April 30, 2004
Odd dreams
I had a weird dream last night, in which there was some sort of heavy lawn equipment and farm machinery auction on our lawn - and Andrew Sullivan was there live-blogging it.
I need to go see my shrink.
We're gonna make it after all
Again, is it just me? This picture of Michael Jackson from CNN.com:
is suspiciously reminiscent of this:
April 29, 2004
It's a start
Sinclair Broadcasting Group has released a statement announcing that their ABC affiliates will not carry this Friday's episode of "Nightline" wherein Ted Koppel will read the names of the soldiers killed in Iraq. Money graf:
While Sinclair would support an honest effort to honor the memory of these brave soldiers, we do not believe that is what "Nightline" is doing. Rather, Mr. Koppel and "Nightline" are hiding behind this so-called tribute in an effort to highlight only one aspect of the war effort and in doing so to influence public opinion against the military action in Iraq.
(Link via ASV.)
never thought I'd be seeking spin
On CNN.com, a link to their daily roundup The Morning Grind says this:
9/11 meeting will be the news of the day. Maybe the year.
Um, no. News of the year? UNSCAM.
A Post about Economics
Captain Ed was nice enough to feature a comment I made on his blog a couple of days ago, and to link this blog as a result, so I probably ought to write a post here amplfying that remark. The remark was this:
When people tell me they don't believe in the market, I tell them that's like not believing in gravity - you're free not to believe in it, but that doesn't mean it's not going to affect you.
In this remark, I was trying to express something about economics that I think a lot of people don't get. A lot of time you'll hear people - especially college-aged people who are flirting with socialism - talk about "not believing" in the free market. The implication here is that you can pick and choose what kind of economic system you have.
To extent that's true. A country can decide to implement socialism or communism, or some manner of non-free market economics, but what I think a lot of people don't understand is that that doesn't get rid of the market. All that does is make an attempt to suppress the market. The market - being the set of motivations that cause people to behave in certain ways with regard to their economic decisions - is still there. What a government has done, in attempting to suppress it, is to try to change that set of motivations, usually by threatening to send you to jail if you act on them.
There's a trope that one sees a lot in horror movies: The hero comes to the understanding that the monster is only a figment of his imagination. That it's his own belief in the monster that gives it it's existance. If the hero manages to stop believing in the monster it goes away.
That's what these young socialists think will happen if they stop believing in the market. "I don't believe in capitalism," and poof suddenly things like the profit motive, rational self-intrest (known to the young socialists as "greed"), poverty, corporate malfeasance, and a whole host of modern hobgoblins disappear like so many CGI pixels.
Well, I don't know about you, but I've never managed to make anything disappear by not believing in it, and let me tell you, I've tried my damnedest. When a guy hit my SUV and did $5,000 worth of damage to it, I tried real hard to wish that one away. Didn't work. The only thing that made that damage go away was a liberal application of money (provided by the guy's insurance company).
So what does happen when you outlaw market behavior? Generally what happens is you get a shortage of something, and then a highly profitable black market. And when the black market really gets going, sometimes the shortage goes away. Let's take as an example, oh, I don't know... drugs.
In the free market, there would be people demanding drugs, and people supplying them. We, in our wisdom, have put a stop to that, haven't we? Well, let's see... I look at the news and I see (gasp) people buying drugs and people selling them. Looks like outlawing the market behavior didn't get rid of the market. The only difference is that now we have a lot of people going to jail, and a lot of violence because they don't have recourse to the law to settle their disputes.
So that's my post about economics: the market will get its way whether you "believe in it" or not.
Bush and Cheney talk to 9/11 commission
I'm not the first to make this observation, but I'll be keeping my eye on the press reports of Bush and Cheney's testimony before the 9/11 grandstanding platform commission. Clinton's and Gore's testimonies were described as "expansive", "forthcoming", and "ranging". Anybody want to put some money that the phrase most used in connection with the sitting executives is "questions remain"?
Get these men some razors
The Globe's online version put out the call: do you look like Johnny "Jeebus" Damon? Here are the resulting shots.
Best line: "Michael Labrie looks like he could teach Damon a few things about how to grow a kickin' mullet."
is it just me? Or...
Frank Lautenberg called Dick Cheney a "chickenhawk."
Kids, where I come from (having reached puberty during the Carter era), a chickenhawk is something decidedly more sinister than a guy who bangs the war drum while hiding from duty himself.
April 28, 2004
Now this is something I can get behind!
Okay, you've got to check out this site. These gals definitely know how to boost morale. Makes sending batteries seem kinda pathetic.
(Link, as are so many, via Instapundit)
Canadian Sharia watch
Yeah, the title is a blatant ripoff of something they'd have at LGF, but how else could you possibly title this item?
I heart my SUV
Try this in a Prius:
What is that giant box? It's a 10hp TroyBilt chipper/shredder with a 3" branch capacity, that's what it is, and it's a fine environmental tool.
Without this chipper/shredder, I would either (a) hire a team of workers to come and rake up all the branches, leaves, and brush on our 1/3 acre wooded lot and haul it away, or (b) do it myself and put it out on the curb for the city to pick up and put in the landfill. Then I'd go over to Home Depot or Lowe's and pick up a few hundred bucks' worth of bagged compost and mulch, plus probably some inorganic lawn fertilizer (or maybe a nice ChemLawn contract).
With the chipper/shredder, I can grind up the 100+ bags of leaves that our trees produce each year, plus the branches that fall off, plus the stuff we prune off, plus dead plants. All that can either go directly onto the garden as mulch which helps reduce evaporation and thus the need for watering, or into the compost bin to make free fertilizer for the lawn and garden. Less cost to the city in the form of garbage-hauling contracts, less expensive summer water on my lawn, more efficient reduce/reuse/recycle.
(And yeah, we drive a Nissan XTerra which we love a lot. We'll drive this puppy into the ground - our Ford Ranger finally went to the junkyard at 230K miles when the emissions control system failed - and by that time we hope there will be fuel-cell SUVs on the market. I don't have high hopes that electric/gas hybrids can handle four-wheel-drive.)
Hm. Perhaps I also need to do an entry on my complicated relationship with the word "environmentalist"?
So proud of our military
I have to leave for a midmorning appointment in a few. I don't have time to read blogs right now. So what am I doing? Sitting here trying not to burst into tears as I read this eloquent and moving description of a Marine's final journey home. Please read this, and think of dignity, compassion, and respect: not only that shown by LtCol Strobl to PFC Phelps, but that which Strobl encountered at every step on his journey to Wyoming.
Thanks to Smash for the link. I am honored to be an American today.
April 27, 2004
Really cool - and useful too
Check out the World Flag Database, where I just learned that our neighbors' new flag is Honduran even though I could have sworn he said they were Cuban when we first met them.
The farmhouse is spank in the middle of a multicultural tableau: Ivory Coast and Irish up above, German and Czech and Honduran along the side, and good old mutts of varying European pedigrees right here. Our neighborhood can't figure out whether it's desirable, affordable, gentrifying, or crack-ridden. Elements of all four! At least our block's nice enough.
The most interesting story you're not hearing
Evidently, there's been quite a lot going on in the search for Saddam's weapons of mass destruction. You haven't heard anything about it in the mainstream press, but some less visible outlets are reporting a great deal.
One can only assume that the Bush campaign is waiting for Summer to announce some of this stuff.
Link via Instapundit.
The Globe persists
Front page:
Kerry spokesman David Wade said the senator's medals were probably at his home in Boston. The Globe asked to see the medals yesterday, and Wade said the campaign would consider it. Yet Kerry swatted down the idea of producing them when it was suggested by an NBC interviewer. ''Absolutely not. They're private, and I have no reason to do that whatsoever," Kerry said.
Deja vu on the military records front. Meanwhile, elsewhere in the paper, Thomas Oliphant tells us to back off 'cause he was THERE and Kerry has VALUES. Joan Vennochi opines that "Kerry's proclivity for doubletalk is giving Republicans an opening they don't deserve in their fight to reelect George W. Bush", and Brian McGrory says that Kerry's a liar just like all the other politicians: "In other words, a lie about liars -- you can't beat that."
In which I grow increasingly angry
InstaPundit links this article from The Age, an Australian newspaper's online site.
Why is international public opinion not outraged at the treatment of women in Islamic fundamentalist societies? Why is it easier for millions of people around the world to see America as the great evil, rather than the countries in which governments ignore such horrific abuses of women?
We've made a commitment here to follow the Rania al-Baz story to the best of our abilities, given the radio silence on the issue and the whole non-fluency in Arabic thing. I'm going to expand that toward Islamic violence toward women. To that end, I've added a new category: Human Rights. After all, it's a basic human right not to be thrown into a wall by your husband or father or son, not to suffer multiple facial fractures because you were watching TV, not to be murdered or raped or forced into marriages you don't want.
Entry later on "Dr. Kate's complicated and long-term relationship with the word 'feminist'". I'm sure you're all just panting to read THAT little screed.
April 26, 2004
Minitruth, Line 1
Well, you knew this was going to happen. The Kerry crew has evidently doctored his website to change the bit about throwing away his medals. PowerLine has the screenshots.
The dark side of fiber blogs
In another incarnation, I've run a handcraft-themed blog for nearly 2 years now. I do not discuss politics there, though many of my friends do so on their blogs - to the point where I've had to stop reading a few. I just unsubbed from one the other day that contained this gem of political analysis: "Don't vote for president Bush this year! He sucks!!!!!!!!!" There was a "Knitters for Dean" button floating around for a while, and this showed up today.
The thing is, how on earth can people take knitting as common ground? What's next? "For CNN, I'm Judy Woodruff. Recent polls indicate that people who carve bears out of tree trunks with chainsaws overwhelmingly support the war in Iraq, while people who make tall-ship replicas from Coke cans are firmly in John Kerry's camp. Political scientists are amazed. 'I needlepoint,' says Jane Doe, a Russia specialist at Stanford, 'but I never dreamed that I would find common political ground over the rack of Paternayan yarns at Stitch'n'Giggle, my local needlework shop.'"
Bah. I'm too much of a pussy to start talking politics over on my other blog (besides, I've spent 2 years working the traffic up to a decent level and I really don't want the crash I'd get if all the lefties stopped reading). Is it Crushing Of Dissent if I decline to bring up the topic in the name of being polite, or is it Silence = I'm A Lefty Too?
Ah well. Did you donate to SOA yet? Leave a comment - I'll draw a name after the Thursday deadline and the lucky winner will get a pair of handknit socks from the needles of your very own Dr. Kate. (If you don't wear socks, I'll happily substitute mittens or a hat or scarf or a felted shoulder bag or whatever. I am not a beginner at this knitting thing, so be reassured that you will not have the whole "handmade at home" vibe going on unless you want it. Patriotic colors optional. Handspun optional.) This is coalition-neutral. I don't care whose team you donated to. Feel free to let people know!
Tinfoil ballcaps?
Globe baseball writer Gordon Edes shares this gem:
Keith Olbermann, the long-ago Boston sportscaster who now anchors his own news show on MSNBC, was at Yankee Stadium with friends yesterday when he spotted Bob Kerrey, the senator from Nebraska who is a key member of the 9/11 commission. Olbermann suggested to Kerrey that when he finishes his current obligation, he consider investigating the disappearance of the Yankee offense. "That's a mystery, too," was Kerrey's response, according to Olbermann.
I am so tempted
Whilst reading the Globe online this morning, this ad popped up on my screen:
What kind of leader - and person - is John Kerry? Join Globe journalists for a discussion about the life and career of John Kerry.
Of course, it's a pimp for the Globe's new book John F. Kerry: The Complete Biography: By The Boston Globe Reporters Who Know Him Best.
(Brief pause as Dr. Kate hauls Amazon's title writer out behind the shed and beats him senseless with his extra colon.)
This event promises to be delightful - no, excuse me, The Globe promises that it will be "an insightful discussion of John Kerry and the 2004 presidential race." I feel better knowing that two of the panelists are "veteran political reporters" as I would be absolutely crushed if I trucked down to Quincy Market and found that I would have to listen to, say, people unjaded by years of covering shifty liars. [In the Globe's defense, they've been pretty good at digging up dirt on the man. NOBODY likes John Kerry in Massachusetts. We're fairly bemused at the rest of y'all.]
April 25, 2004
0\/\/|\|3D!!!!!!!
Who is the babe with the beautiful, er, hat? That's none other than ASV's Michele Catalano keeping her promise to us Red Sox fans who donated to SOA via the Victory Coalition (and just in time to celebrate the Sox going 3-0 over the Yanks in this last series).
Yes, she rather cheated by not showing her face, but whatayagonnado?
Gratuitous waffles post
I'm highly amused by our stats recently. Frequent search strings that land people here:
Now I'm hungry.
April 24, 2004
Lest we forget? We've forgotten
I got up this morning all set to write a lengthy explanation of April 24 and how horrific it is that this day has been forgotten by all but the Armenian community. While Googling in another window, I scanned some blogs and noted that Dean had already gotten there. Rather than repeat, let me just tell you a couple of stories.
Just off the northeastern corner of Boston, across the Charles River and nestled amid the dozens of tiny suburbs, is Watertown. Watertown is home to one of the most vibrant Armenian immigrant communities in the US. Armenians first arrived here in the 1890s, just as the Ottoman Turks began to weed them out at home. Over the next three decades, the genocide rolled on, and more Armenians fled to Watertown. These days, Watertown is home to about seven thousand Armenian-speaking residents. There are three Armenian Catholic churches, an Armenian newspaper, close to a dozen bakeries and groceries, a few funeral homes and doctors and dentists. Along with lines out the door when Little Armenia pulls fresh lahmejune out of the oven, you'll also find The Armenian Library & Museum of America. Wherever you go in Watertown, whether it's to the funky diners or the bead store, you'll hear people speaking Armenian: young girls in lowriders or old men in hats and black suits gone green with age.
One day, I was having lunch at the diner with a friend, and there was a couple at the next table who had just gone to Little Armenia (a good bakery/store). The woman exclaimed that it was nice to see people holding on to their culture. From the counter, an Armenian man in his 60s turned to her and said "There is no more Armenian culture in Armenia. We are Armenia's culture."
Armenia was the first Christian nation in the world, converted in 301 (before the conversion of Constantine). Over the next sixteen centuries, Armenian culture flowered. Starting on April 24, 1915, 1.5 million Armenians were murdered, raped, chased on foot across the countryside, or married forcibly into Turkish families. It is darned hard to find any popular or academic review of this topic - I've tried. In many ways, it feels like the current attitude toward the Hutu/Tutsi genocide of the past decade. An internal matter, nothing more. We weren't there, we weren't involved, nothing to do with us.
When asked for justification of the Jewish genocide, Adolf Hitler remarked "Who, after all, speaks today of the annihilation of the Armenians?"
Oh yeah, baby
As Jerry Remy said during the eighth inning: "Everything the Yankees did tonight...was wrong."
April 23, 2004
al-Baz update
A zillion thanks to Frank at IMAO who trackbacked our post on Rania al-Baz. We saw a distinctive spike in traffic yesterday coming from IMAO, and we're grateful.
I would like to give y'all an update on her condition, but there's little out there. There's a lot of reprinting of this article from ArabNews; this is the same article which formed the basis for the CNN story in the earlier post. Awdal News Network, the Somali news channel, reports here that the unnamed Saudi princess in the earlier report (who is paying for al-Baz's extensive plastic surgery - thirteen facial fractures) is Princess Sarah al-Anquari, the wife of the governor of Makkah. The ANN article is the only one I've found so far with more details than the ArabNews article.
More updates as I can find them. Hard to do Jeff Jarvis's blog-journalism on this topic when one doesn't speak Arabic.
RIP Pat Tillman
Support IowaHawk's campaign to get Pat Tillman's number universally retired. I've seen Pat Tillman tributes today on almost all the blogs I read - write a letter, willya? Say the same things to Tagliabue that you said to your readers.
I'm working on mine right now.
UPDATE: Tim Layden remembers Pat Tillman in a column that has me close to tears.
A week or two ago, when Michelle Witmer's parents were asking the DoD not to send their two other daughters back to combat, The Commissar had an excellent post reminding us of the Fighting Sullivans and their quintuple-Gold-Star mother. Every time Joe and I go to Doyle's, the Boston politico Irish bar par exemple, we sit near the corner filled with Sullivan memorabilia. Kevin Tillman's still over there. Today, while I write my Tagliabue letter and read eulogies, I am proud that there are families like the Sullivans and the Tillmans in America.
UPDATE 2: While I was writing this, CNN reported that DoD has extended compassionate leave for Rachel and Charity Witmer while they decide whether to seek reassignment. Please note - I am not slamming the Witmer sisters for whatever decision they choose to make. I believe that the DoD is offering Kevin Tillman the same choice, as they do for all siblings or spouses of those killed in action. And yes, I'm proud that there are families like the Witmers in America as well; when the sisters' Guard units were called up, they went. Frankly, whether they stay or go back, they're doing more for the War on Terror than I am. I'm just sitting here on my butt blogging and I'm not wearing fatigues while I'm doing it.
Kerry, like, rocks, dude.
I'd like to comment on this picture, if I may. (Found on the Kerry campaign site, link via Allah)
Now, I'm not really goint to comment on the ad itself, because it's evidently something that was uploaded by a Kerry fan (is there such a thing?), and as such, really isn't the doing of the Kerry campaign. But the image itself deserves some comment.
1) Kerry does actually appear to know how to play the guitar. The positioning of his hands shows that he knows a thing or two.
HOWEVER
2) The guitar that he's playing is wholly inappropriate for any kind of serious rocking. The only person who's ever successfully rocked out with an ES-175 is Ted Nugent, and let's face it - The Nuge could rock on a glockenspiel if he wanted to.
3) Check out the man's face fer crissakes! That is NOT the face of Rock and Roll. That's the face of a rich, straightlaced white guy trying to show that he's hip with the kiddies.
4) Does this image not have an eerie affinity with Dukakis in the tank?
Quote of the day
You've given to Spirit of America already, right? As we noted a couple of days ago, we're non-partisan SOA supporters. However, there may be a small Farmhouse raffle thingy if I can figure out how we want to set it up. Check back later...
UPDATE: I take it back. There are two QOTD - "My secretary once rode a camel across much of Mali, and has retained a deep hatred for camels ever since. ".
April 22, 2004
Thoughts on the Congo
I have had a mild fascination with the Congo for a few years, both the river and the country. (I'm also a big fan of soukous, the Congolese dance music, particularly of the band Les 4 Etoiles. In fact, the only reason I have a Live365 membership is for the multiple soukous and African music stations.) Anyway. Over the past 200 years or so, it has been a sad place to live, from the worst ravages of Belgian colonialism to the recent internecine warfare that left more than three million people dead.
Today's NYT has a story of hope, describing the slow process through which the Congo River has become navigable again (political, not geographical, barriers). It will be many years before the scars of war are healed, before the constant patrol of gunmen slows, before the trains run again.
"For years, people don't see any hope," lamented a Catholic priest named Zbigniew Orlikowski. "They don't want to face reality, because it doesn't work."
I don't have any answers. I don't know how to overcome decades of warlords and private armies and a population deadened to hope. Of course, I thought the same thing about Iraq a few years ago. Who knows? Perhaps freedom and Western ideals will spill over onto the African continent. Meanwhile, I'll listen to Pepe Kalle and add my own hope to the mix.
Suggested reading: Adam Hochschild's King Leopold's Ghost, Redmond O'Hanlon's No Mercy: A journey into the heart of the Congo, Jeffery Tayler's Facing The Congo: A modern-day journey into the Heart of Darkness, and Robert Edgerton's The Troubled Heart of Africa.
A light day
Sorry for the lack of updates - we've been erranding around Boston, watching the horrific early spring displays. Filk, if you will, to the tune of "Summertime": Summertime, and Bostonians are pasty.... I tried to get some pics but haven't quite figured out the technological wonder that is my camera phone.
A lot of couples smooching in the sunlight, though, and so I present you with this love story.
April 21, 2004
Now who's the waffler?
Farmer Joe and I are wafflers. We admit it. See, we couldn't decide who to support in the Spirit of America challenge. Joe's blogroll is pretty heavy on the Victory Coalition folks, while I've got a good chunk of the Argggghhhs, and we both read Liberty Alliance blogs.
So, I split it out equally among all three of you. Please don't hate us or, worse, call us "traffic-whoring donation monkeys." Please?
A different sort of army
There are a lot of folks like us out there: thinkers no longer (if ever) affiliated with an institution of higher education. In particular, there are more like me than one would think - the PhD who isn't practicing her trade. Over the past few years, in the journey from online journal to non-political blog to political blog, through the murky waters of friendships redefining themselves to exclude the political oliphaunt in the living room, past the despair of wondering whether anyone else in the world thinks like me, I have finally come to the edges of a community that might just be what I've been looking for.
This community of, for lack of a better term, anti-idiotarians has the potential to be the most thoughtful intellectual community I've ever been part of - and I have been in some darned fine company through no fault of my own. Yes, there's taunting and sharp humor, but there's also a willingness to engage with those who think differently, as long as the conversation moves past sloganeering and offhand comments.
I thought about this today while reading this article: "Three differences between an academic and an intellectual". I would argue that there are as many fine thinkers in the blogverse as there are at almost any random decent university. Perhaps more: people in the blogverse don't have to maintain a given position in order to obtain tenure or get published. (Of course, there are bozos in both. I speak not of bozos.)
Jack Miles, who's a biblical scholar, asks us to consider what would happen if all of us "unemployed" PhDs realized that we don't have to be in a tenure-track position to do what we're trained to do:
Will free-lance writers and thinkers unsalaried by any college or university ever coalesce into a new form of intellectual army, an organized liberal arts alternative to academe?
There are implications to this piece that still bubble just below the surface of my conscious mind. I have a lot to think about and, possibly, a lot to write.
Looks like they're up
The Kerry records are up. Now we just need the annotated review from someone who understands such things.
Waffle Watch, Day 18-bazillion
Tim Russert's on the prowl. The Boston Globe isn't backing down. And what's John Kerry doing?
But when a reporter from The Boston Globe sought to review the records on Monday, campaign spokesman Michael Meehan said no records beyond those already given to this newspaper would be released. ''He is releasing all military records he has released to The Boston Globe," Meehan said.
Isn't that a gorgeous quote? It is a shimmering, sparkly delight of ambiguity. What you non-Boston readers need to understand is that the Globe is on Kerry's side. The Globe is the paper-of-record for white-collar educated folks and those who own the companies for whom the white-collars work. By all rights, the Kerry campaign ought to be sucking up to the Globe as if they were one of those new Dyson vacuums.
The campaign says it "will post the military records that the US Navy provided Kerry on his active military service from 1966-1970 on www.johnkerry.com." More ambiguity, I think - I've never served, so one of our military readers will have to explain. Is it the Navy's responsibility to provide Kerry with his own records?
[Hat tip to Captain Ed for the Meet The Press link. And a big howdy to all you folks who find us with the Google search "link: www.johnkerry.com"! Stick around. The waffles are fresh each day.]
UPDATE: Whiskey, whose new blog is JAG Wire, provides the concept I was searching for - performance reports. Citizen Smash illustrates how hard it can be to get accurate info from performance reports. I still want to see them - I bet those among you with service experience know how to read between the lines.
A public service
I've been a fan of the Commissar for a while, but his new venture is even more worthwhile. All the UNSCAM news that's fit to print, and a lot more (given that the print media seems disinclined to share ABC News's enthusiasm for the topic).
ABC News has printed the names of people known to have participated in the shell game. Megawati Sukarnoputri? Where the hell is the outrage? She is the president of a country which teeters on the edge of Islamic rebellion, she claims to be a symbol of democratic reform unlike the cronyist administration of her father, she sailed to victory on a reformist platform - and yet, she's taking kickbacks. I am shocked, I tell you, shocked.
Consider Friends of Saddam required reading here at the Farmhouse.
April 20, 2004
April 19, 2004
Standing up in Saudi
Rania al-Baz is my new hero. I'll be watching this story as it unfolds, to see if the Kingdom is truthful when they say that her husband (who done r-u-n-n-o-f-t after bashing his wife's head in) will "likely face charges of abuse and attempted murder". Not holding my breath, see, but she is a high-profile television star who is planning on using her show as a podium to discuss violence against women. I wish her the best, both in healing herself and the women in her country.
Of course, Saudi law requires a woman to be accompanied by a male guardian when she goes to file charges at the police station.
Just disgusting
I hope you're happy, Spain. This kind of crap is what you capitulated to when you voted in the Socialist government:
The body of a Spanish police officer who was killed in a raid on suspected Islamic terrorists was removed from its tomb Sunday night, dragged across a cemetery, doused with gasoline and burned, a Spanish police official told CNN.
April 18, 2004
ASV Returns, somewhat changed
A Small Victory is back, albeit in a somewhat altered form. I'm glad Michele is returning to blogging as it seems to be an important outlet for her, but I must admit, the absence of political content will rather diminish the blog's appeal for me.
In today's mail
A joke, headlined "Boston Media In Action":
Two boys in Boston were playing basketball when one of them was attacked by a rabid Rottweiler. Thinking quickly, the other boy ripped a board off of a nearby fence, wedged it into the dog's collar and twisted it, breaking the dog's neck. A newspaper reporter from the Boston Herald witnessed the incident and rushed over to interview the boy. The reporter began entering data into his laptop, beginning with the headline: "Brave Young Celtics Fan Saves Friend From Jaws Of Vicious Animal."
"But I'm not a Celtics fan," the little hero interjected. "Sorry," replied the reporter, "but since we're in Boston, I just assumed you were." Hitting the delete key, the reporter began again: "John Kerry Fan Rescues Friend From Horrific Dog Attack."
"But I'm not a John Kerry fan either," the boy responded. The reporter said, "I assumed everybody in this state was either for the Celtics or John Kerry or Ted Kennedy. What team or person do you like?"
"I'm a Houston Rockets fan and I really like George W. Bush," the boy said.
Hitting the delete key, the reporter began again:
"Arrogant Little Conservative Bastard Kills Beloved Family Pet."
April 17, 2004
April 16, 2004
Red Sox/Yankees
Second inning on FOX national.
Scooter must die.
UPDATE: BOO-yah! (Just wanted to taunt any Yanks fans who might be reading.)
Ouch
Just in time for the first Sox-Yankees matchup of the season, we see this in today's Globe:
Trying to improve on his unparalleled percentage of .779 (102-29), Pedro Martinez instead committed a nearly unprecedented act of personal futility, putting the Sox in peril as he suffered one of the worst poundings of his storied career.
Oooooh. We'll be firmly ensconced on couch for an 8:05 start - let's hope that Tim Wakefield can pull it out.
Note to self
Don't add handy scripts to close old comments, then go through and clean out penis spams, without paying attention to the buttons that you're clicking. I've inadvertently deleted a couple of posts from March since I was too busy reading stuff in other windows and essentially clicking randomly.
Don't mind me - I may be a tech professional, but I can still be an idiot when it comes to clicking buttons. I will go off and self-LART immediately.
(Note that you won't be able to leave comments on posts older than 7 days. When comment registration comes in with MT 3.0, I'll open it back up.)
Freaking Baby Boomer Reporters
The more I think about this the more it keeps bugging me. The comparisons between Iraq and Viet Nam are only of the most tenuous sort, and yet, as in Dr. Kate's post below, we keep hearing about "Bush's Viet Nam". What accounts for this?
I'm reluctant to indict "Baby Boomers" as a whole. Clearly you can't paint an entire generation with one brush, but you wouldn't know it looking at the media. It's so painfully apparent that they're viewing this war through the lens of the only war they've ever known. For all the media's desire for "nuance", this is simplism of the worst sort. It's a reduction of a complex situation to a single word, and a word that doesn't even have that much in common with the situation.
And one could write it off if there weren't such an obvious agenda behind it. By painting Iraq as Viet Nam, we can de-legitimize the effort. We can give stature to the Democrat candidate who was - true to his fashion - both a participant in that conflict, and an opponent of it.
Stupidity and propaganda: the chocolate and peanut butter of the mainstream media.
UPDATE: David St. Lawrence hits a similar theme but without the baby boomer angle, and with his characteristic positivity.
Letters home
Captain Ed has a Letter from Fallujah that you have to read. The whole thing. I am spending my weekend with friends who tend to divide the Americans in Iraq into two camps: "money-hungry soldiers of fortune" and "poor minority kids who could only pay for college by slaughtering other minorities in the name of the christian god". I might just take a copy of this along.
In other boots-on-the-ground news, Farmer Joe and I are packing up boxes upon boxes to go out through AnySoldier. Baby wipes, toothpaste, Purell, crossword puzzles, lots and lots of batteries, Mother's Day cards for them to send home, etc. Please join us - even if you only send a card, you'll be doing your part for troop morale. (We're sending all sorts of magazines, but no Newsweek or Time. Why demoralize with stories about "Hey, are you guys fighting in the New Vietnam?")
The Perils of Blogging
Michele Catalano over at A Small Victory has chosen to close up shop for mental health reasons. I'll miss Michele while she's gone, and I wish her a speedy road back to feeling up to blogging. I like Michele's style because she has a deft touch mixing serious political commentary with fun frivolity and her own no-bullshit personal style. I can even forgive her for being a Yankees fan.
We here at Urban Farmhouse aren't yet attracting the kind of traffic that ASV does (did?), so we haven't had to tangle with the hate mail and the hate comments. I guess those things come with the territory when your blog starts getting popular. How many times can you be called a Nazi or a racist before it really starts to wear on you? Charles Johnson seems to do a good job of keeping an even keel in the face of attacks. He's been namecalled, hit with DOS attacks, had attemps made to get his hosting company to drop him, etc. etc., and still he manages to keep plugging away without getting emotional about it. (At least not in public). What's your secret, Charles?
April 15, 2004
Do as I say
John Kerry, candidate of white guys everywhere.
Compare that to the Cabinet, won't you? I did.
But what about the hair?
Over on Slate, Ann Marie Bardach interviews Oliver Stone about his trip to Cuba (thanks to Glenn for the link). Read the whole thing, but savor this gem:
I think it would be a mistake to see him as a Ceausescu. I would compare him more to Reagan and Clinton. … They were both tall and had great shoulders, and so does Fidel.
If I were Wonkette, right now I'd be making insinuations about Stone's shoulder fetish.
April 14, 2004
Poor little journalists
Also from today's Globe: Public's cynicism about media has become a pressing concern. Pressing for whom? For the journalists? Poor babies.
UPDATE: Since Globe links expire after 48 hours, or because you might want to read the whole thing, the original report is available here from the Project for Excellence in Journalism and the Center for Concerned Journalists. (Center for Concerned Journalists - man, I'll be chuckling all day at that one.)
3 injuries, 1 day off?
The Boston Globe is questioning whether John Kerry deserved all three Purple Hearts he received in Vietnam and thus the six-months-early trip home he got under a program for soldiers wounded three times. According to the story, two of Kerry's PH-worthy injuries did not result in any needed time off, while the third caused him to take off "a day or two".
Note, please, that I'm not questioning his Bronze and Silver Stars. Those require a level of authentication that the PH does not. However, it's the three Purple Hearts that got him home early. I wouldn't be surprised if Kerry's car sports Massachusetts Purple Heart license plates.
April 13, 2004
Thinking about the troops
It's easier for me to think about "The Troops." You know - that faceless amorphous mass of undereducated minority guys who are over there piloting remote control aircraft like the dude on the Air Force ad last night on Fear Factor, hanging out with WWE stars at the USO tent, and lying on their bunks listening to iPods until it's time to go rough up some more innocent Iraqi citizens.
Just like the media tells us, Today's Army is a hell of a place.
But I've been reading military blogs. If you, like me, don't have much contact with the armed forces except for a USAA insurance policy 'cause your dad did his hitch stateside during Korea, taking jeeps offbase to chase down spiders and snakes around Fort Bragg, reading milblogs is, well, unsettling. All of a sudden, I'm on a first-name basis with individual women and men who are there, on the front lines, face to face with al-Sadr's fanatic army of morons. Because I read them, I know them.
This makes things like yesterday's moonbat entry more frightening. Yeah, it's fun to laugh at the loonies - and at a certain level, what else can you do 'cause it's not like they'd listen, and LaRouchies are certifiable in any event - but when you associate the signs and slogans with individual folks whose boots are on the ground in the Sunni Triangle, people you know and worry about and hope like hell to see an update in your BlogLines roll? Then it makes me wanna punch somebody. You know, I have zip upper body strength, but I bet I could knock some of these weedy little guys over. How DARE they talk about our forces like that? I have a lot of anger issues, but rarely do I feel that paralyzing shaky sense that, if I don't get out of a situation right now, I am gonna get medieval on someone. These days, since reading the milblogs and the moonbat reports, I find myself flirting with violence more than ever. It's distressing and probably indicative of a serious personality disturbance on my part.
Anyway. If you are looking for something - anything - to do in support of the troops on the ground or in the air or on the water, here are a few ideas:
Those are the ones I know of off the top of my head. I'm going to pick up some stuff today and put together a package of coolties - summer's coming, and it's the least I can do. (Well, no. The very least I could do would be to spit on what those folks are doing for me.)
April 12, 2004
Moonbats indeed
No time to blog today, but you have to see this report from the ANSWER rally in DC. I think that, if I can get out from under this mountain of work in the next couple of weeks, I might give the "freelance journalist" thing a try - though, after Matt Margolis got beaten up by steelworkers last month, it might not be such a good idea to mock the moonbats in Boston.
My favorite thing from the DC rally? The LaRouche sign that said "Cheney didn't kill Jesus - but he would've liked to!" Buh?
April 09, 2004
Oh dear
Saith Farmer Joe: "Maybe Johnny Damon is trying to become the Rally Monkey."
Here is a photo essay from the Globe which compares last year's Sox fashions with this year's - Damon's the second slide.
Happy Opening Day!
It's not opening day in Boston until it's Opening Day At Fenway.
Of course, the ol' Farmer and I won't be gracing the friendly confines this year. The Sox are plumped firmly on top of the Fan Cost Index this year, at $263. For those of you who don't follow the FCI, it's what a hypothetical family of four would spend at the park for a typical outing: "two adult average price tickets; two child average price tickets; four small soft drinks; two small beers; four hot dogs; two programs; parking; and two adult-size caps." Although I'm utterly delighted that it looks like the Sox are going to stay at Fenway - you should see the renovations they've made during the offseason, and you don't pour that kind of money into a stadium you're going to tear down in three years - I prefer to watch on TV.
Just give me Jerry Remy and Sean McDonough, with my new fave Curt Schilling on the mound, and I'm a happy girl. (For heaven's sake, though, can't someone hold Damon down and shave him?)
April 08, 2004
Why we're here
One of the reasons we started this blog was because we found, here in our little liberal enclave of friends and community, that we were alone in our meatspace. Alone as libertarians, as fiscal conservatives, as whatever it is that we aren't but that everyone around us seems to be.
I might have lost a friend today, when I told her I no longer read her (non-political) blog because she has started to rant about dead Americans who shouldn't be in Iraq making money in the first place but somehow it's all the fault of GHWB and GWB and Halliburton, and oh yes, Condi Rice is an Aunt Tom. I said I was far more conservative than she probably thought I was. She said "Oh, you're a Kerry supporter?" (She's a Naderphile.) I said no, actually, I voted for GWB last time and I wish I could do it twice this November.
Funny, she's not responded to that email yet.
My friends know I'm a libertarian, but they think that means I like guns and no taxes and gay marriage (all true). It would be easier to come out as a pedophile nun than it is to say I'm pro-war, though. I'm glad someone out there is reading - even if y'all don't comment, I know you're there. It's a bit less lonesome that way.
April 07, 2004
I Heart Dr. Rice
As promised, a "why I love Condi Rice" entry.
It's because she's smart and she doesn't care who knows it, she's not interested in hiding it to make other people feel more comfortable, and she clearly expects those around her to hold up their end of the conversation. Even in this New Era, that's a hard thing for a woman to pull off consistently. I have friends who've worked at Stanford for years who say that she's tough to work for, but rewards those who stick it out. I admire that - not sure I'd want to work for her as I'm inherently slack, but I admire it nonetheless.
It's tremendously important to me to see a woman with such power who is neither strident nor sloppy, who manages to show deference to her boss without becoming submissive to every other would-be alpha male in the room, and who has been relatively successful at keeping her private life, well, private. That just makes today's Doonesbury even more offensive. Thanks to JunkYardBlog for the heads-up - I stopped reading newspaper comics a couple of years ago, and stopped reading Doonesbury long before that.
Dr. Rice is a lady. That's what I like about her, antiquated and lace-trimmed as the notion may be. Garry Trudeau is no gentleman.
The Bold Waffler
I have been enjoying the Boston Globe's schizophrenic reaction to John Kerry. The paper seems to have taken the line of "Well yes, he's ours and he should win, but we don't have to like it, by cracky!"
Today's column by Eileen McNamara addresses the persistent local rumor that Kerry is considering John McCain as his running mate. After opening with "There is a sound and simple reason why John McCain should not be John F. Kerry's running mate on the Democratic ticket in November. He is a Republican," McNamara hits us with this:
Far from elevating Kerry as a bold, bipartisan thinker, the choice of McCain would enshrine forever Kerry's reputation for political equivocation.
Read the whole thing. It's entertaining, especially because there's one of those stupid animated John Kerry ads (you know, "dethrone the king") smack in the middle of it. Those ads follow me around - gee, ya think I'm reading too much liberal media online?
April 04, 2004
The Spanish Impulse
Captain Ed over at Oh, That Liberal Media coins a term that deserves wider play: "The Spanish Impulse". It's only tangential to the article, but I thought the term was so great that for me, it became the main thing I took from it. We all know what the Spanish Impulse is - it's the impulse that makes terrorism work. The impulse that says, if we just give these people what they want, they'll leave us alone. "Appeasement" is the term that most people use to describe this, but I think Appeasement describes a policy or a course of action, whereas "The Spanish Impulse" describes an emotional reaction.
And I don't wish to belittle the Spanish by using this term. I don't think it impugns the Spanish any more than the term "Stockholm Syndrome" impugns the Swedish. I think at certain times we all feel the Spanish Impulse. It's only when the Spanish Impulse turns into Appeasement that it's dangerous.
Otherworldly
Prima facie evidence that the Islamic world thinks differently from the West. Completely, totally, differently:
Source: The Boston Globe. Photo credit: Getty Images Photo / Scott Nelson.
This is the female regiment of the Army of the Mahdi, the personal strong-arm force of Iraqi Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al'Sadr, who claims solidarity with Hamas and Hezbollah. The guys were wearing green ski masks and headbands that said "Martyr". al'Sadr is 30. Why is this important? I've seen a lot of opinion that clerical resistance is an element of the old guard - I'd argue that young fanatics are far more dangerous.
April 02, 2004
Forgive me
I haven't been blogging much lately. Between work and personal concerns, the news of the day seems somewhat distant from me at the moment. I'll try to get something written Real Soon Now.
April 01, 2004
Damn, I love Condi Rice
More on why, later. But for now, this from JunkYardBlog:
The most powerful black woman in American history will speak on behalf of the President who hired her and trusts her advice--conservative, Texan, Republican George W. Bush.
You go, Dr. Rice.