Junius' question?
I didn't imagine I could feel anything other than contempt for the so-called "artist" Eminem, but if this report is true, then he will have my sympathy:
Metro Detroit hip-hop artist Eminem (news - web sites) has reportedly received threats in response to a video he made in which he dresses up like Osama bin Laden (news - web sites).Bin Laden's supporters allegedly threatened the artist, whose real name is Marshal Mathers, after the release of the video for the single "Without Me." The threats were reported on a music Web site and appeared Thursday in print and television reports.
Eminem hired more bodyguards and consulted with a specialist in terrorism, according to Local 4.
It should be noted that Eminem's people deny the report and the website that originally printed the story has taken it down, in which case I can get on with my life without having to sympathize with Eminem.
Here's a good post on the costs of nuclear power by J Bowen of No Watermelons. Via Ted Barlow.
The Houston City Council followed through on its intentions to outlaw dumpster diving as well as "aggressive panhandling" downtown.
Today on Salon there's a story which attempts to debunk the "psychic" John Edwards. Author Shari Waxman makes a good case of pointing out how Edwards manipulates the audience and works the odds in his favor, but nearly made me gag with the following:
But Edward, a 32-year-old native of Long Island, has not fessed up to all of his talents. As it happens, he is more than a psychic medium; he is also a master statistician. The smoke and mirrors behind his self-professed ability to communicate with the dead is a simple application of the summation law of probability. The law states that the calculated probabilities of events that are independent (i.e., the occurrence of one event has no effect on the probability that another event will occur) may be added together. In symbolic terms, where A is the first event, B is the second event and P stands for probability:P(A) + P(B) = P(A or B)
For example, if you roll a six-sided die betting on a 3, your chances for success are 1 in 6, or 17 percent. Roll the die six times, and you are almost guaranteed to see a 3 (17 percent x 6 = 102 percent). Lucky for Edward, most audience members on his television show, "Crossing Over," are too hopeful and trusting to pull out a calculator and expose the charlatan behind the prophet.
Her statement about independent events is correct, but it's only true for differing independent outcomes of the same probability distribution. In other words, if an event has three outcomes A, B, and C, and the three outcomes are independent, then the equation Waxman gives is correct.
However, Waxman is all wrong when she tries to extend this to successive events. If what she said were true, then the probability of seeing at least one heads on two flips of a coin would be 100%. And whoever proofread this piece should be shot, since a 102% probability is impossible.
The right way to figure out the probability of a single outcome A occurring over N tries is to calculate the probability of A not occurring at all, and then subtracting it from 100%. The odds of two events occurring together is the product of their probabilities. Thus, the odds of outcome A occurring on consecutive tries is P(A) x P(A), where P(A) means the probability of A as before.
Let's take Waxman's example of rolling a 3. The odds that you do not roll a 3 on a given toss of a six-sided die is 5/6. The odds of not rolling a 3 on consecutive tosses is the product of the probabilities, so for two tosses it's (5/6) x (5/6), or 25/36. For six tosses, it's (5/6) multiplied by itself six times (ie, to the sixth power), which works out to be about 33.4%. Since that's the odds of not rolling a 3, the odds of rolling at least one 3 is 66.6%, because the odds of an event occurring (in this case, no threes in six dice rolls) plus the odds of that same event not occurring (in this case, at least one three over six dice rolls) must add up to 100%.
Putting Waxman's mathematical foibles aside, I was happy with her debunking efforts until the very end:
I prefer to believe Edward's fans are not unintelligent, but simply in need of something to believe in, to feel good about, or to relieve the anxiety of what cannot be controlled. If he is fulfilling these needs, then in some ways, his gig is legit. Just like playing the lottery, if you really want to believe, you are better off not knowing the odds.
How is his gig "legit"? Earlier in the article, Waxman notes that Edwards sells an audiotape called "Developing Your Own Psychic Powers" for $59.95. Given that he's selling nothing for something, how is this not fraud? If he were marketing himself as strictly entertainment, as many stage magicians and mentalists do, that would be one thing. But he's not. And you can believe in him all you want, but unlike the lottery, the odds of hitting the jackpot with Edwards really are zero.
Charles Murtaugh answers the question that InstantMan asks and Den Beste fumbles, namely why is it that so many sex-advice columnists are female. Murtaugh groks the real reasons:
The reason women succeed as sex columnists is because lustful guys like myself (and I would lay long odds that the Rachael Kleins of the world -- we had one of her back when I was in school -- have more male readers than female)(a) are curious to know what an attractive woman thinks about sex
(b) really, really want to believe that such attractive women think about sex just as much as we do
(c) secretly hope for mentions of "experimentation," if you know what I mean, and every guy does
and (d) already know all there is to know about the straight male perspective on sex -- because we are straight males!
Yep. There's another side to this coin as well. The Playboy Advisor (note to Glenn, Steven, and Avram - there's one you missed) has written that a large percentage of his questions come from women. It's no stretch to imagine that they're looking for the straight male's perspective, just as Rachel Klein's male readers want the straight female's viewpoint. Knowing what the other side thinks, that's what it's all about. You'd think a military expert like Den Beste would understand that.
The Chron's least useful columnist cops to laziness in a correction in today's paper regarding his uncritical belief in the Valentine Foundation, which Houston Press readers knew is run by convicted grifter Whitney Broach. Thanks to Kevin for helping to put pressure on Houston's Leading Information Source and for spotting the mea culpa.
Mac points to this article about McDonald's in Hawaii testing a breakfast meal that contains Spam. I sent this link to the RoundTable mailing list, and was promptly informed that this sort of regional adaptaion is quite common for McDonald's. A friend who did a stint in the Peace Corps in the Phillippines confirms the McSpaghetti item, and adds the rather gross comment that it contains a fair bit of sugar, since Filipinos apparently like sweet foods.
I've been to Japan, and I've eaten at a Japanese McDonald's (let me tell you, as much as I love sushi, after a week of it I was really really really craving a burger), but I don't recall seeing Teriyaki McBurger or Chicken Tatsuta Burger. On the other hand, I was so blinded by my need for comfort food that I don't think I actually looked at the menu - I just pointed to the picture of the Big Mac and fries and sat down to await the greasy goodness that was headed my way. Mmm, Special Sauce...
Avedon has a good conspiracy theory going today, in which the mysterious founder of Media Whores Online is in reality Jennifer Liberto. The hatchet job was done to throw everyone off the scent. Works for me!
Meryl gets in a musical mood over the NYT blogger rivalry article. Hmmm, maybe I can help here...
National Bloggerhood Week, with sincere apologies to Tom Lehrer
Oh, the war blogs hate the tech blogs
And the tech blogs hate the war blogs
To hate all but
Those just like your blogs
Is every blogger's goal
But during National Bloggerhood Week
National Bloggerhood Week
Dave Winer and Glenn Reynolds are dancing cheek to cheek
It's fun to eulogize
The bloggers you despise
As long as you don't put 'em on your blog-roll
Oh, Ted Frank hates Cameron Barrett
And Jason Kottke hates Eric Olsen
Hating those blogs
Is really wholesome
It's as American as apple pie
But during National Bloggerhood Week
National Bloggerhood Week
Scripters love the pundits cause it's really chic
Step up and give a link
To those who really stink
You can tolerate them if you try
Oh, the old school hates the new kids
And the new kids hate the old school
And the techies hate the newbies
And everybody hates Ted Rall
But during National Bloggerhood Week
National Bloggerhood Week
It's National-We're-All-Just-Web-Loggers Week
Be nice to bloggers who
Are inferior to you
It's only for a week so have no fear
Be grateful that it doesn't last all year!
Congrats to Karin for her new blog location. Update those links, people. And help her figure out a movie made recently that was about women, but which was not also a "disgusting, sappy, Hollywood chick flick?" Can't help you there, Karin, the only movies I've seen this year are Star Wars and Spiderman.
Also, note Amy's new blog name and purpose. Have fun with it, Amy!
The redoutable Jack Cluth has named me the People's Republic of Seabrook Site of the Day, which puts me in good company. Thanks, Jack!
The NYT's Harvey Araton shoots down Risible Ralphie's silly charges about fixed refereeing. Via Ken Layne.
Oh, and for those who like to bemoan the lack of competitive balance in baseball, check out this Jayson Stark column which talks about the abject lack of such balanced in the salary-capped NBA. Stark goes right to the heart of the issue here:
If the Yankees are so bad for baseball, how come they're on national TV every time you turn on your set? If the Yankees are so bad for baseball, how come they outdraw every team in the sport in road attendance? If the Yankees are so bad for baseball, why were we all so worked up last weekend when Barry Bonds finally came to the Bronx?Because, in so many ways, they're not bad for baseball. They're great for baseball.
So what bothers us about the way Bud Selig's crowd complains about the Yankees isn't the merits of their arguments. It's all in the attitude with which they make those arguments.
It's about time baseball started doing more to sell everything that's right about its sport instead of everything that's wrong. The NBA has problems, too. It just doesn't turn them into a national marketing campaign.
So listen closely as David Stern presents the championship trophy to Jerry Buss and Shaq and Kobe this week. We bet he won't mention competitive balance for one mili-second -- even though his league has had so little of it, it makes baseball look like the World Cup.
Damn straight.
Larry has been keeping track of local bloggers' responses to this piece of shinola. Here's another one for you, from the aforementioned Owen Courreges, who does a nice job of debunking the notion that Houston is all brown and no green.
Erica suggested in the comments to my post on this that Larry, Ginger and I write a letter to the NYT to set them straight. Tiffany told me she agreed with this, saying that unless a few articulate Houstonians speak up, the average NYT reader will think he or she has read an accurate report. I'll try to compose a letter in the next day or so, and when I do I'll post a copy here.
I see that the story of the Texas GOP and its broadly inclusive platform have been fairly widely noticed in the blogosphere. Today, state Democratic chair Molly Beth Malcolm fires back:
State Democratic Chairwoman Molly Beth Malcolm on Monday said the new Texas Republican Party platform is a religious document that tries to question the loyalty of Democrats."I think it is rather frightening that these people are trying to say everybody ought to believe alike or they are not good Americans. They are wrong," Malcolm said.
"When the Republicans try to say they are people of faith and the Democrats are not, they also are very, very wrong," Malcolm said.
It's illuminating, I think, to look at what the state GOP platform calls for and what the Democratic platform calls for:
For the folks in Santa Fe who've been harassed about their beliefs - including a lot of Christians - that first one is undoubtedly a barrel of irony.
Besides the call for a Christian nation, some of the other faith-oriented items in the GOP platform include:
- A call on Congress to sanction any country that persecutes citizens for religious beliefs. The platform specifically calls for rejection of "most favored nation" status for the People's Republic of China until it allows freedom of religion.
- A restoration of the chapel in the Texas Capitol.
- Increased government attention on promoting faith-based community and business organizations that help the needy.
- Public group prayer in schools as well as "the return of Bibles and other religious books to the shelves of all public schools and libraries."
The party also called for character education "based upon biblical principles upon which our nation and state law system were founded."
Now compare to the Democrats' statement:
The state Democratic Party's 2000 platform, subject to revision at the party's state convention later this week, calls for "government to scrupulously honor every Texan's right to religious freedom while respecting the separation of church and state," according to the state party's Web site.The platform adds, "We recognize the importance of religion and prayer in the lives of Texans and support every individual's right to practice his or her own beliefs without imposing them on others."
Which one sounds to you like it's more in tune with the First Amendment?
Owen Courreges left some good comments in my last entry about the philosophy of the "separation of church and state". While I can see where he's coming from, and agree to a certain extent, I hope it's clear why I prefer that the two maintain their distance. I have no faith that the position as stated in the state GOP's platform cares one whit about those who practice a non-evangelical faith, let alone those who choose to practice no faith. That's not the America I believe in.
BTW, Ginger gave a list of platform items from a mailer she got in March. Even putting aside my disagreement on many of these issues, it's hard to see why some of them are such priorities. Don't we have Important Things to be worrying about, such as the $5 billion budget shortfall?
NewPower, the erstwhile Enron subsidiary, is pulling out of the Texas market, sending 80,000 customers back to Reliant and TXU while making some people ask if this whole deregulation thing is going to work.
Pending regulator approval, Dallas-based TXU Energy will gain NewPower's 34,000 electricity customers in the Houston area, and Houston-based Reliant will get 45,000 NewPower customers in the Dallas market.
Also, although they will be paying less than local customers who pay the "price to beat" rates of incumbent provider Reliant, many former NewPower customers in Houston will be paying more as customers of TXU.
NewPower has been the most aggressive among competing electricity retailers in the state -- the leader among providers that had convinced customers to switch over from their incumbent provider.
"I think it's going to shake some confidence in the system," said Reggie James, director of the southwest region of Consumers Union in Austin.
When deregulation was first proposed, James said, "there was all this hype about how everyone would save all this money."
The reality, James said, has been numerous billing problems and "now we see the biggest marketer going down the tubes."
The powers that be, of course, disagree, saying that the market is just fine, thanks.
Rep. Steven Wolens, D-Dallas, who co-chairs the legislative committee which has oversight over electricity deregulation, issued a statement affirming the overall strength of the market.Wolens noted that Texas customers are continuing to pay less than they did under last year's regulated electric rates.
That's in part because the state's new laws on deregulation mandated a significant decrease in the base rates offered by the incumbent providers.
That last sentence has me scratching my head. I admit, I haven't followed the dereg story here very closely. I'm a risk-averse late-adopter. My plan remains to wait and see how much the market shakes out before I look around for another provider. (Actually, I just want to avoid the hassles of making a switch and the worry that my power will get cut off because some phone drone misspelled my name or some such.) But what's up with a deregulation law that mandates a "significant decrease in the base rates offered by the incumbent providers"? Isn't that, like, a regulation of the market? Couldn't we have just mandated the decrease and left things as they were? What am I missing?
There are still a bunch of providers in the market (nine in the Houston area, according to the article), so it's not like we're on the verge of being in an unregulated duopoly. I do have to wonder if anyone's thought of the possible consequences if this market, like so many others in America, goes through a wave of consolidation and buyouts. What happens if some day there are only two or three players? What happens if a part of the state winds up with only one choice?
Recently I posted about a change to Harvard's sexual assault policy, which would now require "corroborating evidence" for an official school inquiry. My father read this story and was rather appalled by it. Here's the feedback he sent me, from his perspective as a judge:
It has been reported that as of the school year 2003 "peer" complaints of "sexual assault" will not be investigated by Harvard University without "corroborating evidence".This change in the student handbook has been brought about by asserted "financial" burdens necessarily incurred by investigating all claims of peer sexual assault.
Does any of the claptrap make anyone take pause as to the underlying message coming from the administration, faculty and student body of this University? The cost of investigation is putting a burden on their already tight "budget" is the message, or more bluntly, "we don't want to spend the money looking at all those claims of sexual assault coming from our student population." Would the result have been the same of complaints about faculty sexual assaults of students?
The question has to be asked, how many complaints are we talking about for the years 1999 to 2002? According to the Harvard's website, in 1999 there we 18541 students enrolled in all courses, fulltime and part-time, in all divisions. 34 sex offenses reported were listed in the Harvard University Police Department's crime stats in 2000. For my purposes, I include their statutory definition of forcible fondling since it most nearly squares up with "sexual assault". Forcible fondling includes, inter alia, touching the body where the bathing suit covers for the purposes of sexual gratification against the will of the touchee. As a comparison, according to the Cambridge Police Department, between 1998 and 2000, 41 rapes were reported. Certainly I am not comparing "sexual assault" to rape, but if we used the classification of sex crime, these stats become significant.
34 "sexual assaults" for the calendar year of 2000 with a student population of 18,500+! Some how I find it difficult to understand the amendment to the student handbook and how eliminating investigations when there is no "corroborating evidence" a cost effective remedy. Much less, I view this amendment as a significant blow to the pursuit of justice.
"Corroborating evidence" is a fascinating phrase. How do you corroborate "forcible fondling" when you are at a frat party or whatever and you are the victim of an unappreciated, unwelcome and intrusive hand on your body? Previously, it's only your word if you want to file a complaint, but now, you cannot file a complaint, you have no "corroborating evidence", no bruise, no scrap on your body, no "medals", only your word and your credibility. Historically, the credibility of the complainant been the basis of many charges and convictions simply because a seasoned cop or prosecutor had the experience and wisdom to go forward with only the complainant's word. I can attest to that fact, since there are a few inmates doing time after convictions based upon the credibility of the complainant in case tried before me.
Someone is going the have to explain all this to me, the old fashioned, out of touch believer in using all those years of experience and all the common sense acquired doing business with the person on the other end of the conversation. Do I believe what this person just said, does it make sense, have the ring of truth, and what is this persons ability to recall past events and report them with accurately?
Consider this set of facts: A coed dorm; a roommate who has a frequent visitor, also living on the same floor; the complainant is in the dorm on a weekend night and the dorm floor is empty; sometime during the early evening the complainant awakes to find the friend of the roommate in bed and fondling the complainant's genitals. The victim makes enough noise that the perp leaves. There is no physical assault so as to leave telltale "medals" (bruises), scraps or lacerations, nothing; identity is not an issue, but under the new policy of Harvard, the is no "corroborating evidence". No harm no foul?
I guess that single sex dorms, curfews, dress code and mandatory attendance at religious services are next, after all, without "corroborating evidence" there is no problem with sexual assault at Harvard.
Would an informed citizenry vote to retain in office the Legislators who voted for such a bill?
Dad's making an implicit assumption that most if not all of these sexual assault cases involve both genders. I've read enough crime fiction set in all-male British public schools that I wouldn't be so sure. It's orthogonal to his point, but I wanted to make note of it.
I also note that TAPped agrees with Dad in that these cases should properly be referred to the police instead of being handled internally. Harvard students Evan Day and Matthew Yglesias have some comments as well.
The Poor Man points me to this post in Quark Soup which discusses why you shouldn't rely too strongly on political writers for environmental policy:
"There is no democracy in physics," the physicist Luis Alvarez once said. "We can't say that some second-rate guy has as much right to opinion as Fermi."
The same goes for any field of science.
And if that's true within fields, it's even more true between fields. Anthropologists have very little useful to say about high-energy physics (which I'm sure they'll be the first to admit), and physicists are very unlikely to be credible on the subject of angiogenesis. Science has gotten too deep, the questions are too specialized.
[...]
The world is complicated. Science is complicated. The scientific method is a time-proven process that has lead to a great understand, and mastery, of the natural world.It takes time for it to reach conclusions, and scientists put in that time. As I've written before, the IPCC Assessment Reports are some of the most peer-reviewed scientific documents in history. When I've attend conferences such as those of the American Geophysical Union and the American Association for the Advancement of Science, I see little debate on the fundamentals conclusions of climate science in the sessions.The skeptics aren't there.
Of course, this subject has now taken on a life of its own, and it's the polemical battlefield that [Thomas] Sowell et. al. are fighting over. But just be clear it's not the scientific battleground. If our society and our politicians decide they want to ignore the scientific findings of climatologists, that is of course their right -- it certainly happens with other scientific topics. But that doesn't make the consequences any less grounded in science. To borrow a phrase from the early days of Los Alamos, that doesn't mean you're not tickling the dragon.
Very well said. I note that I expressed similar concerns awhile ago, in a slightly different context.
Anyway, Quark Soup is worth checking out. Scroll down from that link to see much more about global warming.
A five-year old bulldog in Minnesota has become a local celebrity for his habit of picking up plastic recyclable bottles while out for walkies. Harry, of course, is a minor celebrity around here, but he only picks up things that smell like food.
Proving that Houstonians harbor no ill will towards New York no matter what the Times and its retread writers say about us, the predicted post-9/11 baby boom will soon generate more of us.
Matt Welch gets the kind of feedback most of us only dream about.
Oh, and my condolences on the Coogs' loss to UT in the Super Regional. UH had a great season and would have been a tough draw in the College World Series. Good luck next year.
I've added a few blog links and done a bit of reorganizing on the left-hand side of the page. I'm caught between the fear that I might be missing something good and the realization that I don't have enough time for all this. In the end, I'd rather have a list of good places to look, even if I can't visit them all the time.
And hey, you never know, some of these folks might eventually link back to me. I'm currently listed as a Lowly Insect on The Bear Truth for having 22 links to me. It's my goal to some day make it to Slithering Reptile. May as well pollute a few people's referrer logs, y'know?
If I really find myself with Too Much Time On My Hands, I can check out Bear's list of lefty blogs and see if the ones I haven't heard of are worth regular reading.
Let's see, today we have Broder where art thou, a reference to the award-winning Cohen Brothers movie in which three Midwestern stringers journey to Washington in search of the mythical Dean of Political Columnists. We have a visit from Andy Rooney, in which he asks "Ever wonder what noted sports journalist Rick Reilly is really?". I always thought he was a failed cloning experiment, Andy, much like yourself. Next, we have someone looking for Iranian Boyz music poster. I don't have any Iranian Boyz lying around, but I do have a fine collection of Chicago Boyz for your edification. Last but not least we have someone looking for pictures of Jennifer Liberto, proving that some things about the Internet remain constant.
Larry vents his formidable spleen at this tiresome article about Houston's soul, or spirit, or spunkiness, or whatever theme former Houston Press writer Randall Patterson's editor asked him to write about. Ginger has her say as well.
The first clue that Patterson may have lived in Houston but was never truly a part of it comes right in the first graf, as they say in the highfalutin' dead-tree media biz:
After the disaster, I got back to Houston as quickly as possible and at first could hardly tell anything had happened. It was not as if a bomb had exploded or a building had collapsed. There had been a disappearance, that is all, and the effect was not apparent until I got out of the car. It was the fear I noticed, and I saw it first when I sat down with Elyse Lanier.
Elyse Lanier, bless her fashionably decked-out little heart, is nowhere close to what a normal citizen of Houston is like. Elsye Lanier is the Arlene Oslaf-Joseph character from Grosse Point Blank. She means well, but she simply isn't from the same planet as the rest of us.
Patterson goes on the do the usual trashing of Enron and Ken Lay that we here have grown accustomed to. His purple prose contains howlers like this:
It has never been like other cities -- not like San Francisco or Denver or Palm Beach. People have never gone to Houston for its beauty or climate, or because it is in any natural way a good place to live. Houston from the start has been a place to make money -- the great interior commercial emporium of Texas,'' as the Allen brothers promised. And if money was Houston's singular attraction, then certainly the city would impose no heavy restrictions on the making of it.
Um, Randall? Just FYI, but the last people to see New York City's natural beauty lived there in the 17th century. And I daresay that I inhaled more exhaust fumes in four-plus years of commuting into Manhattan than I have in fourteen years of living in Houston.
On top of that is all of the nose-wrinkling about making money. It never ceases to amaze me that in a society that so clearly worships having money there are so many people who gets prissy about people who actually work to make it.
And if we're going to look down our nose at people who work at making money, we have to spend a few sentences making Jim "Mattress Mack" McIngvale look like a rube. Mack is many things, including a live-action cartoon character in his own TV commercials (and anyone who thinks that this sort of thing is endemic to burgs like Houston has never seen a Crazy Eddie commercial) and a businessman who is truly dedicated to customer service. I've bought furniture from Mack. Most times I've gone to Gallery Furniture, he's right there. You can walk up to him and tell him what you think. I've done it. The decor may not be Hamptonsesque, but I've never walked out of there feeling like I got ripped off. If that's tacky, then so be it.
By the way, while prominent New York businessmen like the fellows behind Crazy Eddie became famous for their role in a huge financial statement fraud case, Mack is known around here for being the fastest checkbook in the West for all kinds of worthy causes. He spends Thanksgiving at the George R. Brown Convention Center feeding turkeys that he paid for to "the less fortunate" as the newsies like to say. Somehow, that sort of thing never makes it into articles like Patterson's.
In the end, I think what really chaps my ass about this piece is how Patterson gives two seconds' worth of time to Tropical Storm Allison, then goes on ad nauseum about the trauma that Enron and Ken Lay wrought on Houston's society, as if anyone in Houston gave a shit. Patterson could have written about how a year later, there are still over 700 families still awaiting FEMA assistance. Patterson could have written about how many of the people in one of the 70,000 flooded houses are still doing repairs or have sold their homes for lot value. He could have written many different stories, but somehow he thought that this society-page pyschobabble would somehow serve the readers of the New York Times. I'm still not sure if I should scorn him or pity him.
I could go on about the reasons why I choose to live here (and for the record, I came here to attend graduate school, an activity which was and is no one's idea of a good way to make money) but that would probably be as boring and self-indulgent as Patterson's piece. I'll just say that whatever else may be true of Texans in general and Houstonians in particular, we do have a pretty good sense of humor about our native or adopted state. That's good enough for me.
Having voted down the silly anti-RINO proposition at the convention, the GOP made some serious inroads to the Democrats' traditional base when a prominent black minister from Houston threw his support behind Governor Goodhair and the GOP.
The Rev. C.L. Jackson of Houston's Pleasant Grove Missionary Baptist Church provided a show of support for Gov. Rick Perry by announcing at the Republican State Convention that he is switching parties.To the cheers of some 8,500 party stalwarts, Jackson said that his two days at the convention convinced him that he now is a Republican after years of being a Democrat.
Add in the GOP's efforts here in Houston and I for one am getting nervous.
Molly Beth Malcolm? Ron Kirk? Tony Sanchez? I hope you're all paying attention here. Counting on black and Hispanic folks to vote Democratic because they've always done so is beyond stupid. If you're not giving people - any people, never mind who - a reason to vote for you, someone else will. I haven't been seeing any good reasons to vote for the so-called Dream Team lately. What I have been seeing is a lot of pissing around, wasting time, and lack of focus.
I keep reading that Texas will trend Democratic in the next decade or so as Hispanics become the plurality population. I have to say, if the Dems don't win at least one statewide election this year, I'm not sure that this prognostication will be accurate any more. It seems to me that the GOP will be able to make a good argument to ambitious young black and Hispanic candidates that if they want to win they need to run as Republicans. If that starts to happen, we may as well give up the pretense that there are two parties in this state.
The GOP will have its own issues regardless of whether the Dems continue to play to lose, as the RINO proposition shows. The bigger your tent is, the more likely you'll have people with wildly different viewpoints fighting for control of the party's soul. The Dems have dealt with this issue since the 80s as the paleoliberals have mostly given way to the DLC types. It's been ugly, there's been permanent fallout (see Nader, Ralph), and it's nowhere close to being over. The Republicans' recent national and state prominence have shielded them from some of this, but it's coming.
Here's an update from the state GOP convention:
DALLAS -- Texas Republicans argued over whether their state convention was mainstream or filled with "religious zealots" Saturday as delegates approved a party platform that called for the repeal of the state lottery, declared the United States a Christian nation and favored posting the Ten Commandments on public property.The Republican platform also reaffirmed the state party's belief that the nation needs to "dispel the myth of the separation of church and state."
Guys? Here's a clue for you:
Amendment ICongress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
And lest we forget, here are a few thoughts on the subject from one of the authors of our Constitution.
The case of a 14-year-old girl and her multiple sex partners in Michigan is calling into question some of the assumptions about age of consent laws. Has Reynolds written about this one yet?
The Rice Owls will play in their third College World Series since 1997 after shutting out five-time national champs LSU in consecutive games in the Super Regional. Rice will play the winner of the Houston-University of Texas series next weekend in Omaha. Go Rice!
In case you slept in this morning, there was an interview with Kimeli Maiyomah, a member of the Maasai tribe of Western Kenya, about the Maasai's gift of 14 cows to the American people as a gesture of consolation for the 9/11 attack. You can hear it via Real Audio here.
Today's weird Google search referral: "Olsen twins legal age count down". There's an R. Kelly joke in there somewhere, but I'm not quite feeling up to it right now.
Ginger notes that the Chron's least useful columnist Thom Marshall has written in praise of the Valentine Foundation, the charitable organization headed by onetime would-be womb-renter Whitney Broach. She's not sure whether he disagress with the Houston Press report that I cited previously or simply hasn't read it. Like her, I suspect the latter. The Press has made some sport of ragging on the ineffably irrelevant Marshall, who so richly deserves it. Look no further than ol' Thom for a good part of any smart Houstonian's contempt for the Chron.
The political season has officially begun here in Texas with the state GOP convention occurring this weekend in Dallas. The Dems get together next weekend in El Paso. The Rs are trying to figure out how they can win without Dubya's coattails, a nontrivial matter since Rick Perry and Carole Keeton Rylander both eked out wins in 1998. They'll have plenty of advantages this year but no guarantees.
Of course, the Dems continue to be unable to articulate why they're a better choice. We received a Tony Sanchez For Governer leaflet on our porch the other day. The themes he highlights are Education, Health Care, and Bringing Business Experience to Government. Let's see, Bush actually acheived some education reform, and HMO reform legislation passed on his watch (against his will, of course, but he still claimed credit for it). It's kind of amusing to realize that Business Experience is a claim that the Democrat can make against the career-politician Republican, but with all the business disasters lately I wonder how much of a plus that is. My point here is that Sanchez, like Ron Kirk, is running on Bush's themes. I still fail to see how they can hope to compete in that area, since Bush himself will be giving visible support to their opponents. Can someone explain this to me?
Kirk, meanwhile, is still floundering around with a charge that he's reversed himself on support for making the Bush tax cuts permanent. Please tell me again why we have a Democrat running if all he's going to do is support Republican policies? I really hope Kirk is learning from these mistakes, because if he's not he's going to get his ass handed to him in November.
And now a few words about exploding toilets. You have been warned.
I saw a few conservo-bloggers link to this Ruben Bolling cartoon, which mocks Democratic attempts to claim that Bush should have known about 9/11. I'm willing to bet that most of them will not be linking to this week's Bolling cartoon.
Naturally, Governor Goodhair is trying to make political hay out of this:
With his effort to help restore higher speed limits on Houston highways, Gov. Rick Perry stepped on the gas in his own race to remain in the Governor's Mansion.And while Perry can expect to face scrutiny about his dedication to clean the air, political analysts say he scored with voters on an issue that will be difficult for Democratic opponent Tony Sanchez to oppose.
"It doesn't take much imagination to understand that almost every Texan wants to drive faster," said Rice University political scientist Bob Stein. "The candidate who can deliver a 70-mph speed limit to the people of Harris County will have, if not their votes, their gratitude."
I have a lot of respect for Bob Stein, but why in the world should people be grateful to the governor for this? I mean, on whose watch was this stoopid plan conceived? On whose watch do we have to pay for the 55 MPH signs to go up and then come back down again? And as the other story notes, it'll be awhile - maybe not until 2003 - before most of these signs come down, and until they do, the 55 MPH limit is in effect. If so, there may be a backlash instead of a reward.
And how is it that Perry got to the front of this parade? The main people fighting the lower speed limit have been the counties surrounding Houston, who had threatened a lawsuit to exempt themselves. And according to the EPA, it was in part to "the leadership of Governor Rick Perry" and others that the TNRCC plan, including the lower speed limit, was enacted in the first place. Here's Rick Perry and that noted environmental activist Tom DeLay joining EPA Regional Administrator Greg Cooke for the October 15 signing of the State Implementation Plan (SIP) that imposed the lower speed limit. Here's a TV sound bite from March 25 in which Perry says "everyone is a part of the solution". Only in April, a good six months after implementation, do we see Perry ask the TNRCC to "consider" alternatives to the 55 MPH limit. The man has no shame.
(Oh, and how nice it would be if Houston's Leading Information Source could have pointed this out as a counter to Perry's shameless politicking. How nice it would be if I didn't have to go Googling for this information. How nice it would be if we had some of that famous liberal bias in our daily fishwrap.)
Of course, our Democratic leadership seems to want to insist on handing Perry the victory:
Some Democrats, including U.S. Reps. Ken Bentsen, Gene Green and Sheila Jackson Lee, have complained about the lower speed. But it has been largely a Republican effort."I'm sure that Democrats are more concerned with the environment, and the 55-mph speed limit is part of the effort of cleaning up the air," said Harris County Democratic Party Chairwoman Sue Schechter.
Earth to Sue: The lower speed limit was a loser with a capital L. It put a lot of time and money into a low-return effort and pissed people off in the process. The new emissions testing, and the long-overdue proposed new rules for refineries will have a real effect. Had any of our previous governors (like, oh, say, the last one) done anything about the fact that in 1999, a bunch of refineries were still allowed to pollute at 1970 levels thanks to a 28-year-old long-outdated grandfather clause in the state's environmental regulations, maybe this whole lower speed limit fiasco could have been avoided. Why not act like you have two brain cells to rub together and talk about the wasted effort and Bush's oh-so-strict call for "voluntary" emissions reductions instead?
I'd feel much better about the Democrats' chances in this year's election if I saw actual evidence that they had an idea about how to win. Sheesh.
The good news for us Dems is that the Republicans may just be serious about enforcing party purity, according to the Houston Press. This expands on the Chron story I linked to on Sunday.
Turns out George Will wasn't endorsing the position that pilots shouldn't carry guns, as I thought he was. He was merely giving the other side's viewpoint. Now he gives his.
The Katy Corridor Coalition, a group of activists dedicated to rethinking the ungodly plan to widen I-10 West into 22 lanes, reports a a crowd of over 500 at their most recent public meeting. I was unable to attend, but I certainly support their efforts. Let's hope the politicians take notice.
Salon readers defend Media Whores Online and its style. It's clear that a lot of MWO fans read Salon, and most of them didn't care much for this article.
Meanwhile Atrios responds to my previous thoughts about MWO and its tactics. He makes a lot of good points, as does Avedon Carol, who wrote in the comments "If it didn't work, we wouldn't be hearing about MWO all of a sudden. Consortium News has been doing careful, measured articles for a long time and you don't hear their name in the media at all."
I'll say again that I'm glad someone is doing this. It clearly needed to be done. I still wish it could be done in a less strident way, but I can't argue with success. It's interesting to me that sites like MWO, BuzzFlash and the Daily Howler have gained a lot of traction since the 2000 election. We've heard "the liberal media" and "liberal media bias" tossed around so much in conservative circles that it's nearly become conventional wisdom despite all the evidence that there's plenty of non-liberal media and media bias. Perhaps now that such sites have started fighting back we might hope to change some perceptions. If that happens, then I'll retract all my doubts and equivocations about MWo and its ilk.
On a side note, Atrios printed an email he got from Jennifer Liberto prior to the Salon article, in which she tried to find some sources to interview. I expect there to be more on this, so stay tuned.
So Ron Kirk has sent a letter to the Senate urging confirmation hearings for President Bush's nominees, despite the fact that earlier this year he sent a fundraising letter which criticized GOP attempts to "pack the federal courts with conservative jurists who oppose Democrat rights and principles, including a woman's right to choose." Naturally, his GOP opponent, John Cornyn, has reacted with delight to this boneheaded move on Kirk's part:
A spokesman for Texas Attorney General John Cornyn, Kirk's Republican opponent, said the Democratic candidate was "wilting" under pressure from Cornyn, who has repeatedly criticized Senate Democrats for delaying confirmation proceedings.[...]
Cornyn has repeatedly challenged Kirk and other Democrats on the judicial confirmation issue. He has specifically gone to bat for Texas Supreme Court Justice Priscilla Owen, whose nomination to the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals has been on hold for more than a year.
I call this a boneheaded move not because I don't think that Priscilla Owen is a bad judge who should be kept off the Federal bench (I do, but that's beside the point). I call it boneheaded because I can't see the point in running as the candidate who promises to work the most closely with Bush. There's no way that Ron Kirk can win that way, since Bush himself will do whatever he can to get his fellow Republican elected. This is a huge asset for John Cornyn. For Kirk to fight on those terms is suicidal.
Look, George W. Bush is hugely popular in this state. Ron Kirk isn't going to win by running strongly against Bush. But to try and paint himself as the man in Bush's corner is counterproductive to the Demcratic strategy, which is based on black and Hispanic voter turnout. With enough turnout from those groups, Kirk will need something like 35% of the Anglo vote. A no-name no-money perennial candidate got 35% of the vote running against Kay Bailey Hutchison in 2000. There's enough baseline Democratic support for this.
What Ron Kirk can and should do is to identify himself with popular policies, including some popular Bush policies, but stress the ways in which he can do better. For example, Kirk can offer the obligatory support of the War on Terror while questioning our cozy relationship with Arafat and the Saudis. Even in an oil state like Texas, I think support for the war will override the economics. Kirk can praise Bush's education reforms, such as standardized testing, while questioning the need to move oversight up a level to the federal government. And of course there's much fertile ground with Enron and accounting reform, making the FBI and CIA more efficient and accountable, rational environmental concerns - remember Houston? what can you do about air quality here? - and lots of other things.
So I don't understand why Ron Kirk is wasting his time on this. It's not an issue he can win with.
From today's Chron:
With a sly reference to his own need for speed, Gov. Rick Perry on Tuesday ordered the Texas Department of Transportation to use clean diesel in its Houston-area fleet, a measure that could bolster the case for repealing the end of the unpopular 55 mph environmental speed limit.
[...]
Neither Perry nor TNRCC Chairman Robert Huston would speculate on what will happen with the 55 mph speed limit at the commission meeting. Asked flatly whether he supported repealing the limit, Perry became slyly cryptic.
"Being a young man who grew up in the '60s and '70s and '80s, drove on relatively large and open and straight and long highways, I'm a big fan of Sammy Hagar," the governor deadpanned.
For those who didn't grow up in those decades, Perry was referring to a track on Hagar's 1984 album VOA titled I Can't Drive 55.
Duuuuuude...
You make the call. Images taken from the blogs in question.
Well, the Astros have found a corporate sugar daddy to pay the big bucks to rename EnronAstros Field. Hell, I didn't even know Minute Maid was based in Houston, but there it is. All I know is that if they go back to the orange uniforms of yesteryear in honor of the new sponsor, I may have to start a fan revolt.
Though it still wasn't reported on ESPN, I have found Ralph Nader's letter to NBA Commissioner David Stern. It's good to know that like Al Gore, Nader has kept himself busy with Important Issues since the election.
All of a sudden my referral log is full of people searching for a letter that Ralph Nader sent to NBA Commissioner David Stern. What's up with that? I can't find anything at ESPN or Yahoo. Is there some group-mind thing going on out there, or am I just seeing a bunch of variations by one obsessive but misguided Googler?
While I generally agree with the criticisms that are being made of Liberto's piece, I find I'm not wholly comfortable with MWO. Oh, their anonymity doesn't bother me. There's plenty of anonymous bloggers out there. When you can't judge someone by a name and reputation, you have to judge them by the persuasiveness of their writing and their fidelity to facts, and by that standard many of them put certain Actual Professional Journalists to shame. MWO and other collaborative efforts like them should be judged by the same standard. Plus, as one of Atrios' commenters says, we seem to have no problem accepting the word of "real" journalists, including Matt Drudge, when they use anonymous sources. With MWO you have unknown writers citing names. How is that less trustworthy?
No, what bothers me is the tone of their writing, and especially the tone of the email campaigns that they've led. I can certainly sympathize with those like Digby, who comments that "[c]ompared to Freep or Lucianne, MWO is St. Francis of Assisi". It's hard to see the value in making like Emily Post when you feel you're being shouted down at every turn.
But still. Maybe I'm just too squishy-nice for my own good (*cough* *cough*), but I'd rather maintain a civil tone and with it the moral high ground. How else can I maintain my aura of Self-Satisfied Liberal Arrogance if I'm getting my hands dirty like that? Seriously, it's just not my style to go all ballistic like they do. I suppose I'm happy that someone else is doing it for me, but I still find it all a bit cringeworthy sometimes.
For example, in the infamous case of Stenographer Sue, I have to say that I don't consider the emails in question to be at all constructive. Frankly, if I'd gotten them as feedback I'd dismiss them as cranks. I'd probably feel more secure in my righteousness if what I'd said could spur people like that to spew invective at me.
Of course, maybe the fact that Sue resorted to a hamhanded attempt to get her correspondents fired indicates that they'd struck a nerve. I just know that whatever I may think of MWO, I'd have never written such emails, even from a throwaway address. It's just not me.
The Chron discovers blogs in its Technology section this week. Right there, along with the Prof and Asparagirl, is H-town blogs, our local group page. I was wondering why I'd started getting so many referrals from that page, since it's usually only updated when we announce new members or a Happy Hour. Now I know.
Ginger quotes Eve Tushnet about the origins of Spider-Man, American innoncence, and Baby Boomer self-absorption. Oh, hell, let me give you the full passage, from one of Eve's blogwatches:
Unqualified Offerings: David Broder gets spidey-smacked [...] I need to add my own rant to the Broder-bashing, because this passage promotes an idea that seriously gets (and annoys) my goat: David Broder writes, "In 1962, when the first Spider-Man comic appeared, the notion of making his alter ego a New York City kid was unobjectionable. We were an innocent country then, not yet familiar with assassinations, urban riots and terrorist attacks." I HATE this cliche. I hate how America didn't lose its innocence with slavery--or the removal of the Cherokee--or the Civil War--or the World Wars--or Hiroshima and Nagasaki--but a pretty president pulls a Lincoln and suddenly America's lost her virginity? What kind of blinkered, privileged, everything-everyone-hates-about-the-Boomers perspective is this? C'mon.Um. Jim Henley does a fine job with smacking Broder for being incredibly prissy about Spider-Man, a movie that I thoroughly enjoyed. Eve is right on with the Baby Boomer Baloney. But what I want to know is, what exactly is "objectionable" about making a superhero's alter ego a New York City kid nowadays? Who is objecting to this, and how can I best administer a cluestick to their noggins? Is there some Department of Objectionable Superhero Origins that I'm not aware of? (If so, it must be Clinton's fault. Surely this began during the prior administration.)
I've read the Broder column that Henley so neatly dismembers, and I still can't understand that line about "the notion of making his alter ego a New York City kid was unobjectionable". I can grok the concern about havoc being wrought on New York - though let's face it, if depictions of havoc-wreaking are wrong, they're wrong regardless of whether it's New York or some other place that's being stomped. I say that some depictions of havoc-wreaking are more respectful and less gratuitous than others, and I say that if we can't show ugliness and violence any more, we won't be able to adequately show heroism and goodness. In the meantime, David, here's a movie that hopefully won't offend your delicate sensibilities.
It was humbling to pick up the Times at Central Market today and read this story about the Masai of Kenya, who were sufficiently moved by the tragedy of 9/11 to donate 14 cows to its victims. I'm grateful for their charity and their understanding. If only we had more friends like them.
Three of the four teams I was rooting for yesterday lot, but the one winner was sweet: Rice bounced back from losing on a walk-off homer to advance to the Super Regional in the NCAA baseball championships. The Owls get to take on five-time national champs Louisiana State this weekend for the right to advance to the College World Series. Go Owls!
So says the Supreme Court, which refused to hear the appeal of the state of Texas in the Calvin Burdine case. This case is Exhibit A for death penalty opponents and people who think Texas is barbaric. Justice was served here. Let's learn our lesson and move on.
Recently I mentioned that there ought to be a Sexiest Female Blogger poll to go with Dawn Olsen's Sexiest Male Blogger poll. I said I'd be willing to host such a poll if people cared. Well, I waited too long - Matt Moore beat me to it. Let your voices be heard, folks.
FWIW, as one who primarily reads political blogs, three women whom I'd have liked to see nominated are not on Matt's list. Under penalty of death and dismemberment, I ain't saying who they are.
UPDATE: One of the women I'd have nominated is now there. Figure it out for yourself, I still ain't saying.
I see that Mark Steyn is writing about how political correctness, in the form of a reluctance by the FBI to single out Arabs and Muslims as more likely to be terrorists, is a threat to Americans now and in the future. While he does note that the Bush administration hasn't done much about this, he never mentions the fact that Bush specifically campaigned against profiling Arab- and Muslim-Americans in 2000. This was part of a concerted effort, led by GOP activist Grover Norquist, to court Arab-American votes and endorsements, especially in swing states like Michigan. It worked, too. So why doesn't Steyn call a spade a spade? If this was a failure, it was a failure of Bush's policies. Do I really have to play the if-this-had-happened-while-Clinton-was-President card here?
Naturally, events of this magnitude are going to be an irresistable opportunity for grifters and shysters, such as Whitney Broach, a woman who first gained notoriety in 1993 when she put up a billboard advertising a womb for rent. Like cockroaches, people like that never truly go away.
Back in April I printed this excerpt from Joshua Trevino's blog, in which a former coworker of Josh's who is now on Ron Kirk's campaign speculated that Karen Hughes resigned in part because Dubya and the national party are worried about the 2002 Texas races. Today in the "Personality Parade" section of Parade magazine, the following letter appears (reprinted due to lack of linkage):
Remember, you heard it in the blogosphere first! Take a bow, Josh.
Q. I applaud Karen Hughes' decision to return to Texas to spend more time with her husband and son. But was that really the only reason she quit as counselor to President Bush?A. No. President Bush asked Hughes to buck up their state's Republican Party, which is in danger of losing this fall's governor's race and the U.S. Senate seat being vacated by Phil Gramm. Such a defeat would be a major (ed. note: surely he meant to say "major league"?) humiliation for the President. Hughes, 45, is intimately familiar with the Lone Star State's rough-and-tumble politics, and Mr. Bush is counting on her to save face for him and the GOP.
For what it's worth, the state GOP is focusing on voter turnout and winning half of the more than 4000 partisan seats in this election. They do have some obstacles to overcome, including a proposal to enforce ideological purity:
Some Republicans fear that at least one item up for consideration at the convention could work against that mainstream appeal. It is a proposal that the party require its candidates to assume all core positions of the party platform.Opponents believe that some of the more conservative planks of the platform -- such as strict opposition to abortion or a return to the gold standard -- could scare away many middle-of-the-road voters.
The gold standard? What century are we in again? Party platforms are generally little more than the distilled beliefs of the True Faithful. Real politicians, who recognize that they need the support of people here on Planet Earth in order to win elections and govern effectively, generally ignore them. The best thing the state GOP could do for Democrats like me is to force all their candidates to subjugate their beliefs for those of the True Faithful.
Calling Matthew and Glenn: I need some perspective here on this report that Harvard is changing how it investigates sexual misconduct allegations.
Under the old policy, the school would automatically look into any claim of a peer dispute, including a sexual assault. The May 7 change mandates anyone filing a dispute complaint provide "sufficient independent corroboration" of misconduct before the school investigates.The new policy -- believed by some to be the first such requirement in the nation -- sparked soul-searching among faculty who approved it, a protest from angry students and women's groups, and fierce debate over Harvard's responsibility to investigate difficult-to-prove claims.
Any thoughts, guys?
'N Sync singer Lance Bass has been cleared for a flight to the International Space Station aboard a Russian rocket. Which begs the question: If we can send one boy band member into space, why can't we send them all?