David Corn On Alito

Despite the obviously bigoted "Scalito" moniker being affixed to Sam Alito by the title of this article, David Corn, perhaps the last semi-sane columnist on the Left (if you don't believe me, go check out www.huffingtonpost.com or Eric Alterman's blog on www.msnbc.com) weighs in on the emerging senate battle over confirmation of Bush's latest SCOTUS nominee.

Alito's Credentials

I saw Schumer on CNBC earlier this afternoon, and he seemed plenty pissed about Bush's new SCOTUS nominee. Ergo, one must conclude that Alito's got the goods. Here are his credentials. (Considerably better than Miers, no?) Some have concluded that Alito is more accomplished than Roberts.

Alito, Samuel A. Jr.

Born 1950 in Trenton, NJ

Federal Judicial Service:U. S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit
Nominated by George H.W. Bush on February 20, 1990, to a seat vacated by John Joseph Gibbons; Confirmed by the Senate on April 27, 1990, and received commission on April 30, 1990.

Education:Princeton University, A.B., 1972
Yale Law School, J.D., 1975

Professional Career:Law clerk, Hon. Leonard I. Garth, U.S. Court of Appeals, Third Circuit, 1976-1977Assistant U.S. attorney, District of New Jersey, 1977-1981Assistant to the U.S. solicitor general, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, 1981-1985Deputy assistant U.S. attorney general, U.S. Department of Justice, Washington, DC, 1985-1987
U.S. Attorney for the District of New Jersey, 1987-1990

Race or Ethnicity: White

Gender: Male

Give That Man A Nobel Prize!

Iranian President Ahmadinejad has said that "if we were permitted to hang two or three persons, the problems with the stock exchange would be solved for ever." For the record, and for those of you that don't follow Iran closely (I do, btw.), the Teheran Stock Market has dropped 20% in the last week, following the most recent government statement of foreign policy, which pronounced that Iran would eradicate Israel and the U.S. off the map. This is an unprecedented announcement, which exceeds even the rhetoric of the Khomenei government. Two questions: Can there be any doubt at this point that Ahmadinejad was the guy identified in the photo from the Iranian hostage crisis in '79, and was cited by former hostages as one of their most cruel captors? And secondly, why hasn't this guy been nominated for a Nobel Prize? After all, he has all the qualifications: vehemently anti-American, anti-Israel, indulges in terrorrism, and clearly understands economics in a manner that few can.

An Eye For The Macabre

I've been listening to ELP's seminal Brain Salad Surgery album as of late, which I consider to be one of the greatest albums ever made, and certainly one of the top five progressive rock albums of all time. ELP always had a weakness when it came to lyrics, but on BSS, singer Greg Lake teamed up with fellow King Crimson alumnus Pete Sinfield (who now writes lyrics for the likes of Celine Dion (Hey, the guys got to make a living!)) , and the collaboration yielded some excellent wordplay. I was particularly struck by the words in Karn Evil 9, First Impression, which makes some very astute observations on the human condition in regards to the general public's obsession with watching the miseries of others. One need only to go to the local supermarket and read the tabloids and celebrity magazines to get an idea of how true this observation is. Actually, one need only pick up any newspaper to see it, at this point. (Sidenote: this tune is frequently used on sports show intros. I guess it is midly funny that it is, considering the subject matter.)

Step inside! hello!
we’ve the most amazing show
You’ll enjoy it all, we know
Step inside! step inside!
We’ve got thrills and shocks,
supersonic fighting cocks.
Leave your hammers at the box
Come inside! come inside!
Roll up! roll up! roll up!See the show!

Left behind the bars, rows of bishops’ heads in jars
And a bomb inside a car
Spectacular! spectacular!

If you follow me there’s a speciality
Some tears for you to see
Misery, misery,
Roll up! roll up! roll up!See the show!

Next upon the bill in our house of vaudeville
We’ve a stripper in a till
What a thrill! what a thrill!
And not content with that,
with our hands behind our backs,
We pull jesus from a hat,
Get into that! get into that!
Roll up! roll up! roll up!See the show!

Welcome back my friends to the show that never ends
We’re so glad you could attend
Come inside! come inside!
There behind a glass is a real blade of grass
Be careful as you pass.
Move along! move along!
Come inside, the show’s about to start
Guaranteed to blow your head apart
Rest assured you’ll get your money’s worth
The greatest show in heaven, hell or earth.
You’ve got to see the show, it’s a dynamo.
You’ve got to see the show, it’s rock and roll

....Soon the gypsy queen in a glaze of vaseline
Will perform on guillotine
What a scene! what a scene!
Next upon the stand will you please extend a hand
To Alexander’s Ragtime Band
Roll up! roll up! roll up!See the show!

Performing on a stool we’ve a sight to make you drool
Seven virgins and a mule
Keep it cool. keep it cool.
We would like it to be known the exhibits that were shown
Were exclusively our own,
All our own. all our own.

Come and see the show! come and see the show!

Greatest Movie Ever Made?

The voters of Total Film Magazine have voted Goodfellas the greatest movie ever made. Great movie, no doubt. But the greatest ever made? Jeez, I don't even think it's the greatest gangster flick ever made, never mind the greatest film. For my money, The Godfather is still tops as far as gangster flicks are concerned, and it is arguably the best ever made. After repeated viewings of The Godfather year in and year out, I've never detected a flaw in it. Complex, compelling, and intelligent, The Godfather is a stellar piece of filmmaking. Goodfellas? Great, but not better. I'm not even sure Goodfellas is even better than Casino.

Rock Isn't Dead. It's Just Old And Tired.

Stevie Van Zandt, Bruce Springsteen's lead guitar player, makes some interesting points in this article regarding the state of rock and roll. I agree with most of what he says, but I'm not convinced that rock is a viable creative entity anymore. In the end, all musical idioms run their course. For my money, I think that the apex of rock was between 1967 to 1975. There's been some great stuff since then, but most of it, even the great stuff, is derived from the template set down by the likes of The Who, The Beatles, The Beach Boys, The Yardbirds (and by extension, Cream, The Jeff Beck Group, and Led Zeppelin), ELP, Yes, Gabriel-era Genesis, King Crimson, David Bowie, The Stooges, Procol Harem, Frank Zappa, Creedence, The Doors, and a few others that don't come to mind immediately. Can anyone really come up with something completely original in rock and roll anymore? I don't think so. In the last two and a half decades, the only bands that I've heard that sounded 100% original and exciting were the grunge bands (Soundgarden, Pearl Jam, and Alice In Chains), The Clash, U2, and Van Halen. I'm not discounting that there's an undiscovered band out there capable of knocking everyone out with their originality, but even if there is, when you consider that most of the bands that I listed above were by-and-large contemporaries of each other (or close to it), will there ever be that many great acts out at the same time toiling within the rock and roll idiom? Highly doubtful.

Proof That Dorks Rule the World

Here's a picture of the Microsoft braintrust, circa 1978. Use your best judgement in figuring out which one is Bill Gates, Paul Allen, and Steve Ballmer. Of them, incidentally, three are in the top ten of the Forbes 400.

Will On Miers

The new George Will column on Bush's pick for SCOTUS is up....and it's a humdinger.

A few words of my own on this Miers pick:

I normally don't like to jump into the fray when it comes to topics which are covered by-and-large by the mass media or countless other blogs. There are plenty of opinions, well thought- out and not-s0-well-thought-out out there, and I often feel that adding my opinion into the public discourse on widely covered issues is the equivalent of spitting into the ocean: it has no impact on the sea level one way or another. That said, I've been supremely disappointed with Bush's judgement on this one. It reflects a lazy mindset, perhaps a weary one. Bush has been under a great deal of strain from the beginning of his presidency to now. I shed no tears for him on this note, mind, as that is the nature of the office. (Kennedy, a year into his own presidency, once exclaimed in private to one of his staff, "I hate this sh*t! You want my position? You can have it!) But the wear of the last five plus years has revealed itself with this pick. Simply, I think Bush is a mentally exhausted man at the moment.

I'm going to go on record with this Miers pick and say that I think that she'll be withdrawn. I don't think she has the intellectual firepower, a la John Roberts, to withstand Senate scrutiny. Bush can beat the liberals, but he can't beat them without the conversatives behind him. Liberals are only semi-partial to Miers because conservatives hate her (and rightly so). But in this instance, the "enemy of my enemy is my friend" strategy might wind up being a Pyhrric one for the Dems. If she gets on the bench, everyone loses. It is not merely enough for me as a conservative to have someone say, "I'm against Roe v. Wade". I want someone who can successfully argue, based on profound constitutional reasoning, why they think it is unconstitutional. To paraphrase George Will's statement in the above linked article, to say that the ruling is wrong without the proper legal philosophical reasoning is as bad as the ruling itself, which arrived at a different ruling based on the same shoddy thought pattern.

Je suis ici

Greetings, mein froinds! It has been a busy week in Spitfireland, not the least of which was a 50-hour plus work week comprised of many sales calls, presentations, market gyrations, higher than expected inflation numbers, a chance meeting with a loony ex-girlfriend's (is there another kind?) best friend (who happens to work across the street from where I work) and a fire in the 14th St. subway station. (Which didn't affect me per se, but I did get a hearty whiff of carbon monoxide when the train opened its doors at that station.)

I'm happy to see the Chicago White Sox have made the World Series, as I'm a fan of El Duque and Contreras, two men who risked everything to get to the U.S. to play baseball, you can count me in as one of those rooting for the Sox. Below is an article on the subject, and I agree wholeheartedly with every word of it. Here's to hoping Contreras and El Duque make Fidel choke:

Castro in a White (Sox) Rage of Anger

The side bonus of a Chicago win.
By Andrew Cline

My team did not make it to the World Series this year, so I'll be pulling for the Chicago White Sox. I want Fidel Castro to angrily toss his Soviet-era transistor radio out the window when he hears that two more Cuban defectors earned World Series rings.

The 2005 White Sox give any baseball fan reason to cheer in their own right. The franchise has been so bad for so long (last World Series win: 1917) that despite five consecutive winning seasons, it hardly had a fan base. Now they are playing for the world title for the first time since 1959 (the Sox have only 7 playoff appearances in the franchise's 104-year existence), and they are doing it with a fairly young team and an ebullient, likable manager.

But even more amazing than the turnaround of this once lifeless franchise are the stories of its two Cuban pitching stars, Orlando "El Duque" Hernandez and Jose Contreras. The pair infuriated Castro by drawing attention to the true nature of his police state when they defected in 1997 and 2002 respectively. Every time they take the mound in the World Series, the announcers will have another opportunity to mention their daring escapes from Castro's island prison. If they lead their team to a World Series victory, it will provide the ultimate contrast to the obscurity and poverty in which their countrymen are forced to live — and to which they would have remained consigned had they not risked their lives to escape. And it will enrage Castro, whom El Duque once called "the Devil" on national television.

Devil's Soon to Be Wearing the Ring?

When he was a boy, Orlando Hernandez was so obsessed with baseball that he slept with his glove. He also shared a bed with his older brother, Arnaldo, whose death at age 30 a lot of people blamed on Castro. Arnaldo died of a brain aneurysm. Because there was no ambulance service, it took more than an hour to get him to the hospital. Hernandez, the winningest pitcher in "revolutionary" Cuba's history, was a national hero in the early 1990s, but nine years after his 1986 debut he was banned from baseball. His crime was helping his half-brother Livan defect. Livan went on to become the MVP of the 1997 World Series, during which he embarrassed Fidel by shouting, "I love Miami" — in English. How could a good socialist boy do such a thing?

At the time of his banishment, Orlando Hernandez was a huge star. It would be as if President Clinton had banned Michael Jordan from basketball during his prime.

To intimidate other players from defecting, Cuba arrested Juan Ignacio, a U.S. citizen accused of helping Livan Hernandez and other players defect, and held a show trial. (He was a partner of infamous agent Joe Cubas, who did get players to defect, and he delivered contraband cash from Livan Hernandez to Orlando and other family members.) Hernandez, a known friend of Ignacio, was put on the witness stand. The government wanted him to denounce Ignacio as an enemy of the state. Asked whether Ignacio was a friend or enemy, Hernandez defiantly and publicly called Ignacio his "companero," or comrade.

A year later, his career destroyed because he had defied Castro, Hernandez was found, with his wife and six other defectors, on Anguilla Cay in the Bahamas. They had arranged to be dropped off there and then picked up by some contacts in America, but their contacts never arrived. They ate conch to survive, and three days later they flagged down a helicopter. The next day they were on a Coast Guard cutter. Fearing they would be shipped back to Cuba, Hernandez told everyone he could that he was the brother of Livan Hernandez, who had just led the Florida Marlins to a World Series championship over the Cleveland Indians two months earlier. The ship's translator related this to the boarding officer, who happened to be from Cleveland.

Though Hernandez won no fans on the Coast Guard cutter, he soon wowed scouts for the New York Yankees, his favorite American team, for whom he went 12-4 with a 3.13 era the next year. That fall, ten days shy of the one-year anniversary of Juan Ignacio's trial, during which El Duque defiantly called Ignacio his "companero," Hernandez won Game 2 of the World Series, striking out seven and giving up just one run in seven innings. Through the end of last season, El Duque was 9-3 in the post-season, with a 2.65 era. His record in the World Series is 4-1 with a 2.28 era. Had he not defected, he would have died another obscure Cuban pitcher, virtually unknown outside Castro's fortress.

A Dream Come True

Jose Contreras, the White Sox's ace for the playoffs and best pitcher in the second half of this season, defected in 2002 for reasons similar to El Duque's. He needed to take care of his family.

"Miriam, you know that my dream was to play in the Major Leagues, but if we had had our own house, for us and the girls to be together as a family, I would've been there with you. But I had to do something to guarantee the future of my family," Contreras's wife, Miriam, told the New York Daily News he had said to her before his defection.

Contreras earned about $23 a month as a star pitcher for the Cuban national team, which he helped win a gold medal in the 1996 Olympics and a silver in 2000. He also pitched brilliantly in an exhibition game against the Baltimore Orioles in 1999. But his wife said the family had waited years for a house the government promised them, and they struggled to care for their daughters.

After Contreras struck out 10 Orioles in 1999, Castro phoned him to offer his appreciation. The Miami Herald wrote of him, "Pitcher Jose Contreras is hailed as a hero in Cuba today because Fidel Castro says he embodies everything that is good about the tyrant's revolution."
Contreras was publicly loyal to Castro, who trusted him implicitly. He was considered so loyal that he was put in charge of all the team's passports when they went on foreign trips. He and his wife have been careful to classify his defection as an economic and not a political decision. But of course, under communism there is no difference between the two.

After Contreras and the national team's coach defected during a team trip to Mexico on Oct. 25, 2002, Cuba immediately denounced Contreras as a "traitor." As long as Contreras was in a Cuban uniform, he was a tribute to the socialist system, as if Jose Contreras the individual had made no contribution to his own success, which was manufactured entirely by the government. But Castro's pronouncements fooled no one. After his defection, Contreras remained popular among Cuban baseball fans, who continued to follow him after the Yankees signed him for $32 million, the biggest contract ever offered to a Cuban defector.

Contreras did well in his first major-league season, but the separation from his wife and two young daughters took its toll. Miriam was arrested more than once, and many thought she would be imprisoned on trumped-up charges. Saddled with anxiety over his wife and sadness over the separation from her and his daughters, Contreras failed to live up to expectations, and he went back and forth between the Yankees and the minors. The Yankees tried to improve his mechanics, but he insisted it was all in his head. Castro had told Contreras's wife that she'd have to wait five years — until the Cuban people had forgotten about her husband — before she would be allowed off the island to visit him. She couldn't wait that long. In 2004 she, her daughters and a boatload of other Cubans landed in the Florida keys.

Finally reunited with his family, Contreras has shined. After going 13-9 with a 5.50 era last season, he is 15-7 with a 3.61 era this year. Contreras pitched for the Yankees in the 2003 World Series, which the Florida Marlins won. Now he has perhaps his last chance to collect a World Series ring — a triumphant symbol of personal accomplishment, which Castro no doubt would denounce as a symbol of the evils of capitalism.

Unfortunately for Castro, Cubans have not forgotten Jose Contreras or Orlando Hernandez. Though broadcasts of major-league games are banned in Cuba, people will find ways to tune in for this World Series, when two of the best pitching stars the island has ever produced will attempt to win the most prestigious baseball title in the world.

Victory for the White Sox would be a great accomplishment for a fine team, and for a franchise that has suffered through 88 years without a title. Yet more profoundly, it would be another defeat for Castro and his twisted efforts to dominate every individual born on the little island he has ruled since 1959 — the last year the White Sox were in the World Series.
Go Sox!

— Andrew Cline is editorial-page editor of the New Hampshire Union Leader.

Tales From Topographic Oceans

Chris Squire, bassist/vocalist of Yes, reflecting on the justification for Yes' Tales From Topographic Oceans release in 1973, which featured four 20-minute pieces spread over four sides of vinyl and was based on a footnote on page 83 in Paramhansa Yoganada’s “Autobiography of a Yogi”:

"What can I say? We smoked a lot of dope."

Words To Keep You (And I) Going

If we burn our wings
Flying too close to the sun
If the moment of glory
Is over before it’s begun
If the dream is won --Though everything is lost
We will pay the price,
But we will not count the cost

When the dust has cleared
And victory denied
A summit too lofty
River a little too wide
If we keep our pride --Though paradise is lost
We will pay the price,
But we will not count the cost

And if the music stops
There’s only the sound of the rain
All the hope and glory
All the sacrifice in vain
[and] if love remains
Though everything is lost
We will pay the price,
But we will not count the cost

Yankees 2005 Post Mortem

I'm not one to say that I'm an expert on baseball. I have several friends and associates that could tell you the starting line-up of the Baltimore Orioles from memory and without hesitation, who the middle relievers of the Colorado Rockies are, and who the third base coach of the San Diego Padres is. They qualify as baseball experts to me. Given these standards, I hardly qualify as a baseball boffin. That said, I do have some baseball sensibility left, as I was a die-hard Yankee fan when I was a boy, and thus I do feel qualified to make a somewhat educated judgement on the current state of the New York Yankees.

I'm old enough to remember going to my first Yankees game. The Yankees were in exile from Yankee Stadium and playing in Shea Stadium (named after the Cuban guerilla leader, Che Stadium, didn't you know?). The year was 1975, and the Yankees were playing the Milwaukee Brewers. I was fortunate enough to see Henry Aaron swat a home run over the right center wall, and the Yankees won the game 10-1. A perfect, sunny day-game: Hank Aaron homers, and the Yanks win. Back then, Bill Virdon was the Yanks manager, and their marquee player was Bobby Bonds. They were also a mediocre squad, that '75 group.

All that changed in '76. Billy Martin assumed the reins of management. The Yanks traded Bonds for Mickey Rivers and gained both speed on the bases and a pretty damn good lead-off hitter. Ron Guidry started making an impact. They traded pitcher Doc Medich (a real doctor, from what I remember) for Willie Randolph. Got rid of weird-looking (to me, at least) Pat Dobson. Thurman Munson was a rock behind the plate and timely at bat. And Chris Chambliss always seemed to get the timely hit, none more important than his Game Five blast in the fifth game of the ALCS against the KC Royals, winning the pennant for the Yankees for the first time in a decade and a half. To me, even at this very young age, they seemed like a team.

In '77, the Yanks acquired Reggie Jackson, the "big straw". He may have been an arrogant jerk-off, but I loved him all the same. Clutch at the plate and a strong arm in right field (though a substandard outfielder), Jackson was the missing piece to the Yankees puzzle, coming through with three homers in the '77 World Series. In '78, the Yanks made one of the most amazing comebacks in baseball history, coming back from fourteen games behind to gaining the division championship in early October in a game that still causes consternation in New England. ("Bucky F**ckin' Dent!?!) Martin got fired in mid-season for his mercurial behavior and loose tongue (in describing Jackson and Steinbrenner to the press, Martin said that, "...one's a born liar, the other's convicted."), but Bob Lemon filled in just fine (and without the pathetic antics). I attended the ticker-tape parade with my mom in '78. Somewhere in our house are pictures of the parade.

And then....they dissolved the team. Thurman crashed his private jet-plane and died, and it seemed that the heart of the Yankees was gone. Jackson left a year or two later to the Angels. Nettles found himself on the Padres, Chambliss went to the Braves. Dave Winfield, a great player in his own right, never seemed a good fit for New York. Good players subsequently came up, like Mattingly and Righetti, but the Yankees never seemed like a team anymore. They merely seemed like a bunch of mercenaries throughout the 80's....and they were. The Yankees, after having a great run from '76 to '78, gradually declined into mediocrity, then sub-mediocrity. Steinbrenner, typical of his capricious nature, figured he could win more championships with his checkbook. But the Yankees sucked, year in, year out throughout the 80's and early 90's. To me, they never seemed like a real team. The Yankee emblem over their hearts meant nothing to guys like Jesse Barfield. To me, the low-water mark was getting Steve Trout, a twenty game winner from the Cubs who arrived with much fanfare, only to have lost his ability to throw the ball straight. Pitch after pitch wound up wild or in the dirt. Just awful.

Then something magic happened. Steinbrenner got suspended for attempting to blackmail Dave Winfield, and real baseball people started running the Yankees....and they developed into a real team. Guys from the minors who more often than not would've been trade bait were now able to develop through the system. They were REAL Yankees, developed at their farm clubs from the rookie team in Oneonta through Triple-A Columbus. Slowly but surely they emerged: Pettite, Jeter, Williams, Mo Riviera. A real team. Then the Yanks went, not for superstars, but for solid, clutch character players: Tino Martinez, Scott Brosius, Paul O'Neill. They topped it all off with a vastly underrated managerial pick in Joe Torre. (Remember the headlines in the Daily News on that one? "Clueless Joe"?) And the makings of one of the most dominant rosters in history went on a five year tear, winning four world championships in the process. They did it, not with a field of mercenaries, but with a field of character players. A team.

Which brings us to 2005. Brosius retired a few years back and was eventually replaced by Alex Rodriguez. Andy Pettite was disrespected and found his way to Houston. O'Neill retired. And Steinbrenner re-asserted his insane policy of going after high-priced all-stars who's loyalties lie not with the franchise, but with their paychecks and individual stats sheets. And so the ridiculous signings commenced from 2000 on: Kevin Brown, Randy Johnson, Gary Sheffield, A-Rod. With the exception of Brown, they've all made solid contributions, and at times have even been outstanding. But can anyone make the case that a guy like Johnson or Sheffield actually gives a shit about the franchise, the tradition, and the honor of playing for the most prestigious franchise in baseball, if not all of professional sports? Can anyone say that these guys are character players who, when the chips are down, would do anything to win? Perhaps I'm being a bit harsh, but what kind of esprit de corps do these guys have? What binds this team?

At this point, nothing, so far as I can tell.

Wake me up when George Steinbrenner gets suspended again.

Bill Bruford Quotes

I'm a big fan of Bill Bruford, who was the original drummer of Yes, left to join King Crimson, toured with Genesis after Phil Collins took over the vocal slot from Peter Gabriel, and is now a solo artist. He's also got a tremendously dry wit to him, unique in its Britishness.

Bruford on why he left Yes just when they were breaking big:

"I left for the money. I was in danger of making too much of it."

Bruford on why he always seems to find himself involved in various reformed incarnations of King Crimson:

"Because it's the only gig where you can play in 13/8 time and still get a decent hotel room afterwards."

Churchill Anecdote

A motion had been passed in the House of Commons that required Winston Churchill, then the Prime Minister of Great Britain, to approve it. When the time came for this parliamentary procedure to reach final approval, Churchill was absent. As his presence was necessary, the Lord Privy Seal sent a parliamentary go-fer to find Churchill. Searching through the Parliament building high and low for more than a half an hour, the go-fer decided to look in the House of Common's gentleman's restroom. He found Churchill in a stall, his cigar smoke wafting up from the walls that surrounded him whilst doing his "business". The go-fer said sheepishly, "Mr. Churchill, the Lord Privy Seal requests your immediate return to the chamber.." Churchill replied, "You tell the Lord Privy Seal that I'm sealed in my privy! I can only deal with one shit at a time."

Thoughts On Hamilton

I've been indulging my appetite for history as of late in downtown Manhattan, particularly since I'm working in the financial district at the moment. There are a lot of remants of the past down there that, unless you're aware of your surroundings, you're bound to miss. That said, I've been to Alexander Hamilton's grave quite a bit. He's very quickly becoming one of my favorite historical figures, right up there, perhaps, with the great Winston Churchill. There are two monuments to Hamilton in and around Trinity Church. In the rectory is a monument to Hamilton from the Society of Cincinnati, a group made up of Revolutionary War veterans, particularly those who were part of Gen. Washington's inner circle. The text, which mostly escapes me (I'll have to jot it down and post it at a later date) is quite moving. Outside in the churchyard is his grave, which also has a very moving epitath. It reads:

In testimony of their Respect For

The Patriot of incorruptible Integrity,

The Soldier of approved Valour,

The Statesman of consummate Wisdom;

Whose Talents and Virtues will be admired

By Grateful Posterity

Long after this Marble shall have mouldered into Dust

Having finished the Ron Chernow biography on Hamilton a few months ago, I can say that this epitath is both a fitting and accurate assessment of Hamilton, and an honest evaluation of the weight of the man's character and actions. A good example of this would be the constant insinuations of wrongdoing and subsequent investigations of Hamilton's actions as Secretary of Treasury during the Washington and Adams administrations. Thomas Jefferson, upon assuming the presidency, charged his newly appointed Secretary of State, Albert Gallatin (who, coincidentally happens to also have been interred in the Trinity Church graveyard, albiet (and quite fittingly) on the opposite side of the yard) to do a full audit of Hamilton's records at Treasury. This undertaking was delegated by Jefferson to Gallatin with the express purpose of exposing, once and for all, the alleged corrupt character of Hamilton. Gallatin not only found no wrongdoing, but was duly impressed with Hamilton's management of Treasury. Years later, Gallatin recalled Jefferson's reaction:

" 'Well Gallatin, what have you found?' Jefferson asked. I answered: 'I have found the most perfect system ever formed. Any change that should be made in it would injure it. Hamilton made no blunders, committed no frauds. He did nothing wrong." I think Mr. Jefferson was disappointed.' "

New York Rangers

I watched some of the replay of tonight's Rangers game versus the Canadiens. I'm surprised and impressed with the young Rangers. A lot of kids on the roster, but they're good, and they're not making rookie mistakes. Nor do they look terribly green. But more than anything, they're playing with heart, which is something that I haven't seen the Rangers play with since Gretzky and Messier were on the same squad.

Here's to hoping that the young Rangers keep it up. I can live with losing so long as the kids play with verve. After all, it's better to have a losing season with a bunch of kids than it is with a bunch of 36 year olds who signed with the Rangers for the retirement benefits.

I also like the new 4-on-4 overtime rule, though I'm not overjoyed about the shootout rule.

It just might be a good season after all.

"And Don't Even Get Me Started On The Keilbasa..."

Howard Dean, expounding on the presidential privilege to appoint SCOTUS judges:

"Well, certainly the president can claim executive privilege. But in the this case, I think with a lifetime appointment to the Supreme Court, you can't play, you know, Hide the Salami, or whatever it's called."

Can't make this stuff up, folks.

Thank God For The Blogosphere...

...Or the following columns in the New York Times would go uncorrected. The "Paper of Record", which at one point represented the triumph of objective journalism over the subjective, yellow journalism of William Randolph Hearst in the first half of the 20th century, has now reduced itself to the equivalent of its Hearstian nemesis. Sad. Some examples:

• Paul Krugman on September 2: “Katrina hit five days ago ... Thousands of Americans are dead or dying ... ”
  
• Associated Press, October 3: “As of Friday, the state health department reported 932 deaths in Louisiana from Hurricane Katrina.”
• 
  Maureen Dowd on September 3: “America is once more plunged into a snake pit of anarchy, death, looting, raping, marauding thugs, suffering innocents, a shattered infrastructure, a gutted police force, insufficient troop levels and criminally negligent government planning.”
  
• New York Times, September 29: “... the most alarming stories that coursed through the city appear to be little more than figments of frightened imaginations, the product of chaotic circumstances that included no reliable communications, and perhaps the residue of the longstanding raw relations between some police officers and members of the public.”

This website gives many, many more examples of the Times yellow journalism, and its not just confined to the op-ed page. It's all over but the shouting as far as the Times is concerned. It's credibility is in tatters, and since there are so many more (read: internet) news outlets out there, the Times will not, in all likelihood, ever get its credibility back, much less the readership that has given up on it....such as me.

Some Random Thoughts

• I fail to understand this Harriet Meiers pick that Bush made today. No judicial experience, no paper trail, and she gave money to Al Gore's failed presidential bid (in '88, not in '00). Worse than that, Harry Reid, the overly whiny and effeminate Senate Minority Leader from Nevada, is pleased with the pick. That last little factoid has me really amazed. I, like many conservative pundits out there, might be proven wrong about this pick, but for now, my opinion about Meiers is similar to Bill Kristol's of the Weekly Standard. Kristol thinks that Bush chickened out. He might be right. Bush has been getting the crap kicked out of him from the press and the left from virtually the minute he won the '00 election. The last few months have been particularly harsh for him, what with Hurricane Katrina (which could be the most embarrassingly exaggerated natural disaster in my lifetime), Cindy Sheehan, the ever-present situation in Iraq, the Valerie Plame non-scandal, etc. Couple all this with the looming showdown regarding the next SCOTUS appointment, and it looks like Bush took the easy way out. I might be wrong, but if this is what he really did, he just lost major conservative support in lieu of attempting to gain liberal support, which of course, he'll never get. (His father made this mistake as well.) Here's to hoping this entire paragraph is entirely mistaken.

• Last Friday, I went to see a new band called The Killers at Jones Beach Theatre. Interesting gig, but not terribly compelling. There's something to their sound, but they kind of seem rather undeveloped at the moment. Additionally, they're not particularly active on-stage. Mind, I'm not turned off by this per se, but if you're going to be a stationary band, you should compensate in one and/or two ways: offer some wild animation and graphics on the screen to offset the lack of action on stage, and you should absolutely WAIL on your instruments. The Killers are neither. They do have some potential, and their sound is appealing, but they've got a long way to go. They kind of remind me of a young pitching phenom who came up too early to the majors. There was one interesting aspect to the whole night, that being the plethora of high school kids at the gig. The average age of these kids was probably about 17. I probably haven't attended a concert with an average age of 17 since I was, uh, 17.

• HBO's Rome is getting better and better with every new episode. Terribly intense, complex characters, and an amazingly interwoven plot-line. Best of all, it's all historically accurate. As I've said in an earlier post, it gives a glimpse into what the world was like two thousand years ago. Rome may have been the apex of civilization at one time, but it was anything but civil. Along with high learning, it was also quite brutal. Machiavelli was to say 1500 years after that man was more prone to do evil than good. He also said that it was better to be feared than loved. Rome reveals to a very large extent why Machiavelli came away with these conclusions. Western Civilization has come a long way since those savage days. But the stirrings of these concepts are always below the surface.

"...And Then The Illuminati Killed Lucy Ramirez, And Members Of Skull And Bones Threatened Bill Burkett, Then The Whole Thing Fell Apart..."

How weird is Dan Rather? Read below:

Dan Rather, Sept. 20, 2004:

"I no longer have the confidence in these documents that would allow us to continue vouching for them journalistically. I find we have been misled on the key question of how our source for the documents came into possession of these papers. That, combined with some of the questions that have been raised in public and in the press, leads me to a point where-if I knew then what I know now-I would not have gone ahead with the story as it was aired, and I certainly would not have used the documents in question. But we did use the documents. We made a mistake in judgment, and for that I am sorry."

Dan Rather, last night:

"The facts of the story were correct. One supporting pillar of the story, albeit an important one, one supporting pillar was brought into question. To this day, no one has proven whether it was what it purported to be or not....The story is accurate."

The Same 100,000

Yesterday in Washington D.C. about 100,000 "anti-war" protesters converged to state their case yet again. Saturday was probably not a very good time for them to do it, as Hurricane Rita was about to bear down on the gulf states. Not only was it in bad taste that they decided to protest on a day that would (but by all accounts appears to not have) resulted in another natural disaster of epic proportions, but it also inevitably led to little to no coverage of their collective jeremiad, as all the networks were covering the hurricane and not their protest. Oh well.

Whilst on the subject, another thing has struck me: the protests aren't growing. Contrary to the 60's (the heyday of people like those that protested Saturday), it seems as if it is the same 100,000 people that show up for these rallies. I'm fairly certain that I am right, too. These same 100,000 people were in New York for the Republican National Convention, in all likelihood the same people (albeit a smaller group) were in Crawford, Texas this August with now-certified loon Cindy Sheehan, and probably were at every other protest since the beginning of the Iraq war, and in all likelihood were protesting the Afghan war as well. Why are they not growing if this war is so unpopular with the majority of the American public, as the "anti-war" radicals claim?

The answer is quite simple: there's no draft. And as we're fighting with an all-volunteer armed services, the people that are doing the fighting and dying are doing it on a voluntary basis. The massive protests of the 1960's were less altruistic than some historians will have you believe they were. Lost in the glee of the radical left's recounting of the story is the fact that the college kids involved in those protests were doing it because they didn't want to get drafted and go to Vietnam! More self-interest than anything else was at work. That is not the case at the moment, which is why people like Congressman Charlie Rangel cynically drew up a bill with the expressed purpose of re-imposing the draft. The "anti-war" left knows that the only way they'll be able to foment enough protest for this war in the streets of America is by threatening the kids of America with falsehoods about the re-instatement of the draft, trying to scare them into joining their movement. It's not happening.

When Cindy Sheehan first turned up in Crawford, I thought that she could really do some damage to Bush and the war effort. Here she was, an aggrieved mother who lost her son in a war she felt was unjustified. If she hadn't allied herself with the most radical elements of the American left (International ANSWER, Code Pink, Win Without War, etc.), she might've had a substantial impact. But it was not to be. Instead of sticking to the matter at hand (Iraq), she started saying ugly things like, "This country isn't worth dying for!", proclaiming radical lawyer and convicted terrorist enabler Lynne Stewart her "Atticus Finch", and coming out about actions in Afghanistan, which most people in this country, whatever their feelings are about Iraq, overwhelmingly support. Her impact was nullified by her idiocy. I'm sorry that she lost her son, but he signed up for the Marine Corps on his own volition. And contrary to her contention that he was lied to by his recruiter to get him to join, the kid signed up voluntarily for a second tour of duty. Who is this woman kidding?

The left is now crowing that 58% of the American public is against the war in Iraq; it's probably closer to 50%, as per the Rasmussen poll, but it matters not. I would venture to say that the reason the opposition numbers are so high is not because they disagree with the war, but rather they've grown impatient with the bad news. And the only reason there is bad news is because any good news out there is being quashed by the mainstream media, which its collective leftist bent. I'm not sure how this Iraq endeavor is going to go, but I would imagine it is going better than the news would have you think.

Movies, Newspapers, and Maybe Even Record Companies...

...Will be a thing of the past, so says this columnist for PC Magazine. And it is awfully hard to refute his argument. As for record companies, I think they're going to have to do some serious downsizing as well. Gone are the days when a record company could put out an album with three or four good songs, six or seven other "filler" (i.e. substandard) songs, and expect to make $13 gross profit off of the CD sale. Online internet stores like iTunes, with 30 second snippets of songs for sale for the low price of .99 cents per, are eating the record industry's lunch; people are buying the quality tracks and leaving the filler behind. Couple that with the ability of bands to now sell their product over the internet and bypass their record company (Pearl Jam, par example), and the record companies on the whole are in an even bigger quandary. Thirdly, with the advent of computer recording software (ProTools, Logic Pro, Reason), it is no longer a huge cash outlay for the unsigned musical artist (me) to produce professional sounding recordings at a tiny fraction of the price of recording in a big recording studio.

About twenty years ago, every town on Long Island had its own movie theatre. Those days are long gone, eradicated by the ten movie multiplexes situated around the county. The theatres were smaller, but the choices were more, and the profit margins were higher. And now, according to the author of the linked article above, even those are in jeopardy. In the same light, I feel that the advent of rap is the equivalent of the multiplex: there's a lot of product, and it is more cost effective to produce (just a rapper, a drum machine, and a sampler are needed), and it also represents the downgrading of the music experience. (It is not music, as music is played by musicians, not people who rhyme in ghetto slang over a sampled beat, but that's an argument for another time. I take that back; there is no argument.)

It also represents the end of mass produced music by corporate entities.

And none too soon.

Bill Maher

There are times when I find his show excruciatingly idiotic, and rightly so. I've tuned in over the years (on both his ABC late night show and his new HBO show) and have shook my head with disbelief at the vacuousness of the guests, not to mention Maher's insipid, boilerplate humor. However, the last two times that I've watched Maher's HBO show (because I'm a glutton for punishment, natch), the obligatory conservative/human sacrifice guests have not only held their own against stacked odds (Maher's typical formula is to stack the guest panel with two liberals, one conservative, and a highly left-wing cheering section/audience, thus ensuring that any points the guest conservative/dissenter makes gets drowned out and sufficiently mocked), they've actually managed to clean the clocks of Maher, the audience, and the left-wing guests. Two weeks ago James Glassman, who runs the blog TechCentralStation and is a trained economist and a libertarian, managed to make Maher, journalist Cynthia Tucker, and the no longer relevant George Carlin look positively foolish. As an added bonus, Kurt Vonnegut managed to make himself look like a doddering old crank. (This he did unassissted.) Glassman punctured one lefty canard emanating from Maher's and Carlin's mouth after another. So good was Glassman that Maher actually "shushed" his audience so that Glassman could get his point across uninterrupted. Conversely, Carlin sagged back on his tired old left-wing bromides like, "Elections and politicians are in place in order to give Americans the illusion that they have freedom of choice." Sure George....nice to see the recovery is going well. No more booze and sedatives in his life, thank you.

Even better than the Glassman episode was last night's episode, which pitted the brilliant Christopher Hitchens against George Galloway, British MP and apologist for Islamic extremism. (Islamic extremism....what a redundant phrase.) Hitchens is no conservative, but he is one of the sharpest intellectuals in the world, and yet again, the lefties got their clocks cleaned. Galloway's contention that British and American actions in the middle east have produced "10,000 more bin Ladens" (how do these people quantify that number?) was met with Hitchens rightly pointing out that American shipping in the Mediterranean was raided by the North African muslims (sorry, moslems) from 1785 to 1815, with no diplomatic justification. The reasoning of the Dey of Algiers, who was one of the chief instigators of this calumny, gave? The Koran. (Color me shocked!) So, here's what it boils down to: do nothing and left the Islamists have their way with us because, hey, they're mad at us! Or respond forcefully, but, oh no, they'll really get mad at us! That's the left-wing position articulated by Galloway and Maher, consciously or not. Galloway also went on to say that Cuban exiles on the coast of Florida were also terrorists, because they were plotting to overthrow Fidel Castro since 1959, and yet America was okay with them. Amazing.

I just wanted to post these observations on Maher's show because they're indicative of the fact that, when confronted with actual historical fact and measured reasoning, the left cannot win, particularly in regards to their myopic defense of an Islamic ideology which makes American conservativism seem like radical libertarianism. (Quiz: who do you think radical feminist Eve Ensler would say is more dangerous to the universal rights of women: Ayatollah Khamenei or George Bush? Discuss your answers amongst yourselves.) This is why they're so shrill, angry, and regurgitate the same soundbytes (how many times does the "Bush is stupid!" joke have to be regurgitated before it ceases being remotely amusing or even remotely interesting? Ad infinitum, I would imagine the answer would be...) in lieu of actual reasoned thought. Disagree with them...and you're a fascist!!!!

(Yawn.)

Phil Hartman

Today is actor/comedian Phil Hartman's birthday. I liked Hartman a lot, finding him to be a highly original personality, as well as a multi-faceted talent. His work on Saturday Night Live and the sitcom News Radio was exceptionally funny. He had an everyman quality about him, and he came off kind of like a guy you'd get to know through consistently riding a commuter train from Westchester with him. That he would say some of the most outrageous, racous things whilst maintaining that type of facade made him that much more funny. His murder by his own wife was shocking, but it just goes to show that one never knows what goes on behind people's closed doors.

(I'm back from my business trip, btw. I'm posting in NYC.)

This Week

I'm off to the midwest for a business trip. I anticipate that I won't have an opportunity to post much, if at all. As a result I don't anticipate that I'll be able to post until next Friday/Saturday. And so, in my absence, I wish you all the best. Slainte mhath.

Quoth Churchill

Churchill describing his highest profile general during the Second World War, the haughty and arrogant Gen. Bernard Law Montgomery:

"Indomitable in retreat; invincible in advance; insufferable in victory."
-- Winston Churchill, on General Montgomery

Here's A Protest I'd Join...

...And I wish I had. This week, the United Nations hosted Iranian President Ahmadinejad, and many Iranian-Americans, as well as others, greeted him with well-deserved ill-humor. I didn't see any of the Union Square loonies anywhere in these pics, but there were plenty of people there to make a ruckus. You can view the protests here, here, and here. Michael Moore, Cindy Sheehan, nor any member of International ANSWER or Code Pink were in attendance, according to news reports. However, Sheehan has been quite vocal about the presence of the military in New Orleans. Quoth Cindy, "George Bush needs to stop talking, admit the mistakes of his all around failed administration, pull our troops out of occupied New Orleans and Iraq, and excuse his self [sic] from power."

"Occupied New Orleans". That's worth a chuckle.

Man....Am I Tired...

Just started a new position with a rather large Forture 500 company this week, and I'm zonked. I anticipate that I'll be more productive with this blog over the next few weeks when I regain my stamina and increase my intake of Red Bull. In the meantime, my output might be a bit skint. Apologies to my regular readers for a less than prodigious output this week.

Guest Blogger, Downtown Rod, Assesses The "Crescent Of Embrace"

Quite a bit of controversy has been kicking up recently regarding the proposed memorial for those that lost their lives on Flight 93, which crashed into a field in Pennslyvania on September 11th of 2001. Ironically, the proposed memorial looks like a crescent, the universal emblem of Islam. Downtown Rod, friend and fellow ranconteur, is on the case and sheds light on the architectural motivation behind the the so-called "Cresent of Embrace" memorial:


By now many bloggers are aware of the controversy over the "winning" Flight 93 memorial design, by one Paul Murdoch, a Los Angeles architect. Entitled "Crescent of Embrace", the design, bluntly put, emulates an Islamic crescent. (See here for pic.) As with many architects, Murdoch fancies himself a deep thinker, and this usually means being able to spout the latest in post-modern, deconstructionist nonsense. I believe the Architect Murdoch knows exactly what he is doing; his task was to design a memorial about an event involving suicide bombers. He may have found his inspiration in Columbia Professor Gayatri Spivak's "post-colonial" deconstruction of terrorism. Professor Spivak offered her views on the concept of "deconstructive embrace" in a notorious speech at Leeds University in 2002, and "deconstructed" the concept of suicide bombing. An excerpt from her speech at Leeds:

Suicide bombing -- and the planes of 9/11 were living bombs -- is a purposive self-annihilation, a confrontation between oneself and oneself, the extreme end of autoeroticism; killing oneself as other, in the process of killing others... the destruction of others is indistinguishable from the destruction of the self...Suicidal resistance is a message inscribed in the body when no other means will get through. It is both execution and mourning, for both self and other. For you die with me for the same cause, no matter which side are you on. Because no matter who you are, there are no designated killees [sic] in suicide bombing....there is no dishonor in such shared and innocent death. [Quoted in The New Republic, July 29, 2002, p.9]

She continues:

The ideal relation to the Other, then, is an 'embrace, an act of love'.... Such an embrace may be unrequited, as the differences and distances are too great, but if we are ever to get beyond the vicious cycle of abuse, it is essential to remain open-hearted; not to attempt to recreate the Other narcissistically, in one's own image, but generously, with care and attention.

Mr. Murdoch, this is your thinking too, and you've been outed!

(Source material for this entry can be found here and here. Also, go to Amazon and see that one of the SIPs for one of her books is: "deconstructive embrace".)

Mark Messier

When the Islanders played the Edmonton Oilers for the second time in the Stanley Cup finals in 1984, we Islander fans (I was an Islander fan then, before they became too painful and inept to watch in the 90's) thought it would be a repeat of the '83 finals. Sure the Oilers had Gretzky, Anderson, Coffey, Messier, and Kurri. But we had Potvin, Trottier, Bossy, and Billy Smith. Sure they were quicker than the Islanders, but they certainly weren't smarter, and frankly, they played suspect team defense. The Oiler philosophy up 'til that point was to win by outscoring the opposition. Even Gretzky once said that it was more fun to win a game by a score of 10-8 than 2-1. That may have been the case, but you can't win Stanley Cups that way. And the Edmonton Oilers, with that attitude going into the '83 finals, didn't. Islander goalie Billy Smith said at the time that he thought Gretzky was a great player, but that one day he was going to grab him, skate him down the ice, and introduce him to his goalie. Funny as the comment was at the time, Smith wasn't joking.

The Islanders swept the Oilers four straight in that '83 Stanley Cup final, winning their fourth straight Stanley Cup. Gretzky said that the moment he was dreading more than anything after Game 4 was walking by the Islanders locker-room celebration. Walking out with defenseman Kevin Lowe, both young Oilers witnessed something they didn't quite expect. Far from seeing an ebullient, joyous celebration, the Islander locker-room was muted. Coming into view, they saw Denis Potvin with an ice-pack on his shoulder, Clark Gillies getting a gash under his eye treated, Bryan Trottier getting his head iced. It was as if the entire Islander team were being treated for injuries of some sort or another. Kevin Lowe turned to Gretzky and said, "That's what it takes to win championships." The Islanders got in front of every slapshot, even if it broke a rib. They dove for every loose puck. They finished every check, knowing that more times than not vicious body-checks are sometimes as painful to give as they are to receive. They paid the price. Messier saw the scene in the Islander locker-room, too. All the Oilers did; they couldn't help but see it, for to get to the exit, it couldn't be bypassed.

The next year, the '84 finals, went down much differently. The Oilers won Game 1 by a score of 1-0; a journeyman plug by the name of Kevin McClelland scored the lone Oiler goal. I had a feeling this was a bad omen; the Oilers had won a game the way the Islanders usually won...by grinding it out. The Oilers had learned their lesson now. They were willing to take the puck in the ribs, the elbows in the face, and dive for every loose puck. They were beating the Isles at their own game. It was a major turning point. The Isles took Game 2 handily, but even that game didn't give the appearance that the Islanders had taken control. They hadn't. Game 3 was in Edmonton, and it was in that game that I started to get an idea of who Mark Messier was. He was something to behold. Down 2-1, Messier, now playing center instead of his normal left-wing position, bore down on Islander defenseman Gord Dineen. He wove in and out with tremendous agility and speed, then gained the inside of the ice from Dineen on the left side of the ice, and let loose the fastest, cleanest, and most accurate wrist shot I'd ever seen. Putting it down low into the bottom right of the net, I had a feeling that this was the end of the Islanders....and it was only Game 3. The Oilers wound up blowing out the Isles that game by a score of 7-2. They did it again in Game 4 by the same score. The coup de grace, Game 5, they won with a resounding 5-2 score. Held scoreless for most of the series, Gretzky was not a huge factor in the '84 finals. Messier was. And though Gretzky was the no.1 center on the Oilers, it was Messier who took the draws against the Isles no.1 line center, the great Bryan Trottier. Winning most of the draws, scoring all the important goals, out-hustling, and physically beating Trottier was a pretty damn amazing accomplishment. All of 23 at the time, Messier beat the virtually unbeatable Trottier in virtually every department. The torch had been passed.

Messier went on to win five Stanley Cups with the Oilers, one of which was after Gretzky got traded to the Los Angeles Kings. He did the unthinkable in New York, leading the oft-futile Rangers to a Stanley Cup in 1994. His performance in Game 6 of the conference semi-finals that year was the greatest clutch performance of any player I've ever witnessed or read about in any sport. Joe Namath might've guaranteed the Jets would win Super Bowl III, but he didn't make that guarantee in the 3rd quarter down 14 points. Conversely, Mark Messier guaranteed that the Rangers would go out in win Game 6 against the Devils. The Rangers had just dropped two previous games and were on the verge of elimination. They looked and played like sh*t, but Messier said the right thing. On the front page of the New York Post it blared Messiers clarion call. I remember it well: "Captain Courageous Predicts: We'll Win Tonight". Then he went out and scored three of four Ranger goals that night, and the one goal he didn't score he assisted on. It defied explanation, and appeared almost super-human. He almost single-handedly fulfilled his own prediction. Unbelievable.

Messier retires with the second highest point total in NHL history, second only to the Great Gretzky. While not as naturally talented or poised as Gretzky, Messier possessed skills that Gretzky did not. Former NHL defenseman Ric Nattress put it best when describing Messier: "Big. Strong. Fast. Great shot. Physical. Mean. Durable. Great leader. What else could you possibly ask for in any individual? Twenty years ago when he broke into this league, Mark Messier was the prototype for a franchise player. And he'll continue to be the prototype. Today, tomorrow and a hundred years from now."

And On A Lighter Note....

Life is for the living, so I'm going to tell you how I'm living, specifically what I'm reading, what I'm listening to, what I'm watching:

Movie: Broken Flowers
Went to the Angelika Cinema on Houston (Manhattan, that is) today to see an indy flick. I've been doing this for about a decade; makes me feel urbane and sophisticated. (Ha, ha.) Also allows me to forget about life for a few hours. This indy flick, directed by Jim Jarmusch (of "Ghost Dog" fame, with Forrest Whittaker), is your typical slow-moving, dialogue driven indy. Not bad by any means, mind you. (It takes a certain amount of practice and continued watching of indy flicks to get the pace down to the point of where it doesn't bother you and it becomes rather enjoyable.) Bill Murray plays an affluent, lonely bachelor who gets an anonymous note from one of his former girlfriends that claims that he's a father of a 19 year old boy, and that the boy is coming to find him. The note is anonymous. His subsequent quest to find out which one of his former girlfriends is the mother leads to several strange encounters, some pleasant, some not. Worth seeing if you're into indies.

Show: Rome-HBO
I got hooked into this about three weeks ago. A historically accurate telling of the fall of the Roman republic to Julius Caeser. Always worth recounting, these historical stories. They remind us all of how delicate democracy is, and how men with guns can destroy civilian, democratic rule. Mao didn't say "power grows out of the barrel of a gun" for nothin'. Well acted, well scripted, well costumed, and a pretty convincing faux Roman buildings.

Music: The Nice-Hold On To A Dream
Keith Emerson's first big band, pre-dating Emerson, Lake & Palmer, did some groundbreaking music. This compilation of The Nice's "best of" material is fun to listen to, even though it sounds very dated, very 60's. (Titles like "Flower King Of Flies" and "Diamond Blue Hard Apples Of The Moon" smack of that weirdly psychedelic 60's, LSD driven lyricism.) The production on most of it isn't very good, but it is awfully entertaining. Emerson was really one of the first rockers to incorporate classical, jazz, ragtime, and hard rock into pop music. He also beat the living crap out of his Hammond organ, coaxing all kinds of weird and wild sounds out of it. (He used to stick knives into the keys of his L-100 Hammond.) Emerson clearly was heavily influenced by Jimi Hendrix at this point, which makes perfect sense, as The Nice did several British gigs with Hendrix. Never big in the States, The Nice are a good listen, despite the technical shortcomings of bassist/vocalist Lee Jackson. (Who, though interesting vocally, certainly was no Greg Lake.)

Mildly Embarrassing Moment Of The Week:
A security guard at Barnes and Noble spying me looking at a Teen Beat magazine Hilary Duff exclusive.

Currently Reading: A History Of The American People, by Paul Johnson
Not to be confused with Howard Zinn's America-hating, agit-prop tome, this comprehensive 1000 page history is quite honest, exceptionally researched, and extraordinarily incisive. It also forces one to continually rethink and re-evaluate how we arrived at this point in American history. It also has reminded me of how thoroughly deficient American history is taught in schools.

9/11/05

I thought about posting my experiences that day, as I was living in Manhattan at the time and worked in Chelsea as well, thus giving me a pretty close view of WTC collapse. Four years past, I figured I would be able to revisit it and get it all down "on paper", but I can't. Not yet. Maybe never.

I will say this, however. For those of us that lived in Manhattan in the months following 9/11/01 experienced things that those outside of the city never did. For months, we caught the smell of cordite and other burnt building materials every time the wind blew north from downtown. The air was so thick with dust and debris the night of 9/11 that one could cut the air with the back of one's hand. Posters of the missing popped up all over the city; after a few weeks of seeing them, I started to remember their names and their faces. I still remember many of them. An aid station was set up at the East 26th St. Armory. I usually took the bus to work (I lived in 39th St. and Lex and worked on 23rd and 6th) down Lexington; it passed the armory every day. The walls of the armory were pasted with posters of the missing, and the building was teeming with their relatives. For a time, I stopped taking the bus and took cabs to work, and advised the cabbie to avoid 26th and Lex. I couldn't bear to witness it anymore. A few people in my building on 39th St. thought I had gotten killed. One of the doormen in my former building had told some of my fellow tenants that "the hockey guy" hadn't come home that afternoon and in all likelihood was lost. (I used to go up and down the elevator at all hours of the day and night with sticks and hockey bag in tow on my way to and fro games of the roller and ice kind; I became known as "the hockey guy" throughout the building.) It turned out I wasn't the only "hockey guy" in the building. A fellow on the 10th floor of my building was also a practicing hockey player; I lived on the 9th floor, so that made us even easier to confuse with one another. He was also a trader at Cantor Fitzgerald. And he never did come home. A young African-American doctor who lived in the building and that I was friendly with approached me about two weeks later. "I thought you were dead!" he said. I asked what had ever given him that idea. He told me that the doormen had said "the hockey guy" had gotten killed. Two or three other tenants in my building had thought the same thing and subsequently approached me to say how glad they were that I was alive. It was a strange experience to be confused with the dead.

There's considerably more to write about, but it's still a bit raw to me so I'll defer. What I can say is that I'm extraordinarily thankful to be alive, thankful that no one amongst my family or friends that lost their lives (although there were a few close ones, among them a FDNY friend of mine who nearly had WTC north tower collapse on top of him), and more than anything, that I am a citizen of the United States, and a Western man. In this civilization that we live in, despite some of the more insidious attacks of its critics, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness is not empty propaganda. 9/11/01 demonstrated that to me in stark relief. Life is cheap in most of the rest of the world, liberty is non-existent, and as for the happiness part, that's a luxury most will never come close to experiencing in this world. On the morning of September 11th of 2001, I was in Manhattan, in the United States of America. I witnessed America at its best when things were close to being at their worst. On one of America's worst days in its history, I wouldn't have wanted to be anywhere else in the world but in New York City.

Join A Cult!

No, I wasn't speaking of Islam. This one makes infinitely more sense and will grant you everlasting peace, enlightenment, and love. At least that's what they claim.

There Once Was A Note....

I still love this song. I was reminded of how much last night. From a lyrical standpoint it also captures the essence of the love of music about as well as anything I've ever read. Pete Townshend, for all of his lunacy, destruction, outrageous comments that veer from the egregiously arrogant to the vehemently self-loathing, still amazes me with the depth of his talent. I wish this song got more credit (and radio-play) than it does. It think it is The Who at their best.


Pure And Easy


There once was a note,
pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

The note is eternal,
I hear it,
it sees me,
Forever we blend it,
forever we die.

I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.

As people assemble,
Civilization is trying to find a new way to die,
But killing is really merely scene changer,
All men are bored with other men's lies.

I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering,
And a child flew past me riding in a star.

Gas on the hillside, oil in the teacup,
Watch all the chords of life lose their joy,
Distortion becomes somehow pure in its wildness,
The note that began all can also destroy.

We all know success when we all find our own dreams,
And our love is enough to knock down any walls,
And the future's been seen as men try to realize,
The simple secret of the note in us all.

I listened and I heard music in a word,
And words when you played your guitar,
The noise that I was hearing was a million people cheering
,And a child flew past me riding in a star.

There once was a note,
pure and easy,
Playing so free, like a breath rippling by.

There once was a note, listen...

Scott Stevens

Back in 1984, my brother and I decamped outside of the Nassau Coliseum from about 5:00 am to snare Islander playoff tickets. I remember the day very well, as it was early spring, and there was still a nip in the air. Other people that were there were obviously more experienced than the two of us when it came to waiting on line for Islander playoff tickets, as there were a plethora of people who brought coolers full of refreshments and snacks, which they gulped down whilst seated on beach chairs and the like. Other people, in the spirit of the game, played roller hockey. As for the two of us, we did the best we could to kill time 'til we got to the window. Eventually, after five or six hours of waiting, we scored tickets to game 5 of the divisional finals. Who it would be against was anyone's guess, and there was no assurance that there would even be a game 5 if the Islanders were to sweep. But we had 'em, and the rest was up to fate. If the Isles didn't win against the Rangers in the preliminary round, or if the Isles swept the Caps (or vice-versa), the tickets were useless.

As it happened, the Islanders beat the Rangers in the preliminary best-of-five series. It was a hell of a series, that one, ended in overtime by defenseman Kenny Morrows lame shot from the right point that strangely went through a tangle of five or six sets of legs to find its way behind Ranger goalie Glen Hanlon. (That series was still to this day one of the greatest play-off series I've ever witnessed.) In the other area of the Patrick Division (oh how I wish they've revert back to the old division and conference names), the Washington Capitals knocked off perennial also-rans the Philly Flyers. All that had to happen for our game 5 tickets to be validated was for the Islanders to drop one to the Caps. They obliged. And so the game was on.

The Capitals back then were a decent team, consisting of a very speedy Mike Gartner on right wing and Bobby Carpenter, the first American kid to get drafted out of high-school (and no.1 at that), at center. But the real force of the Caps were two defensemen: Rod Langway, and a kid that was either a rookie or a sophomore (don't remember exactly) Scott Stevens. Langway was an American player brought up through the Canadiens system (he won a Cup with them in '79) and was a rock on defense. Stevens was his young protege: stout, huge shoulders, punishing checker, an incendiary personality on the ice and a world-class brawler. Even then it was said that he would be one of the greats if he could keep his temper in check and concentrate on playing hockey. Eventually, he did.

The Islanders beat the Caps in five games, and it was thrilling at that young age to witness play-off hockey in person. To this day, despite dozens and dozens of hockey games that I've attended, I don't think I've ever been back to see a play-off game. The Islanders would eventually go to the semi-finals against the Canadiens, knocking them off in six, before the resurgent Edmonton Oilers knocked the Isles off in five to win their first Stanley Cup. But Stevens had made an impression on me that one Isles/Caps game. He was punishing and intimidating on the blue line, and he was certainly a guy to watch for the future.

Stevens eventually wound up on the New Jersey Devils by way of the St. Louis Blues. By the time he got to the Devils, he'd harnessed his fiery personality enough to concentrate on pummelling opposing players with bodychecks instead of his fists (though he never fully stopped beating the crap out of people). He became the cornerstone of the Devils franchise and epitomized everything that organization stood for. Stevens was their man, the best of a great crop of defensemen, and in all likelihood was the most intimidating defensemen I've ever personally watched. His open ice hit on Eric Lindros, who was no shrinking violet, showed how devasting a presence Stevens was.

The Devils will miss Stevens presence. So will hockey. Stevens walks away from the game with three Stanley Cups, a Conn Smyth Trophy (playoff MVP), and eleven All-Star Game appearances.

No Traction Whatsoever

Latest poll taken in regards to Katrina by Gallup:

Who's To Blame? (Results)
--No One: 38%
--State/Local Officials: 25%
--Federal Agencies: 18%
--President Bush: 13%

I've stated ad nauseum that the attacks on Bush in regards to this hurricane disaster were patently unfair, obscenely partisan, and just plain wrong. I'll also reiterate for any of those that read this blog what I wrote in an earlier entry: when this whole thing is hashed out, it will be the local and state authorities of New Orleans and Louisiana on the whole, respectively, who are going to take the political beating, for ultimately, under our system of federalism, they're responsible for their own backyard.

The Saturation Point

I've reached it. I knew I would. The Hurricane Katrina coverage, the absolute hatred of the Left and their blame-game, the endless op-eds....I'm done. At some point I would imagine when the postscript of this debacle is written, they'll be plenty of blame to go 'round. But for now, Bush is taking almost all of it, quite unfairly and due to abject ignorance on the part of his critics. Worse than all this is that while the crisis was still very critical, all the Left could do was open up the guns and attack Bush for his admittedly flat-footed response to this disaster, conveniently leaving out the fact that the federal government nor its agencies are rigged to be "first responders". Those close to the situation are supposed to be those that are supposed to be on the scene first. As the panic-stricken and incompetent Mayor Nagin and Gov. Blanco dithered, there was no federal back-up to save their bacon. Thus, Bush has received the lion's share of the blame for the failure to act on matters that were the duties of the local and state authorities. I believe in time, when this investigation is concluded, Nagin and Blanco will get some serious political (and justified) political whiplash. The vehemence with which the Left has attacked Bush and conveniently left out an incompetent, Democratic black mayor and a choke-artist, Democratic woman governor is almost comical were it not so unbelievable. Bush will, without a doubt, lose some political capital over this, and on some level, rightly so. FEMA wasn't there quick enough, and again, his rhetoric and that of his administration officials did not instill confidence that they were on the ball. But if one cannot contrast Nagin or Blanco with Giuliani and Pataki (and I think one could, mind), one could certainly contrast the behavior and the results of Nagin and Blanco to, say, Haley Barbour of Mississipi, who got hit harder by the hurricane than Louisiana did. Biloxi, Mississippi has been wiped clear off the map, yet the chaos that followed New Orleans, admittedly a bigger city, did not appear in Biloxi, Ms., or even Mobile, Alabama, which also got hit hard. New Orleans and Louisiana on the whole are not the only places that got walloped by this hurricane, but they're clearly the ones where the organizational abilities, as well as the crisis management of the local officials, was superior. In the end, the Left have landed some pretty nasty punches on Bush, some of which were justified, most of which weren't. But as I've said in an earlier post, when this is all hashed out, the state and local authorities in New Orleans and the greater state of Louisiana are going to have a lot to answer for. And screaming "racism!" or "witch-hunt" isn't going to protect them. The manner in which our government is based on is federalism; the states and cities take care of their back-yard, and the feds only come in in the most extreme circumstances, and only after the fact. A president can't send out the National Guard of any state unless it is under the most extreme circumstances (and would have to invoke the Insurrection Act to deputize the National Guard, which has only happened once, during the Civil War; one can only imagine the cries of "fascism!" if Bush did that. Proof once again that he's subject to intense criticism no matter what), and he can't call out the buses to evacuate a city. The comedy of errors on this chain didn't begin at the White House, it ended there. It began in New Orleans and Baton Rouge.

I'll try not to blog on this further. It's too excrutiating.

The Ugly Truth

Columnist Errol Louis has written a scathing yet even-handed piece on the current crisis. Worth reading.


Bubbling up from the flood that destroyed New Orleans are images, beamed around the world, of America's original and continuing sin: the shabby, contemptuous treatment this country metes out, decade after decade, to poor people in general and the descendants of African slaves in particular. The world sees New Orleans burning and dying today, but the televised anarchy - the shooting and looting, needless deaths, helpless rage and maddening governmental incompetence - was centuries in the making.

To the casual viewer, the situation is an incomprehensible mess that raises questions about the intelligence, sanity and moral worth of those trapped in the city. Why didn't those people evacuate before the hurricane? Why don't they just walk out of town now? And why should anyone care about people who are stealing and fighting the police?

That hard, unsympathetic view is the traditional American response to the poverty, ignorance and rage that afflict many of us whose great-great-grandparents once made up the captive African slave labor pool. In far too many cities, including New Orleans, the marching orders on the front lines of American race relations are to control and contain the very poor in ghettos as cheaply as possible; ignore them completely if possible; and call in the troops if the brutes get out of line.

By almost every statistical measure, New Orleans is a bad place to be poor. Half the city's households make less than $28,000 a year, and 28% of the population lives in poverty.
In the late 1990s, the state's school systems ranked dead last in the nation in the number of computers per student (1 per 88), and Louisiana has the nation's second-highest percentage of adults who never finished high school. By the state's own measure, 47% of the public schools in New Orleans rank as "academically unacceptable."

And Louisiana is the only one of the 50 states where the state legislature doesn't allocate money to pay for the legal defense of indigent defendants. The Associated Press reported this year that it's not unusual for poor people charged with crimes to stay in jail for nine months before getting a lawyer appointed.

These government failures are not merely a matter of incompetence. Louisiana and New Orleans have a long, well-known reputation for corruption: as former congressman Billy Tauzin once put it, "half of Louisiana is under water and the other half is under indictment."
That's putting it mildly. Adjusted for population size, the state ranks third in the number of elected officials convicted of crimes (Mississippi is No. 1). Recent scandals include the conviction of 14 state judges and an FBI raid on the business and personal files of a Louisiana congressman.
In 1991, a notoriously corrupt Democrat named Edwin Edwards ran for governor against Republican David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. Edwards, whose winning campaign included bumper stickers saying "Elect the Crook," is currently serving a 10-year prison sentence for taking bribes from casino owners. Duke recently completed his own prison term for tax fraud.

The rot included the New Orleans Police Department, which in the 1990s had the dubious distinction of being the nation's most corrupt police force and the least effective: the city had the highest murder rate in America. More than 50 officers were eventually convicted of crimes including murder, rape and robbery; two are currently on Death Row.

The decision to subject an entire population to poverty, ignorance, injustice and government corruption as a way of life has its ugly moments, as the world is now seeing. New Orleans officials issued an almost cynical evacuation order in a city where they know full well that thousands have no car, no money for airfare or an interstate bus, no credit cards for hotels, and therefore no way to leave town before the deadly storm and flood arrived.

The authorities provided no transportation out of the danger zone, apparently figuring the neglected thousands would somehow weather the storm in their uninsured, low-lying shacks and public housing projects. The poor were expected to remain invisible at the bottom of the pecking order and somehow weather the storm.

But the flood confounded the plan, and the world began to see a tide of human misery rising from the water - ragged, sick, desperate and disorderly. Some foraged for food, some took advantage of the chaos to commit crimes. All in all, they acted exactly the way you could predict people would act who have been locked up in a ghetto for generations.

The world also saw the breezy indifference with which government officials treated these tens of thousands of sick and dying citizens, even as the scope of the disaster became clear. President Bush initially shunned the Gulf Coast and headed to political fund-raisers in the West.
That left matters in the bumbling hands of the director of emergency management, Michael Brown, who ranks No. 1 on the list of officials who ought to be fired when the crisis has passed. Even as local officials were publicly reporting assaults, fires and bedlam at local hospitals, Brown took to the airwaves to declare that "things are going well" as mayhem engulfed the city. When asked about the rising death toll, Brown attributed it to "people who did not heed the advance warnings." Brown's smug ignorance of the conditions of the place he was tasked to save became the final door slammed on the trap that tens of thousands of the city's poorest found themselves.
The challenge for America is to remember the faces of the evacuees who will surely be ushered back into a black hole of public indifference as soon as the White House and local officials can manage it. While pledging ourselves to remember their mistreatment and fight for their cause, we should also be sure to cast a searching, skeptical eye on the money that Bush has pledged for rebuilding.

Ten billion dollars are about to pass into the sticky hands of politicians in the No. 1 and No. 3 most corrupt states in America. Worried about looting? You ain't seen nothing yet.

Thoughts on N.O.

To date, most of the op-eds and blogger entries I've read about the situation have been pretty much useless. Filled with overwrought emotions and devoid of any constructive content, it hasn't been a very good week for the Fourth Estate, at least as far as the talking heads are concerned. Of course, the Bush-hating loonies have been barking with considerably more volume this month than they did last month during Cindy Sheehan's publicity stunt. Not too deep below the surface, they're rejoicing over the tragedy of New Orleans, for it gives them the ultimate cudgel with which to beat Bush over the head with. That is no surprise, but it is stunning the speed and veracity with which their multi-pronged attacks have arrived at Bush's head. The vast majority of these attacks are merely attributable to the left-wing psychosis that the loony left has been in the grips of since Gore lost the election in 2000, though the roots of this ever-elevating psychosis probably date back to Reagan's election in 1980, and in all likelihood, intensified with the implosion of the Soviet Union. We're talking twenty five years of anger, frustration, and thwarted ambition that the left must contend with. However, New Orleans has provided them with what they feel to be is the ultimate poker hand. It gives them a race card, a poverty card, a "global warming" card, and ultimately, a card which shows Bush's lack of caring and compassion for all of the above, as well as a card they feel shows Bush's ineptitude regarding the crisis at hand. The loons on the left blame this debacle 100% on Bush, discounting the lack of proper plan follow-through on the part of the colossally inept mayor Ray Nagin, not to mention a wholly absent and panic-striken governor Kathleen Blanco. (Not terribly surprising, they're both Democrats. Shocker.) Neither one of them have shown any semblance of leaderhip since the hurricane, and though many may say that there's no comparing this to 9/11 (which is true, the magnitude of this catastrophe is much worse), it is more than right to compare and contrast the leadership styles and the grace under pressure that George Pataki and specifically, Rudy Giuliani displayed, versus the complete bumbling, panic-striken behavior of Mayor Ray Nagin and Gov. Blanco. It wasn't Bush who failed to provide transportation out of New Orleans for the black folks who had no other means of escaping, it was Nagin. It wasn't Bush who failed to carry out an already pre-determined plan for the evacuation of New Orleans; it was Nagin. It wasn't Bush who failed to activate the Louisiana National Guard PRIOR to the Hurricane; it was Gov. Blanco who failed to do that. That said, I don't exonerate Bush of responsibility for this debacle. His initial response was flaccid and hardly instilled confidence. FEMA's response has essentially been crappy in the early going, but more than anything else, Bush's initial response was not forceful enough, and it demanded some kind of Churchillian, dare I say, Giuliani-like commanding response. Times like we've just had this past week demand rhetorical boldness, and Bush did not show that. They demand bold initial acts, which might be less than truly effective, yet send the message, "I'm in control here." That did not happen. Bush might or might not recover from his initial flat-footedness this past week. That remains to be seen. Thus far, Nagin and Blanco have gotten a pass from the mainstream media (though not the blogosphere) for their complete and utter failure to lead. But their day of reckoning will come. Hopefully someone will get the news to Nagin, decamped as he is in Baton Rouge.

A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words

I'm sure Mayor Ray Nagin would prefer you not see it, however. Some photos I've seen have counted as many as 200 plus submerged buses. I'm sorry...getting ahead of myself. It's Bush's fault, no matter who f**cked up at the local and state level.

Ahh....leadership. The underrated attribute.

(Who here thinks Rudy Giuliani would've handled the New Orleans crisis in the same way?)

UNFINEST HOUR

Courtesy of David Frum:

I haven't written thus far about the New Orleans disaster. There are so many people on the spot, adding so much to genuine understanding, that it seemed an absurd waste of your time for me to add my distant words. Tonight though I was invited by the BBC to talk about the political fall-out from Katrina with Sidney Blumenthal. To prepare, I spent some hours immersing myself in the catalogue of left-wing attacks on the Bush administration.

Now let me declare at the onset: Katrina has obviously not been the finest hour of American emergency management. There may well be fault on the part of the federal government and this administration. I'm certainly open to evidence on that point.

But to review the wild, contradictory, and utterly opportunistic charges from the administration's critics is to enter a realm of madness. Some patient bloggers are responding to the charges one by one. Here is a post in reply to the charge that the levees were somehow neglected. Here is an accounting for the Louisiana National Guard: 8,000 of whom remain on duty in-state, including the Guard's most pertinent engineer group, numbering four battalions.
Here is a crushing reply to those who blame the Bush administration for hurricanes - when hurricane activity has in fact dropped since 1940. Here is one of many stories detailing how the notorious New Orleans police force led the breakdown of civic order. (For those who deplore the sharp drop-off in the flow of federal funds to Louisiana since 1999, here is a link to one important explanation: the resignation of former Speaker of the House and Appropriations Committee chairman Bob Livingston [R., La.] after Larry Flynt and Hustler magazine threatened to publish details of Livingston's marital infidelity, in order to punish Republicans for the then-looming impeachment of Bill Clinton on perjury charges.)

And yet ... and yet ... is all this really necessary? The time will come, and come very soon, when the great self-critical mechanisms of American society and government will go to work to study what went wrong. Those who deserve blame will get blame in plenty then. But now - with the dead still uncounted and unburied, with the living still struggling for refuge and help, is there not something indecent about the haste with which the American left avidly tries to turn this terrible disaster to political account?

Is there not something bizarre about their willingness to fire off accusation after accusation, each contradicting the last? The disaster was caused by the Bush administration's failure to protect the environment from global warming .... no, no, it was caused by the administration's refusal to manipulate the environment by funding more levees to control the Mississippi River .... it's Iraq, no it's budget cuts, no it's wetlands, and on and on and on.

Good God, what is wrong with these people? Will they ever learn to see somebody else's misfortune as something more than their political opportunity?

Mississippi governor Haley Barbour is right. This tragedy is bringing out the worst in many people. And I wonder, as I watch the volunteers cooking food for the houseless in the Houston Astrodome, or supplies being delivered by rescue workers who are living in cars because there is no place else for them, or the elderly being hoisted to safety - I wonder: why at a moment like this can we not live up to their generous spirit. Why can't we act first, investigate afterward, and let blame and credit be apportioned as they are due, when they are due?

Jesse Jackson, Exhibiting His Usual Good Sense Of Priority

"Jackson questioned why Bush has not named blacks to top positions in the federal response to the disaster, particularly when the majority of victims remaining stranded in New Orleans are black: "How can blacks be locked out of the leadership, and trapped in the suffering?"

'It is that lack of sensitivity and compassion that represents a kind of incompetence.'

U.S. Army Lt. Gen. Russell Honore, head of the military task force overseeing operations in the three states, is black. His task force is providing search and rescue, medical help and sending supplies to the three states in support of the Federal Emergency Management Agency."

Read it all here.

Schizophrenia and the New York Times Op-Ed Page

The New York Times gave it to the president the other day for any number of reasons. That's okay. Most of us on the right don't take the Times seriously anymore, and judging by their consistently declining readership, I don't think it is just hardcore righties like myself that find it execrable. A friend of mine on his blog wrote that this piece was "spot on" (his words). I wonder if he thought an earlier op-ed piece essentially contradicting it was also "spot on". Here are the critical excerpts of their 9/1/05 op-ed:

While our attention must now be on the Gulf Coast's most immediate needs, the nation will soon ask why New Orleans's levees remained so inadequate. Publications from the local newspaper to National Geographic have fulminated about the bad state of flood protection in this beloved city, which is below sea level. Why were developers permitted to destroy wetlands and barrier islands that could have held back the hurricane's surge? Why was Congress, before it wandered off to vacation, engaged in slashing the budget for correcting some of the gaping holes in the area's flood protection?

Here's what the Times had to say about the same topic back in April of this year:

Anyone who cares about responsible budgeting and the health of America's rivers and wetlands should pay attention to a bill now before the Senate Committee on Environment and Public Works. The bill would shovel $17 billion at the Army Corps of Engineers for flood control and other water-related projects — this at a time when President Bush is asking for major cuts in Medicaid and other important domestic programs. Among these projects is a $2.7 billion boondoggle on the Mississippi River that has twice flunked inspection by the National Academy of Sciences... this is a bad piece of legislation.

(Provided courtesy of Donald Luskin)