Chicago Chutzpah

I stayed up a little past my bedtime yesterday afternoon so that I could watch the 3 p.m. press conference from Chicago, featuring Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich (henceforth, "Blago"), who is being pursued by the Feds for allegedly planning to sell the appointment to replace President-Elect Barack Obama in the Senate to the highest bidder. And what was the press conference for? Why, to announce the man that Blago has chosen for that appointment: An African-American politician named Roland Burris. This was despite the fact that other members of the Illinois state government have said that they will not certify anyone appointed by Blago, and despite the fact that the Senate's Democrat caucus has said that they will not recognize a Blago appointee, because of the cloud that the Governor is currently under. Blago, however, is shameless, and proves that one need not be Jewish to have chutzpah.

And then, it got even weirder, when Rep. Bobby Rush (D-Illinois) who is a former Black Panther, played a race card the size of a tombstone, saying that since there were no African-Americans in the Senate with Obama moving up, that the other Senators wouldn't want to be the ones trying to keep another African-American man from joining the Senate. Don't be trying to "lynch" the appointee, you racist crackers!

I watched this and thought, "How sexist! If this is the designated 'reserved-for-African-Americans' Senate seat, then it is only appropriate that African-American women from Illinois should receive equal consideration!"

And I knew exactly which African-American woman from Illinois should be named to fill out the rest of Obama's term. Yes, they should replace one O (that's a LETTER O, not a ZERO!) with another: They should appoint the third-most popular woman in America (behind Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin), Oprah Winfrey.

Yes, Senator Oprah! It makes sense: She meets all three criteria: She's at least 30 years of age, a citizen for at least the past nine years, and a resident of the state that she would represent. And she's richer than Croesus, so when the time came for her to run for election to defend the seat, she would have plenty of financial resources to draw on.

Some might say, well, she has no political experience! But then again, neither does Caroline Kennedy, who is being seriously touted by some for the appointment to replace Senator Hillary Clinton in New York if she is confirmed by the Senate as Secretary of State. And indeed, Senator Clinton herself had no political experience when she became New York's Senator, other than being married to a President. Caroline Kennedy's experience consists solely of being the daughter of a President. Oprah? She's a friend of the incoming President. And in Chicago, it's all about who you know and whose palms you grease.

Monday Quick Hits

While watching the New York Yankees spend over $420 million on long-term contracts for three top free agents last week, all I could think was that it was a damn shame that the Steinbrenners didn't invest with Bernie Madoff.

Who had a worse weekend, the 0-16 Detroit Lions or Hamas in Gaza? I'm thinkin' Hamas...

I don't have much sympathy for the Palestinians in Gaza. If someone was firing a bunch of missiles at us, we'd kick their butts from here to next week. Frankly, the Israelis put up with it a hell of a lot longer than Americans would have. I think our response to the Israelis of "try not to kill civilians while you deal with the terrorists" is appropriate. As for the Hamas guys getting killed, sure hate it for 'em. Next time, don't start something you can't finish, nimrods.

I saw in the news that some bleeding hearts are whining about music being used to "torture" the detainees at Guantanamo Bay. Some of the music included the themes from "Barney" and "Sesame Street"! Oh, the humanity! If it was up to me, they'd get a steady diet of patriotic American music, 24/7: "The Star-Spangled Banner," "God Bless America," "America the Beautiful," "Stars and Stripes Forever," "My Country, 'Tis of Thee," etc. All in the public domain, so no whiny little artists would be bitching about their music being used for "torture." And if Lee Greenwood wanted to let them use "God Bless the U.S.A." and Toby Keith wanted to let them use "Courtesy of the Red, White and Blue," well, that would be just fine, too.

Merry Christmas To All

I hope that all of you have a joyous holiday with family and friends. For those of you who don't have to work tomorrow, enjoy your long weekend. Merry Christmas!

Christmas Eve in Florida

I'm getting ready to celebrate my twentieth Christmas in Florida. I've lived here longer than anywhere else. For about 364 days a year, I'm happy to live where there is no snow or ice. I see people struggling through it on television, and I remember how unpleasant winter can be. But on Christmas Eve, well, like the song says, I'm dreaming of a white Christmas, even though if we actually got one, it would be catastrophic to our local subtropical vegetation.

It actually has snowed here before, five times in the last 150 years. The last time there were reports of snow flurries was my first winter here, during the Great Christmas Freeze of '89. That was a cold, cold day. I had to work Christmas Day at the Division of Forestry, and the building was unheated. It got down to around 28 degrees, which killed off a lot of the palm trees. It also froze the water in the garden hose outside the building. I was bundled up like an Eskimo, wondering if it was typical for a Florida winter (it wasn't). This week will be more representative, with high temperatures in the low 80s.

While people in Florida do manage to decorate festively for the season, it just isn't what I grew up with. I don't know how many times we actually had a white Christmas growing up, but it seems like winters were always cold when I was a kid growing up in Missouri. If we didn't have snow around Christmas, there was always plenty in January and February. As someone who walked to school (uphill, both ways!) the cold temperatures and the snowy conditions were an indelible memory.

So for those of you with snow on the ground as Christmas approaches, enjoy the beauty of the season. I don't envy you, well, not very much. Maybe just a teeny little bit around midnight tonight.

Nazis For Christmas?

Several months ago, I wrote about the upcoming Tom Cruise movie Valkyrie, which opens on Christmas Day. There's now a veritable blitzkrieg of advertising for the movie, both on television and on the Web. If the movie bombs, it won't be for lack of trying to get people to see it.

I'm still skeptical about the movie's prospects. Sure, people like to see a good action-suspense movie, but do they want to see one where both the heroes and villains are wearing Nazi uniforms? And even more importantly, do they want to see a movie where they already know going in that the hero fails? It would be like going to see a Lord of the Rings movie where Frodo fails to destroy the Ring, Sauron wins and Middle Earth is destroyed.

It's not that Americans don't respect a good try in a lost cause, even if it is some other nation's hero making the doomed attempt; Scotland's William Wallace in Braveheart would be a perfect example of such a movie hero, and that was a box office hit. But will they show up to see a movie in which the protagonists and the antagonists were both enemies of the United States? I'm guessing that they won't.

Unintended Consequences

A while back, after the government bailed out financial firms like Goldman Sachs, it was announced that their CEO and six of their other top executives would forego receiving bonuses this year. Well, after running their company into the ground, most of us would say that they really didn't deserve bonuses, right? After all, a bonus should be earned by doing things that improve your company's profitability.

But now, we learn that there are some negative unintended consequences from those fat cats not getting even fatter: New York state is anticipating a tax shortfall of $178 million dollars that they would have received from the taxes on those bonuses that those executives didn't get. Which means, of course, that they'll have to raise taxes and fees on the rest of the people in New York to make up for the shortfall, at least if they want to keep their funding for various programs at the same level.

$178 million is a lot of coin, especially as the taxes from just seven guys' projected bonuses. How big would the bonuses have to be to have generated that much in taxes? We're talking about some serious ill-gotten gains. If they've been giving these guys this kind of money in bonuses every year, no wonder their companies have gone into the crapper.

Toothless Lions One Loss Away From Perfectly Imperfect

There are a number of bad teams in the NFL this year, teams that have only won two or three games. But they all look pretty good compared to the hapless Detroit Lions, who got clobbered by the New Orleans Saints today by a score of 42-7 to fall to a league-worst 0-15. If the Lions lose next week at Green Bay, a place where they have not won a game since 1991, they would become the first team in league history to finish a season at 0-16.

There have been winless teams in the NFL before, of course. The expansion 1960 Dallas Cowboys finished at 0-11-1, but they did at least manage a tie. The expansion 1976 Tampa Bay Buccaneers have been the yardstick for failure for the last three decades, finishing their first season at 0-14, and then losing the first 12 games of the 1977 season before winning the last two games that year to finish at 2-12. Note that both of those teams were expansion teams, however, so there is at least some excuse for their futility. The Lions have no such excuse. They're just a very, very bad football team. And since even most really bad teams manage to win at least one game in a season, they're a very unlucky team as well. Bad and unlucky is an unfortunate combination, and that's the 2008 Detroit Lions in a nutshell.

So can they manage to avoid the infamy of winlessness next week in Green Bay? Or will they become the new yardstick for failure? Stay tuned.

Busy Day

As Christmas gets closer, it gets busier and busier at the post office. Last night was the busiest night yet. We ran a ton of mail and barely finished everything up in time. It felt like I was running down a mountain, trying to stay ahead of an avalanche. Or perhaps it felt like the Running of the Bulls in Pamplona. I didn't get buried in snow or gored by a bull, but I sure felt wiped out by the end of the day. I'm ready to get past December 25th and see the volume drop a little bit once all of those Christmas cards are out of the system.

Thoughts on "Shoe Guy"

You probably saw the story about the Iraqi journalist who threw both of his shoes at President Bush during a press conference in Baghdad over the weekend. The president showed admirable reflexes, ducking both of the missiles. And you could tell the Iraqis are a nation of soccer players; they're used to kicking things, not throwing them. Sorry, Muntazer, but you throw like a girl. That's an insult in our culture, by the way. Shoes don't mean diddly-squat to us. Enjoy your stay in whichever Iraqi jail you end up, idiot!

Another Remake? Why?

Recycled from an e-mail to a friend, since I haven't posted anything lately:

You may have seen that they've remade The Day The Earth Stood Still, with Keanu Reeves as the alien Klaatu, and it opens Friday. This time, though, Klaatu's message is supposedly different: Instead of the anti-Cold War message of the original movie, this time he's going to tell us to stop destroying the planet. For some reason, I expect that he's going to get all Goracle-y on us: TDTESS meets An Inconvenient Truth. Feh! I usually dislike remakes on general principle. To me, it shows a lack of creativity and originality to just re-do something that someone has already done decades earlier. If it was good before, watch the original. If it wasn't good before, why remake something that sucked?

And no, I didn't think that the Will Smith version of I Am Legend was better than Charlton Heston's The Omega Man.

Were They Wearing Prada?

Greetings, my fellow Great Satans and Great Satanettes,

While I was surfing over at Drudge Report this morning, I found this odd story:

Iranian Police Detain 49 For `Satanic` Clothes

Police have arrested 49 people this week in a northern Iranian city during a crackdown on "satanic" clothes, IRNA news agency reported on Thursday.

...

"Police confronted rascals and thugs who appeared in public wearing satanic fashions and unsuitable clothing," Qaemshahr city police commander Mahmoud Rahmani told IRNA.

Rahmani also said that five barber shops were shut and 20 more warned for "promoting Western hairstyles".

So, do you dress like Satan? What are the signs? Is it that pentagram pendant with matching 666 earrings? Or lots of black leather? Maybe a studded dog collar?

Nope, all you have to do is dress like an American. The story continues:

It includes measures against men sporting spiky "Western" hairstyles or women wearing tight trousers and high boots.

Spiky hair? Tight trousers and high boots? I'll bet that blue jeans are on that 'satanic' list, too. It appears that you don't have to dress like a Goth or some kind of death metal fan to qualify as 'satanic.'

Well, mad mullahs, the Billy Joel song lyrics are still relevant: "I'd rather laugh with the sinners than cry with the saints, the sinners are much more fun..." You guys, not so much.

Aren't you glad that you don't live in a country where the authorities can decide what you can wear, and punish you if you fail to obey their edicts? Yeah, me too.

Only The Upper Lip Is Stiff

From Jolly Olde England, a story that made me laugh:

Lap dancing 'not sexual act' claims head of club organisation

In their evidence to committee, Warr and colleagues from the Lap Dancing Association claimed that their clubs should not be classified as sex encounter establishments because they were providing hospitality, not sexual services.

But Warr astonished the committed when he argued that sexual stimulation was not part of the clubs' attraction.

"One of the biggest problems we face is that not enough people understand the business blueprint of our clubs," he said.

"Actually, our premises are not sexually stimulating. It would be contrary to our business plan if they were."

At this point, Philip Davies, the Tory MP for Shipley who was questioning Warr, said he found that hard to believe.

"You are saying that the purpose of a lap dancing club is not to be sexually stimulating? Most people would find that a rather incredible claim," Davies said.

Warr replied: "Then you need to go to a club, because the purpose of a club is to provide entertainment. It's to provide alcohol, it's a place of leisure.

"All right, the entertainment may be in the form of nude or semi-nude performers, but it's not sexually stimulating."

Davies responded with even more astonishment.

"So if I did a straw poll of all the customers who came out a lap dancing club and said 'Did you find that in any way sexually stimulating?' I would find a big resounding fat zero? On that basis you would have a lot of dissatisfied customers."

Warr replied by asking: "How do you measure sexual stimulation. What is the definition of sexual stimulation?"

The article is even better when read with Monty Python voices. And that last sentence! How Clintonian! And wouldn't you think that the person in charge of the Lap Dancing Association should be a woman? Come on, ladies, empower yourselves!

Messed-Up World

The weekend's news confirms it. The poor man at the Long Island Wal-Mart who got trampled to death on Black Friday by a horde of greedy shoppers. The two men at the L.A. area Toys 'R Us whose wives got in an argument, so the husbands both pulled out guns and shot each other to death. And the story out of India that confirmed that the Israeli hostages had been tortured before being murdered by the Muslim terrorists. The Indian police were none too gentle with the terrorists, though. One was reportedly shot through both eyes, according to the story above. And the only reason that there was a live terrorist for them to grill (again, hopefully none too gently) was because he played dead, then came miraculously back to life when his body was being transported in an ambulance.

For me, the key difference between India and the United States is illustrated in the final paragraph of that story:

A senior National Security Guard officer, who had earlier explained the operation in detail to rediff.com, said the commandos went all out after they ascertained that there were no more hostages left. When asked if the commandos attempted to capture them alive at that stage, he replied: "Unko bachana kaun chahega (Who will want to save them)?"

In America, of course, there would be plenty of bleeding hearts who would want to save them, because they were just poor misinformed victims of oppression by Western civilization. Look at how they cry over the terrorists detained at Guantanamo Bay. The Indians are a little wiser: Dead terrorists have no legal rights, get no trials, don't need to be incarcerated. Dead terrorists no longer cause any problems, other than proper disposal of their bodies. When dealing with terrorists and other irregular military groups, it's best to just kill them all and not take any prisoners. They've already forfeited any claims to humanity anyway by their heinous deeds. The Indian commandos did the country a favor by saving the cost of nine trials. Nine out of ten ain't bad.

And with that, we kick off the festive Christmas season.

Early Morning Channel Surfing

So it was 4 a.m., the History Channel's documentary about the Sputnik crisis was over and the channel had gone to an infomercial. Time to channel surf. I scrolled through the pages of the guide and at the end of the movie channels, Sundance had a 1960 documentary of the Wisconsin Democratic primary race between Sen. John F. Kennedy of Massachusetts and Sen. Hubert Humphrey of Minnesota.

Well, 1960 is of interest to me because it is the year I was born, and here was a documentary that showed not just the two candidates, but the society of the time. The documentary took place from March to April 5th, when the primary election was held. It was the same country that I was born into about three weeks later, one that has changed quite a bit in the last few decades. So I flicked it on.

On shows like this one, I'm just as interested in what the places looked like, what the people looked like, what they were wearing, what they were driving. They say that the past is a foreign country, and this one was very alien to the visitor from 2008.

The cars were all from the 1950s, of course; 1960 had just begun, after all. And they were all American-made, with not a foreign car to be seen. Bulbous Detroit iron with lots of chrome and big tailfins, like the recently invented intercontinental ballistic missiles, meant to impress with their bulk alone. And with gasoline almost as cheap as water, who cared about gas mileage?

The men were mostly wearing suits and hats, although at one rally, Humphrey addressed a group of farmers mostly dressed in overalls, talking about farm subsidies (he was in favor of them). The women all were wearing dresses with long skirts. "Cat glasses" were in vogue for the ladies.

Both candidates spent a lot of time glad-handing the locals in the small towns of Wisconsin, signing autographs, shaking hands. The young people seemed particularly enthused by Kennedy. The graphics in the home-made signs in the background at a Humphrey call-in television show looked amateurish compared to the glitzy campaign signs of 2008.

Humphrey was much younger than I remembered him being when he won the Democratic nomination eight years later. Still, he seemed older than Kennedy, who was a youthful 42 years of age at the time. There was also a marked contrast in styles, with Humphrey always wearing a hat when outdoors, as most men still did at the time, while the trendsetting Kennedy was bare-headed to show off his full head of hair. Jackie Kennedy was with him at some of the campaign rallies, and brother Bobby showed up for one memorable cameo. Amazingly, Humphrey and Kennedy were the only ones campaigning in 1960; according to the Wikipedia article on the 1960 U.S. Presidential election:

[Stuart] Symington [of Missouri], [Adlai] Stevenson [of Illinois], and [Lyndon] Johnson [of Texas] all refused to campaign in the presidential primaries, thus limiting their chances of winning the nomination. All three men hoped that the other leading candidates would stumble in the primaries, thus leading the Democratic Convention's delegates to choose them as a "compromise" candidate acceptable to all factions of the party.

How times have changed! Can you imagine a candidate today hoping that everyone else will screw up and the nomination will just fall into his (or her) lap?

I was also surprised that only 14 states and the District of Columbia had primary elections in 1960. How did the other 36 states select which candidate to support? Did the state party bigwigs just get together in a smoke-filled room and say, "Joe Blow is our guy"?

Then there was the campaign music. The Kennedy campaign used "High Hopes" with different lyrics, while the Humphrey campaign chose an altered-lyrics version of "Davy Crockett"; one scene has four guys playing it on accordions. Yeah, it was cheesy, but hey, we're talking about Wisconsin, after all!

It was interesting to see more footage of JFK than I've seen in the past. There are a few clips from iconic speeches and the film from the assassination that we've all seen, but not much of Kennedy behind the scenes just being himself. This documentary had some of that, with some behind-the-scenes Jackie as well. It was endearing and more than a little sad, knowing what was to come later.

Hannity Colmes-less?

I read a short article in this morning's newspaper which said that Alan Colmes is going to be leaving Fox News Channel's Hannity & Colmes show after twelve years. Whatever shall he do? Wherever shall he go? Colmes has been good at what he does, which is to act as the lefty Democrat to balance out Sean Hannity. The show won't be the same without him after he leaves; who else will be able talk as fast as one of those guys reading the small print in the commercials in order to walk all over what conservative guests are saying? That was usually the best clue that the conservative was making a good point, because Colmes would talk faster and faster.

My guess is that he is getting out now in order to try to capitalize on the current vampire craze. You never see Colmes in the day time... Just sayin'.

Cool Pictures

You might not have heard, but Google has links to the digitized photo archives from Life magazine, including a lot of pictures that were never published. If you go to the Google home page, you can click on the Image search tab and currently, there are links to some possible searches of the Life photo archives, including World's Fairs and Marilyn Monroe. You can also click on the link and see some searches by decades, ranging from the 1860s (U.S. Civil War) through the 1970s. Or you can just do a generic image search and add "source:life" to the search string, and it will look only in the Life archives.

I find the older pictures to be especially fascinating. Seeing President Lincoln standing in front of a tent at Antietam in 1862 or Red Cross founder Clara Barton seated next to an ornate clock, wearing a dress with a hoop skirt several feet in diameter, is a window on another time. The people were like us in many ways, but their lives were very different. Technology changes the way we live, but not who we are.

The amazing thing, when you think about it, is how brief our "modern" period really has been. Automobiles, for instance, have only been around and in common use for about a century. My father is 70 years old, and has been around for about 70% of the era of the car. His father was born in 1911, at a time when the horse was still the main mode of transportation for most people; if they were going to travel long distances, it would be by train. Within his lifetime, Man walked on the Moon and sent probes to other planets in the solar system, most people owned automobiles and had flown on airplanes for long-distance trips.

And yet, our photographic archives only go back a century and a half. We have photographs of Lincoln and all subsequent American presidents, but if you want to see what George Washington looked like, you have to depend on the skills of portrait artists. So if you, like me, find the old pictures interesting, feel free to sift through those vintage images of the past.

Every Silver Cloud...

This morning, while driving into town to get my car serviced, I saw that the price of gasoline at some stations had dropped below $2.00 per gallon. Considering that less than three months ago, we saw gasoline at $4.00 per gallon, it seems so cheap that it's like it's almost free. My advice is to enjoy this while we can, because it probably won't last.

To continue the mangled figure of speech in the title, every silver cloud has a dark lining. While we all celebrate the fact that we're going to be sending less money to countries that don't like us much as long as gasoline is cheap by recent historical standards, we should look at the flip side: Those same countries that derive much of their income from oil sales, such as Iran, Russia and Venezuela, will be having less money coming into their coffers. Combine that with the worldwide economic downturn and there could be a rather dangerous situation if one of those unfriendly regimes gets into a desperate financial situation.

On the other hand, if the repo guys show up in Iran to take back the centrifuges that the mullahs can no longer afford to pay for, well, that would be pretty good.

Not All Racists Wear White Sheets

Sometimes they wear "Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks." (via Instapundit)

A number of Rod 2.0 and Jasmyne Cannick readers report being subjected to taunts, threats and racist abuse at last night's marriage equality rally in Los Angeles.

Geoffrey, a student at UCLA and regular Rod 2.0 reader, joined the massive protest outside the Temple of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints in Westwood. Geoffrey was called the n-word at least twice.

It was like being at a klan rally except the klansmen were wearing Abercrombie polos and Birkenstocks. YOU N-----, one man shouted at men. If your people want to call me a F-----, I will call you a n-----. Someone else said same thing to me on the next block near the temple...me and my friend were walking, he is also gay but Korean, and a young WeHo clone said after last night the n-----s better not come to West Hollywood if they knew what was BEST for them.

I read this disturbing story and thought about it for a while. It seems that even among the groups that have been most in favor of teaching "tolerance," the lesson still hasn't sunk in for everyone. "Tolerance" for thee, but not for me. But it didn't take long for me to figure out why these people felt so much anger against black voters. Let me explain:

The current incarnation of the Democrat party is based on identity group politics. Various minority groups who believe that they are "victims" of America's society have banded together to act in concert, believing that they will be stronger together than separately. This is the lesson of the fasces: Each of the sticks can be easily broken, but when you bundle them together, they are unbreakable.

The anger among the gays against the blacks who voted against same-sex marriage in California is because they see those voters as having unbundled themselves from the fasces for their own convenience: They welshed on the unwritten agreement that Democrats vote together as a group, "you scratch my back, I'll scratch yours." Sure, they're mad at the Mormons and Catholics and fundamentalist Christians and Republicans who voted for Prop 8, but most of those people were not their allies in the Democrat party in the first place. With blacks, however, it's different: "Hey, I scratched your back, I voted for Obama! And now you don't support me?" No wonder there was such incoherent anger.

Trouble In Paradise?

Already? Apparently.

Obama campaign workers angry over unpaid wages

Indianapolis - Lines were long and tempers flared Wednesday not to vote but to get paid for canvassing for Barack Obama. Several hundred people are still waiting to get their pay for last-minute campaigning. Police were called to the Obama campaign office on North Meridian Street downtown to control the crowd.

The line was long and the crowd was angry at times.

"I want my money today! It's my money. I want it right now!" yelled one former campaign worker.

This illustrates the problems that President Obama will have with his supporters. They have very high expectations built up. They want what they have coming to them, and they "want it right now!" Patience may be a virtue, but it's not one of theirs.

Some people weren't satisfied with filling out a claim form for money they felt was still due to them.

"They say that they gonna call you or they going to mail it to you, but I don't know. We'll see what happens," said Antron Grose.

"Talking about they'll mail it to us. I ain't worried about that, man. They're not going to mail nothin'," said Martin.

For people who canvassed for and elected a man running on "Hope," they certainly seem lacking in it.

And Yet...

Bill Whittle speaks eloquently for me at National Review Online:

When he is inaugurated, President Obama will be my president. He cannot be otherwise. I will disagree with him at just about every turn, in all likelihood, and that is my right and duty as an American. However, in an emergency he will have my unqualified support, and I will always wish him wisdom and hope that he may do what is best for this great country of ours. I do not wish — I do not ever wish — to see my country suffer so that I may gain political leverage. If at this same time four years from now, President Obama has acted in such a way as to make us safer, and more prosperous and free, it will be my greatest pleasure to admit I was wrong about the man. I look forward to that day. I hope to see it come to pass.

Amen, brother. Amen.