The LLama Butchers

Evening Edition

Oof! Went out to dinner with a group from Church to a Turkish place. Had some dish involving spicy lamb, yoghurt, pita and pilaf. (I know this description covers about 85% of Eastern Mediterranian cooking, but I simply cannot remember the actual name of the dish.) Boy, was it good. But now, I am absolutely stuffed and in no condition to go to bed. On the other hand, I currently have the cognitive power of Mr. L.F. Gumby, now appearing in the Thames near Wapping Steps. So please bear with me.

In the meantime, I usually try to take this late period to look at comments, check emails, do the rounds of my favorite sites. Tonight, the home computer seems to be acting up. It has a particular trick of deciding that once it can't find one address, it can't find any address. Plus, I can open haloscan only about 50% of the time. So if I don't respond to something, this is usually the reason. The thing is in one of its moods.

However, sitemeter is working tonight. And it tells me that we've had a terrific day today. What can I say except to once again express my delighted gratitude that anyone bothers to read these screeds. Thank you very, very much!

Yip! Yip! Yip!

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

By now, all three of you are thinking to yourselves "Tom, where are they?" Well, sometimes these things just happen. Sorry 'bout that.

However, if you are looking for lots of linky tidbits, go on over to the special April Fools' edition of Carnival of the Vanities, hosted this week by Eric Berlin. Lots of silliness, lots of fun, lots of new faces.

Mad Al

No, not Gore, Franken. James Joyner picks up on Franken's op-ed piece in the LA Times.

As I have been saying for some time, the only folks this opus is going to attract are current NPR listeners. And judging by James' comments, Franken & Co are going out of their way to avoid as many of those as possible!

I'd like to start an Air-America Death Pool. I give these guys 6 months. Any other predictions?

Wow.

I'm practically speechless. Lynn of Reflections in d minor triple-linked me today. (Here, here and here.) My very first linky trifecta!

Lynn smacks me around a bit for my flip remarks about Dvorak. Just for the record, I really do like his work too. I think something about his Eastern European origins shielded him from the overly-stale sophistication of, say, French composition of the period. His music (and I really only know a few symphonies and overtures) is fresh and lively, and at the same time, well grounded in tradition.

As for Vivaldi, well confess Lynn - you don't like all of his umpteen zillion concerti, do you? After all, many of them were just academic exercises which he used to fiddle around with different instrument arrangements.

BUT, when Vivaldi was good, he was very good. My personal favorites are from his L'Estro Armonico and La Stravaganza. Here is the recording I have, featuring one of my all time favorite groups, The English Concert under Trevor Pinnock.

Also, just to set the record straight, the bit about the EU and the Kyoto treaty Lynn quotes is actually out of the article that I quoted, not my own stuff. But her conclusion was the same as mine.

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Maginot Candidate Watch

It's Daisy-Gate! Glenn has the round-up. What's the matter with all you people? Don't you know it's a reference to the Mystery Machine?

The mystery is why anyone would want this bozo to be president.

Heh, if I do say so myself.

Where the Forehead Meets the Desktop

Client insists on a sudden conference call this afternoon and then sends me the wrong !@#*&#((*& dial-in information. Grrrrrrr.......

UPDATE: All fixed. Kinda wish it wasn't. Zzzzzzz.

Hey, There He Is!

Welcome back to my fellow L-B'er Steve-O!

As for yours truly, just got back from a client lunch. Had venison in a swank Spanish place at 19th and Eye. Delish. Alas, however, more meeting stuff and an unscheduled conference call coming up, so blogging will probably be rather light until later.

Meanwhile, think Al Franken Radio is the most boring thing on the airwaves? Try Al Gore TV! Just thinking about it makes...me....zzzzzzzzzzz

Back to the surface, but not breathing yet...

The big project I've been working on for the United Way in our area goes in today; my eyeballs are about ready to pop out of my head from staring at Excel spreadsheets non-stop the past two weeks. In the end, we came up with data in 260 categories for four counties and two cities, as well as the state of Virginia and when relevant the US. All in all, it turned out to be pretty cool, but an enormous pain in the ass. I'm done with pro bono for quite awhile.

Anyhoo, I've done one blog related thing over the past few days, which is doing the spade work to get our arses off of blogger and into MT on our own domain.

We'll keep you posted, and thanks for the patience. Blogging has turned out to be more fun than I thought it would be.

We Call It Rope-a-Dope

But Michael Novak is calling it a mousetrap play.

Either way, I think Condi is gonna score big.

Today's Choice Cut

The messenger boy got through on his bike with this one. Go read Hitch on Clarke-Bait and Iraq. (That is, if you're through laughing about Bawbwa.) HT to Eric at Classical Values.

Ladies and Gentlemen

I give you the talented, the sparkling, the answer to all of your questions about the world around us......MEGA-BAWBWA!!!!

Share and Enjoy!

AHA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAA!!!

Today's Choice Cuts

Normally Sir, yes. Today the van broke down.

Back later.

YIP! YIP!

Permalink Update

I emailed into Blogger support yesterday trying to get help with our permalinks. I pointed out to them that I had checked through the "How Do I Create Permanent Links To My Posts" section of their Knowledge Base and also that I had confirmed the permalink tags that come with Blogger's default templates were there intact.

This is the response I got:

If you have already included the line of code for permalinks included in the help article, you may need to republish your entire site in order for your changes to take effect.

Please see our Blogger Knowledge Base article for details:

http://help.blogger.com/bin/answer.py?answer=103&topic=17

But I haven't done anything that would require republishing. The code was there from the get-go. Was I supposed to do something with it? I am asking Blogger that question too, but would appreciate any help you guys could provide.

Remember, when it comes to the tech side of this stuff, I feel like the guy frantically trying to decide whether to cut the red wire or the blue wire while the clock winds down to 2 seconds.

Danger, Will Robinson!

If you don't care about classical music, for Heaven's sake - skip the post immediately below! We don't want to lose anyone who wanders in here to a MEGO moment, just because I indulged in some bloggy bloviating tonight! Scroll down a bit and you'll find all sorts of, well, stuff. Y'know... stuff.

That's us Llamas - always looking out for YOU!

Gratuitous Musical Post

For once, I did not squander the evening watching repeats of movies on television. Instead, I listened to music in my Fortress of Solitude. It's a funny thing - I often "play" certain pieces over in my mind. I have found that sometimes when I go for long periods without actually listening to the piece, it takes a while to readjust. It's almost as if the external physical presence of the sound gets in the way of the internal thought about the sound. Or as Mrs. Entity of Monty Python says, "So anyway, Beethoven was really rather glad when he went deaf."

Anyhoo, this evening I was listening to Haydn. "Papa" does not get anywhere near as much respect these days as he ought. I strongly suspect that this is because Haydn does not fit the modern model of what a composer should be - He started out from humble beginnings, worked like hell, caught some lucky breaks, paid close attention to what his audiences wanted, rose to fame and fortune, became insanely popular in his own time and lived to a ripe old age. Furthermore, all accounts concur that he was of a cheerful, kind-hearted temperament. This hardly comports with the model of the ar-Tiste as a tortured, lonely sole, unappreciated in his own time and wracked by internal divilment over his Art.

Nonetheless, I love Haydn. His keyboard works are of a nature that anyone with a given amount of talent can play and enjoy, even if they have a limited amount of time available for practice. His orchestral works are accessible to any audience with a reasonable amount of musical sense. At the same time, both keyboard and orchestral works can satisfy the tastes of even the most sophisticated listeners. Then there is the old story about his religious music. Haydn came in for a certain amount of criticism from the Church because his Masses were considered too "light-hearted." Haydn was supposed to have responded that he couldn't help it, because every time he thought of God, he was overwhelmed with a joy that translated into his music. In my opinion, this was just about half-way tongue in cheek. Just gives you an idea of the man's personality.

As for performances, I grew up listening to George Solti and the Chicago Symphony Orchestra. Letter perfect, of course, but still a modern orchestra. I also had many recordings by Neville Marinner and the Academy of St. Martin's-In-The-Field that were safe, but rather pedestrian. These days, as I was blogging rather enthusiastically earlier, there are many more options. Adam Fischer and the Austro-Hungarian Orchestra are okay, although they have a slightly mushy sound. Trevor Pinnock and the English Concert are great for some of the earlier symphonies as are Peter Salomon and his group whose name I can't quite recall.

This evening, I listened to two pieces - the "Clock" Symphony, No. 101, and La Reine - Symphony No. 85.

The "Clock" was first performed in London in 1794 and is named as it is because of the pizzicato tick-tock effect in the second movement. (Beethoven's second piano sonata - Opus 2, No. 2 - which is dedicated to Haydn, also uses this effect. I am unaware of any keyboard works of Haydn's that do the same thing and often wonder if Beethoven adopted this technique as a tribute to this symphony.) I have a recording by Richard Hickox and Collegium Musicum 90, a first-rate period instrument group. Allow me to quote from the liner notes:

One of the most striking features of the twelve symphonies that Haydn composed for London between 1791 and 1795 is the strong sense of rapport between composer and the intended audience. Haydn was a celebrity and the daily newspapers are full of vivid descriptions of the concerts in which he took part. The composer never pandered to this popularity but nurtured it so that the tastes and enthusiasms of his audience were gradually developed. For Haydn, popularity went hand in hand with artistic integrity. (Emphasis mine. Try foisting that attitude on a modern day ar-Tiste. Or Britney Spears, for that matter.)

.............

Symphony No. 101 received its first performance on 3 March, 1794, at the fourth of the twelve concerts that constituted "Mr. Salomon's Concert, Hanover Square." It was again the slow movement that captured the attention of Haydn's public, its ticking rhythms giving rise to the nickname 'Clock'. On this occasion the writer who wrote an account of the concert for the newspaper The Morning Chronicle isolated the technique what went with this gimmick: " The management of the accompaniment of the Andante, though perfectly simple, was masterly." There is hardly a bar in which the tick-tock rhythms are not present but their context embraces the naive, the decorative, the sublime (in the true eighteenth-century sense), the colorful and the flamboyant.

The other choice for the evening, Symphony No. 85, La Reine ("the Queen"), first performed in Paris in 1788, is on a CD I have by Bruno Weil and Tafelmusik, another crack period instrument group. This symphony was one of Haydn's "Paris" symphonies, written a bit earlier than his London works, but also insanely popular. No. 85 is called La Reine because it was reported to be a great favorite of Marie Antoinette. Allow me to again quote from the liner notes:

An extraordinary tale is connected with Marie Antoinette, imprisoned in The Temple with her husband and children:

"Another of those who came to the Temple was Lepitre, a young professor who became a member of the provincial Commune on December 2nd, 1792. With him on duty one morning was Toulan, a man who did all he could to make life more bearable for the royal family. There was a harpsichord by the door of Madame Elizabeth's room, which he tried to play, only to find it was badly out of tune. Marie Antoinette came up to him. ' I should be glad to use that instrument, so I can continue my daughter's lessons, but it is impossible in its present condition, and I have not succeeded in getting it tuned.' Lepitre and Toulan sent out a message, and the harpsichord was tuned the same evening.

As we were looking through the small collection of music that day, upon the instrument we found a piece called La Reine de France [Haydn's Symphony No. 85]. "Times have changed, " said Her Majesty, and we could not restrain our tears.

[John Hearsey, Marie Antoinette, 1974: 190]"

If that doesn't make you a bit teary, well, then you really shouldn't be reading this blog. But my defense of The Queen is for another day. The real point of this post is that you should be listening to Haydn. Go. Do it.

Red Ghost

Sheila O'Malley posts something I saw a little while back, but could not open at the time for some reason: A photojournal by a Kievian motorcycle girl named Lena who has spent several years now cruising around what is left of Chernobyl, taking pictures.

Every single pixel of these snaps screams "Soviet" at me. There isn't a single frame that does not bear silent testimony to the wretched cruelty, incompetence, corruption and perversity of this disastrous experiment in 20th Century totalitarianism. God help those hundreds of thousands of people who suffered as a direct result of Chernobyl, together with the millions upon millions who suffered from the Soviets overall. And God damn those who caused the suffering.

Sorry. Didn't mean to bloviate. But the next time you hear some snarky moonbat singing the praises of Communism, just remember what you see when you link to Lena's site. Then punch the bastard.

Blogging Note

We have received a new round of irate fan mail telling us to fix the @(*#$&*@ permalinks. Blogger has been notified. We'll let you know what happens.

Thankee.

Llama Yips!

YIP! YIP! YIP! to Willow for blogrolling us!

I know that everyone who reads us also checks in for (Ed. - No, you cannot use the expression "Frequent Whomping") um, Lively Prose and Scathing Wit over at Willow's place. Right? Right?

UPDATE: Okay, now I'm seriously blushing. Shucks, indeed.

Brave Sir Robin

Miguel Angel Morantinos, the incoming Socialist foreign minister in Spain, has a piece in today's Wall Street Journal. (Sorry, I read the dead tree version, so I have no linkage on this.) Most of it is Euro-Weenie clap-trap, but one paragraph caught my eye in particular:

As for Iraq, Spain will cease to have "occupation forces" there on June 30, whether it is because the U.N., at the request of a legitimate Iraqi government, assumes authority and constitutes a new international force; or simply because our troops will withdraw. The decision will be coordinated with the other countries present in Iraq, and will have the support of the Spanish parliament. This was our firm electoral promise, a contract with our citizens that no terrorist can make us breach. (Emphasis added.)

Boy, that'll show 'em! We're running away and there's not a damn thing you can do about it!

"Close The Casket Lid - I'm Decomposing!"*

A collection of musical jokes brought to you courtesy of John at TexasBestGrok. Some of these are quite good.

From the evident bitterness towards players of various instruments, I'm reminded of Bertie Wooster's description of a violin solo he was forced to attend (I quote from imperfect memory): "I don't remember much. It was loud in some spots and less loud in other spots and, like all other violin solos I've ever heard, seemed to go on longer than it actually did."

I also remember this one: The Irish invented the bagpipes in the 11th Century and gave them to the Scots. The Scots still haven't caught on to the joke.

(*The punch line to a joke I first heard as a kid. The music lover goes to Beethoven's grave, digs up the coffin and looks inside. There he finds Beethoven furiously erasing sheet after sheet of music scores. Beethoven looks up and says - )

Europe Discovers the Price Tag!

It's one thing to sit around the salons gassing (as it were) about Global Warming. It's something else entirely, to ask people to pay to do something about it, as the EU seems to be discovering.

Favorite graph(s):

But Europe's auto and electric industries recently warned of a slowdown in growth if they are forced to invest in clean energy technologies. The warnings come as the EU has acknowledged that it's falling further behind in its plan to match the US in productivity, employment, and growth.

Those kinds of warnings about slow growth are what compelled the US Senate, and President Bush, to reject Kyoto. If Europe now backpedals, the global effort to influence climate change will be driven mainly by the market, as car buyers and the auto industry choose to become less polluting. And Europe will lose its claim to global leadership in pushing Kyoto.

It could just be that government inducements, such as tax credits, may be preferable over tough regulation on greenhouse gases.

No sh**, Jacques.

Unfortunately, the piece can't resist continuing with some reflexive hand-wringing:

But then, would that pace of change be fast enough to slow down climate change? The science is not clear yet on whether the temperature trend could be reversed even if the whole world went full bore to reaching Kyoto's targets.

In fact, the science is not clear yet on whether human beings have anything at all to do with climate change. Given that, it's nice to see that the EU is actually having second thoughts about the genuine harm that would result from trashing their economies in an effort to stave off a theoretical threat.

Eye Condi

(Sorry, can't resist.)

So it looks as if Condi is going to testify after all. I suppose that, politically, this has become necessary, although I worry about the precedent. Evidently, the White House does too, which is why they are negotiating so intensely with the 9/11 Commission over the out-of-bounds markers.

So you think the Left is happy that Condi has been flushed out of her WH Spider Hole? Guess again! Michelle at A Small Victory has been sampling moonbat reaction. Heh, indeed.

My gut feeling: Condi Rice is extremely intelligent, extremely poised and extremely good looking. From what I've seen, she also has a very strong case to refute the wilder accusations that Clarke-Bait has been hurling around. She might just turn into the Oliver North of this whole dog-and-pony show. That would be a disaster for the Left. (If you're too young to remember the Iran-Contra Hearings, I just don't want to know about it.)

We'll see.

UPDATE: Viking Pundit has reaction from around the blogsphere. I swear on my children's heads that I did not see Bill Hobbs' comments before I threw in my two cents above.

FURTHER UPDATE: The Commissar is ready to go into Purge-Mode.

Wanker Of The Week Award

Goes to this guy.

That is all.

Go Back To Bed, Dammit!

A story about kids and parents not getting enough sleep. Stop the presses!

One figure that caught my eye: About 69 percent of the children in the households surveyed were said to experience sleep problems a few nights a week. Common problems included difficulty falling asleep, sleepwalking, snoring, resisting going to bed and breathing difficulties.

69 percent? That seems awfully high to me. And is snoring really a "sleep problem"? I suppose it depends on the severity.

I am thankful to say that our kids have always been very sound sleepers and they are invariably out within about 10 minutes of being put to bed. I attribute this in part to the fact that we are real Bedtime Nazis. 8:00 PM. In bed. No excuses. Period. It probably also has something to do with the fact that they run flat out on all cylinders all day.

The hard part is the running battle we have with the older two about when they can come in and snuggle in the morning. Saturday mornings especially can get ugly sometimes.

As for parental sleep time, 8 or 9 hours? Yeah, right. Closer to 6 for me.

Yup

Mor-ton assesses the impact of the Clarke Missile on Fortress Bush and concludes that, if not exactly a dud, it certainly wasn't enough to breach the walls.

In the end, I'm not even sure if it's going to chip the mortar very much.

HT to Viking Pundit.

More Sad Death News

Very sorry to see that Alistair Cooke died. I remember him primarily as the host of Masterpiece Theatre, back in the days when it was worth watching. At the same time, I can't quite shake from my brain the Monty Python bit (from one of the albums) in which Eric Idle plays Cooke getting attacked by a duck.

As usual, Laurence Simon has a tasteful, understated tribute as he updates the tally on his Dead Pool.

Today's Choice Cuts

A chilly, dreary day in Your Nation's Capitol, with rain moving in later and forecast to stick around for a couple of days. But that's okay, because the Yankees lost their season opener this morning - and to the Devil Rays at that! Ha, ha! Die Yankee Scum!

Ah. Well, now that that's out of the way, here is what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning.

POLL WATCH

Looks like despite the flap over the 9/11 hearings and incessant pounding by the Dems, the latest polls are showing a Bush Boost. To its credit, CNN for once isn't burying the story, but has it right out on the top of its home page. That should make Eric the Viking happier. Glenn also relays an interesting longer term graph. We need to get Steve-O in here with another one of his Election Futures Reports.

Meanwhile, Bill Whalen over at the Weekly Standard has a different set of election stats that I strongly suspect are going to make the Hoover Institution wonder exactly why it is paying him such an enormous stipend.

Oh, and speaking of the Campaign, check out the new Kerry Gas Tax Increase Calculator. According to this, a Kerry election would cost me better than $200 per year in extra gas taxes. No thanks.

CLARKE-BAIT WATCH

Speaking of the 9/11 flap, George Will sticks the proverbial fork in Clarke and suggests it's time to forget this silly little man. Rich Lowry, however, wants to administer a few more kicks to the ribs.

I AM BLOG

Donald Luskin has a new edition of the Krugman Truth Squad up in which he reports some possible good news about changes in the NY Times' policies regarding corrections to editorials. It has to be said that none of this would have happened but for the rising power of the Blogsphere. (Here is more on the story from The National Debate. Well done, indeed. Keep up the good work!

SULLIVAN AGONISTES WATCH

Forgot to mention this yesterday, but after getting fed up with Andrew's hand-wringing, National Review's Katherine J. Lopez finally called him on it and asked that he go ahead and declare his support for Kerry. (We need to check and see if she entered Dr. Horsefeather's pool on the Defection Date - this kind of interference might get her disqualified.) Well, K-Lo managed to provoke an uncharacteristic outburst of pomposity on Andrew's part.

All I can say is lighten up, Francis.

SPLENDID, SPLENDID

And to end on an up note, it looks like the Good Guys have scored a big success in London. It also seems that some baddies were nailed in the Phillipines.

Good day, y'all.

Snark Alert

I found myself watching Broken Arrow again on FX last night. After all, it's one of those movies that Guys Have To Watch when they come on. (Like, say, Patton or High Plains Drifter, or Die Hard 3.)

I find that it is absurdly enjoyable to watch Christian Slater toughing it out with John Travolta while bearing in mind that Slater got beat up by his wife recently. Heh, as they say.

And speaking of Hollywood distortions, the Butcher's Wife was none too pleased when I recently suggested that her devotion to Andrew McCarthy effectively made her a Fan Club of One. (Don't tell her, but I plan on getting her a copy of Mannequin for her birthday. And damn if Kim Cattrall isn't in that one, too! Suddenly this woman has managed to time warp herself back into all sorts of goofy 80's flicks that I used to enjoy - Porky's, Police Academy. Personally, I think she's a nasty piece of work.)

Where was I? Oh, yes. Well anyway, The BW is now claiming that the WaPo recently refered to McCarthy as an 80's heart-throb, or words to that effect, and therefore vindicates her taste. All I can say is, gee, if Pravda on the Potomac says it's true, it must be.

Family Values

Here are some stats on what people in the United States consider to be the ideal family size. It seems the magic number has shrunk somewhat in the past thirty years. HT to Dean, who is quite crabby about this shift in attitude and blames it on the faux-scientific hysteria of the zero-population growth crowd.

He's not just making this up, either. I once had a moonbat tell me that if having three kids was the reason I bought an SUV, then maybe I shouldn't have had three kids. At the time, I just stared in disbelief. Like which one would he have suggested I send back?

People who think that the personal is political can be so tarsome.

Clarke-Bait Update

Bill at INDC Journal picks up on Gregg Easterbrook's assessment of the 9/11 Hearings. (I guess this is how Gregg keeps himself in Spagettios while Tuesday Morning Quarterback is on hiatus.)

I agree with Gregg and Bill about the futility of hindsight-based finger-pointing. Also, even if we did have hard information about the impending threat prior to the attack, consider this scenario: It's late spring/early summer of 2001. The crisis d'jour is Bush's decision to freeze some last-minute Clinton tightening of environmental regulations. (You remember how Bush wanted to put arsenic in our drinking water?) Political enemies - still fresh with fury over the Supreme Court decision and raw over Dubya's recent swearing in, are looking for any way possible to delegitimize his presidency.

Can you imagine what would have happened if we all woke up one morning to learn that Dubya was having hundreds of Arabs rounded up in the United States and had started pounding the hell out of Afganistan in an effort to wipe out Al Qaeda? Can you even contemplate the combination of rage, hysteria and laughter that would have erupted even had he stood up to the podium and announced that the reason for these measures was that we had credible evidence of what was coming?

Cor lumme! They'd have hooted! They'd have booed! They'd have called him a liar, a moron and a fascist and moved immediately for his impeachment. They'd have chased him up a tree and set fire to it!

The truth is that prior to 9/11 the United States simply did not have the political will to go on the offensive against Al Qaeda, no matter how much intelligence was available. And that's pretty much what is coming out in the hearings.

High-Tech Ambulance Chasing

Yeesh. I am very, very glad that I don't do this kind of work. Not that one doesn't hustle for clients in a regulatory practice, but there's a difference between pitching a corporation to represent them before a government agency and this sort of thing.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

Here's your tasty little dish of Llama Niblets (Ed. - wha? Don't ask) for this afternoon:

GOOD MORNING, BAGHDAD!

Actually, it's Good Morning, Mesopotamia, but I don't want to get tagged for copyright infringement. Rich Galen has his latest report from Iraq. As I think I mentioned, a colleague of mine has just gone over. Last we heard he had arrived safely and all was well. My colleague is a card-carrying moonbat. I hope he takes a good look at the folks in Rich's photos and remembers who's covering his scrawny little backside while he's gaining fame and fortune turning the place into a genuine Civilized Country.

DO THE BART-MAN, INFIDEL DOGS!

Meanwhile, check out Pejman's post on Iraq's answer to Tokyo Rose. Did this chick work for Baghdad Bob?

ALL THINGS ISLAMOFASCIST

The World's Scariest Website is positively giddy it its belief that we have nailed both Osama and Zawahiri. Well, it sure beats their regular predictions.

HT to Allah.

THE MOTHER OF ALL POLITICAL SH*TS

You probably heard about Terry McCauliffe's doormat, featuring a picture of Dubya and the legend "Give Bush the Boot." Well, the Commissar noticed as certain charming precedent. Does this put McCauliffe in violation of UN Resolutions? Can we start the bombing? Huh? Can we?

ON THE HOME FRONT

In a complete gear-shift, everyone go congratulate Dana of Note-It Posts, who is trying to figure out how to make the transition from man-to-man to zone defense.

And speaking of Domestic Bliss, Laurence at Amish Tech Support has some harsh words for purveyors of the Dysfunction Racket. I concur. Looking at my own family, I'm tempted to quote the Psychiatrist from Fawlty Towers who says of Basil, "There's enough material there for an entire conference." But this is not a clinical condition necessitating drugs, therapy and social-services meddling, it's just who we are. We like it.

Oh, and while we're at ATS, Carnival of the Cats? To quote Marty Feldman in Young Frankenstein, "You're putting me on!"

RUN FOR YOUR LIVES!

Farm Accident Digest has the raw material for the next Sci-Fi Horror Flick. I'm already looking forward to the sequel, where they mate with Vampire Bats and start flying around attacking people. Think I'm being unrealistic? It's happened before!

NON-FLYING, NON-BITING TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.

Now We Know



Take the Hey Hey, Which Monkee Are You? Quiz.


HT to Eric at
Classical Values, who is also a member of the PT Club.

Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM) - Lunchtime Version

My six year old is turning into a voracious reader. Saturday afternoon, we were driving down to the hardware store when she suddenly focused on the back of the Fairfax County Virginia sticker on my windshield. (In contravention of all Safety-Nazi rules, she often rides in the front seat of my jeep for short trips.)

"Daddy, what does "Taxes due by Oct. 5, 2004" mean?"

I explained to her what the personal property tax was and then went on to a larger discourse about the purpose of taxes in general: "Taxes are money we pay to the government so the government can do its job."

"Oh. Does the government take all our money?"

"Not yet, Sweety. Not yet."

Sad News

Ustee is dead. One of my all time favorite "characters" who also happened to be a brilliant actor.

Not sure if the judges would agree, but I always thought of Spartacus as one of the truly bad films of all time. John Dall, who plays Glabrus (Crassus' mentee) turns in one of the worst performances in the history of cinema. And I never cease to laugh when Tony Curtis gets to the line about teaching "da Classics." As for the rest of it, well, it's mostly 60's Big Budget Hokum.

BUT. There are some great bits. The deployment of Crassus' legions for the big battle at the end is one of the high spots of epic film. And, what I really meant to say when I started this, Peter Ustinov is superb as Lentulus. If you ever find yourself watching this movie again, just ignore all the Kirk Douglas side of it and focus on Ustinov, Laurence Olivier (Crassus) and Charles Laughton (Gracchus). Two scenes stand out in particular - one, where Crassus and Lentulus are in Crassus' tent discussing where and how to find Spartacus. The other is a dinner scene where Lentulus and Gracchus discuss the attractiveness of fat men. Both scenes leave me in stitches.

Ustee had that Olivier-like quality of playing himself and his character at the same time. Whether it was Prince John, Hercule Poirot or Charlie Chan, you could believe the character and appreciate the craft of the actor simultaniously. Not many can do that. And in this age of celebrity for its own sake, it's an art that is not encouraged much.

Sad news, indeed.

Zoinks!

Okay, one more. James Joyner relays a piece about the puzzling yet enduring popularity of Scooby-Doo. Certainly a tough one for the Mystery Machine.

My theory: Casey Kasem, who did Shaggy's voice, long ago signed a pact with the devil. This would also explain the success of Super Friends and Mister Magoo, to say nothing of his umpteen weekend radio countdown shows.

There is no other plausible explanation.

BTW, if you ever get a chance to see the Johnny Bravo episode where he meets Scoob and the Gang, do it. Hi-larious.

"Sorry, Shorty"* Watch

Okay, just a quick one. Steyn has a great one about Clarke-Bait today. Go read.

*Richard Clarke is now in the position of Shorty from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly. Scroll down to last Friday for further details if the reference is unclear.

Mmmph

Monday morning here at the Butcher Shop and I'm still in the process of putting my head back together. We hosted a big party for the 20's/30's crowd from our Church last evening. We're Episcopalians, which means we spent the whole time trading insider stock tips and arguing about how the Decalogue was really just a list of suggestions. Oh, and of course, drinking. Lots of that.

Most of the people there had small kids, which we herded into the basement and out into the yard, shepharded by a trio of babysitters. I have often floated the idea of having a baby-swapping party: Everyone tosses their child's pacifier into a big bowl when they arrive. When the evening ends, there is a blind drawing and you take home the kid who's binky you have pulled. I think this idea is beginning to catch on.

Anyhoo, between actually throwing the party and spending most of the weekend preparing for it and then having to clean up after it, I'm pretty burned out this morning. And behind on my reading. Which means the Choice Cuts (TM) will have to wait till lunchtime.

But I can't leave you empty-handed, so I will just throw this out: Saturday night, I finally saw "Lost in Translation." As I had read elsewhere, the movie itself was pretty slight. But the remarkable thing was this - I could not take my eyes off of Bill Murray's face. His range of expression is as wide as it is subtle. Amazing.

Good day, y'all.

Best new website I've come across in ages

An old student who is now in law school in Chicago asked in an email how life post-tenure was going, whether I was having too much fun or minding my own bidness.

I wanted to quote Godfather 1 to her, but needed precision: two seconds on google turned up this website, complete with WAV files attached.

So now, I'm attaching this to emails whenever I need to make myself clear.

Bad Movie Inquiry

This is mostly for Liz and the gang, but anyone else is welcome to chip in:

I'm trying to remember the name of a movie I once saw long ago. Dunno if it was a big screen flick, but I'm inclined to believe it was.

The basic plot, from what I could gather, was set during the Cold War. There was some kind of nuclear explosion in the United States which was thought to have killed the President and most of his cabinet. This left the Secretary of, I think, Agriculture thinking he was the senior government rep alive, so he assumed the Presidency. (All this time, he was cruising around on an Air Force One-like jet.) Gradually, he works himself up into thinking that he has to launch a nuclear strike on the Russians. In the process, he starts to get delusional with power. Meantime, it becomes increasingly clear that the real President is not dead, and also that what had been thought to be a first strike by Russia was really some kind of accident or rogue event.

Somehow or other, there is another government jet chasing the Ag Sec's. It can't catch his, because they are the same type and both running at max speed. But as the Sec gets more and more bananas, the pilots realize he is going to start a war and divert the Sec's plane sufficiently out of its path to allow the other one to catch it up and ram it. The movie ends with the real prez talking to his Russian counterpart on the hotline, and everyone else calming down.

This sound familiar to anyone? I forget everyone who was in it, but I have an idea that the Prez was played by some Big Dog of an actor. Olivier comes to mind, but that couldn't be right.

Let me know. Thanks.

Yikes

The gels were fooling about with play-dough this afternoon, and my six year old had made a couple of people figures that she kept marrying to each other. At one point, I overheard her say, "They have to do what I want because I am their God!"

What have we created?

The Perfect Philosophical Question for a Rainy Saturday Afternoon

What's more fun than shooting at Nazis? Blackfive has the answer.

HINT: It involves beer.

Personally, I've been playing a lot of Mob Rule lately, which is like an evil SimCity.

Richard Clarke Goes To The Movies

I had a sudden flash this evening. Just hear me out.

Thinking about the latest twist, it suddenly occured to me that Clarke-Bait must be feeling rather like Shorty from The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, as, with the noose around his neck, the horse was whipped out from under him and Clint Eastwood failed to shoot him down. I simply cannot believe that anyone would be so....stooopid.. as to set himself up like that unless he believed that a Guardian Angel was going to save him from his fate. With the announced efforts to disclose Clarke's previous House testimony for a friendly game of compare and contrast with what he's saying now, it looks like it may be too late for this. "Sorry, Shorty."

Of course, the allusion only goes so far. The Repubs are hardly Tuco. And I would not care to equate whoever the Dem mastermind is behind all of this with Clints' Blondie. But insofar as Clarke is the dupe, er, hung out to dry when things go wrong....well, it works.

Llama Yips!

We just wanted to take the opportunity to thank all y'all (as we used to say in Texas) for your continued and growing support of our little opus. We are coming off the best week we've had yet in terms of hits. If I read the sitemeter data correctly, we've got a core constituency of about a dozen to fifteen loyal readers who like to come down the shop three or four times a day. On top of that the amount of "walk in" traffic is growing steadily as well, as folks pick up links and blogroll references from other sites. Plus, some of the Big Boys are beginning to acknowledge our existence. Okay, so we ain't Glenn or Stephen, but this is the way small businesses get their legs. We are truly gratified by your patronage.

So what can we say, other than to quote the King: Uh, Thangyuh. Thangyuh verrah mush.

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Beer Me

How well do you know your beer bottles? Try this test. I only got three of the damm things, which shows how much beer I actually drink.

Time for a glass of wine.

HT to Lawren Mills.

Speaking of the President

John Hawkins tells GOP'ers to loosen up - Our Man is going to do just fine. (HT to Viking Pundit.)

On the other hand, this puts me in mind of a post the NE Repub put up the other day relaying Dick Morris's opinion that the Maginot Candidate is going to tank hard. I always feel the need to wash my hands after reading Morris, and I sure wouldn't buy a used car from him. But this is, after all, what he does.

You're So.....Hurtful!

Ouch. It looks as if Clarke-Bait is about to get his fingers caught in the vise of conflicting Congressional testimony. Glenn has a post. The New England Republican has more.

Now I just got through listening to the moonbat in the office next to me rant about how all of this is somehow nothing more than some eviiiiil Republican plot to crush a tiny bug that has dared to thwart the Sith Lord of the White House. Explain to me, please, how determining whether someone who is accusing the President of the worst possible incompetence or corruption has changed his testimony concerning his knowledge of relevant events, and using records of his own words to make such a determination, constitutes a "plot."

Bueller? Bueller? Anybody?

Daddy Posting

Amongst this weeks Carnival entries is one from J. Fielek of Man Meets Baby, who just found out he (well, his wife) is having a girl. He offers some thoughts about how he hopes to raise his pending daughter.

Well, I have three little girls myself. And it occurred to me that someone had sent me, a looooong while back, a nifty, relevant, email on the subject. I have no earthly idea where this came from originally, but I pass it on for the benefit of Mr. Fielek, myself, and anyone else in our position:

Ten Rules For Dating My Daughter(s)

Rule One: If you pull into my driveway and honk, you'd better be delivering a package, because you are sure not picking anything up.

Rule Two: You do not touch my daughter in front of me. You may glance at her, so long as you do not peer at anything below her neck. If you cannot keep your eyes or hands off my daughter's body, I will remove them for you.

Rule Three: I am aware that it is considered fashionable for boys of your age to wear their trousers so loosely that they appear to be falling off their hips. Please don't take this as an insult, but you and all of your friends are complete idiots. Still, I want to be fair and open-minded about this issue, so I propose a compromise: You may come to the door with your underwear showing and your pants ten sizes too big, and I will not object. However, to ensure that your clothes do not, in fact, come off during the course of your date with my daughter, I will take my electric nail gun and fasten your trousers securely in place to your waist.

Rule Four: I'm sure you've been told that in today's world, sex without utilizing a "barrier method" can kill you. Allow me to elaborate: when it comes to sex, I am the barrier, and I will kill you.

Rule Five: In order for us to get to know each other, we should talk about sports, politics and other issues of the day. Please do not do this. The only information I require from you is an indication of when you expect to have my daughter safely back at my house, and the only word I need from you on this subject is "early."

Rule Six: I have no doubt that you are a popular fellow, with many opportunities to date other girls. Frankly, I would much rather that you did. However, if you absolutely must go out with my little girl, you will continue to date no one but her until she is finished with you. If you make her cry, I will make you cry.

Rule Seven: As you stand in my front hallway, waiting for my daughter to appear, and more than an hour goes by, do not sigh and fidget. If you want to be on time for the movie, you should not be dating. My daughter is putting on her make-up, a process that can take longer than painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Instead of just standing there, you may demonstrate to me why I should tolerate your existence by such acts as, say, changing the oil in my car.

Rule Eight: The following places are not appropriate for a date with my daughter: places where there are beds, sofas or anything softer than a wooden stool. Places where there are no parents, policemen or nuns within sight. Places where there is darkness. Places where there is dancing, holding hands or happiness. Places where the ambient temperature is warm enough to induce my daughter to wear shorts, tank tops, midriff T-shirts, or anything other than overalls, a sweater and a goose-down parka zipped up to her throat. Movies with a strong romantic or sexual theme are to be avoided; movies which feature chainsaws wielded on unsuspecting teenage girls by males of your age group and general appearance are okay. Hockey games are okay. Old folks' homes are better.

Rule Nine: Do not lie to me. I may appear to be a potbellied, balding, middle-aged, dimwitted has-been, but on issues relating to my daughter I am the all-knowing, merciless and vengeful God of your universe. If I ask you where you are going and what you will be doing, you have one very brief chance to tell me the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. I have a shotgun, a shovel and five acres behind the house. Do not dare to trifle with me.

Rule Ten: Be afraid. Be very, very afraid. It takes very little for me to mistake the sound of your car in the driveway for a chopper coming in over a rice paddy outside of Da Nang. When my Agent Orange starts acting up, the voices in my head frequently tell me to clean the guns as I wait for you to bring my daughter home. The moment you pull into the driveway, you should exit your car with both hands held high over your head. Speak the perimeter password, announce that you have brought my daughter safely home, then return to your car and leave immediately once she has exited the vehicle. Do not attempt to come inside or even follow her to the door. The camouflaged face in the window is mine, as is the ruby red beam of laser-light targeted directly at the center of your chest.

Works for me.

Arrgg! Prepare for boarding!

I've been somewhat AWOL the past couple of days as I'm trying to put the finishing touches on a project I've been doing for our local United Way for, oh, the past year. What we are doing is taking their Index of Caring Model, which assesses a whole variety of social issues and compiles the data so to compare individual states, and gather the data to get an honest and [relatively] accurate sense of how our area falls on the continuum. Easier said then done, of course. One thing that showed up rather quickly is the lingering effect of school segregation, when you measure things such as percentages of the population without a high school degree.

Anyhoo, hopefully this will be done in the next 24 or so, and relative snarkiness can continue...

Extra Bonus Happy Friday Linky Time

This week's Carnival of the Vanities is up (and has been) over at Pete Holiday's site. Go on over and poke around. Meet some new people. Just don't nod, that's all.

Insert "Oy Vey" Joke Here

Ian Andrew Dodge relays the perks of owning a kosher computer.

So, heh already.

Allah Is In The House

Check out these great pics.

The Cranky Cassandra

Wow. Check out what Flo King has to say about gay marriage. The punch line is that she said it in 1996.

A Bloggy Broadside From The Captain

I went for the Clarke-Bait Update. I stayed for Better Health Through Nose-Picking and a rare glimpse of brass-balled Anglicanism.

HT to the New England Republican for laying off the course.

Carnival of the Blorg - Week 5

Yes, it's time once again to assimilate fresh new blogs that I have not seen before, but that catch my fancy for one reason or another as likely to be beneficial to the Collective. Remember, don't just flip past them - click on over and have a look yourself.

Today's host is Lynn of Reflections in d minor, who has one hell of an eclectic blogroll. (Thanks for adding us, btw, YIP! YIP!) I heartily recommend going and looking at all of it. In the meantime, these are my quick personal picks. I'd love to see the looks on some of these folks' faces when their Google or Technorati searches lead them to this place! Mwa-ha-ha-haaaaa! (Ed. - If you're going with this stupid Blorg thing, you're out of character. Shut up.)

IT'S "SOOTHES THE SAVAGE BREAST," DAMMIT!

A number of goodly musical blogs. Want to check out the rough and lawless world of unaccompanied singing? Check out the A Capella News, a round up of everything from Thomas Tallis and Anonymous 4 to Homer Simpson and his friends singing "Mr. Sandman."

I was bloviating the other day about issues surrounding modern composition and performance. In response, Rocket Jones directed my attention to an outfit called Symphony X that concerns itself with ways to bring Classical music to a wider audience. Well, small world, here they are. (The site seems to be on the fritz a bit, but you can poke around to different posts via comments.)

And here are some great source sites that I'm sure Dad will want to bookmark: The Mozart Project, Bach Central Station, Beethoven, and, if you're feeling a little fringy - Vivaldi & Dvorak (who I like, but am surprised someone else likes enough to make the centerpiece of a website).

A CONFEDERACY OF CRANKS

And I mean that in the best way. Go over and check out Captain Yips. I particularly like his references to the Bishes and "Friends of Gene." My own Rector is a card-carrying member of that particular club.

Meanwhile, the Pious Agnostic, apparently a huge fan of Lileks, has lots of good things to say. Scroll down a bit to see a photo of an anti-American, er, I mean, anti-war protestor that gave me an almost irresistible urge to incur bodily harm.

The Peeve Farm seems to be growing a bumper crop of dope-slaps this season.

I went for The Cheese Stands Alone because of the name. But I stayed for this little gem which, I'm sure, will make the Butcher's Wife smile.

And carrying the banner for the Right, check out Dissecting Leftism, which comes to us from Down Under. I don't think he concerns himself overmuch with giving his subjects anesthesia.

Meanwhile, Inappropriate Response is following the continuing saga of Kennewick Man, a cautionary tale about the flashpoint between science and identity politics.

SIC TRANSIT GLORIA

Several nifty sites devoted to the Classics. Check out Rogue Classicism for all kinds of cultural references from both now and then. Sorry about the martyrdom, Castalus! Hope it gets better!

Meanwhile, fresh to R in dM, here is BlogLatin. I loved Latin in school and always regret not going for a Classics major in college. Ah well. Look on my face. My name is Might Have Been.

And speaking of modern classics, I stumbled across the New Criterion website skulking in the blogroll. That one goes on ours as well. It'll really class up the joint.

SPEAK, THAT I MAY SEE THEE!

As an English major who long ago lost his gruntle and likes to indulge in correcting people's grammar, I am particularly pleased to highlight for you The Discouraging Word.

Meanwhile, also have a look at Language Hat, which seems devoted to a broad array of linguistic issues. I was particularly interested by the McGurk Effect. Try working that one into your next cocktail party conversation.

AND SPEAKING OF DRINKS

I went to Whiskey River expecting something involving poker chips and steers, one-eyed scouts and mysterious Railroad Men, Miss Kitty and Indian raids, Saturday night fights and claim-jumping. I was wrong. I was so wrong.

On the other hand, Badgett's Coffee eJournal delivers the goods. I have seen the Promised Land, Beavis. And it is Good.

Assimilation complete. Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.

Ish In Da Hole!

Bad luck seems to be haunting Tiger Woods at the moment. In a way, this is a good thing. Keeps him honest and humble. I think this is especially important for someone who rose so fast and who has so much pure talent. A successful golfing career is a long-haul proposition. To borrow a quote from another sport, "Sometimes you win. Sometimes you lose. And sometimes it rains."

Many golfers storm on to the scene as God's Gift to the Links, only to flame out. Some of them don't handle it well. (See Daly, John.) Although I was initially apprehensive, given the hype surrounding his own arrival, I think Tiger will do fine now. He's a Golfer, not a prima donna. He "plays the game," as it were. These little bad patches, although frustrating at the time, will help him focus and keep him cool.

Mark my words, Tiger is going to be winning green jackets when I'm in my wheelchair setting the attack-badgers on the grandkids.

You Are All Unique! - I'm not - SHHH!

I've seen this a few places, but wanted to remind everyone that, indeed, Life of Brian is coming back to the Big Screen. Unfortunately, it seems as if the film's distributors are trying to set up a faux "controversy" between Python and Mel Gibson's Passion in order to flog ticket sales. From this article, it looks as if the Beeb is going along with the hype.

Dean, from whom I borrowed the story, thinks this is all a lot of rubbish. So do I. The film mocks human absurdity, not Christian doctrine. Indeed, the single, brief appearance of Christ in the film is, in my mind, really rather complimentary - a single figure of calm sanity in an otherwise mad, mad, mad, mad world.

Since I'm on the topic, my favorite scenes in the flick are the Latin lesson - where Cleese's centurion catches Brian painting grammatically-incorrect graffiti, and the stoning scene where everyone attacks each other for saying "Jehovah." The look of sad disbelief on the Roman guard's faces speaks volumes - and is really a pretty historically accurate summary of Rome's frustration in dealing with Judea.

Personally, I rather prefer Holy Grail to Life of Brian - I think the dialogue is snappier and there are fewer longuers. But it's a close call.

Maginot Candidate Watch

Eric the Viking has an excellent post this morning that catches out the haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam, in his shifting definition of a "vote."

Heh, indeed.

Today's Choice Cuts

Friday comes once again to the Butcher's Shop. Just so you know, it's supposed to hit 76 degrees here in Your Nation's Capitol today - 76 degrees! Woo, Ah say, Whoo-Hoo!!

So with the sap on the rise, let's take a dekko at what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning.

CLARKE-BAIT WATCH

Mom's Favorite Columnist sums up everything that is wrong with this miserable little man who is forcing us all to indulge him in his fifteen minutes while we have much more important things to worry about elsewhere. Meanwhile, Lileks fisks the WaPo's softball coverage of the 9/11 dog-and-pony show and asks just why the hell we're watching it. Punch line quote:

And I bring this up . . . why? Because I want to blame the Clinton administration? Look: to me that's ancient history. That's Flintstone time. If it weren't for these hearings I wouldn't give a tin fig for who didn't do what when and where. September Eleventh was the bright red gash that separated the Now from the La-la Then, and we've been living in the hot spiky Now ever since. I am interested in the Now and the What Next. I don't have much patience for people who believe that the salvation of Western Civilization depends on hiking the marginal tax rates to pre-2002 levels. But if you want to play Eight Years vs. Eight Months, fine. Just remember that before 9/11, the skies over Afghanistan were clear. After 9/11, they thrummed with the sound of B-52s until the job was done.

Now go read the rest. Meanwhile, Glenn has the latest comprehensive round-up of Clarke's self-immolation here, here and here.

What continues to amaze me - and to illustrate the ever-widening "knowledge gap" between Those of the 'Sphere and Those of the Old Media - is that most of the people who rely on television and newspaper coverage with whom I discuss this matter don't have the faintest idea about many of these facts. So while it's great that we blog back and forth on the topic, I hope you're also going out and enlightening non-bloggy folks too. Well, are you?

UPDATE: Cox & Forkum have more, including, as usual, a wicked cartoon.

HANSON WATCH

I can't think of anyone else who so persistently captures the Big Picture as does
VDH. Go. Read. What else is there to say?

AIR AMERICAzzzzzzz......

David Skinner over at the Weekly Standard does a weigh-in between Al Franken and El Rushbo. I don't think it's going to be much of a contest - Franken's likely audience will be nothing more than current NPR listeners enraged that Bob Edwards is getting the axe.

Meanwhile, Eloise the Spitbull reports on the first fruits of the Franken Experience's efforts to bring diversity to radio. Heh.

RISING STAR

George Will has a piece on Rep. Jim DeMint - a likely Republican contender this fall for Fritz Hollings' senate seat. DeMint sounds like an old-fashioned Conservative from the first flower of the Reagan Revolution. While reading about him, I suddenly found myself wondering why we shouldn't limit the franchise to people who actually pay taxes. Okay, okay. I need some more coffee.

HEAD-BANGER OF THE DAY

Sheila O'Malley relays a report on the insanity surrounding bullying in schools. What happens when you mix irresponsible parents, CYA-ing school systems, and monster kids savvy at gaming the system? Well, this. (Be sure to remove all sharp objects from your immediate work surface before proceeding to bang.)

On the other hand, at least we're not dealing with this.

SOME GREENS TO GO WITH YOUR MEAT

(Oh, I'm so very witty sometimes!) Most of you probably know that Steven Green likes to post recipes. Well, I flag his entry for Caesar Salad in part because it's the first one I'm going to try and also because it sounds very much like the formula my parents use. Just reading about the garlic is making me drool - I'd brush my teeth with garlic-flavored toothpaste if it was socially acceptable. (And since I've been married nearly 11 years, I can laugh off Stephen's first-date warning. The Missus will understand.)

DISPATCH FROM THE FEVER SWAMP

The ever-delightful Meghan Cox Gurdon weighs in on the trials and tribulations of kids' lunchboxes. You want to talk about your WMD? Try opening one of these babies after it's been sitting in the car all afternoon with the remains of a lunch still inside!

Good day, y'all.

Question for the Floor

Did the geniuses who came up with this remember this? I mean, is this deliberate lefty snarkiness or is it just clueless coincidence?

Inquiring minds want to know.

Mea Culpa

Yes, I know, you're all eagerly glued to your monitors. You're developing carpal tunnel syndrome clicking the refresh button with your mouses (mice? meece?). You're throwing away time you could be strolling in the sunshine. Por qua? Because you're waiting for this week's Carnival of the Blorg. Right? Right?

Well, it's like this. I got the idea the other day to do a "meatspace" version of the COB. My target was going to be Reen's DC Metro Blogmap. Pretty clever, eh? Folks round my own neighborhood, what?

So much for clever intentions. There are definitely some interesting blogs on the map, but then again, there are some, er, non-interesting ones too. Plus some just plain weird ones. Plus a lot of dead links. All in all, it just didn't gel. (BTW, where are YOU on this thing, Bill? I know you're around here somewhere...)

Anyways, I only had a carefully allotted ration of time in which to play with the thing and rather than serve up something half-assed, I thought it would be better to chuck it altogether and wait until later when I could find a better host and do it right.

The good news is that I have found a very promising host indeed. Lots of assimilation potential. So stay out of Wolf 359 this evening!

New Bush Ads

Are up. Have a look.

Aaaahh

Just got back from a meeting up at 19th and Penn. Decided to walk back to my digs at 10th and Penn, cutting across the top of the Ellipse. What a day - D.C. at it's early spring best. I think the ol' jeep is going topless for my commute home this evening.

I can't help thinking sometimes as I pass the White House, "Wow! What a place to be!" Right in the Middle of Things, as it were. I often have this same feeling playing softball out on the Ellipse with my firm team in the summer. Then again, I passed a couple of heavily armed SWAT-types giving a pickup truck a very thorough going over and thought, "Damn, what a place to be." Right at Ground Zero, as it were.

The tourists are beginning to break out all over, like the daffodils. Where you swing round that long curve of walk between the White House and the Ellipse, there are always gaggles of them taking pictures of each other with the WH in the background. I know that I randomly show up in some of these pictures as I pass through the crowd. Sometimes I wonder what, if anything, these folks think when they take the film back to Des Moines or Provo or Montgomery, or wherever it is they're from. Do they even notice I'm in the picture? If so, do they wonder if I'm a Very Important Person because I've got a suit on and am carrying a file or briefcase? Or do they suppose I'm just another one of the nameless cogs in the Beltway Machine.

No way to tell, of course. But it's weird to think that an image of me might be in some family vacation photo album somewhere, subject to view and comment by complete strangers and without my even knowing about it.

At least with you guys, I know when I'm being watched.

Why I love the Internet, Reason LXXVII

The Smoking Gun has Richard Clarke's resignation letter from last year. Let's just say it's not exactly in line with what he's saying now.

I know, I know, he was lying then, but telling the truth now.

Riiiiiight.

Forcibly Apply Forehead To Desktop. Repeat As Necessary.

Read Professor Bainbridge's post relaying a piece by Richard John Neuhaus on the jaw-droppingly low level of First Amendment comprehension among university administrators and students. Remember, these are supposed to be the informed members of society.

Personal anecdote on this: I used to ride the Metro Orange Line into DC from Falls Church every day. Very often, a little, middle-aged Korean (I think) guy would get on at the Court House station. He would sing a verse of a hymn - usually Rock of Ages or something like that - say good morning, and get off at Rossyln. Had a nice, light baritone voice, too. Most people either smiled or just ignored him.

Well one morning, as the guy broke into song, a man from the other end of the car suddenly snapped. He was a decently dressed, well-groomed man - I'd have said a lawyer for sure. Certainly educated. Anyway, Angry Guy started shouting "You have no Constitutional right to do that! You are violating the Constitution!" at our little hymn-singing friend. Hymn-Singing Guy ignored him and plowed on. Angry Guy, getting angrier by the minute, continued to hurl First Amendment objections. Finally, Angry Guy got so angry that he charged back at Hymn-Singing Guy and physically assaulted him. By then, the train had pulled into Rossyln. Angry Guy bodily hurled Hymn-Singing Guy off the train and then tried to get the Metro cops to arrest the little guy for infringing on Angry Guy's Constitutional right not to have to hear hymns in the public square. The train was held up a couple minutes while Angry Guy yelled at the driver and the cops. Finally, he got back on in a huff.

I will say this for the rest of the passengers - they hissed Angry Guy when he got back on the train.

As the Professor asks several times in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, "What do they teach in schools these days?"

Today's Choice Cuts

Spring finally seems to be sweeping into the area - cherry and forsythia are now in bloom in some of the more protected sunny spots around town and the temperatures are finally going to get up into the 60's and 70's for a few consecutive days. This pattern also seems to be occuring in other parts of the country.

Maybe that explains why everyone seems to be full of buck n' beans today. To see what I mean, just check out what the Llama Butchers are reading.

Peggy Noonan (mmm.....Peggy) gives us her thoughts on the 9/11 Commission hearings. She echoes the sentiment of a good many other people that this is the wrong time for partisan finger pointing. After all, there's a war on. But does she believe someone is responsible for our being asleep on sentry duty? You bet. Hint: He never inhaled.

And speaking of the 9/11 hearings, Stuart Benjamin over at Volokh is critical of those dismissing Richard Clarke, including the White House, arguing that while they pile on his account of events, they lose credibility by not bringing forth their own version. It strikes me, after reading posts like this and this, that Benjamin is making a rather weak arguement. Clarke has come forth with some extremely serious - and in some cases fantastical - allegations against the Bush White House. Yet Clarke's own record seriously undermines his credibility on these very issues. Why is a thorough examination of that record "disappointing?" Jonah agrees with me, however sadly.

Speaking of the War on Terror, go and read Donald Sensing's extremely good strategic analysis of the relationship between the WOT and the war in Iraq. Swamps and alligators, my friends, swamps and alligators.

RANT CENTRAL

As much as I would like to challenge him to a duel for daring to malign Peggy Noonan, the Derb is on a tear about what passes for a culture of tolerance these days. Let me just give you a sample:

Beyond tolerance? I don't see it. What I do see is a trend towards a European-style society dominated by an arrogant overclass of credentialed intellectuals, who are deeply contemptuous of those less articulate than themselves, and profoundly in-tolerant of traditional customs and morals, of Christianity, of normal sexuality, of manual work, of motherhood, of the military virtues, of any expression of ethnic pride or loyalty by anyone not a certified member of a Designated Victim Group. They don't actually like America much, don't believe there is much good to be said about this country, and would like to change us into something quite different.

Now go read the rest.

Meanwhile, Lileks rages against the Corporate Machine. Aaand he danced to Dolby's "Hyperactive" with Gnat! I'll have to try that with my own maniacs some time.......

Good day, y'all.

Clarke-Bait Watch

Glenn has this evening's round-up of evidence pointing to Clarke as a Karl Rove operative. Heh, indeed.

What mystifies me is the sense that no one in the Get Bush Camp seems to have bothered to go back and check Clarke's current set of assertions against things he's said in the past. You know, to keep him from looking like a flip-flopping moron or an opportunistic hatchet guy. Evidently Clarke shops at the same Advisors-R-Us store as Kerry.

March Madness Rant

I said I wasn't going to post anything else on the tournament because I don't like basketball. This isn't about that, but instead about one of the hideous by-products of the season.

Specifically, it seems as if every year half the local car dealerships get the idea that it would be great to have someone impersonate Dick Vitale in their radio ads. I dunno what effect they think this is going to have on sales, but every time I hear someone yelling, "Yeah, Bay-beee!" I start to twitch like Chief Inspector Dreyfus.

Stop it! All of you! Don't make me come and hunt you down. Because I will. (Twitch!)

Bloggy Notice

Not going to be able to post the After 3's today - too much to do at the office and I also have a bunch of commitments over ta' Church later.

But that will only leave you hungry for more, right? Well have no fear, because tomorrow we will have the latest installment of the Carnival of the Blorg (TM). Be sure to dial in for the assimilation fun!

First And Last Post On This Issue

Lots of folks seem to be getting their shorts in a twist over this God and the Pledge case.

Frankly, I have the same reaction P.J. O'Rourke did to the flag-burning case back in the late 80's. This business just pins a big "kick me" sign on the back of the majesty of the law. I am reasonably sure that the little girl involved is not going to turn into some kind of Bible-thumping fundamentalist if she mouths the pledge. I am also reasonably sure she is not going to be strangled on a cross by a new Inquisition if she simply keeps her mouth shut.

Seems to me there are a variety of more important things to worry about at the moment. Like, for instance, this.

That is all.

Welcome to the Butcher's Shop!

Big ol' Llama YIPS! go out to Lynn of Reflections in d minor for very kindly mentioning us. Please be sure to help us return the compliment by going on over and looking around. Lots of really good cultural pieces of a calibre to put my own occassional bloviations to shame.

For those of you who haven't seen it, I wanted to highlight Lynn's summary of us:

First impression: a pair of snarky republicans with a variety of interests. Some pop culture stuff, frequent Star Trek references and they linked to my Mozart post.

Can she call it, or what?

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Zut Alors! Le Boom!

So much for averting terrorism through craven appeasement, eh, mon ami?

Apparently, no one knows who these AZF people are, but I'm willing to bet they aren't agitating for an autonomous Pas de Calais.

Clarke-Bait Watch

Stick a fork in him, he's done.

And Another Thing.....

A powerful op-ed piece by Spain's Jose Maria Aznar over at OpinionJournal today in which he slams his political enemies for exploiting 3/11 to boot him out of office, gives a full accounting of the government's investigation and information efforts and calls on all civilized people to band together to combat terrorism. (Registration required.)

Unfortunately, this is the speech that should have been made prior to the election. Over and over again. (Maybe it was, but evidently not nearly enough.)
Now, it comes out sounding an awful lot like that snappy comeback you think of a week after you've been zinged.

1776 gets the boot

A deranged lunatic over at Truly Bad Films has a post on the latest genius move from the Fairfax County School system.

Movie Quotes

BTW, a big Llama YIP! YIP! to Liz over at Truly Bad Films for picking up on our idea. If you're here from there, just scroll down.

Sorry about the link business, but I leave the techie side to my compadre Steve-O. To employ another of my favorite movie quotes, "He's the brains, sweetheart!"

Today's Choice Cut

Taking a break from political trench warfare this morning - I'll catch up on my reading at lunchtime and report back.

In the meantime, however, let me direct your attention to an interesting post by Willow, in which she discusses the possible (fingers crossed!) demise of modernism in art. By way of boosting the counter-revolution, she links to a couple of Progressive Realist painters I've never heard of - but whose work looks pretty good from what you can see on the 'net. Let me toss in one other suggestion: Jamie Wyath. (Yes, he's one of THOSE Wyaths - Andrew, N.C., etc.)

I don't pretend to have any expertise in the visual arts, but I have always detested abstract painting in all its forms, primarily because - without a frame of reference readily understood by the viewer - the work is essentially meaningless. It is common in the Art World to snigger condescendingly at Rubes who say things like, "My four-year-old could have painted that." But the Rubes have a point. If they cannot understand what the artist is getting at when looking at his painting, then the artist has failed. Willow's post gives one hope that people are finally getting up the courage to say that the Emperors of the Brush are buck-nekked.

I do have some expertise in serious music, which has followed a similar ruinous course throughout the Twentieth Century. It is true that, unlike visual arts, music does not refer to anything around us. You don't write a score describing a tree, for instance. (And no cranky emails about "The Birds," "The Four Seasons," Beethoven's 6th, the Music of the Spheres or the Golden Mean, please.) Instead, Western music traditionally has been self-referential. Nonetheless, the references are very clear to anyone with the least amount of aptitude and background. Like a language, Western music slowly and steadily built up rules of grammar and composition and a vocabulary. This framework was learned and embraced by generations of composers, musicians and listeners.

Alas, at the end of the Romantic Era (say, right about the time of WWI), the collective body of composers seemed to have run out of ideas on how to continue building this language, and instead began to lash out in different directions - exploring atonalism and other experiments in abstraction. Again, the problem with this approach is that it simply threw away the commonly-held frames of reference. The result, much like abstract art's meaningless splashes and scribbles, was a lot of meaningless shrieks, howls and discords. Modern serious music, in my humble opinion, has never really recovered from this blow.

Another difference between painting and music is that a painter is his own performer. No one gets up on stage and "does" Rembrandt. Music, on the other hand, is a collaboration between composer and performer. And here, at least, the news for music lovers has been better. We may be living in a time of compositional sterility, but we are also living in a Golden Age of performance.

For example, I am a whole-hearted devotee of the Period Instrument Movement that has blossomed in the past 35 years or so. (Go here for a first-rate catalogue of period instrument ensembles.) These people bring a freshness and vibrancy to music of the Renaissance, Baroque and Classic periods that is the aural equivalent of the restoration of the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. And furthermore, thanks to them, many, many more works are performed and recorded these days that simply had been ignored previously - some of them for hundreds of years.

And it is not just the period groups. One can go virtually anywhere and hear first-rate performances. Years ago, almost all the talent in the United States was confined to a few big centers - New York, Cleveland, a few others. Now, you can walk into a Church basement in East Podunk and come across amazing concerts. I suppose this is a function of an ever-expanding talent pool and modern educational techniques. But I also have a sneaking suspicion that it is at least in part a function of the disaster of modern composition - people who might otherwise be writing music (if it had something to say) are instead attracted to performance of music actually worth listening to. Just a theory.

Good day, y'all.

Llama Butchers Go To The Movies

Dean has a post on inspiring movie quotes, citing as one of his favorites a Charles Bronson line from The Magnificent Seven.

Well, at this point in the day I may be just a weee bit tired and jaded, but one of MY favorite movie lines is a short duologue from that eminently quotable movie, Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure:

"Dust."
"Wind."
"Dude."

'Bout sums things up, doncha think?

What are YOUR favorite movie lines?

Bastard.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

Been running about from meeting to meeting outside the office today. At least I got a decent lunch out of it! Alas, you, poor reader, suffer as a result. It's easy enough to do the occassional snarky snippet when you're at your desk all day. But just try it when you're sitting in a face to face client meeting and see where that gets you!

Oh, sitting at lunch in a swank resturant on Pennsylvania Avenue, I couldn't help overhearing the table next to me, which was filled with Democrat "power broker" types. They seemed to think that Colin Powell's career is over because of the 9/11 hearings. They also thought that John Kerry is making a real connection as a "man of the people."

Uh, huh. Must be that lead in the water supply coming through.

Any-hoo, here are a few nifty nibblers on the counter this afternoon:

CLARKE-BAIT

John Podhoretz slaps our boy around a bit. We're probably going to have to drop this item soon, as I've an idea Clarke is going to get sucked down the same memory hole as Paul O'Neil. Who? See what I mean.....

HERR DOKTORPROFESSOR WATCH

The Krugman Truth Squad once again spanks the World's most dangerous pundit. Share and enjoy!

IS THAT A BLOG IN YOUR POCKET?

Dean has an interesting post on human flirting behavior. According to the research he cites, the various moves men and women make are instinctive, not learned. Even so, I wish I'd had this info when I was a geeky, short-sighted, acne-prone teenager. (Yes, since you ask, I'm geeky and short-sighted now, but I'm married. Thus, as Jesse Jackson would say, the question is moot.)

THAT'S ME: STANDING ATHWART HISTORY YELLING "KNOCK IT OFF!"

Cobb has a 90's retrospective piece, seeking to define the decade, that gives every Tory cell in my body the screaming heebie-jeebies. Yes, yes, I know all about the historical connection between human advancement and creativity and the shaking up of social norms. And I agree that overall it is a good thing. But that doesn't mean I have to like it.

BUT VAT ABOUT MOOSE AND SKVIRREL?

Practical Penumbra has the latest edition of the Frostbite Falls Gazette. Knock yerselves out on "Links for the Memories," or "Blog This!"

THIS IS A SHAME

As much as I deplore NPR as a general rule, I did listen to Bob Edwards on Morning Edition for long stretches of my life. Not any more. Bob is history.

TARANTO WATCH

Once again, James is assimilated. We are the Blorg.

Completely random post

I'm printing a rather large document for a project, and so was weedling away some time looking to see if there were some Bill the Cat and Steve Dallas jpgs already online [because I'm too lazy at the moment to scan some myself]. Anyhoo, I came across this interview with Berke Breathed from 2001 which was rather funny.

He addresses the libertarian issue, which ran through my earlier Warren Zevon post:

Liberal, shmiberal. That should be a new word. Shmiberal: one who is assumed liberal, just because he's a professional whiner in the newspaper. If you'll read the subtext for many of those old strips, you'll find the heart of an old-fashioned Libertarian. And I'd be a Libertarian, if they weren't all a bunch of tax-dodging professional whiners.

I think that about sums it up.

So: we've got a large part of the blogosphere revolving around the poles of Warren Zevon, Berke Breathed, Fredrich Hayek, and Cartman.

Ah, it's nice to be home!

Cats and dogs, living together!

Jonathan Rauch has a fascinating piece on how the US initiative to create a Democracy Caucus at the UN is beginning to bear fruit.

Conclusions:

But consider the long-term potential. By the time the Community of Democracies becomes strong enough to act coherently inside the U.N., it will also be strong enough to act coherently outside the U.N. It will contain most of the world's countries, including most of the strong ones. It will be unencumbered by the vetoes of tin-pot tyrannies. As it gains confidence and skill, it will attract money and authority. It may sprout an aid budget, a relief program, a peacekeeping arm, perhaps treaty powers.

In other words, the Community of Democracies may begin as a voice within the U.N. but go on to become a competitor to the U.N. Perhaps -- one can dream -- it may someday be the U.N.'s successor.

"United Nations" is an oxymoron. Democracies and dictatorships are mongoose and cobra, with no real hope of uniting except opportunistically. But a community of democracies -- that might just work. It already works in NATO and the E.U. The new community is a fledgling, but many readers of this article may live to see it soar.

One could only hope....

Take action while getting some action

This running dog of the Zionist capitalist lackeys and Imperialist tools wishes to report that The Commissar has the goods on the latest "why Al Gore invented the internet" bright light: a hook-up service for activists seeking fellow-travelers.

Mischief ensues...

Just a typical Tuesday morning

I was driving the kids to school this morning, and as I was pulling out of the driveway that unforgettable riff at the beginning of "Werewolves of London" came on the radio. As of late, we've been playing one song in particular on the way over to school--"Pay the Alligator" by the Flatlanders. I happened upon it as a means to break up backseat squabbling--the rule is, I play the song loudly, and they have to scream at the top of their lungs "pay the alligator" whenever it comes up.

Sheriff pulled me over and he started his jive
In a 20 mile zone I was doin 25
Son keep your lead foot off the accelerator
If you don’t slow down you’ll have to Pay the Alligator

I was countin my money in the back of my store
IRS came a knockin at my door
He found me hidin down behind my own refrigerator
If you don’t pay me you gotta Pay the Alligator(whining - Not again!)

Pay the Alligator (Pay the Alligator)
Pay the Alligator (Pay the Alligator)
Might be sooner Might be later
One thing for sure you gotta Pay the Alligator

The afterlife come and it scared me half to death
I heard Saint Peter mutter underneath his breath
Take this bucket well talk about it later
You can paint the pearly gate or Pay the Alligator

Devil caught me lookin at the thermostat
I told him Id never touch nothin like that
He said shut the hell up and do what I say
Or you gonna have the alligator to pay

Order in the Court! Suspect on the Stand!
He said he saw the witness with a whistle in his hand
The Judge said I hate to implicate the perpetrator
But if you jack with the Judge, you gotta pay the Alligator

Walk on razors and sleep on on nails
Talk like ducks and walk like quails
Go blindfolded backwards through the Disconbobulater
If you don’t do it right you gotta Pay the Alligator

This usually does the trick. But today--why not introduce the kids to a little Warren Zevon?

One thing I noticed last year when Warren Zevon passed on was how he served as the unifying link of the part of the blogosphere I like to hang out in. Instapundit, Postrel, Stephen Green, Volokh all had lengthy euologies. Professional media types have tried to characterize what unifies this part of the blog world--are they conservatives? War-mongers? Libertarians?

How about just simply, "people whose views on foreign policy are shaped through repeated listening to 'Roland the Headless Thompson Gunner.'"

"Roland" is a fabulous song on many levels: partly a send up of ballad rock and arty folk, but mainly, well, the ballad of a merc who gets betrayed fighting in a forgotten African Civil War.

Written By Warren Zevon & David Lindell c. 1976 Zevon Music/BMI

Roland was a warrior from the Land of the Midnight Sun
With a Thompson gun for hire, fighting to be done
The deal was made in Denmark on a dark and stormy day
So he set out for Biafra to join the bloody fray

Through sixty-six and seven they fought the Congo war
With their fingers on their triggers, knee-deep in gore
For days and nights they battled the Bantu to their knees
They killed to earn their living and to help out the Congolese

Roland the Thompson gunner...

His comrades fought beside him - Van Owen and the rest
But of all the Thompson gunners, Roland was the best
So the CIA decided they wanted Roland dead
That son-of-a-bitch Van Owen blew off Roland's head

Roland the headless Thompson gunner
Norway's bravest son
Time, time, time
For another peaceful war
But time stands still for Roland
'Til he evens up the score
They can still see his headless body stalking through the night
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun
In the muzzle flash of Roland's Thompson gun

Roland searched the continent for the man who'd done him in
He found him in Mombassa in a barroom drinking gin
Roland aimed his Thompson gun - he didn't say a word
But he blew Van Owen's body from there to Johannesburg

Roland the headless Thompson gunner...
The eternal Thompson gunner
still wandering through the night
Now it's ten years later but he still keeps up the fight
In Ireland, in Lebanon, in Palestine and Berkeley
Patty Hearst heard the burst of Roland's Thompson gun and bought it

The only part of the song that doesn't quite work is the reference to Patty Hearst--like his contemporary Jimmy Buffet, Zevon often sprinkled his songs with pop cultural references that don't age well.

I've often think of Buffet and Zevon together, which would surprise most people. What the heck do these two have in common? They are in many ways doppelgangers, or perhaps the same artist but at different ends of the manic-depressive roller coaster. There is a common link in their songs. They have fugitives from justice: Buffet's however are running from the IRS and the DEA, Zevon's from the CIA and MI6. There is a hungover quality to the characters in the songs: Buffet's are drinking day old teqilla and rum straight from the bottle, whereas you can just feel Zevon's characters drinking johnny walker from a dirty K-School coffee mug. And pirates: Buffet's characters are either lamenting the passage of pirateness into Disney-esque respectability, all the while just taking this one last flight of dope into the states, where Zevon's characters would laugh at the cartoonish antics of Harmon Raab on JAG while smuggling a plane load of guns to a former Jesuit named Tony. But they are outlaws in love, pop-music grandsons of Bogart's Sam from Casablanca, met with alcoholic haze of Don Quixote tilting at his windmills of greed, despair, lust, and lost love.

Which brings us back to the van this morning: the kids liked Werewolves of London for the simple reason that they got to howl very loudly. Which was good. But they were doing one of those "two in a row" things, and started to play Excitable Boy. A catchy little song about a very disturbed teenage serial killer who is just really misunderstood. Hit the CD-button---Sound of Music.

Order restored to the universe.

Today's Choice Cuts

A very limited selection - this LB has to spend lots of time running about town to various meetings today. But I think you'll like what you see.

How about a good old-fashioned fisking? Of Robert Fisk his own self, no less! Michelle at A Small Victory serves it up hot.

And what better way to start your morning than a dose of Steyn? His take on Europe's embracing of "Neville Again" will wake you up far more efficiently than coffee. HT to Tim Blair.

My father-in-law is going to hate this, but here is a long piece by Daniel Drezner about the hysteria surrounding offshore outsourcing. Go and read. This material will appear on the final exam.

Good day, y'all.

Ecosystem Madness

No news back from N.Z. Bear about what's going on, but I see we got some of our links recredited - we're now at 18, which still seems a bit low but is considerably better than the 7 we had yesterday. According to the rankings, that ought to make us a reptile now. On the other hand, we are ranked at #2799, which ought to put us back in the amphibian range. However, as you can see if you look to the right, we seem to have devolved even farther, now dwelling on the bottom of the pond as a slimy mollusc.

There is a children's book called The Mixed Up Chameleon about a, yes, chameleon that winds up getting body parts from a lot of other animals. I'm beginning to understand how he feels.

UPDATE: Back to amphibian status. I think this is where we're supposed to be....

Movies Imitate Self-Parody

I swear I did not throw this evening away! I got a haircut, did half an hour on the treadmill, read to the gels at bedtime and read a bit of Ship of the Line, one of the Hornblower series, for myself, during dinner.

But later on, I drifted down to the T&V.

HBO, I suppose to get into the spirit of the times, was running off Executive Decision - a mid-90's movie about an Islamo-fascist extremist who tries to crash a 747 full of nerve gas into Washington D.C. I like it because the fanatical Islamicist is played by David Suchet. I guess he needed the money. Suchet is probably the best Hercule Poirot I have ever seen. How he goes from being a prissy little Belgian detective to a psychopathic Middle-Eastern murderer is beyond me. (How did the old SNL bit go? Acting! Genious! Thank you! No, thank you!)

Steve-O, I'm sure, likes the movie because Kurt Russell is the Savior figure, replacing Steven Segal, who gets waxed (heroically, to be sure) early on. And Russell gets to wear Evening Dress throughout. What a classy guy.

What struck me this evening was the last 15 minutes or so of the flick. The bad guys have been waxed, Russell is at the controls of the damaged plane, aided and abetted by stewardess Halle Berry, trying to make an emergency landing (the pilots both being dead). It suddenly occurred to me that I was watching Ted Stryker from Airplane! all over again. The only differences were that Russell didn't have Robert Stack shouting at him over the radio or Leslie Neilson making multiple good luck speeches. And there was no Otto the Autopilot for Halle to, er, activate.

Pity.

Your Ivy League Tuition Money At Work

Sigh. Here we go with the latest exercise in collective liberal self-flagillation. I don't doubt that my own alma mater, the People's Soviet of Middletown CT will be very far behind, since these two schools pride themselves on being so much alike.

Needless to say, I think this whole reparations business is nothing more than a large-scale exercise in mau-mauing.

But that's just me.

Paging Mr. Wizard.....

Well, I tried to trackback to a Whomping Willow piece in the post below. For once, Blogger didn't reject the link outright when I went to post. However, the ping appears not to have gone through.

Also, emailed N.Z. Bear today to see what is going on with the TTLB Ecosphere business. (See post down the page a bit.) I'll report back any information I get in response.

Dammit, Jim! I'm a writer! Not a computer geek!

Today's After 3:00 PM Half-Price Specials

Well, it's turned out to be one of those days where you realize you simply are not going to get anything done. (Don't look at me like that, Mr. & Mrs. Protestant Work-Ethic! We all have this kind of day now and again.) After a long, draining weekend navigating the Perfect Storm and getting jerked awake multiple times last night by angry, shrieking childs, my brain compensated this morning by simply not waking up.

So let's see if we can inject a couple shots of espresso into this afternoon's offerings:

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

The haughty, French-looking Massachusetts liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam, continues to demonstrate not only the capacity to shoot himself in the mouth, but also to reload, reaim and do it again. Hugh is keeping a running count of shots fired. Meanwhile, Eric at Classical Values is repulsed by the sight. So is Moxie. Of course, when a politician is busy catching himself in the cross-fire, you can bet that Steyn will be around to hold his coat and cheer him on. (HT to Viking Pundit.

VISUALIZE WORLD FIENDS

A zillion blog reactions to this past weekend's anti-American protests, most of them featuring this incredibly disgusting photograph. The Whomping Willow, who looks to be settling now with her new blogging identity, is incensed. (She is also now, officially, a guinea pig for our new trackback capacity. Please don't mind the repetition.)

I can't help thinking that these folks really aren't going to help very much persuading Middle America to vote for Kerry. Can you imagine what a zoo the area around the Democratic Convention is going to be this summer? Almost makes you think these folks are Karl Rove stooges.

STOOOPID

Speaking of the protestors, Josh Claybourn offers some gentle advice in the form of a question.

WHILE WE'RE ON THE SUBJECT OF ANIMALS

Ed at MonkeyWatch brings us this and this reaction to the recent escaped gorilla incident at the Ft. Worth Zoo. Obviously, instead of shooting the ape, we should have sent Kofi Annan to negotiate with it. Perhaps Hans Blix could have determined whether it was stockpiling illegal coconuts.

BACK TO STOOOPID

The Bitch Girls pass on this little nugget from Jens 'n' Frens. I have to ask: I've heard Jessica Simpson's name, but who is she? What does she do? Is she famous? Why? If she looks up during a rainstorm, how does she keep from drowning? Enquiring minds want to know.....

IS OUR CHILDS LEARNING?

Ran across this from Joanne Jacobs. Nrrrrgh! I mean, is it necessary to state this sort of thing? As if it was some kind of newly-discovered principle of education? Sigh.....And then I wonder how we get people like Jessica Simpson.

SPEAKING OF CELEBRITY

Frank J posts up a hi-larious interview with The Derb. I hope Sully sees this. I hope even more that he laughs about it.

NOT YOUR FATHER'S G.O.P.

I remember an old Letterman Top Ten list from 1988 entitled "Top Ten Rejected Bush Campaign Slogans." One of them was "Party With The Bushmeister." Well, looks like someone has decided to run with this idea. You know how all the lefties like to accuse Dubya of running an Imperial Presidency? To-GA! To-GA! To-GA!!!!

MULL THIS!

The latest from Rich Galen in Baghdad, celebrating the first anniversary of the war. Be sure to check out the pic of Miss New York. Rocket attacks? Road-side bombs? Heat? Worth it. But note to Rich - Your wife might read this, too!

TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

New. To Me. Website!

I. Hadnotseen. This site. Before.

Having. Read it. I. Can't. Stop. Typing. Like. This. NomatterwhatIdo. This. Energy force. Isdoingeverythinginitspowertocontrolmythoughts. My actions. My. Words.

Help me! Spock!

Clarke-Bait Update

Cheney was on El-Rushbo's show today, talking about Richard Clarke and the political battle in general. Here is the transcript. (HT to the denizens of The Corner.

It seems pretty apparent that the White House is not rolling over on this one. That is very encouraging.

UPDATE: Looks like Condi R. was doing the rounds today also.

The loyal opposition

Blackfive--the paratrooper du amour--has the goods on antiwar I mean anti-American protests in Chicago yesterday. Bonus special: Little Blackfive loved it because of all the horsies! As the all-seeing one say, it's not a bug but a feature.

I have a hunch that protests like this are going to play right into the hands of Dubya at the Convention in NYC.

The whole world is watching, indeed: but the influence of web-based citizen's media carrything this type of stuff is going to have an impact. And that's a good thing.

Easing into the week

I've noticed that to warm up for an actual post, I like to add some Yips to one of Robbo's, just to get the juices flowing. Don't want to pull a blogging hammy or something.

It's been a wacky day so far: coming out of the house and seeing the crocuses and daffodils, but looking up to see snow up on the Blue Ridge in the early light of dawn. That, alas was the highpoint [you know a day sucks when the highpoint takes place on the way to the driveway]. I started off in the office with a phone call from the investigator for the attorney of a colleague who is getting divorced, who was basically trolling for rumors. Unfortunately, it took about forty minutes before "IdunnonothinItrytostayawayfromgossip" actually sunk in on the guy. Sheesh. Class was good, though, as we were talking about the role of metaphor and analogy in political reasoning and policy making, which the kids really got into. The weekend was good, except for this party we went to Saturday night [for actual grownups! I can't remember the last party I went to that didn't involve a pinata and a trip to the toy store ahead of time]. At one point I had to take refuge outside on the deck, caught between ABBA's "Dancing Queen" in one room and a way too serious discussion of the DaVinci Code in another. Talk about being between Scylla and Charybdis...

There is one thing that we need help on [or at least, one thing that can be helped that doesn't involve years of psychoanalysis]: I'm a real doofus, and am having a bear of a time making the "Trackback" feature work. If anyone has any experience with Haloscan on this [or a recommendation for another, ahem, free service] we'd really appreciate the help!

Nuke Al-Loosh

Then there is this story about Al Qaeda claims that it has bought one or more suitcase bombs. This one was enough of an eye opener that my drive-time disk-jockeys were mulling over it this morning.

I dunno, tho. Talk is cheap. And I think Westerners still have a bad habit of too-readily believing something if it is uttered with a mysterious Middle-Eastern accent. Also, it is unclear when this particular interview took place, and AQ has said this sort of thing before.

As the article notes, back in the day Osama boasted that Al Qaeda was hanging on to nuke components as a "deterent," presumably against Western aggression. Well, we called him on that one. It strikes me at this point that with the Good Guys fully committed to hunting these dirtbags down, if they actually had such weapons, they'd simply shut up and use them already.

Still, I think I would prefer it if we took these threats seriously.

He's Dead, Jim.

That's pretty much all I have to say about this.

However, I'd be interested to know how many of the folks on the Bush-Didn't-Do-Enough-To-Stop-Osama Bandwagon, are now also wailing about the evil Israelis murdering a beloved spiritual and political leader.

I'd bet it would be a pretty sizeable list of names.

YIPS from Steve: First I had half my final four pool lose [damn you Wildcats! to hell!!!!!], then I forget to put the Halliburtoning leader of Hamas in my dead pool. What was I thinking? [What were you thinking? You were thinking about second rate tee-vee sitcom actors buddy! Loading up on the Don Knotts-es, Harvey Korman-es, the Howard Hessmann-es, instead of the high likelihood dirtbag tango crowd!]

UPDATE: Blackfive has the goods [as per usual], as well as a priceless quote from Jacques Chirac, with the key modifier being, " ,of course,"

How long will it be before Chirac goes around with a "But, but, we killed our Jews in WW2! We're on your side!"

Make It So, Eleanor....

Dean has the rather dismal news of a Showtime remake of The Lion In Winter, starring Patrick Stewart and Glenn Close.

Dean is rightly dismayed that such a fine film should be subject to this treatment, especially as it seems to have been consigned to that particular circle of hell reserved for made-for-television movies. However, it raises an interesting question about what is fair game. After all, Lion In Winter was originally a 1966 Broadway Play, (starring, among others, a young Christopher Walken as King Phillip). There is certainly precedent for multiple movie versions of stage plays (or novels, for that matter). At what point does one particular screen treatment become, well, sacrosanct, especially when the screenplay is based on some other form? I remember a great deal of wailing and gnashing of teeth by devoted fans of Laurence Olivier (including me) when Kenneth Branagh stormed the scene with his Henry V remake.

Ah, well. I suppose we'll all survive somehow. I'm pretty sure I won't see this abomination, which, in the end, is really all one can do.

But while we're on the subject of movie abominations, may I just point out again that the Coen Brothers are going to rot in hell for their remake of The Ladykillers. Naaaasty! Wicked! Tricksy! False! We haaaates them! We haaates them! We hates them FOREVER!!!!

YIPS from Steve: Here's a good idea for a contest: take an otherwise great movie from the 50s or 60s, and update the cast so it could be a made for tee-vee Sunday night movie on CBS. And no fair have Greg Kinnear substitute for the William Holden character---don't make me go back there and smack you for that one!

Clarke-Bait

What to make of Richard Clarke's assertion over the weekend that Dubya & Co. dropped the ball before 9/11 and went after the wrong set of bad guys in response?

Waaaaaal.....

I haven't had time to really focus on the minutiae of all the claims, and as a point of principal I stolidly ignore 60 Minutes and all the other news-magazine spawn on television, but my general impression is that Clarke is a guy with a huge personal axe to grind and a book to flog. When you adjust your internal sensors to filter out all of the rhetoric associated with these two factors, you really are not left with very much.

As for the claim that we should have seen 9/11 coming, Clarke's problem seems to be that he cannot explain away the fact that the Clinton Team (on which he served) did not adequately deal with Al Qaeda. Also, his allegations that the Bush Team sat on their hands seems to be incorrect.

As for the claim that we went after the wrong target (Iraq) in response, well, I'm getting old, but I'm not so old that I've forgotten we hit Afganistan first. As for Iraq, well Clarke disagrees with Bush's strategic plan for the region. Big deal. That ain't news.

What will be the likely outcome? Well, absent any genuine new factual developments like photos of Bush and Osama scoping chicks together on South Beach in August 2001, Clarke gets his 15 minutes of fame and a big boost in his book sales. Those of the moonbat left who hate Bush anyway will simply have another meme with which to reenforce their beliefs. Those on the right (like me, for example) will dismiss Clarke as a crank. Most folks in the middle will continue trying to guess who gets booted on next week's episode of American Idol.

In the meantime, Stephen Hayes starts the process of deconstructing Clarke's claims. James Joyner found himself in the odd position of being criticized for not commenting on the story before it broke (welcome to the blogsphere!). The White House is not wasting any time responding to Clarke's charges. (NB - go to theWaPo for Condi Rice's op-ed - registration required). Bill at INDC Journal takes a step back in his initial analysis to make sure he's not being a knee-jerk partisan in his scepticism. He later notes that Holy Joe Lieberman is pretty dubious, too.

UPDATE: Oops. Looks like CBS had more at stake in the Clarke interview than previously known. HT to Glenn, who is back from hiatus. Zoink!

MORE ON CLARKE: Here and here thanks to the New England Republican. When Joe Biden says your anti-Bush ravings are, well, ravings, you know you've got problems.

STILL MORE: Here is a transcript of the White House's point -by-point response to Clarke.

Today's Choice Cut

Aaaah, back in my nice, quiet, calm office. What remains of this weekend's Perfect Storm is still spawning some isolated micro-bursts and the occassional funnel cloud. Hopefully, it will be well off the coast by this evening.

In the meantime, I know everyone else on the planet has linked it by now, but go and read Lileks today. Really. Seriously. Go. And when you're done, tell me whether I am imagining that James, when in Full Screed Mode, is beginning to sound an awful lot like Tom Wolfe. I think so. And I mean it as a compliment.

Good day, y'all.

Eco-Disaster

We seem to have devolved in the TTLB Ecosystem over the weekend, dropping from 21 inbound links to 7, and losing our air-breathing capacity.

At first, I thought a bunch of folks must have been offended by my Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM), but as I look around at other sites, I see that they have suffered a similar fate.

Anybody know what's going on with this?

Perfect Storm Weekend Update

For those of you keeping track, we managed to weather the weekend storm here at the Butcher's House. (A primer for everyone else - my oldest daughter's sixth birthday was this week. The weekend, which featured an ice skating party, also included the visit of my brother, his wife and their three kids, the Butcher's Wife's parents and grandmother, and my daughter's godmother and her baby son. So we had seven kids in the house, ages one through seven, as well as five adults. I don't do especially well with this kind of crowding.)

Despite my inititial dubious trepidation, the skating party turned out pretty well. None of my kids had skated before, but all of them (including the two year old) thoroughly enjoyed it. I am not much of a skater myself, and things were made that much more difficult by the fact that I had a variety of forty-odd pound bodies clinging to each arm virtually the entire time. Nonetheless, I managed to avoid falling and although I think virtually every kid at the party cried at one point or another, all of them seemed to enjoy themselves in general.

Needless to say, I was in bed by about 9:00 PM last night.

Oh, for those of you following the Friday Night Video Choice, we went with "Twister." My brother is as sharp at picking out movie silliness as anyone - much honest mirth was had by all.

My only fear now is that the storm may reform before I can skitter back to the office on Monday morning. (I believe the meteorlogical term is "back-building.") The kids' sleep cycles are all off and they are still wired up by all the excitement. It'll take a few days for them to completely settle. In the meantime, it could still get ugly again.

Welcome to the Butcher's Shop!

A big Llama YIP! YIP! YIP! to John Hawkins over at Right Wing News for plugging us in his Daily News Section! I see from the sitemeter that lots of folks have come over to have a look at our little project.

Well, to all of you who are new here, welcome! Feel free to look around, post comments, send cash and booze- whatever you want to do. As you will see, we are a somewhat eclectic little establishment - lots of political analysis, to be sure, but also thoughts on Star Trek, young families, Supreme Court porn (under certain special circumstances) and whatever else wanders into our collective minds. We like to think there's a little something for everyone here. So dive right in and don't worry about the mess!

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Maginot Candidate Watch

In the greater scheme of things, this probably means next to nothing. But this is politics. Drudge has had the episode posted on his banner all day, and I'll bet we see it talked about elsewhere as well.

These are the kinds of things that stick in people's minds and help to define candidates. Remember Algore and the Internet? Dukakis and the tank? And lest any of our lefty readers start getting too worked up about things being "unfair," I will also remind you of George H.W. and the famous sock-buying incident.

The point of the matter is that when you know your political enemies are trying to paint you as, well, a haughty, French-looking Massachusetts liberal, you don't go and do dumbass things like this that simply reinforce the image.

Have a nice vacation, John.

DANGER! Mr. Wizard at work

Adjustments underway to the trackback feature.....

Seems to work so far. If not, let Mr. Wizard know!

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

Sometimes these little morsels are so good, even we can't understand why we cut the price! Are you ready for some treats? Then here we go:

ERIN-GO-WHOMP!

Erin Brockovich (who from what I have read of her real life is not only a thoroughly unpleasant person, but is, in fact, also a legal huckster of the worst sort) gets taken down by a small town newspaper editor. As Marv Albert would say, "Yuuuussss!"

'Course, I have never ever understood the appeal of Julia Roberts, either. But that's a topic for another day.

SPEAKING OF HOLLYWOOD

Our friend the Chai-Rista has the last cruel, but well-deserved word on that pathetic, burned-out spider-hole of human hubris, Courtney Love. Sn-hark!

SPEAKING

The Derb relays a nifty moniker for our elected lawgivers that someone picked up over at Chaos Manor Musings. Feel free to use it in a sentence yourself!

PUT. THE COFFEE. DOWN.

Otherwise, do NOT read this hi-larious post from the Happy Carpenter. LOL, as they say.

KEEP. THE COFFEE. DOWN.

Mike, subbing today at Note-It-Posts has a great one for all you Partners In Strife.

MORE TCP BIRTHDAY FROLICS

Laurence Simon looks back on his own involvement in the Command Post in the way you'd pretty much expect him to.

TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

New Category?

Der Commissar has a good take on the whole Insta-lanche phenomena. The only thing I have to add is a new way to describe blogs like ours in the teeming masses:

we are the lumpen-blogitariat.

Der Commissar is on a role

Ever wonder if there's a formula by which the NYT buries positive news stories involving Dubya? Politburo Diktat has the formula.

Preemptive Appeasement

Der Commissar details the split between the "New Appeasers" and the "Old Appeasers."

Hint: it involves Spain and France.

Now that's rich

Dean Esmay links to a post comparing public opinion polls in Iraq and Germany with the result that Iraqis are more confident about the future than Germans.

As omniscient Glenn would say, Heh.(TM) The real question is: when are we going to be able to extract ourselves from the quagmire that is Germany?

Phew!

I blame Dubya's radical agenda and his minions in the House for almost destroying Planet Gaia. And Halliburton too!

I mean, it's gotta be their fault, right?

Changing Direction Fast Enough To Provoke Whiplash, Dept.

I usually leave this kind of thing for later, but I have to bug out early ahead of the approaching Perfect Storm. So, how about this week's Friday Five?

If you...

1. ...owned a restaurant, what kind of food would you serve? It would be called "Rumpole's." The only thing on the menu would be roast beef and two veg, washed down by a bottle of Chateau Thames Embankment.

2. ...owned a small store, what kind of merchandise would you sell? Norweigan Blue parrots, of course. Or I tell you what - terrier makes a lovely fish. I could do that for you straight away.....

3. ...wrote a book, what genre would it be? Fiction, so it would make more sense.

4. ...ran a school, what would you teach? Well, kids, I suppose. Or am I being dense?

5. ...recorded an album, what kind of music would be on it? So long as I could do a cover of Rock Me Amadeus, the rest wouldn't even matter....


YIPS from Steve:

Very simple:

1. Llama ka-bobs, with some minty falafel on the side. Or calzones.
2. Something that would get me arrested by the fine gendarmes of Amherst Virginia within the first 12 hours of opening.
3. Historical fiction, or soft-core porn. Or, maybe soft core historical fiction porn. ["I think I will approve that writ of certiorari, Ms. Dawkins" smoldered Chief Justice Taft to his buxom assistant.....]
4. Steve's Lyceum of Constitutional Law and Home-Refrigeration Repair. Either that, or a home-liposuction course over the internet.
5. I would remix 2 Live Crew's "As Nasty as they wanna be" to replace the word "fuck" with "Halliburton." I've started doing this around school, and hilarity has ensued. Our Dean looked at me crossed eyed when I told him he was full of Halliburton, you Halliburtoning motherHalliburtoner.

YIPS Back! from Robbo. That last one works well with movies, too. "You're terminated, Halliburtoner!"

Lunchtime Reading

Here is the text of Bush's speech marking the anniversary of the Iraqi invasion.

Two quick thoughts. First, the absolute insistence that no one in the world can hide from this war and that everyone must choose sides:

There is no dividing line -- there is a dividing line in our world, not between nations, and not between religions or cultures, but a dividing line separating two visions of justice and the value of life. On a tape claiming responsibility for the atrocities in Madrid, a man is heard to say, "We choose death, while you choose life." We don't know if this is the voice of the actual killers, but we do know it expresses the creed of the enemy. It is a mind set that rejoices in suicide, incites murder, and celebrates every death we mourn. And we who stand on the other side of the line must be equally clear and certain of our convictions. We do love live, the life given to us and to all. We believe in the values that uphold the dignity of life, tolerance, and freedom, and the right of conscience. And we know that this way of life is worth defending. There is no neutral ground -- no neutral ground -- in the fight between civilization and terror, because there is no neutral ground between good and evil, freedom and slavery, and life and death.

Second, the effort to point out to France and Germany (and now Spain), that even after all that has happend, they can still choose the right side:

There have been disagreements in this matter, among old and valued friends. Those differences belong to the past. All of us can now agree that the fall of the Iraqi dictator has removed a source of violence, aggression, and instability in the Middle East. It's a good thing that the demands of the United Nations were enforced, not ignored with impunity. It is a good thing that years of illicit weapons development by the dictator have come to the end. It is a good thing that the Iraqi people are now receiving aid, instead of suffering under sanctions. And it is a good thing that the men and women across the Middle East, looking to Iraq, are getting a glimpse of what life in a free country can be like.

There are still violent thugs and murderers in Iraq, and we're dealing with them. But no one can argue that the Iraqi people would be better off with the thugs and murderers back in the palaces. Who would prefer that Saddam's torture chambers still be open? Who would wish that more mass graves were still being filled? Who would begrudge the Iraqi people their long-awaited liberation?

Think our Euro-friends will climb down? At this point, I think they'd rather cling, Denathor-like, to their delusional view of the world. But that's just me. And I hope I'm wrong.

Credit Where Credit Is Due

Yesterday, I linked to a post by the Scrutineer containing a humorous new Kerry bumper sticker. Michael has been kind enough to inform me that he, in fact, linked the sticker from Dissident Frogman. You probably ought to be reading both sites anyway.

Thanks again for the tip!

Request for Proposals

As I mentioned yesterday, my brother and his family are rolling in today for my daughter's birthday party. My plan for this evening is to get everyone else bedded down and otherwise disposed of, and then kick back with the bro' in my basement watching a movie and tossing back some brews.

In particular, I have two older movies in mind that I'm pretty sure the boy hasn't seen before, but that I think he'd like.

One is Independence Day. Steve-O hates this movie because of its flagrant plagiarism. The crash scene stolen from The Right Stuff seems to antagonize him the most. I, on the other hand, rather enjoy playing "Spot the Riff" and am even thinking of starting a collection. In addition, the effects are pretty cool, the story is pretty good and the acting is just fine.

The other choice is Twister. I have always maintained that Helen Hunt is the Thinking Man's Babe. Plus, the effects are pretty cool and some of the ensemble acting flows pretty well. On the other hand, the story line is ridiculous in some places and incomprehensible in others. Also, there are a great many "Huh?" moments - such as when the 200 pound man and the reenforced steel door get picked up by the tornado but the three pound dog standing five feet away does not. However, I've developed a great drinking game for this movie called "C'mon! Let's Go! Look out!" - everyone takes a drink when one of these phrases is uttered. There are no winners.

So - which should it be? I'm open to additional arguments pro or con....

YIPS from Steve: Mmmmmm........Helen Hunt. She is SO babe-ah-licious--Paul Reiser was SO unworthy. When she almost got killed by the sea urchin in that special Christmas episode of the Swiss Family Robinson tee-vee show, my juvenile heart almost broke.

As to what movies to watch while kicking back with your brother man [sorry, I couldn't resist], my advice to you is "Go Kurt early, go Kurt often." Start with Big Trouble in Little China, seguay into the hard edge of Dark Blue, and end with the original [accept no substitutes] Bad News Bears. I know, it's not a Kurt Russell movie, but it's fabulous---no way in hell that movie could be made today. That to me is a great standard to view.

As to why ID4 is one of the worst movies of all time--it has no love in it. Nobody on the cast and crew were in on the joke that they were making a huge stinking load of swamp gas. To be a truly great bad film, someone has to be in on the joke. I mean, they rip off Battlestar Galactica without realizing it! Sure, go ahead--rip off Battlestar Galactica---but at least be aware you are doing it, and extra points for a little nudge "hey, we're ripping off Galactica!" Otherwise, it's just derivative, and not good derivative at that.

BONUS! Naughty Helen Hunt suggestions

Now if you want to go on a Helen Hunt jag [I repeat myself....Mmmmmmmm..Helen] I would suggest starting with Desperate Lives, an ABC Afterschool Special from 1982 where let's just say Helen gets a wee bit naughty. True fans should not neglect Having Babies, another one which isn't as naughty as it wants to be, but where you have The Helen sharing the screen with Abe Vigoda. And let's not forget fan-fave Angel-dusted, where The Helen you guessed it smokes some angel dust and goes flying out a window.

YIPS BACK! from Robbo, but don't suggest Only You, as the Butcher's Wife is the president and sole member of the Andrew McCarthy Fan Club and we'd never get rid of her!

Happy Birthday To The Command Post!

Big Llama Yips! for the first anniversary of this extraordinary achievement in one-stop shopping for up-to-the-minute news on the world's flashpoints. Whenever there's trouble abrewin', don't waste your time on CNN or Drudge - zap straight over to TCP.

Michelle at A Small Victory was one of the original founders. Here are her thoughts on how it started and why it is such a success.

Well done, indeed.

Llama Yips!

Say hello to Eloise the Spitbull, who very kindly gave us a Hat Tip t'other day. (Which means, logically, that she must have eyeballed these pages.)

Lots of interesting stuff coming out of the Northern Woods, some of it having to do with demented children's stories. Go on up and check it out.

YIP! YIP!

Life Imitates Star Trek

Apparently, the Klingons have been arming the Martians with buck-shot. Is it time for us to introduce the rifled barrel to the Red Planet?

UPDATE: I think we have a candidate to fly the supply ship!

He's on a roll, but then again, he IS the creator of worlds, after all...

This guy's got a great post on why Mommar Quadafi is the Micheal Jackson of the Arab world.

The bon temps keep rolling for John Kerry

Another distinguished statesman endorses Kerry for president: his advice, "Watch out for the Jewish lobby."

But silly me, Mel Gibson is the source of all evil in the world.

Somehow I think this would be reported in the NYT or WaPo if Pinochet, for example, came out and endorsed Dubya....

Ut-oh

Looks like Spain is going to get another visit from AQ. And the chuckleheads at Democratic Underground will wonder why....

What was that about the War in Iraq distracting from the War on Islamic Fascist Terror?

Blackfive has the goods on the manhunt in Pakistan.

Let's see, Pakistan has suddenly become very cooperative over the past two months, about the time after Libya started singing like a canary about the WMD proliferation coming from Pakistan's good ol' Dr. Khan. And Libya started cooperating right after Saddam gets pulled out his latrine's basement apartment.....

Oh right, Libya cooperated because they were afraid we would send in Hans Blix.

[insert old man noises here]

It was bad enough a couple of weeks back when Vodkapundit's cabana boy noted that Van Halen's "Jump" was at #1 twenty years ago that week, now this happens.

What's next, Martha Quinn doing Depends commercials?

Kevin at Wizbang is en fuego this morning, by the way.

YIPS! from Robbo - Of course, I wouldn't know anything about that thanks to Sentian the Evil Internet Filter.

Life Imitates Die Hard III

I hope this is just some dumb hoax.

Sigh--why I hate academia some mornings

It's crap like this, which unfortunately is all too common. Wizbang has the goods on the latest staged "hate crime" on campus. Maybe instead of "hate crimes" we should call these haute crimes.


Today's open thread: what should we call staged campus crimes designed to "raise consciousness" about the pervasiveness of ------------------------ in American society today?

Winner receives a day's supply of Rice-A-Roni, the San Francisco Treat.

"Elimination Communication"

If you have, or have had or are thinking of having babies at any time past, present or future, you have got to read this hi-larious piece from John Hawkins about the eternal question of reusable vs. disposable diapers. Warning - the No Hot Beverages rule is in effect.

There is nothing, nothing, worse in the world than what I call the "core-breach poopie," the kind that overwhelms the containment field. The only thing I can think of when dealing with one of these is to get the wreckage isolated and double-plastic bagged and get that thing out of here! I never want to see it again in this world or the next. If it sits at the bottom of a landfill for a thousand years, fine. I won't care. I'll be dead.

And as for the au naturale approach: Yeah, right. We've tried that when it was time to potty-train. Any Wrath of Khan fan can tell you exactly what happens when you run with shields down in a hostile environment. This is me on several such occasions.

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

Check out this report on Kerry and bear in mind the fact that it comes from Pravda-On-The-Hudson. When your own cheerleader is snarking at you like this, you've had a very bad week indeed.

Via Drudge.

UPDATE: Yow. Check out this critique of Kerry's performance from The New Republic that suggests the past week is no fluke. HT to Viking Pundit.

Today's Choice Cuts

Here we go with another Friday. In this case, it is the calm before the weekend storm known as the Birthday Party (see below). In these brief, halcyon moments of respite, here is what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning.

IRAQ WATCH

The always-required Victor David Hanson has a thoughtful piece on the meaning of democracy and what is really at stake in terms of Getting It Right in Iraq.

MOM'S FAVORITE COLUMNIST

Meanwhile, Krauthammer gives just about the most succinct, cogent argument connecting the war on terrorism and our efforts in Iraq that I've seen in a long time. Yes.

And be sure to read Ralph Peters' piece on the politics of preemption. Yes, yes.

SULLIVAN AGONISTES WATCH

Sigh. Andrew is at it again, sulking about gay rights and trying to convince himself that of course Kerry would be as tough on terrorism as Bush. Dr. Horsefeathers is again taking bets on when Sullivan will finally cross over to the Dark Side.

POTUS SPEAKS

Here is the text of Bush's recent address to the troops at Ft. Campbell. Power Line has the meat of the speech, together with a great photograph. Whatever else you might say about Bush, his flag is nailed to the mast and his message is clear and unequivocal. You are, in effect, either with him or against him. Kerry is going to have an awfully, awfully hard time nuancing his way around this.

DISPATCHES FROM MOONBAT CENTRAL

For your reading pleasure, Clayton Cramer is fisking spam political email. Enjoy!

I'LL DRINK TO THAT

This is interesting. Researchers at the University of Barcelona have recently concluded that King Tut drank red wine. I must say I approve of his taste whole-heartedly. Never have liked whites. I am also fascinated by the methods used to figure this out.

HT to Professor Bainbridge, who is something of a connazooer himself.

PROPS TO THE BUTCHER'S WIFE!

Rich Lowry has a piece about the resurgence of stay-at-home motherhood. I haven't read the Time piece he cites, but I find it pretty significant that Time could report something like this without feeling compelled to be snarky about it. Interestingly, most of the flak the BW gets for staying at home with our kids is from a pretty specific belt of women in their mid 40's to mid 50's. I think that tracks with the peak of the "Having it All" demographic of idealistic feminists. Most of her contemporaries (and my own at the office) seem not to have the same chip on their shoulders.

BLEAT -O- RAMA

Oh, it's useless trying to encapsulate Lileks today. Go. Read. Enjoy.

DISPATCHES FROM THE FEVER SWAMP

It's Friday, which means time for another installment of the delightful Meghan Cox Gurdon. Today's topic is sleep, comma, children and. Given the daily 6:00 AM skirmishes at the Butcher's House as to whether it is Too Early for the gels to come in and snuggle, I loooong for the day when I will have to pry them out of the sack with a crowbar.

Good day, y'all.

Oscar, Oscar, Oscar

I believe I now have our blogroll in some kind of order, rather than the higgledy-piggledy shape we'd allowed it to get into.

Doing this gives me the same sort of pleasure as does fiddling with my library or my CDs.

Yes, I know there's a clinical name for this, but I don't want to hear about it.

That 9/11 Feelin'

I realized how much the news from Spain has spooked me again as I was driving home this evening. There was a Ford Bronco (or the equivalent) sitting abandoned in the center-right lane of west-bound Constitution Ave. between 14th and 15th. A cop car was pulled up right behind it and there seemed to be rather a lot of police cars elsewhere in the neighborhood.

As traffic slowly crept by, I suddenly had an overwhelming urge to put as much distance between myself and the stalled SUV as I could. Of course, there really wasn't anything I could do about it except go with the flow. But as I continued moving away, I kept looking back in the mirror, wondering what would happen if the thing suddenly detonated.

The surprising part is that at least part of me would not have been that surprised.

This was the same sort of thing I felt whenever I saw a double-parked truck in the weeks after 9/11.

I dunno if it's just because I happen to work in a target city, but I don't think the White House is going to need to worry too much about me forgetting that we're at war.

Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM)

As I mentioned this morning, today is my oldest girl's sixth birthday. It seems as if it's the best one she's had yet. A nice party at school this morning and family presents to open when I got home this evening. Among other things, she got a soccer ball and her first wristwatch. (She figured out how to tell time from the big and little hands about four weeks ago and has been following me about saying things like, "Daddy, it's 4:05 now.......Daddy, it's 4:07 now." Once I got her watch working, we had to very carefully synchronize it with mine. She went to bed quite content.

The main party is this weekend. This year, she and some of her little friends are going to go ice skating. This ought to be, shall we say, interesting. I haven't skated in years, and it's going to take all my powers of concentration to ensure that she falls down slightly faster than I do.

Also, the whole party thing has gone far beyond a mere gathering of friends: Not only are the Butcher's Wife's parents and grandmother coming down from Connecticut, my brother the doc is coming up from West Virginia with his wife and three kids as well. And my daughter's godmother is coming up with her baby too. A large proportion of these folks are going to be camped out at the Butcher's House this weekend.

Suffice to say, this place is going to be a zoo.

On the other hand, think of the material I'll be able to gather to entertain YOU, our readers! Think I'm not going to use it? Getoutta here!

Damn You Again, Sentian!

It is as I feared earlier today - something about my firm's newly-installed Internet filtering software plays Old Harry with some folks' blogrolls. I can't see any particular pattern to it - there are both Blogger and Movable Type sites where this happens, and some where it does not.

Most annoying.

I Am Blog

Read this article by Bill Hobbs about the way in which blogging is changing the shape of modern journalism and the hysterics with which this phenomenon is being treated by Old Media.

Dean is rightly affronted by the arrogance of the Status Quoers and reiterates a point that Steve-O has made here before: Weblogs are, in fact, the modern equivalent of the newspapers of two hundred years ago - partisan, organized along the lines of the editor's thoughts, committed to covering whatever is of interest to the individual publisher.

Blogs are also the equivalent of soap boxes in the electronic Town Square. Anyone with a computer and Internet-access can set up in about ten minutes and say whatever the hell he wants. And while a lot of what gets typed is simply ignored, what is read is immediately attacked, analyzed, parsed, folded, spindled and mutilated by myriad other bloggers. Truths tend to stand. Lies tend to be exploded almost immediately. Opinions from all over the spectrum are aired and refined.

From my dim memory of First Amendment jurisprudence, this sounds an awful lot like the Marketplace of Ideas that is supposed to be the Holy of Holies of Free Speech and the protection of the Press.

And the Press would just as soon it all went away.

Heh, indeed.

The Sky Is Falling!

Here's what NASA has to say about the 100' asteroid that apparently just skootched within 26,000 miles of Earth a few minutes ago. Money quote: On average, objects about the size of 2004 FH pass within this distance roughly once every two years, but most of these small objects pass by undetected. This particular close approach is unusual only in the sense that scientists know about it. The fact that an object as small as asteroid 2004 FH has been discovered now is mostly a matter of perseverance by the LINEAR team, who are funded by NASA to search for larger kilometer-sized NEAs, but also routinely detect much smaller objects.

Now here's how CNN reports it. Money quote: As far as flying space rocks go, it's as close an encounter as mankind has ever had.

Yikes! We're under siege! Must be Dubya's fault! One of these days, we're gonna stop one of these babies! Then what?

Astronomers have not ruled out that the asteroid and our planet could meet again sometime in the future. If the two were to collide, the asteroid likely would disintegrate in the atmosphere, Chesley said.

Oh. Never mind.

Heh.

See? Sometimes there is some justice in the world.

March Madness

I will just say here and now that I hate basketball and have no interest whatsoever in the NCAA Tourney. So don't expect me to post about it. Ain't gonna happen.

That is all.

That's Gonna Leave A Mark

Wham! Check out the new Bush TV ads on Kerry's dismal support of the troops.

Also, think about this: Kerry dropped his "I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it" bomb on Tuesday and the Bush Team is throwing it back in his face within 48 hours. That denotes money, organization, focus and aggressive thinking.

Kinda remind you of, oh I dunno, a German Panzer Division, Senator Maginot?

I love it when a metaphor comes together.

Big News (Maybe)

Reports have been flying around all afternoon that the Pakistanis have trapped (and wounded) one of the Big Cheese in Al Qaeda. The name being bandied about the most is Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is Honcho No. 2 in the organization.

It seems plain that the Pakis have got a bunch of bad guys pinned down and are currently shooting it out with them. Go on over to The Command Post for all the latest.

Anticipatory Retaliation is watching things too.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials - Carnival of the Blorg, Week 4

Yes, once again it's that time of the week to assimilate into the Llama Collective bright and interesting bloggers not previously linked on these pages. Any method to this madness? Not really. Don't like what you see? Get yer own damn blog!

With that, here we go. Today's "host" blogroll is Eric's Classical Values.

IT'S THE WONDER OF NATURE, BABY!

Myria at It Can't Rain All The Time has a fantastic SOHO photograph of the sun. Go for the picture. Stay to learn about the SOHO program.

Meanwhile, James Rummel of Hell In A Handbasket links to some nifty photos of Flying Sharks. That ought to give you the willies next time you're at the beach.

LLAMA CULTURE WATCH

Yes, thank you very much, we do appreciate the finer things here at Llama Central. And here are a couple of samples worth appreciating - First, go and browse at Classics In Contemporary Culture. Now explain to me again why there is no point in studying Antiquity?

Meanwhile, an interesting post over at Lynn S.'s Reflections In d Minor about the recent cracking of a minor mystery about the identity of the pianist for whom Mozart wrote his K. 271 E-flat piano concerto. I listen to this piece fairly often. This post is a nice little grace note to think about next time I do so.

MIDEAST WATCH

The Astonished Head has a long, interesting piece about the history of Euro-meddling in the Middle East. I'm sure this is all Dubya's fault somehow. Or maybe Reagan's.

And speaking of Reagan and Iraq, Micheal McNeil at Impearls has a long piece commemorating the 17th anniverary of the Exocet missle attack on the U.S.S. Stark which, I'm ashamed to say, I'd forgotten about.

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

Michael Pollard, the Scrutineer, has a nifty new Kerry Bumper Sticker that just cries out for a snappy jingle by Cole Porter.

Meanwhile, the Happy Carpenter reports that our favorite haughty, French-looking Massachusetts liberal has a wind problem. Heh.

MIRROR, MIRROR

I direct you to the works of the Bileous Young Fogey. Oddly enough, that was more or less what my college girlfriend accused me of being all those years ago. (She subsequently threw herself away working for the Dukakis Campaign. Heh, indeed.)

IT'S NOT JUST A NAME PIRATED OFF A LETTERMAN TOP TEN LIST

Mookie Riffic is asking some serious questions about Life, the Universe and Everything. Altogether now - the Answer is - Forty-Two!

Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.

Damn You, Sentian! Damn You To Hell!

I made the rather startling discovery today that apparently the new Internet filtering software recently installed by the Firm automatically blocks blogrolls on sites using Movable Type. The Blogroll banner is there. Just nothing under it. Dean Esmay, Moxie, INDC. Nope, nope, nope.

Jeesh!

UPDATE: NE Republican - Nope. Has this disease spread to Blogger too?

FURTHER UPDATE: Venemous Kate? Nope.

FURTHER FURTHER UPDATE: But sites like Viking Pundit are cool. What's going on here?

EVEN MORE: Classical Values - mit Movable Type - is fine. I just can't fathom the pattern here!

I'll have to check out what happens with my free and clear dinosaur of a home computer later (assuming I can coax the squirrels to wake up).

What I love about the web, part deux

John Kerry gets some new endorsements. Geez, and I thought it was bad when Al Gore endorsed Dean-o...

[Hat tip to the deliciously demented Tainted Bill]

Watch Out, Al Qaeda!

It's Mr. Terrorism!

Why can't I get these images out of my head? "You go to hell! You go to hell and you die!"

Merciful God In Heaven Above!

This is just so pathetically ugly on so many levels that I wouldn't even know where to begin......

And check out the photo on Drudge's homepage.

What We Have Here Is A Failure To Communicate

Remember Jim Traficant? Well, apparently he's still a bad boy.

Cheerful News From The Dismal Science

Here's an article from The Economist that argues most of the dismal economic news being splashed about the press is bunk, the product of paranoid hallucination and political conditioning.

Dean, from whom I got the link, suggests again that bad news always sells newspapers. He also wonders why it is that people have allowed themselves to be trained to think the worst, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary.

Bloggy Announcement!

I feel sort of like the Regent handing out Birthday Honors on behalf of his minor daughter, but I wanted to alert everybody to some new additions to the Llama Butcher Blogroll:

Rocket Jones - Ted has lots of cool space stuff plus movie reviews (he considers my recent query re the worst Kevin Costner movie to be beneath him), games and diatribes against the eviiiil of breakfast cereals.

Reenhead - Run by Reen. Who, you may ask? Let her tell you herself: a law-related human being and sad, sad punk wannabe (it will never happen) living in various cities on the East Coast that tend to get blown up or anthraxed from time to time. With a lil help from her friends.

(Who says cranky social conservatives like me can't hang with cool people, or at least pretend to?)

Aaand, INDC Journal - Bill is another denizen of this wretched hive of scum and villainy known as the Beltway.

Go on over and say hi to the folks.

YIP! YIP! YIP!

What? Is Satan hosting the Ice Capades or something?

Make that a record two days in a row that I actually agree with an editorial in the once-reliably inane Arab News:

Editorial: Iraq’s Criminals

Authorities in Iraq have ten thousand supporters of the old Baathist regime in jail. Among them are the captured dictator Saddam Hussein and most of his henchmen, including his cousin, Ali Hasan Majid, who was directly responsible for the poison gas attacks on the Kurdish population of Halabja in1988 . They have all been visited by the International Red Cross (IRC), one of whose officials recently delivered a letter from the deposed dictator to his sisters living in Jordan. So far the IRC has made no complaint about the treatment of these formerly high-ranking prisoners. It can be assumed that they are being looked after adequately and being handled in a civilized manner.

It must be wondered however if these detainees ever reflect upon the contrasts in the way that they are being treated with the way that they treated their own prisoners during their ruthless years in power. Mass graves are still being uncovered in Iraq. The stories of torture and murder by the old regime are so widespread, they no longer excite comment. Saddam’s Iraq was a brutal and merciless state where the slightest dissent produced the most savage punishment.

After his capture in a hole in the ground, television pictures showed a frightened and pathetic Saddam, complaining to his captors of a bad tooth during a medical examination. He later reportedly recovered his composure and now behaves with his old arrogance. He probably believes that the benign regime of imprisonment to which he is being subjected is only his due as a former head of state. Maybe his fellow Baathist leaders are equally oblivious. This may however change when they are brought to trial and have to face in horrific detail evidence of the terrible crimes they committed against their own people and their neighbors.

The people of the new Iraq, still beset by terrorist violence, have other things on their mind at the moment. But when Saddam and his fellow creatures finally come to trial, bitter memories will be rekindled of the long nightmare of Baathist rule. All the pent-up fury at the long years of brutalization and terror will be unleashed. There will almost certainly be a steadily growing demand for vengeance. Iraqis deserve to see Saddam and his cohorts punished.

What is most important however in the judicial process is that it must be seen to be impartial. There must be no show trials. The accused must all be given the opportunity to defend themselves. They should be treated with fairness and correctness. In short, they should be given every privilege which they themselves so regularly and routinely denied their own victims. In so doing, the new Iraq will be asserting strongly that it has really broken with the bloody Baathist past and is embarking upon a just and honorable future for itself.

What? You thought the French bashing was over? Mais-no!

Headline from the IHT:

France takes letter's threat seriously

What? Was it written in German?

Wondering what your friendly neigborhood SEALs are up to these days?

Probably a lot of this:

SINGAPORE Al Qaeda is possibly planning an unprecedented maritime attack, hitting targets on land with ships carrying chemical, biological or dirty bomb weapons, a defense analyst said Wednesday.

The terrorist network could easily exploit weaknesses in shipping companies' crew selection procedures by planting sleeper agents on vessels to eventually seize them, said Michael Richardson, a senior researcher at Singapore's Institute of Southeast Asian Studies who writes extensively on Asian security issues.

"The Al Qaeda network has serious maritime terrorism plans," Richardson told diplomats, academics and defense officials at the institute.

Singapore's coordinating security minister, Tony Tan, has warned repeatedly since November that there is a "very serious" risk of terrorists' using ships to attack the city-state.

Such an attack could have come sooner if it was not so difficult to procure a nuclear device and if Al Qaeda's operations chief, Khalid Shaikh Mohammed, and its head of naval operations, Abd al-Rahim al-Nashiri, had not been arrested, Richardson said.

"Sooner or later, Al Qaeda or one of its affiliates will make and detonate a radiological bomb, whether it's in a ship or a shipping container," he said.

"If you look at how relatively easy it is to get the materials, put them together and make them go bang, and look at the motivation, terrorism is going to get bigger and it's going to get worse," he added. A prime target would be Singapore - or any of the world's 40 largest port cities - or key international shipping straits and canals, Richardson said. Al Qaeda operatives could easily get jobs on ships by buying fake seafarer credentials, which are widely available, he said.

But Al Qaeda's past pattern of disciplined, coordinated attacks makes it unlikely that the network will risk hijacking a ship, or seeking help from pirates outside its circle of zealots, he said.

The network has already demonstrated its willingness to attack sea targets, with suicide attacks on the U.S. destroyer Cole in 2000 and the French oil tanker Limburg in 2002, Richardson said. In both attacks, suicide bombers detonated small explosive-laden boats next to vessels off the coast of Yemen.

And when AQ does strike France, as it inevitably will?

Part of me would say "THPFFFT!" together with a rousing "screw you, Vichy slime!" But you know what? We won't. We'll help, and we'll welcome them back from lala land. Because that's what Americans do.

Why France, Germany, and Spain can go eff themselves

Who needs "allies" like that when we have England and Australia covering our backs?

More from the Sydney Morning Herald:

Al-Qaeda may use the Iraq war as a justification, but its intent goes far beyond that.

Just as what was in Hitler's mind in the 1930s was completely alien to his contemporaries, so alien that it took the best part of a decade for them to comprehend its challenge, al-Qaeda's ideology is as alien to the societies in which we live.

It may be difficult to condense a description of al-Qaeda's driving force into a 10- to 20-second news grab, and it may be difficult to work it into a commentary piece on the politics of terrorism, but it is essential to an understanding of the challenge we face. Osama bin Laden and his principal lieutenants must either be taken into lawful custody or lawfully killed. We are not involved in a game of compromise, for their beliefs and goals are absolute.

Why is Australia a target? We are a target because we are seen to be part of the Zionist/Christian conspiracy - in other words, because we are who we are.

The fact we are in close alliance with the United States, and that we were early and actively engaged in the war on terrorism, does contribute to us being a target. That is very different from any claim that we are a target solely because of our alliance with the US and our involvement in the war on terrorism.

But there is a more fundamental question when we ask "Why us?" Should the threat of terrorism ever be a factor in determining a country's key policy settings?

Even if we were to accept the proposition that Australia is a target only because of our alliance with the US, would that justify a revision of a policy that has had bipartisan support for more than 50 years?

With or without Iraq, al-Qaeda would have continued to undertake attacks in the pursuit of its ideological goals. It seeks to exploit the war for its own propaganda and recruitment purposes - how successfully remains an unfinished story. And we can be certain that in the event of any al-Qaeda attack in a country involved in Iraq, it will be presented by bin Laden as one of the rationalisations for the attack.

Whatever the rights and wrongs of the war in Iraq, I do not believe you will find that countries such as France consider they are now somehow inoculated from al-Qaeda attacks because of their stance on the war - not that this was ever an element in their considerations.

Terrorism does not respect borders. It does not necessarily use the weaponry of a nation state. It does not negotiate as a nation state. Its targets are innocent civilians.

We should be in no doubt that, should bin Laden and al-Qaeda ever get their hands on weapons of mass destruction, they will seek to use them to devastating effect. That is not an alarmist comment, it is a measured assessment.

It is not possible to successfully overcome a global terrorist network like al-Qaeda and its associated groups, such as Jemaah Islamiah, by seeking to put a fence around one country or one region. Al-Qaeda's links are global and its battleground is global.

Let's face it: if AQ had had the operational ability, don't you think they would have much rather planted that bomb in San Francisco next to Gavin Newsome's office? It's time the left realizes we are in a war to preserve civilization, and we are ALL targets because, silly us, we don't want to live in the Caliphate circa 1100.

Thanks, Spain

One theme that pisses me off from the left is how "Bush squandered international sympathy after 9/11" by, um, doing something other than holding a symposium on why America is evil and deserves this shit, hosted by Robert Fisk.

Somehow, I don't think the left will be harping on the Socialist Party's squandering of international support and sympathy after 3/11.

Anyhoo, the flying monkeys are going down under [I guess after they are done with Italy]:

From the Syndey Morning Herald:

Australia has been named as a terrorist target by a group claiming to represent al-Qaeda, which warned the "brigades of death" were ready to strike US "lackeys".

The apparent al-Qaeda statement follows calls from suspected Jemaah Islamiah leader Abu Bakar Bashir for a holy war against the US and its allies, and comes as Australia steps up efforts to keep the radical Muslim cleric behind bars.

Australia will demand the US give Indonesian authorities access to the JI operations chief and accused architect of the Bali bombings, Hambali, to help build a case to keep Bashir in prison. He may be released within weeks.

The Abu-Hafs al-Masri/al-Qaeda Brigades delivered a letter to a London Arabic-language newspaper overnight, saying: "Learn your lesson, you lackeys of America, the brigades of death are at your gates . . . Our brigades are now preparing for a fresh strike. Will it be the turn of Japan, America, Italy, Britain, the al-Sauds, Australia . . .?"

The group said it was cancelling further operations against Spain after its new socialist government said it would withdraw troops from Iraq by July unless the UN became involved.

The authenticity of the statement could not be verified. The group, which said it carried out the Madrid bombings, has previously claimed responsibility for terrorist acts that were later proved to be the work of others.

I don't know about you, but this sounds suspiciously like the French Knight in Monty Python's Holy Grail to me.

Help Mr. Wizard!

A loyal reader writes:

You might not be getting linked or trackbacked as often as you like because your link to me wasn't reflected on my "trackback." Make sure that your blog software is set up to "ping" all of the right tracking sites when you post an entry.

Uh...............[insert Gomer & Goober noises here]

How does one do this?

Thanks!

Making book on the election

Long time Llamabutcher readers know one of our continuing features is following how British bookmakers Tradesports.com are projecting the 2004 presidential election. Tradesports runs futures markets, in which you buy or sell contracts worth $100 each if the event happens, and 0 if it doesn't. By "bidding" or buying you are projecting the event will happen, by "asking" or selling, you are betting that it won't. My interest in this is in political science: my hunch is that these markets will give a much more reliable reading of the flow of popular opinion up to election day than traditional polls, because it sets up an incentive to get it right that isn't there in traditional polling. In the primaries so far it has been dead on accurate.

What's neat is that for the presidential election there are a variety of markets. First is the general election outcome: the contract is stated as "GWBush reelected president." If you think the answer is yes, you want to buy, and if no, you would sell.

Currently, the Bush reelect contract is trading at $61.70 [on a scale of $0-$100], on a total volume so far of over 190K+ contracts traded. Let's just say that's a hell of a lot larger of an N that you get in your typical poll that reaches 800 people.

But the fun doesn't end there: there are also markets in how many electoral votes Bush will get, and which states he will win. This is what is innovative about this: it will give us a much better sense of the dynamics of the race as it plays out in the individual states that need to be amassed to win the Electoral College.

In the total votes category, the markets are phrased as "GW Bush will get +xxx electoral votes."

Bush +250 electoral votes is trading at 68
Bush +300 electoral votes is trading at 49

270 electoral votes are needed to win.

In terms of the individual states, I've broken this down before by category:

States where the Bush reelect contract is >$80 [in other words a high certainty]

AL, CO, GA, ID, IN, KS, KY, LA, MISS, MONT, NEB, NC, ND, OK, SC, SD, TX, UTAH, VA, WY
Total electoral votes in states >80 = 186

States where Bush reelect contract is trading 79----55

AZ, AR, FL, MISSOURI, NV, NH, NM, OH, TN
Total electoral votes in states trading between 79---55 = 99

States where Bush reelect is trading 54----44

IOWA, PA, WVA, WISCO
Total electoral votes in states trading 54--44 = 43

If Bush can secure the popular vote in all the states where he is currently trading above $55, he'll amass 285 electoral votes.

Today's Choice Cuts

How are you feeling this morning? I said, HOW ARE YOU FEELING THIS MORNING?

Heh.

Now that I have your post St. Pat's attention (what there is of it), I just wanted to remark that it is a fine day, indeed. Why? Because it happens to be my oldest girl's sixth birthday. I may feel inspired to do some lunch-time Gratuitious Domestic Blogging (TM) on the subject, so consider yourselves warned.

In the meantime, here's what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning:

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

After having sailed through the early primaries without a scratch and having achieved the presumptive nomination of his party, Kerry is coming off his first genuinely bad week. And it's been pretty bad. Hugh Hewitt has a round-up of events, together with a deeper exploration of the background of everyone's favorite haughty, French-looking Massachusetts Liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam. Hugh's conclusion is, basically, that Kerry doesn't have a clue when it comes to connecting with the average voter. If this is true, things are only going to get worse.

Think the Bush Team doesn't smell blood in the water? Read Dick Cheney's speech in California yesterday. If Kerry thinks he's going to nuance and finesse his way into the White House, he is sadly mistaken.

BAGHDAD WATCH

Fred Barnes has a piece on yesterday's hotel bombing in Baghdad that fills in the backdrop of good news coming out of Iraq. Our trouble in the West is that we tend to focus our attention on the former and not so much on the latter. I suppose some of this is press hostility towards Bush, some of it simply "We don't report the ones that land safely." Either way, tho, if Americans are to fairly assess the success or failure of our policies there, they need to have the full facts on the ground.

Speaking of which, Strategy Page has some facts and figures regarding the mood in Iraq, as well as some suggestions as to where the terrorists are coming from now. Anyone want to place some bets where the War Against Terror goes from here? HT to James Joyner.

PASSION WATCH

The lovely Peggy Noonan has an interview with actor James Caviezel (who played Jesus in the Passion of the Christ) in which Caviezel describes his recent meeting with the Pope and talks about wider issues of faith.

I know this will make Mom cringe. But I spent all evening at my own Episcopal Church, first attending a Lenten lecture series discussion of the history of controversy in the Church and then participating in a weekly program called Disciples of Christ in Community - again discussing Big Tent accommodation. All this by way of trying to come to terms with the fallout from General Convention. All of that was well and good, and yet it did not move me one tenth as much as reading Peggy's transcription of Caviezel's comments. What does this mean?

ASSIMILATION IN THE MORNING

Taranto has his Best of the Web up early today. But that makes no difference. We are the Blorg.

Good day, y'all.

Justice grinds on

Phil Carter has the latest on the status of the military tribunals for the AQ bastages [yes, a little Johnny Dangerously reference there to slip by Rob's office's filtering software].

Sobering up slowly today

Blackfive--the paratrooper d'amour--has a pic of his spiffy new Irish Palm Pilot.

Gotta get me two of those!

Queer Eye For The Holy Guy

Sunshine, that is soooo Old Testament!

Via Drudge.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials - St. Patrick's Day Edition

I told myself that I wasn't going to fall into this trap. I'm Scots. Why don't we celebrate St. Andrew's Day? You can keep yer leprechauns - we have the Queen's Own McKamikazee Highlanders.

Nonetheless, I found myself grabbing the green tie this morning. And when I walked out the door, the Butcher's Wife and the Llama-ettes were industriously concocting green pancakes.

Sure, then, d'ya know resistance is futile, so it 'tis.

SERIOUS THINGS FIRST

The Dizzy Girl is about the most Irish-sounding person I know on the net (if that makes sense). She has a comprehensive St. Pat's posting today, including a long prayer which sets all my latent Catholicism a-twitter.

BRIDGING THE GAP

As I made a reference to the Battle of Gettysburg earlier today, it was altogether fitting that I should include this post by Tainted Bill.

PRACTICAL APPLICATIONS

Lawren Mills gets us going in the more, shall we say, earthly enjoyment of the day.

Meanwhile, Susie at Practical Penumbra demonstrates why Friends don't let Friends blog drunk.

DID YE HEAR THE ONE ABOUT...

What is March 17 without some Irish jokes? Bill at Bloviating Inanities has got you covered!

THE NEXT STEP

So far, the Eviiiil Commercial Cabal (headed by FTD and Hallmark) have not totally succeeded in transmogrifying St. Pat's Day into a Mandatory Gift-Giving Event. But they're working on it. If such comes to pass and you find yourself looking for that special gift that says, "Yup, it's the 17th alright!" check out this collection of catalogues brought to you by the Angelweaver.

WORST. WEBSITE. EVER.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we have a Winner. I hope the police have some kind of tracker implant on this guy. HT to Dave.

O'TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. We are the O'Blorg.

Has Kerry Peaked?

John Ellis has some interesting comments about recent polls.

Link Me, Dammit!

Ya know that Garth Brooks song Unanswered Prayers? The part about how they are some of God's greatest gifts? Well this hi-larious post from Bill at INDC Journal about the fleeting pleasures of getting "Insta-lanched" put that song in my mind.

(For Mom and Dad, "Insta-lanche" means getting linked by Glenn and thus momentarily eye-balled by half the denizens of the known universe. The effect generally has a very short half-life.)

I have been brooding about our traffic flow and link accumulations over the past few days and yearning for a brief moment of Llama glory at the feet of the Puppy Blender. Now I see that way Madness lies.

But we wants it! We WANTS it! WE WANTS IT!!!!

Warning: the No Hot Beverages Rule is in full effect for Bill's link.

HT to Dean.

Dispatches From The Fever Swamps

Here's the latest bit of theatre from Moonbat Central, a/k/a MoveOn.org.

I love in particular the center-staging of families of military personnel opposed to the war. Makes it look as if massive dissent is breaking out in the ranks. Just like Vietnam!

I have a bit of experience in lobbying. It is standard operating procedure to pick a couple of poster children for your project and build your presentation around them.
This has the psychological effect of putting a face on your cause and making your message stronger.

Here, it's "Omigosh, if Service Member families are calling for censure, there must be something to this!" Of course, no figures regarding how many families of servicemen take this position are provided. My guess is that the number would be pretty small. There are, what, 500,000 troops involved in Iraq? I could go round to their families and also discover a few people who believe the moon landings were faked, the Tri-Lateral Commission rules the world and Elvis is being held in cryogenic suspension somewhere in Montana.

Without these poster children, the whole "Censure" movement is just 500,000-odd long-haired hippie freaks making noise.

Via Drudge.

YIPS from Steve: Whadda ya mean Elvis is in cryo-suspension in Montana? It's Idaho, durnit!

Baghdad Bombing

Not enough information yet to know what to make of it beyond the obvious. Keep checking coverage over at the Command Post for updates.

A colleague of mine is on his way to Baghdad to do some telecom-related work. We're hoping to set him up as a Llama Butcher field reporter there. I cannot imagine that he is too happy to hear this news.

Speaking of Bodies In The Water....

I've got a pretty good idea of who the Kerry Campaign would like to fit out with a pair of concrete shoes.

Yikes!

When I saw this headline, I thought for one hideous moment that Coach Wannstedt was cleaning house for salary cap purposes!

Tom Clancy Droolfest*

Check out this article on Joint Range Extension. This is the sort of stuff that makes me begrudge paying taxes a little bit less.

HT to James Joyner.

*Title flagrantly stolen from Stephen Green.

Buford-ing The Maginot Candidate*

Kate O'Beirne has an interesting and encouraging piece up today analyzing the Bush Campaign's media strategy to keep the haughty French-looking Massachusetts Liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam, off balance.

I like this strategy a lot - it is the political equivalent of seizing McPherson's Ridge and forcing your enemy to deploy for battle, where he had previously thought he could move on a strategic cross-roads unhampered. And this is where Bush's enormous war chest is really going to come in handy.

How effective will it be? Well, I imagine that we are going to see rather more episodes like this one if folks walk into a Kerry event having seen a couple of the Bush ads a few hours before.

Heh.

*I know I should be flogged out of the Bloggers' Guild for mixing military metaphors so outrageously, but war is hell and sometimes these things can't be helped.

UPDATE: Depriving the enemy of the High Ground. Keep in mind that Chris Matthews is hardly a Karl Rove Stooge.

FURTHER UPDATE: I tend to think of Dick Morris as an opportunistic weasel, but that doesn't mean he isn't sometimes right. HT to Viking Pundit.

YIPS from Steve: Okay, but which indispensable Kerry aide had his arm shot off, leading a morose Kerry to make some tactically unsound decisions?

Wouldn't the better analogy be from Apocalypse Now, with the frantic candidate Kerry saying "Never leave the boat, man, I'm never leavin' the boat...!"

Random Mid-Morning Movie Question

I have a question ripe for development by Liz and the crew over at Truly Bad Films, but really open to anyone, which has absolutely nothing to do with anything except my rather pathetic choice of viewing on the Sci-Fi channel last night:

Which is worse - Waterworld or The Postman?

I know it's a tough choice, but hey - life is like that.

Today's Choice Cuts

A small offering this morning, focusing once again on Madrid. I give you Rick Brookhiser and Hitch. Go. Read. Discuss amongst yourselves.

Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM) Et Al.

Well, this was one of those evenings where yours truly got to put all three Llama-ettes to bed himself, as the Butcher's Wife had to step out for a bit.

My girls have discovered that I am pretty good at voice impersonations. When I read to them, I try to adopt the voices of characters that they would recognize. So, for instance, when I am reading one of the Angelina Ballerina books, I ask myself "What would Emma Thompson do?" My oldest informed me recently that I sound "just like her." (Angelina, that is. I dunno who actually does the voice.) Similarly, when I read a Wiggles book, I try to adopt an Australian accent. Fair dinkum, mate! And just step back when I tackle the denizens of the Hundred Acre Wood!

The gels love this.

I have discovered some pitfalls, however. One is that I simply cannot do Minny Mouse. Mickey, yes. Donald Duck, yes. Even Huey, Duey and Louey. But not Minnie. Too high. Similarly, Baby Bop is beyond my range. And I am pretty much clueless as to how Boots the Monkey is supposed to sound. Ditto some of the peripheral Blue's Clues characters, although I love their song "I've Got A Silly Hat."

On the other hand, I wowed the kiddies the other evening with my rendition of The Great Mouse Detective, trying hard to recall everything I could remember from the old Basil Rathbone/Nigel Bruce - Sherlock Holmes movies. Some day, when they actually see one of these films, I hope they think of me.....

One thing I have discovered with my eldest - she does not much like ad-libing. The trouble is that the child has taken to reading along with me. Whenever she catches me embellishing - as tonight, when we read a kiddie version of Disney's Aladdin - she calls me on it. Damned literalist!

One area where I have been given a magnificent lead is with the Madeline books. We have a tape of some of the songs from the television series that features - I think - Richard Burton (or someone of his ilk) doing the narratives. I have picked up on that treatment, and extrapolated accordingly. Works very well, I can assure you, right down to "That's all there is. There isn't any more."

BTW: Anyone who has come these natterings thanks to the HT from the Whomping Willow should just hit their down arrow to see what she is talking about. (I mention this not because we are worthy (which we aren't), but just to avoid any confusion. The delightful curse about being a Llama Butcher is that we've got our feet firmly planted in a lot of different blogsphere soils. So you are likely to get posts on weighty political matters interspersed with stories about our children, our gardening plans, music, art, you name it. It's just what we are.)

YIP! YIP!

Eeew Britannia

It appears City of London Mayor "Red Ken" Livingstone wants to contribute some new art to Trafalgar Square.

I'll bet Nelson wouldn't mind losing his other eye not to have to look at this.

We Swear We're Not Making This Up

Knock back a good stiff drink and take a gander at this piece from the NY Sun about French puppy-love for the Maginot Candidate. Note in particular that they like him because "Well, he doesn't look Texan."

Now, go to this and this article about the gathering storm of Islamicism in the Country of Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys.

Now ask yourself this: If the Bad Guys are fixing to ride into town to kill, pillage and burn, who would you rather have defending you? John Wayne? Or Jerry Lewis?

Me, too.

Bloggy Announcement

A big Llama YIP! YIP! YIP! goes out to Lucy of Lucy's Island, a new blog that has recently risen above the waves and is now anchored in our blogroll. Go on over and let Lucy show you around - good, happy posts that remind us Why We Fight.

(Note to Lucy - Sorry that there's no such thing as a Llama-Lanche. Yet.)

Life Imitates The LLama Butchers

Sweet Baby Jesus! I've been calling Kerry the Maginot Candidate for some time now by way of metaphor for his appeal to the Democratic base. But now it begins to look as if that tag is literally applicable to the man. Just check out this piece by Bill Hobbs delving into the language of Kerry's approach to the War on Terror. Mind you, Hobbs is talking about Kerry's own press release.

Nice to know that if I'm blown to atoms by a truck bomb on Pennsylvania Avenue some fine, sunny morning on a future date with lots of 11's in it, President Kerry will see to it that there are lots of firemen standing by to sweep my remains into a shoe-box for the benefit of my family.

Thanks to Viking Pundit for cranking my blood pressure back up.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

A day punctured by frustrations, big and small. First, the continued gloom over the Madrid fallout. Then, a bad miscalculation about whether I should have taken my umbrella to an out of the office meeting (I should have), an ATM card that would not work for some reason, Metro holdups, the Cabbie from Hell and clients that changed their plans at the last minute so that instead of having a nice lunch at the expense of the firm I had all the problems listed above plus the humiliation of having to borrow a couple bucks from my secretary for a sandwich.......

Well, anyway. Point of the matter is that I'm in the mood for what Father Mulcahy would call, "Jocularity! Jocularity!" Shall we jocularize?

I KINDA LIKE THAT STYLE....

One of the first casualties of law school is stylish writing. In you go as a fresh young English major bursting with creativity, only to have it beaten out of you and replaced with a style that, while clear and concise, is deadly, deadly boring. Well, apparently, not everyone takes this lying down. Check out this story from Legal Underground about the decision in U.S. v. Abner, 825 F.2d 835 (5th Cir. 1987). Someone (I'm guessing the clerk) peppered the text with Talking Heads titles and lyrics. Love to see someone having some fun with it. Just remember, if your job isn't what you love, then something isn't right.

HT to Reen.

AND SPEAKING OF JUSTICE....

This is snarf-worthy. But where the hell are the Wonder Twins? "Shape of...Ice Wine!" "Form of....a Loaf of Bread!"

MY DAY HAS BEEN MADE!

Check this out! Best. Website. Ever. HT to the Farm Accident Digest.

BUT DOES KHAN BACK THE MAGINOT CANDIDATE?

Meb not, but these guys do. Where is Frank Drebin when you need him? (5 points to whoever gets that joke.)

HT to the Junk Yard Blog for outing this one.

IT SEEMS OTHERS ARE HAVING STRANGE, FRUSTRATING DAYS TOO

Punch goes, well, postal. And be sure to look for him furtively peering from behind the curtain the next time you watch "COPS."

RESISTANCE IS FUTILE

Harvey at Bad Money could turn the urge to hit the link he highlights into a Contest. Suffice to say, I'm more of a Kramer than a George......

STILL HAVE A TWITCHY LINKING FINGER?

Well you, my friend, are in luck because Carnival of the Vanities is up over at Patterico's Pontifications. Go on over and click away!

ESTOP IT! ESTOP IT!

I thought I had heard most anti-lawyer rants, but Laurence breaks new ground.

AND LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Taranto has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

Aaaah. I feel a bit better now.

A weird day indeed

Satan must be breaking out the ice skates, because I am in complete concurrence with the lead editorial in The Arab News:

Editorial: Victory for Terrorism?
16March 2004


The victor in Sunday’s Spanish general election was Al-Qaeda. The decision of the electorate to abandon the center-right Popular Party, which before last week’s Madrid massacre had been comfortably ahead in the opinion polls, will have extremely dangerous consequences for elections in all other democracies. Terrorists will now believe that they can bomb any democracy into electoral submission.

This foolish and emotional decision is in stark contrast to the immense dignity with which Spaniards initially reacted to the slaughter of 200 innocents last Thursday. The opposition Socialists were shameless in their accusation that the government was trying to cover up Al-Qaeda involvement by blaming the Basque terrorist group ETA. In fact in the hours following the horrific attacks, it was perfectly reasonable to suspect ETA. In December, Basque terrorists planted a bomb on a train and were caught with another in a rucksack similar to those which ripped apart the Madrid commuter trains.

And there simply was no cover-up. After Thursday, the Interior Ministry mounted press conferences with unprecedented frequency trying to pass on the facts as they became known, something unheard-of in any other democracy. Among these was the discovery of the white van with seven detonators and an audiotape with verses from the Qur’an. The retiring Prime Minister Jose Maria Aznar at no time ruled out Al-Qaeda involvement. Against this the Socialist party mounted manipulative demonstrations outside the Popular Party offices claiming that the government was seeking to conceal Al-Qaeda evidence because it feared voters would punish it for backing the Bush invasion of Iraq and committing1 , 300troops to the Coalition occupation.

It is a sign of the still immature nature of Spain’s democracy that the voters bought this pernicious nonsense and voted with emotion rather than common sense. It would have been far better had the election been postponed to give time for people to calm down and gather their wits.

Spaniards were by no means alone in opposing Bush’s invasion of Iraq. However, the mature reaction when they themselves became victims would have been to stick with their prior electoral intentions.

The upshot is that Al-Qaeda, which it seems increasingly clear were behind last week’s savage butchery, have won a stunning victory. They have seen how they can panic and manipulate the electorate of a comfortable democracy. Now they will be convinced that terrorism works. From now on, any democratic state whose government has already or will in future dare to back the crushing of Al-Qaeda and its poisonous offspring can expect to be targeted. The terrorists have proved that they can manipulate the democratic process by unbridled violence and fear.

Meanwhile, this guy is still ecstatic....

WORST TIMING AWARD

For political science conferences, it is customary to submit your proposals at least six months ahead of time, which can create a lag between the state of affairs at the time of proposal and when the paper is actually delivered. Sometimes, it produces funny results [like papers at the APSA meeting in September 1990 which were proposed before the fall of the Berlin Wall]. Sometimes the results are sad, and sometimes they are tragically in bad taste. However, if the author is an arrogant jackass to begin with, you can chalk it up to cosmic irony.

So, here's my award for the worst political science paper of 2003, by Chris Banks of the University of Akron.

Title: "Insanely Tilting at Windmill Terrorists"


ABSTRACT: The 1996 Antiterrorism and Effective Death Penalty Act, which precedes September 11 and the USA Patriot Act, has a quixotic legacy. Using LEXIS, this study documents the judicial response to AEDPA claims in federal courts and juxtaposes those cases against the statute’s legislative history and stated purpose. In light of the law’s legislative history, and since AEDPA was Congress’s answer to Oklahoma City, it is hypothesized that the law was crafted to prevent terrorist acts and punish terrorists. It is discovered, however, that federal courts mostly entertain habeas cases and, consequently, that AEDPA’s true impact lies in restricting court access to non-terrorists, a conservative political aim that is not consistent with fulfilling the goal of punishing terrorists. AEDPA is metaphorically symbolic to Cervantes’ Don Quixote because, like the knight-errant, the law has a chivalrous purpose but is self-defeating. Not only was it forged in a time of political turmoil and sweeps too broadly, it creates more victims in its wake, including those who need judicial protection the most. This criticism is especially salient in light of the persistent claim that the USA Patriot Act sweeps too broadly in its law enforcement provisions and, accordingly, does not punish terrorists as it intended.

Here's the concluding paragraph:

In Miguel de Cervantes famous novel Don Quixote the protagonist, Alonso Quixana, is an idealistic but impractical hero who is portrayed as whimsically tilting at windmills because he believes they are giants. Despite his noble intentions, he goes from failure to failure in his often comic, but tragic quest as Don Quixote de La Mancha to regain his sanity (and find love) after reading many books of chivalry. On the one hand AEDPA has a Don Quixote-like quality because, like the knight-errant, the law has a chivalrous purpose of helping citizens protect themselves against evils such as terrorism. On the other hand, while the motive is pure the knighterrant, just like AEDPA, is blinded to the reality that his behavior is self-defeating. In this sense, AEDPA has a quixotic legacy, for it was forged in a time of political turmoil and arguably sweeps too broadly. The fact patterns revealed in the AEDPA cases imply that AEDPA’s broad coverage creates (however unintentionally) more victims in its wake since the law, by and large, does not operate to curb terrorism. Ironically, those victimized include the ones who need judicial protection the most, as the habeas analysis in the foregoing pages attests. Other victims include foreign aliens, and even U.S. citizens, who are penalized for joining or supporting a group whose terrorist propensities may overshadow the good that can result from association, political advocacy, and humanitarian aid. Perhaps the biggest victim of all are the federal courts themselves, who have the unenviable task of retaining a commitment to justice while striking the proper balance between public safety and individual rights in an increasingly unpredictable world. For some, AEDPA is an effective tool in the war against terrorism; however, this essay reminds us that it is important to judge it as a proverbial Don Quixote who insanely tilts at windmill giants. Worse, it does so under the pretext of creating an illusion that helps Americans feel secure in knowing that they still possess unalienable civil rights and liberties that cannot be abused by the government.

The date the paper was delivered? March 12, 2004, approximatley 24 hours after the terrorist attacks in Spain.

Way to go, Chris! And here I thought the victims of terrorism were the, well, civilians blown to smithereens. Silly me.

You can download the paper and read it for yourself here [use the search function].

Today's Choice Cuts

Well, so much for the Big Storm here in Your Nation's Capitol. Despite every effort of will by Dave Schwartz and Paul Kocin, all we have here this morning is a grey, soggy, wet day.

I suppose that's fitting for the rather bleak continued coverage of events in Spain.

MADRID FALLOUT WATCH

Steyn is especially bitter today, and well he should be. When I saw all those photographs of people standing in the rain in Madrid on Friday (see here, for example), I had hopes that the Euros finally get what we're up against. Nope. Go read.

Meanwhile, George Will remarks that the train bombings were "the most efficient explosions in the history of terrorism." He raises some hope that the Bad Guys will draw the wrong lessons about what kind of reaction they might get to a similar attack in America. But then again, there's only one way to find out.

Stephen Green says the danger for Americans this fall is not so much a new terror attack as it is a case of Attention Deficit Disorder. He also questions whether the Bad Guys think John Kerry would have the balls to stand up to them in the event we forget the real stakes and elect him. I know what I think.

SULLIVAN AGONISTES WATCH

Meanwhile, it appears events in Spain have jolted Andrew out of his sulk but good, with a plea for the Europeans to for Christ's sake wake up and some chilling evidence about the planning that went into these latest attacks.

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

Speaking of the haughty French-looking Liberal from Massachusetts, who by the way served in Vietnam, Glenn has a good round up of the latest on the snow-balling foreign leaders endorsement flap.

One piece of anectotal evidence: The jocks on the radio were joking about this business and Kerry's "truth issues" this morning. When an issue is picked up by country music station DJ's, you know it's grown legs. The last political bit these guys talked about? "EEEEAAAAAGGHHH!!!!!"

BUT LET'S END ON A GOOD NOTE

Here's something new to me: The Carnival of the Bush Bloggers. (HT to the New England Republican.) Go on over and check 'em out.

Good day, y'all.

The Perils of Going Backless In March

I mentioned last week that I had removed the back window from my Jeep for the season. Well, here is the latest forecast for the area:

Statement as of 3:00 PM EST on March 15, 2004

Anne Arundel MD-Arlington/Falls Church/Alexandria VA-Augusta VA- Culpeper VA-District of Columbia DC-Fairfax VA-Fauquier VA-Greene VA- Harford MD-Highland VA-Howard MD-Loudoun VA-Madison VA-Montgomery MD- Page VA-Pendleton WV-Prince Georges MD- Prince William/Manassas/Manassas Park VA-Rappahannock VA- Rockingham VA-Shenandoah VA-southern Baltimore MD-Warren VA-

... Rain and snow on the way late tonight into Tuesday...

An area of low pressure developing over the Tennessee Valley tonight will spread a mix of rain and snow into the area late tonight and early Tuesday. The precipitation will change to all rain from south to north from the mid morning through early afternoon Tuesday.

Temperatures today have been in the 50s and 60s. This has caused ground and Road surface temperatures to warm considerably. Therefore... any snow that falls will melt on impact. An inch of wet snow may accumulate on grassy surfaces in the northern and western suburbs of Washington and Baltimore Tuesday morning.

Temperatures Tuesday will hover in the mid 30s.

Stay tuned to NOAA Weather Radio and other local media for further details or updates.

So if you see a moron driving 'round DC tomorrow in the snow in an open-backed soft-top green Jeep, that'll be me. Be sure to honk!

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

A light (or as they say in the biz, "lite") selection today after this morning's extra-meaty offerings. Here we go:

SEARCH AND CAESAR

Patrick Belton at OxBlog has a horrible Ides of March joke and a link to more.

SENTIAN WATCH

A new feature here at the Butcher's Shop. Late last week, my firm installed Internet-filtering software that automatically blocks access to sites believed by the software to contain various objectionable content. The first victim was Kevin Alwyn's WizBang, which got clocked for "pornography." (I evidently did not read the right posts!)

Today, it's Spoons, which gets flagged for "profanity." WTF? Also, I can no longer take those Quinzilla tests flooding the Internet. This is gonna hurt the Chai-Rista, whom we've been feeding them to for a while. Sorry bout that, Liz!

We'll keep you posted on other examples of this perfidious outrage.

SPEAKING OF PERFIDIOUS OUTRAGES

Donald Luskin weighs in with another edition of the Krugman Truth Squad, once again ripping away the flesh to expose the reenforced titanium alloy chassis of the World's Most Dangerous Liberal Pundit.

GENERALS' DELIGHT

Jonah is going to be speaking at my old stomping ground tomorrow night. My Central Virginny friends would be well advised to try and get over to Metro-Lex for that one.

GOT MEAT?

In case you haven't settled your dinner plans yet, remember what day today is!

YIPS! FOR THE DARK SIDE

I can't recall if I've thanked him properly before, but Tainted Bill has been kind enough to blogroll us. As ever, if you don't already read him regliarly (as my six year old says)go on over and check things out. YIP! YIP! YIP!

GRATUITOUS DOMESTIC BLOGGING - NOT!

Guest-blogger Mike at Note-It Posts (don't worry, the photo of the delightful Dana remains in place), brings a humorous tale of father-son antics on the road!

I will say in the guy's defense, that by age eleven I could drive a stickshift and pilot a motorboat. I went hunting and fishing with my Dad a lot and his theory was that if something happened to him out in the wilds (the Texas Hill Country and the back bays of the Gulf Coast), I had to be able to get us back to civilization. But two hundred miles because of drunkeness? Naaaaaa.....

TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

Madrid Watch Update

Well, so much for the new Spanish Government's "resolve" to fight terrorists. Check out this jaw-dropping article. Let's highlight some of the things being said by Zapatero and his Euro-buddies, shall we?

"The war in Iraq was a disaster, the occupation of Iraq is a disaster," Zapatero, 43, told Cadena Ser radio Monday.

Uh, okay. That would be the liberation of millions of Iraqis from the clutches of a maniacal dictator who had a bad habit of killing them by the thousands. That would be the recent establishment of an interim constitution and the ongoing transition to democracy there. That would be the preemptive surrender of Quadaffi, the new cooperation of Musharriff and the further isolation of North Korea. That would be the fly-paper that has killed or captured thousands of foreign insurgents fighting Coalition troops. All at the cost of just over 500 U.S. casualties, and proportionately fewer for our allies. Yep. Sounds like a disaster to me.

Zapatero firmly aligned himself with France and Germany, which opposed the war from the start, in calling the invasion an "error".

My friend, you are backing the wrong horses.

Bush and Blair, both of whom are facing elections in coming months, need to engage in "self-criticism," Zapatero said.

Ah, self-crit! One of the favorite exercises of academic leftists! (Buh-lieve me! I've seen it in action.) A weird little program of mental self-flagellation, it seems to have an appeal for those who secretly loathe themselves.

"You can't bomb a people" over a perceived threat, Zapatero said in comments coming five days before the first anniversary of the March 20 start of the war."

That's right. International terrorism should be handled as a police matter. That means waiting around until there are body parts lying all over the place before you feel compelled to actually do anything about it. Just ask John Kerry.

"You can't organise a war on the basis of lies," he said, alluding to Bush's and Blair's insistence the war was justified by their belief -- so far unfounded -- that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction that posed an imminent threat."

Bush Lied. People Died. Sigh.

"Wars such as that which has occurred in Iraq only allow hatred, violence and terror to proliferate," he said.

Yeah, you know what a Peaceble Kingdom Iraq was under Saddam and what a festering hell-hole it is now, by comparison.

The head of the EU executive arm, European Commission chief Romano Prodi, agreed, in an interview published by Italy's La Stampa newspaper Monday.

"It is clear that using force is not the answer to resolving the conflict with terrorists," Prodi said. "Terrorism is infinitely more powerful than a year ago," and all of Europe now feels threatened, he told the paper.

In other words, just bend over and smile. It'll hurt, but not as much as getting a shiv between your shoulder blades.

As I said below, I hope Dean Esmay is correct that I and some others are over-reacting to events in Spain. But remarks like these sure don't give me much reason to do so.

Sometimes you have to drink from the cup of dark humor....

Needless to say, THIS guy is elated about events in Spain....and he wants a sandwich [and I'm assuming it's not a BLT].

Dispatches from the Steve-O Front

Well, I'm back from my conference in Portland and am presently trying to dig my way out of a serious paperwork hole. There's approximately two weeks worth of mail and phone messages to dig through, which include some real clinkers [for example, a colleague apparently is getting divorced, as there was a phone message from his wife's attorney that she wanted to talk to me---which is a real beaut, as I have no clue as to why. I think he's a jackass, and she's insane, and while I've heard stories, it's just that--stories. Sheesh.]

We just had a good discussion in Legal Theory and Public Policy on the whole marriage issue, approaching it from the perspective of contracts, and what types of contracts people can make that the state won't sanction, as well as contracts recognized by the state as well as by other non-state institutions like religious organizations. It was one of those great teaching moments where they just ran with it, and were coming up with some excellent permutations on the problem that really were informative. Plus, we were outside today for the first time. Somedays I really love my job.

Other than that, I'm exhausted from the trip. DC National was a zoo yesterday--my connecting flight from Minneapolis was filled with high school kids on their way for the junior class trip to dee-cee: heaven help their chaperones. The check-in lines as well as the security lines were easily 100 yards long each. But there was no complaining: people understood the seriousness of recent events.

Portland was fabulous--I'd move there in a minute. It was kind of like the anti-Hartford: they are both cities on a river, old cities to their states with accompanying old money and neat mixtures of 19th, 20th, and 21st century architecture. Hartford has the state capitol, Portland Mt. Hood, Hartford lost the Whalers while Portland is stuck with the Blazers. Portland I think is a bit larger in population. But the difference is pronounced: Portland is beautiful and clean, and the people are wonderfully polite and civic minded. Hartford is, er, not.

More later when I get my brain back in the game. First thoughts about Spain and the Spanish election: heart torn out for the Spanish people, cringing for the implications of the Spanish election. Obviously they missed that part in bin Laden's declaration of war about "reversing the Andalusian Tragedy"--ie the expulsion of the Moors from Spain. I'm worried sick about the security implications for our own election.

One last thing: building on my earlier theme about how the CNN/CBS/NYT media types would treat Kerry's "Band of Brothers" theme differently if it came from a Republican: after the initial outrage over finding the brothers of the VC Kerry killed in Vietnam, it would then move into "HOW DARE YOU INVALIDATE THE SACRIFICE AND SERVICE OF OUR VALIANT ARMY NURSES?"

Gratuitous Self-Congratulations

I don't often comment on my real job a) because of the conflicts and client confidentiality involved and b) because it is a very dry, dull area. However, I just wanted to flag this WTO decision, which I have known about for some time.

I had a hand in representing some of the U.S. telecom industry members who worked with USTR to get this case going. Nice to see that we got what amounts to a historic win (well, in WTO circles anyway) and that it got a modest amount of press coverage.

Maginot Candidate Watch

I haven't had much to say about it yet, but this appears to be snowballing into Kerry's first prime-time political stumble. Don't expect it to be the last.

Nope, The World Really Has Gone To Hell

If you're like me, at least, you might think so after checking out this site. Thanks to Rocket Jones, who has a pretty charitable attitude towards what Eric Cartman would call those goddam long-haired hippie freaks.

Well, God bless Rocket's tolerance, I suppose. But I don't have much.

On A Brighter Note

Rich Galen posts his latest Mulling from Iraq, this time on the hurly-burly surrounding the signing of the interim constitution there. As I remarked last week, this was a Gen-u-ine Historical Event. Rich gets a pass on posting so late about it.

Also, I don't know why, but the implications of "Smile" brand toilet-paper strike me as intensely amusing. (Go see for yourself what I'm talking about.)

Evidently, I'm In A Pretty Bleak Mood This Morning....

You're Fahrenheit 451!

by Ray Bradbury

Having wanted to be a firefighter much of your life, you've recently
discovered the job wasn't exactly what you were looking for. While ignorance seems like
the result of oppression, it all began with people just wanting to be ignorant. As you
realize more about the sordid world around you, you decide to watch less TV and work on
your memorization skills. Though your memory will save you in the end, don't forget to
practice running from dogs as well.


Take the Book Quiz
at the Blue Pyramid.

More Bad News

Donald Sensing has a column up at OpinionJournal.com today arguing that conservatives lost the fight over homosexual marriage forty years ago.

I think that this is right. We're now entering a new phase of the sexual revolution and, at least on the societal level, can do nothing more than wait and see what happens. Alia iacta est.

On a personal level, I suppose all that the Butcher's Wife and I can do is stick to what we believe and try to instill in our children that same belief. Just one more precipice to climb in the uphill struggle of being a social conservative in the modern world.

Today's Choice Cuts -They Get Results

My pre-first cup of coffee Monday Morning take on this is that the odds of a similar stunt being pulled here some time before the election just went up appreciably. Hope I'm wrong about that.

Glenn has a comprehensive roundup of weekend reaction here and here. It is readily apparent that I am not the only one who is worried. Remember, the Spanish Socialists, the American Left, the Media - anyone can spin this however they want. But it ultimately comes down to what lesson Al Qaeda takes away. And it's going to be pretty hard for them to resist applying post hoc ergo propter hoc reasoning: We devastated Madrid on Thursday. Over the weekend, the current Spanish Government was voted out of office and the new Government announced it was pulling its troops out of Iraq. We have punished Spain for its involvement, and Spain is now changing course. We have been victorious.

I can't say that I would blame them for thinking this way.

The New England Republican has more. Until last week, I had pretty much put away my worries about the "spineless factor" in the United States. I reopened that can over the weekend. After 9/11, people here were fantastic, united in anger, resolve and energy. However, that was two and a half years ago. The Left, which got caught flat-footed that day, has had a long time to whisper poison in our collective ears, like Wormtongue lulling Theoden into helplessness. What would be the effect of the next Al Qaeda strike on the States? Would we come together again? Or would we wallow in self-doubt and self-loathing, blaming ourselves in general and Bush in particular for provoking the fight? At this point, I really just don't know anymore.

Michelle has even more chilling thoughts here and here.

Although it's linked in one of Glenn's posts, I also want to reemphasise Steyn's point that running away now is not going to save anyone, not in Sydney or London or Warsaw or Washington. David Frum agrees.

Meanwhile, however, the Whomping Willow reminds us not to let the bastards get us down.

UPDATE: Dean says we're over-reacting. I sincerely hope he's right, but I'm afraid he discounts the appeal the psychological symbolism of the attack and the vote will have for the bad guys who, after all, trade in this sort of thing. As for the new Spanish Government's pledge to fight terrorism, for Heaven's sake, John Kerry says the same thing - and how much do you trust him?

Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM) - Outdoor Division

Well, the Butcher's Wife is off at a birthday party with Llama-ettes A & B at Chucky Cheese - a place I wouldn't set foot in on a bet, leaving me with the two year old. After our weekly Saturday viewing of "Baby Beethoven," a lunch in which she made a bologna bracelet for herself and ate the slice off her wrist, and a rousing round of Where's Waldo?, she is down for her nappies, leaving me to snatch a few minutes of bloggy peace.

I believe I mentioned last week that the six and four year olds were helping me plant seeds in trays for this year' flower garden. Well, some of those seeds have germinated already, much to the delight and astonishment of my progeny. Someone recently asked me, "Dave, what flowers would you recommend for a sunny perennial bed in central Virginia?" Well, since that is more or less exactly what I am planting for myself, I thought it might be useful to catalogue for you exactly what I've got cooking down in my workshop. (For those of you begining to feel a MEGO moment coming on, feel free to ignore the rest of this post.)

I should start by saying that I am aiming for a perennial garden that can take a lot of heat and drought. We had a hundred years' rainfall here last year, but I don't think that's likely to happen again this year. And my garden is situated so that it gets a lot of sun. So just about all of the plants I am trying were chosen for their toughness as much as anything else. That said, here is my list:

Butterfly Weed - Asclepias - a bushy plant that grows to between two and four feet, it has large clusters of small flowers that range in color from yellow to orange to various shads of red. I am trying a variety called Cinderella (A. incarnata) that has pink and white flowers. Blooms all summer till frost.

Hollyhock (Alcea Rosea) - You can't go wrong with these. Five to seven feet tall and two feet wide, big broad leaves, a variety of different single and double blooms in all sorts of colors. Make sure and stake these beasts or they will fall over under their own weight. The individual plants are short-lived perennials, but self-sow very well. Blooms all summer till frost.

Joe-Pye Weed (Eupatorium) - A bushy plant that grows to about four feet, it produces clusters of little purple to lilac flowers. This one blooms later in the summer.

Salvia - (Salvia x superba). For the front of a border. Note that there are both annual and perennial varieties. This plant gets to be 12 to 18 inches tall with spikes of intense blue flowers. It blooms early and then repeats. I am going with a variety from Parks called "Blue Queen."

Coneflower (Echinacea). I am trying two varieties of this, Magnus - a pale purple, and White Swan - a white flower with an orange center. These are tough, daisy-like plants that grow to about three feet. Midsummer to early fall.

Goldsturm (Rudbeckia) - Black-eyed Susans. Yellow flower with a black center, they grow to between two and three feet tall and bloom midsummer to early fall.

Butterfly Bush (Buddleia davidii) - Not to be confused with Butterfly Weed, this is a big six to eight foot tall plant that produces big clusters of purple, red and white flowers. If you cut them back midsummer, they will rebloom through the fall. Perfect for putting at the back of the border.

Columbine - (Aquilegia x hybrida). I love columbine. They get to be about two feet tall with big bright multicolor spurred flowers. These are extremely tough, wiry little plants, too. They are supposed to bloom earlier in the summer, but I have found that if you are good about deadheading, they will rebloom later on. I am trying a couple of Burpee's hybrid mixes (Songbird and Harlequin) that will produce a variety of blues, pinks, yellows and purples.

Moonbeam (Coreopsis) - This is another great plant for the front of the border, producing 12 to 18 inch mounds of dense yellow flowers. Moonbeam is tough as nails, too, and very drought resistant.

Shasta Daisy (Leucanthemum x superbum) - The classic daisy, white with a yellow center. These come in a variety of sizes. This year, I am going with Burpee's Silver Princess, which gets to be about 12 inches. The idea here is to mix this along the fronts of my borders with the salvia and the moonbeam.

Veronica - This is another plant that produces spikes of red, white and blue flowers. It gets to be about two and a half feet tall and flowers from June till August.

Gladiolus (G. hybridus) - These are the only bulbs I'm planting this year. They produce tall spikes of big, vibrant flowers in a variety of colors. I am trying Burpee's Ruffled Pastel Mix. You want to be very careful with Glads, in that once they get established, they spread very quickly. Also, we are right on the borderline in terms of winter treatment. South of here, you can leave the bulbs in the ground all winter with no worries. North of here, you have to dig them up and replant in the spring. I tend to be rather cold-hearted about it: If they can't weather the winter, that's their problem.

Finally, I am planting a mixed bag of sunflowers for the Butcher's Wife. There are so many different collections and varieties, coming in so many shapes and sizes, it would be useless to try and list them. FWIW, I am going with Burpee's Fun n' Sun hybrid mix. These are very good seeds to let kids plant, btw, because they are so large and germinate so quickly.

So there you have it. As I say, I am starting all these plants from seed this year. The advantages of this are that you typically have access to a greater variety of specimens and it's a lot cheaper than buying plants. The disadvantage is that it is much more work and requires much advanced preparation. I got all of my seeds from Park's Seeds and Burpee. Many of these varieties are available from them in plant form as well. Also, your local nursery will carry most of the more common varieties, and can give you good advice about what works best in the local conditions.

As far as starting from seed, you can sew directly into the ground after the last frost, or start them indoors, as I am doing. Typically, that has to be done eight to ten weeks ahead of your planting time. 'Round here, the first to second week of May is the best time for such planting, so it is getting a bit late to think about starting seeds indoors. Of course, with live plants, you can theoretically plant them any time, although, again, late spring is the best time. I am starting seeds early mostly because I'd like to get some blooms this year.

Well, there you have it. If you've made it this far, you must be interested in the subject. I'd be interested, in turn, to hear what success other folks have had with different flowers here in Northern Virginia. Feel free to chime in with your comments!

Things That We Hates!

It isn't often (well, yes it is) that I damn a movie before I see it, but I am here tonight to tell you that whoever got the bright idea to do a remake of "The Lady Killers" has already reserved his own special circle of hell.

The original Ealing Studios version of the L-K is one of those special gems of British Cinema that captures a bygone era of the art in a manner worth fighting to preserve from the ugly assimilation of modern film-making. Alec Guiness, as the Professor, ought to be ashamed of himself. Likewise, Herbert Lom, Peter Sellars and the bloke who plays One-Round are equally, shamefully funny. And the delightful old biddy who plays Mrs. Wilberforce. Well. After hearing the supposed rehearsal of the Boccerini quintet by the villains, she remarks that a string band had been playing that piece at her (I think) sixth birthday party when someone came in and said the old Queen was dead. This in 1950's Britain, after the war, in a bomb-damaged house. The look back across the ages to the late Victorian Age, however fleeting, is really quite touching and, in a way, awe-inspiring. As for the rest of it, the movie is well paced, gentle and yet compelling. A delicate plant, yet one worth preserving.

But now! I've only seen a couple of previews, but even from them I can tell you - this is not going to work. It is wrong. It is bad. It is eviiil! Like most of what passes for culture in the modern era, it is crass and heavy-handed. This is a hideous idea dreamed up by some Hollywood git who should have his tongue cut out and stapled to his forehead as a warning to others who would pillage the Classics in search of an easy remake buck.

Please! Do not see this movie! Do not encourage the Hollywood Borg to assimilate other classics! What's next? "Adam's Rib" with Drew Barrymore and Ben Afleck? "His Girl Friday" with Harrison Ford and Lucy Lui? "The African Queen" with Adam Sandler and Britney Spears? Do you think it can't happen? We hates it! We hates it! We hates it forever!!

Things That I Love

Perhaps I'm just in one of those moods tonight, but I am inordinantly pleased with having received real live comments to a couple of my earlier posts today. First, the Chai-Rista was sweet enough to call me "funny." (See blogroll for both the C-R and Truly Bad Movies.) Then this evening, positive feedback from both The New England Republican (blogrolled as well) and the Whomping Willow (not yet b-rolled, but linked in the After 3's). [NB - linking is a pain in the backside when I'm operating at home with the evil combo of AOL and dial-up.]

There is something about the connection, about knowing that someone has read my blatherings and thought about them, and even considered them worth responding to, that gives me an intense sense of satisfaction. Perhaps someday Steve-O and I will rise to the heights of Stephen Green, Dean Esmay and Frank J and be swamped with responses to our bloviations. Meb. But I hope I never lose this sense of gratitude. Thank you so much!

Ain't It The Truth

Occasionally the Butcher's Wife will ask me, "Tom, why are you always so tired when you get home?" Well, here's a big part of it.

HT to James Joyner.

UPDATE: I do have to confess - my outbound commute consists of traveling down the Mall on Constitution Avenue then taking the George Washington Parkway up the Potomac River-valley. Even when traffic is bumper to bumper, there is always something worth looking at. Still, this evening it did take me better than an hour to cover the 14 miles between my house and my office. Do the math.

Friday Happy Hour Cocktail Chit-Chat

As both of you know, we don't just churn socio-political commentary here. Oh, no. We've got our domestic, personal sides as well. In this vein, here are this week's Friday Five, mit answers:

1. What was the last song you heard? A jazz riff of "Ode to Billie Joe," in the sandwhich shop downstairs at lunch. Over the crowd noise, I at first swore I was hearing "Harper Valley PTA." Neither one holds up well as lounge music.

2. What were the last two movies you saw? In theatres? I have no recollection whatsoever. We don't go very often. On the T&V, however, I watched "Patton" last night and "Rooster Cogburn" a few nights previous. Last two tapes/DVD's were "Finding Nemo" (with the kids) and "The Three Musketeers" (the old one with Charlton Heston, Michael York and Rachel Welch. Pretty good adaptation.)

3. What were the last three things you purchased? Em. Lunch, lunch and lunch. (Hoots! I'm a thhrrifty Scot, ye ken? Toots!)

4. What four things do you need to do this weekend? Sleep. Exercise. Deer-proof the flower garden. Sleep. Won't happen, tho.

5. Who are the last five people you talked to? Three secretaries, the librarian and a piece of driftwood from the Michigan Public Service Commission. Kind of a slow day here at the shop.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half-Price Specials

Having dedicated the Carnival to events in Spain, I feel a little better. Not quite so jangly and angry as I have been the past 24 hours or so. So let's see if we can inject a leetle more levity into the mix with a short round up of end-of-the-week tidbits.

NOW THIS TAKES ME BACK

John J. Miller has a piece in today's WSJ about that remnant-of-humanity-in-SkyNet's-World, the college Republican. Folks, I attended the People's Soviet of Middletown back in the day. Somewhere or other I still have a collection of the mutilated versions of the cartoons I did for the conservative campus paper that thoughtful classmates would tape to my door. I might still have the paper I got back in my English survey class that had a note on it that said something to the effect of "very well written, but wrong conclusions - B minus." (This for refusing to believe that Jane Austen was a lesbian.) Buh-leeeave me, it's harsh out there! Good to see there are some John Conners organizing a resistance.

FLO KNOWS MARTHA

Miss King puts her misanthropic boot into Ms. Stewart's good things.

SOME SITES HAVE ALL THE LUCK

The Whomping Willow has hit the blogwaves with a whoop and a holler, getting props from both Michelle and Glenn in her first two days. (I don't know quite how this works. Obviously, the Llamas are not sleeping with the right folks.) Go on over and check it out.

THE THOUGHT POLICE ATTACK

This is a bit more serious. Today my firm had some Internet filtering installed and when I tried to access Kevin's WizBang, it got blocked as "pornographic." The blocking filter is from Sentian, fyi. Jeesh!

STEP AWAY FROM THE LLAMA

Rocket Jones seems to be straying into our metaphoric turf. Back off, man, or we'll unleash our dreaded "Llama Stealth Scud."

LATE FOR THE FAIR

This week's Carnival of the Vanities has set up its tents at Aaron's Rantblog and Sweet Jesus it's a big one.

PROJECT TARANTO

James has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

Your Tax Money At Work - Final Update (?)

Just by way of a parenthesis between the post below and anything else that goes up this evening, I wanted to report that we finally seem to have stopped the flow of repetitive faxes from the Michigan Public Service Commission and I am slowly beginning to unclench.

Carnival of the Blorg - Week 3 - Spanish Solidarity Edition

In remembrance of those who lost their lives in Madrid yesterday, in sympathy with those who were wounded, in support of the People of Spain and in defiance of the bastards who did it, this week's assimilation of fresh voices and perspectives will focus on Spain's 3/11. Today the Blorg raid the blogrolls of The Command Post and DodgeBlogium.

Citizen Smash sets the proper tone. Somos Todos Espanoles, indeed.

Billy Two-Four relates a nightmare grace-note of the horror.

Meryl Yourish reminds us that terror is a universal evil and that, as Bush correctly noted, everyone must stand up and decide which side of the fight they choose. Marcus at Harry's Place agrees that there is no place to hide.

The folks at Blognor Regis have another nice tribute which I wouldn't dare try to recreate here for fear of melting the site. Go on over and see it.

Oliver Kamm picks up on Andrew Sullivan's speculation about the identity of the terrorists and expands to some thoughts on the polarized nature of the fight. Someone explain to me again why Bush's "You're either with us or with the terrorists" remark is so simple-minded? In the end, what else is there to say.

Dan Darling at Regnum Crucis speculates on the motives of Al- Qaeda and the ramifications for Europe if this is, indeed, the opening of a new front in the Islamic Holy War there.

The Cracker Barrel Philosopher at The Country Store picks up on Mark Steyn's take and notes that when a rabid dog is coming after you, you don't try to peak at its identification tags.

Joe Kelly at For The Sake Of Argument speculates about what would happen if another strike came to the United States and concludes that Al Qaeda will not try anything before the election. I think Joe is probably right, but not necessarily for the right reason. The Luminaries of AQ do things in their own strange way and for their own strange reasons. A rational calculation of the U.S. political fallout to one of their attacks probably is beyond their strategic vision. If they don't hit us again, it will be either a) because they can't or b) because such an attack would not be aligned with their internal sense of timing.

And John at Iberian Notes has an unbelievable report of political jockeying within Spain, literally before the smoke clears.

Finally, in an update from earlier, Glenn has a post, with pictures, of today's rally in D.C.

Con las vi­ctimas, con la Constitucion, por la derrota del terrorismo

Required Reading

John Podhoretz says it's time to get serious again. Go. Read.

In the next few days, as the horror of Madrid sinks in on our collective thought, I will be very interested to see how the shockwaves affect the political debate here. This isn't a matter of tactics and triangulation. This isn't a matter of trying to score points off of your political foe with trash-talk or clever positioning. This is life. This is real. This transcends politics. People literally will live and die by the vote they make in this election.

George Bush understands this. There has never been any disconnect between his message and his actions: There are Bad Guys out there who have attacked us and plan to attack again. We are at war. I will do everything in my power to stop them. Please reelect me so that I can continue that fight.

That's it. No spin. No hedge.

I do not believe John Kerry understands this. And I do not care to take the chance with my life and the lives of my family to find out if I'm wrong.

(HT to the New England Republican.)

Madrid Bombing Watch

I pass along this information (posted by Glenn Reynolds) to anyone who happens to be reading this in the DC area:


The Embassy of Spain convenes a silent demonstration tomorrow, Friday, March 12th, to express its outrage for today's terrorist attack perpetrated in Madrid, in which approximately 200 people have died and 900 have been injured.

The demonstration will take place at the Washington Circle (Pennsylvania Ave and 23rd St NW) at 12 am.

Please convey this information to others.

A book of condolences will be open at the Embassy (2375 Pennsylvania Ave NW) from 10 am to 2 pm today, Friday 12th and Monday 15th.

A funeral service for the victims will be held at St. Matthews Cathedral (1725 Rhode Island Ave NW, Washington DC 20036) on Monday, March 15th, at 5:30 pm.

Today's Choice Cuts

Yes, the Llama Butchers are open for bid-ness today. We're still not feeling one hundred percent, but I promise that I washed my hands thoroughly before handling the inventory.

I'm also still about a day and a half behind in my reading, so this morning is going to be something of a Choice Cut Bonanza:

VICTOR VICTORIOUS

The superb Victor David Hanson takes a long view of the Iraqi war, nearly a year after liberation, and exposes the emptiness of the Western Left's opposition to our purpose and effort there.

WOW

Lileks has some very powerful words in the aftermath of yesterday's bombing. Go. Read.


THE BUTCHERS GO TO THE MOVIES

If you didn't think Tim Robbins was a filthy crackpot traitor, er, committed leftist before, read this review of his latest screed from The New Republic. I was of the vague impression that Nuke had said he was headed for France after the 2000 election. Well? (HT to Lindsey at Reenhead.)

Meanwhile, I have frequently said that I read Ann Coulter purely for entertainment purposes (well, also so I can look at her picture). But I wanted to flag this piece in which she savages William Safire over his comments regarding The Passion of the Christ and the whole anti-Semitism meme, because Ann makes an important point that seems to be lost on most people: Jesus' suffering and death is not a Hatfields-and-McCoys story demanding retaliation. The gist of the religion that transformed the world is: God's only son came to Earth to take the punishment we deserved. That is exactly right. There is no blame game in the Christian faith. People who believe otherwise haven't the faintest idea what they're talking about (and probably don't care).

ELECTION WATCH

Peggy Noonan has advice for both parties about waging the campaign. Mmmm.....Peggy

And speaking of the campaigns, Hugh Hewitt has good thoughts about the way the press is treating Kerry's "you dirty crooks" comment and a useful contrast to another famous off-the-cuff comment of a few years back.

Meanwhile, Jonah is getting tired of this sissy-boy slap party and wants to see some real blood.

IS OUR CHILDS LEARNING?

George Will has a very good column on the impact of the No Child Left Behind Act that reinforces something that I have long thought about Bush's domestic policies that seems to get overlooked by the more wild-eyed libertarian types on the Right: By getting into the domestic policy debate and, yes, by spending lots of money, Dubya is subtly sowing the seeds for radical restructuring of many of these programs. Think of the Social Security privatization scheme. Think of school vouchers and standards of accountability. There are other examples as well. Dubya might not necessarily get to the policy goals he might want now, but consider how the much the mere debate about these matters has shifted.

SPEAKING OF CHILDREN

The ever-delightful Meghan Cox Gurdon has another installment of The Fever Swamp this morning. There is something so resonant about the tales she relates that I almost feel as if she has been gathering source material from The Butcher's Wife.

My favorite line: Phoebe's voice takes on the rising scream of a diving Stuka.

LOL funny and perfectly applicable to any of my three Llama-ettes.

Good day, y'all.

New Blog Announcement

Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you Truly Bad Films, a new production by our friend the Chai-Rista. Congrats on your new baby! First crack out of the box are a review of Beyond the Valley of the Dolls (which was robbed of an Oscar, btw) and an interesting piece arguing that John Kerry is the Thing from Planet Lifetime.

Go on over and say howdy.

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Your Tax Money At Work - Update

Overnight, the Michigan Public Service Commission sent me the same goddam fax an additional 35 times.

I should have noted earlier that long ago I downloaded one of the comm system hailing sounds from Star Trek: Voyager to use as my own email notification sound (as opposed to those lame-ass noises offered up by Bill Gates). That is the sound that is now beginning to get to me.

Daaaw-deek!

Twitch!

Daaaw-deek!

Twitch!

Daaaw-deek!

TWITCH!

Please make it stop, Dave!

Your Tax Money At Work, or Why I Hate "Labor-Saving" Technology

For just over 24 hours now, I have been receiving the same goddam three page fax from the Michigan Public Service Commission. Over and over and over again. I've now had something better than 40 copies routed into my email box.

I have emailed the contact asking them to stop.

I have called and left messages with the contact asking them to stop.

The best I can figure is that the yo-yo who sent this thing somehow misprogrammed her autodialer to keep sending it. I cannot believe that anyone would be doing this deliberately.

I can't tell our information center simply to ignore the faxes because of the off chance that one might be something different. I have to look at each one.

This is really beginning to jangle my nerves which, given how I feel today, are already raw enough. It's like something out of The Tell-Tale Heart, only with email notifications instead of hearbeats.

If anyone with connections to the Michigan PSC reads this, please tell them to turn off their damn fax machine!

Thankee.

Madrid Bombing

Just a quick post about this. It's beginning to look more like Al Queda than Basque Separatists now. Bastards.

For up to the second information, of course, the Command Post is manned and ready. Check there often for news of developments.

In the meantime, our prayers go out to those poor victims in Madrid. And may the Lord have mercy on whoever it was who did this, because I don't think anyone else is going to.

UPDATE: I pass along this excellent idea from Glenn.

Early Closing

Sorry, my friends, but we just are not going to be able to put out much more this afternoon. This bug is still with me - pounding head, ringing ears and achy joints - and I frankly do not have the energy to keep up today.

Thanks for dropping in 'tho. Back soon.

Hillary Rodham Kerry

The Maginot Candidate discovers the Vast Right Wing Conspiracy!

Heh.

Normally, Sir, Yes. Today, The Van Broke Down.

Sorry for the lack of new posts. Got whanged with some kind of stomach bug yesterday afternoon. Went home and slept for about 16 hours. On the mend now, but have some catching up to do.

Back later!

Kerry/McCain?

Apparently, it's a possibility.

For all his political, what is the word - maverickness? Maverism? I've always considered McCain to be absolutely serious when it came to matters of national defense. Would he really be so tempted by personal political gain that he would knowingly aid in the election of a new president whose complete lack of understanding of the threats facing us would substantially increase those threats?

I doubt it. But then again, he is a politician.

UPDATE: Some other folks are dubious, too. Then again still others can see it happening. Steven Taylor just laughs.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half-Price Specials

Ready for a late afternoon snack? Well here ya go.

JEBUS JUNK

Don't know what to get that special someone for a birthday, anniversary or graduation? How 'bout a Crown of Thorns? Note the thing is 12" across, meaning you too can wear it whenever the occasion serves - Passion Play, Halloween Party, Red Sox game....Be the first on your block! (HT to Randy Brandt, via Dean.)

OSAMA WATCH

The World's Scariest Website has a piece up about two conflicting recent issues of The Voice of Jihad, speculating that the phenomenon may indicate mayhem within the upper ranks of Al Queda. Mmmmm.....could be. Needless to say, Allah is raining storms of hailstones and scorpions of derision down on the heads of these infidels.

SPEAKING OF DERISION

Michelle at A Small Victory takes Ted Rall, famously ex-NYT cartoonist, out behind the woodshed. I love this stuff.

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

The New England Republican picks up on a press report about the very low Democratic primary turnout numbers, which I had not seen before. Mile wide and an Inch Deep. Not exactly a ringing mandate from The People.

MUST....REMAIN....CALM.....

This kind of thing infuriates me. The Cranky Professor and Joanne Jacobs both pick up on this Atlanta Journal-Constitution report about translating Shakespeare into modern English in order to get kids to read him. "We're not dumbing down lessons for these students," [a teacher] said. "We are giving them tools that allow them to do the same work as everyone else."

Read it and weep.

MUST...REMAIN...CALMER....

Then again, who the hell cares whether the kid can read? College isn't about academics, after all, it's about finding your custom sexual persona. Want to take a wild guess which school is featured prominently in the NYT article? You bet.

FOR THE CHILDREN

As long as we're on the subject of loutish youth, check out Jonah's latest rant on youth culture and the "Voting Is For Old People" T-shirt flap.

LINKETY-LINKING TIME

This week's Bonfire of the Vanities is up over at Pragmatic Conservatism. You know what to do.

Meanwhile, Taranto has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

NOTE: Be sure to dial in tomorrow afternoon for this week's Carnival of the Blorg, in which we assimilate fresh faces and opinions into the Llama Collective. Resistance is futile.

NPR May Lose Substantial Audience Share

At least, that's the only effect I can imagine from the launch of the new Air American Radio Network, scheduled for the end of the month.

Grab a fresh cup of coffee and then take a look at the line-up:

Monday-Friday
Uprising: 6:00-9:00am

This is a fast paced morning show that will entertain and engage audiences with wit and political satire. It will feature the latest news, offering up to-the-minute interviews with newsmakers, analysis and strong opinions.

Host: Marc Maron
Co-host: Sue Ellicott
Co-host: Mark Riley

Unfiltered: 9:00am- 12:00pm
Air America’s midmorning program is a showcase for conversation about the political and cultural state of the union. Unfiltered introduces listeners to fresh new voices not available in mainstream media today.

Co-host: Lizz Winstead
Co-host: Chuck D
Co-host: Laura Flanders

The O’ Franken Factor: 12:00-3:00pm
Relentless, pure satire, delivered by the leading political humorist of this generation. With his partner, longtime radio host Katherine Lanpher, this will be three hours of fearless barbs, sketches, and interviews with newsmakers and characters who have lived, up until now, only in Al’s fertile imagination. He’s no policy wonk, but this best-selling author and veteran of Saturday Night Live, is devoting his energy to fighting back against rightwing propaganda with hard evidence and facts.

Host: Al Franken
Co-host: Katherine Lanpher
Producer: Billy Kimball

The Randi Rhodes Show: 3:00-7:00pm

Randi Rhodes has spent the last 20 years burning up the airwaves in southern Florida with her pointed and provocative brand of talk radio. Combining live interview, call-in and commentary, Randi engages her audience with a passionate presentation.

Host: Randi Rhodes

So What Else Is News? : 7:00-8:00pm
Based in Los Angeles, this is a one-hour program showcasing the intersection of politics, media and popular culture. This program will feature analysis and reports from the presidential campaign, as well as a daily reporters’ roundtable on how the news of the day is affected and reflected by the media. Marty will also cover the spinning of the news with a regular segment called “The Corrections.” This is also the place to hear the political voice of Hollywood, with celebrity guest interviews from the entertainment industries.
Host: Marty Kaplan

The Majority Report: 8:00pm-11:00pm

This program will introduce new, younger voices and opinions, with live guests from the world of politics, the arts and entertainment. Host: Janeane Garofalo
Co-host: Sam Seder

Saturday and Sunday

Air America Radio’s weekend line-up will offer more original programming, like Robert F. Kennedy, Jr. and Mike Papatanio’s “Champions of Justice,” a program that brings a fresh and entertaining perspective to talk radio from the top legal and social issues focused minds in the country. Additional programming will include Best-of Air America Radio and Best-of-O’Franken Factor as well as other original programming to be announced soon.

Imagine listening to a dialogue between Linda Wertheimer and Garrison Keeler from 6:00 AM to 11:00 PM every day and you'll get the flavor. Seriously, do all of these shows sound like rehashes of the same damn NPR-thing to you? This looks more like a Saturday Night Live parody than anything else.

And who better to capture the Spirit of America than Al Franken, Janeane Garafolo and Chuck D? (BTW, Franken is not "the leading political humorist of this generation." That honor, IMHO, belongs to P.J. O'Rourke.)

I give this opus about four months, tops.

Today's Choice Cuts

Having a bit of a mind block this morning trying to tee up a snappy introduction, so instead I'll throw out a completely random observation: Have you ever seen that Ace Hardward commercial where the guy has his hand down the kitchen sink trying to fish out his ring and his wife comes in and flips the wall switch because she wants to check out the ceiling fan that the guy just wired in? Gives me the creeps every time. And the evil laugh of the Ace spokesman only ads to the wickedness.

Told you it was random. Now, let's get on with what the Butchers are reading this morning:

HUMP DAY TREAT

How about a little Steyn this morning? Mark gives of his feistiness over excessive government foolishness. I like his deficit analogy in particular.

IRAQI TRANSITION WATCH

Claudia Winkler has some good thoughts on the baby-steps towards democracy being taken in Iraq. The anecdote about the Iraqi Press is among many I've read that gives me great hope for the future there. The vast majority of Iraqis seem bound and determined to Get It Right. One thing that Claudia stresses is the bottom-up nature of the transition, with the emphasis on grass-roots education. I forgot to note in my comments about the new Interim Constitution that there are a number of specific provisions regarding the drafting of and voting on the permanent document that will replace it - all geared towards maximum public education, discussion and input. This is hugely important in terms of establishing the legitimacy of the new regime.

Also, the good folks at OxBlog have a round up of background material that you should peruse in order to get a better sense of what is going on.

Meanwhile, James Joyner links to a warning from the Council of Foreign Relations that any premature U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be disastrous and urging that this issue not play any part in the presidential election this fall. I heartily agree. I have not seen anything from the Kerry camp on the matter, but it will be interesting to see what he does. How can he pledge to maintain our forces there and at the same time argue (as he does now) that we shouldn't have gone in the first place? Tricky.

THE SKY IS FALLING!

Glenn Reynolds has an interesting column up at TechCentralStation about dealing with the threat of asteroid collisions. At this point, it appears all we can really focus on is trying to minimize the death toll by improving our early-warning capabilities. But Glenn also talks about the need to bolster our own push out into the cosmos in terms of the "not all our eggs in one basket" rationale, an argument that I ultimately find very persuasive.

SCHOOL DAZE

A long and thoughtful post from Jane Galt regarding the relative rarity of Conservatives in Academia, the possible reasons behind this and the issue of what, if anything, to do about it. I briefly flirted with the idea of going in to academics when I was in college, but it quickly became very very apparent that there was such an institutional hostility to the kind of traditional and, yes, conservative scholarship that appealed to me that such a course would lead only to misery and frustration.

Good day, y'all.

Now Hear This, Ya Dogs

Thanks much to my fellow LB Steve for the faith he has in my ability to con this ship through the rocks of.....Oh, what the hell. AAARRGGGH, me hearties! Hoist the Jolly Roger! D'ya see the Spanish treasure blog ship off the port bow? Stand by for boarding! Arrrgh, Jim Lad, arrggghhh!!!!

Finding the breakfast recipes of the Supreme Court

One thing that definitely has struck my fancy in the past week is the announcement by the Library of Congress Manuscripts Division that the papers of Justice Harry Blackmun have now opened.

I'm a geek, but I can't begin to tell you how cool it is doing archival work in the papers of former members of the Supreme Court. I've done a fair amount of work for various project in the papers of eight justices, and it's amazing how much you can pick up just seeing how the things are organized. You get a sense of the scope of things, the patterns of the work, what is being done in relation to other things. What you start with is the index--this is the master list, usually in a loose-leaf binder, that lists what's in there. When I was just starting out, an old hand who is a legal historian and former Supreme Court clerk recommended that the thing you need to do first is to find a case you think you know well, particularly if it's not an absolutely famous one. In other words, if you are just starting into Warren's papers, don't begin with the files for Brown v. Board. What you are looking for is getting a sense of how the file is constructed--what types of memos are there, how much of the original drafting and revisions remain, whether there are research summaries from clerks or notes from the spouse--whatever is going to begin to give you a sense of what might be in there.

My favorite papers to work in are Justice William O. Douglas. It's all in there. You can get an amazing sense of how the guy's mind was working just by reading the multiple drafts, seeing the penciled corrections and marginalia, the drafts of the notes to the other members of the Court, the notes received, the directives to the clerks. It's fascinating and cool stuff. Chief Justice Warren's papers are also fun, but for a different reason. You get a real sense that the papers were "sanitized," that they were picked through pretty thoroughly. Yet, when you then compare files, you start to get a sense of what might be missing--the jurisprudential pentimentos if you will--which leads to the question "why is this memo/letter missing from his files?" They know these things are going to be picked through very thoroughly, and so you get a sense of how they are trying to influence how history sees them by trying to influence what becomes the raw material of history itself. This summer, I'm going to be up at Harvard doing some research for a bit and want to use the opportunity to get a look in on Felix Frankfurter's papers, if anything to compare notes with Justice Black's and Douglas' accounting of things. The rivalry in life is carried on in death.

Warren's papers are also fun for what's in there that you don't expect: people would write to him asking for recipes to use in charity cookbooks. So if you want Earl Warren's recipe for Waffles [and no, this is not a joke!] I'm your man. There's also a thick real estate file--he kept very meticulous records when they bought and then sold their house in DC, to avoid any appearances of favors.

Anyhoo, I'm going to let folks fight over getting a look at the files for Roe and head straight to the federalism files, in particular Garcia v. San Antonio MTA from 1987. There was a tantalizing memo in Thurgood Marshall's papers describing how William Brennan was going to try to influence Blackmun's vote---change his mind on the law. Brennan did, with big results, and it will be interesting to see how. Thurgood Marshall's papers are like that--they are the antithesis of the Douglas papers because there's not much in there to show the development of the decisions [that's not a backhanded remark about Marshall--it's just the way he organized his papers]. However, what is in the Marshall paper's are Brennan's memos to Marshall and Blackmun, which gives you a proxy into Brennan's mind on so many issues. Brennan's papers are open but you need the permission of his family, which is rarely given to folks who aren't Brennan alcolytes.

So it should be fun, worth some [real] articles, and who knows, perhaps more breakfast recipes from the Supreme Court.

Just the guy you want holding down the fort

A big Llamabutcher YIP YIP YIP to Robbo for the panache and flair we've been seeing around here lately. I've been holed up, finishing a conference paper that went out last night to the panel. Tomorrow morning I'm heading out to Portland, Oregon, which should be cool. If there are any readers out there with some tips on the "must do" list for Portland, I would be much obliged.

The paper turned out to be fun: I look at three sets of cases--the Cherokee Removal cases from 1830-1832, the Major Crimes Act cases from the 1880s, and the Free Exercise Clause/Peyote case from 1990--and from them try to demonstrate the growth of the independence of the US Supreme Court. All three sets of cases have the Court being challenged by either Congress or the president, with the Court losing the showdown in the first two instances. The question is what can we learn from those incidents--what was missing that's now present? No state would dream of defying the Court the way Georgia got away with in the 1830s [openly defying a stay of execution from the Supreme Court and living to tell the tale? Right!] And Congress tried to overturn the Court by passing the Religious Freedom Restoration Act, which the Court then smacked down at the first opportunity. Yet, in the 1880s, the response to congressional overturning of the Court's ruling was in essence "Silly us! We dun wrong!" It's part of a larger project I've been working on for awhile which uses American Indian nations & tribes before the Supreme Court to show the development of American federalism and citizenship, and with it the rise of the Court's independence.

Anyhoo, I've been going all guns on this as of late, hence the decline of posting from the underground bunker of Llama Central. I'll be out of the blog loop probably until later Thursday, but you're in capable hooves until then. I've got to finish packing, and make a late night call to an exterminator to set up an appointment because it sounds as if we have some mice that have somehow gotten into the walls of the newly finished basement. Just another day in paradise.

Hollywood Goes To War - Part II

Last week we linked to an interesting post over at Sgt. Stryker's about inaccuracies in Hollywood's depiction of the military. Well since then, the comments have come pouring in. Not only that, Sgt. Mom has added a follow-up post containing additional observations.

Fascinating discussion by some obviously very knowledgeable folks.

I'm Not Fat, I'm Big-Boned!

The CDC makes the earth-shattering connection among obesity, inactivity and poor health.

Well, duh.

Eat Or Be Eaten

The UK Sparrow Hawk: Killer of cute, innocent, American Robins? Or endangered victim of deranged pigeon-fanciers?

Nature's a bitch, ain't she?

Today's After 3:00 PM Half-Price Specials

A short, snappy smorgasborg of treats this afternoon, as I am otherwise engaged in (alas, non-billable) real work. Enjoy!

IRAQI CONSTITUTION WATCH

Wouldn't you know it? After all the blood, sweat and tears that went into forging this landmark document, the granola-crazed yahoos on the 9th Circuit go and shoot it down. Heh. Courtesy of the New England Republican.

CHRISTMAS IN MARCH

Boys and girls, you are in for a treat! The incomparable Victor David Hanson now has his own website! Needless to say, we're going to blogroll this baby instanter. HT to Dr. Horsefeathers for the spot.

WE GET RESULTS

As both our our loyal readers know, we had our doubts about the motivations of the "victims families" who criticized Bush's use of 9/11 images in his campaign ads. Within a day or two, the blogsphere had discovered that there was a great deal to these doubts. Well now the popular press is beginning to catch on. Glenn has a comprehensive roundup of what's been going on to date.

Strom Thurmond, Jayson Blair and....Theresa Heintz Kerry? I keep telling ya, the 'sphere is here, Baby!

FISK-O-RAMA!

Quis fiskodiet ipsos Fiskodes? Fiskem Ipse!. HT to Glenn again. Heh, indeed.

Okay, I know you're asking "Tom, why Latin?" Probably because I've seen this freakin' thing floating around for the past week or so and can't shake it.

TARANTO WATCH

James has been assimilated. We are the Blorg.

Yes!

Pop the bastard.

Sullivan Agonistes Watch

Wow. We may have to drop this business. For three solid days now, Andrew has been back to posting the sort of snappy, intelligent stuff for which we started reading his site to begin with.

Mark you, Andrew has not backed off on his defense of gay marriage or his criticism of Bush over spending. Nor should he. But it is nice to be able to read him again without being exposed to raving tantrums and threats to either sulk in his tent or go over to the other side come November.

Anniversary Salute to the Cheese-Box on a Raft

Monitor vs. Merrimac, March 9, 1862. One of the great decisive, non-decisive battles of history.

Thanks to Tainted Bill for reminding me.

(BTW, you can tell my Yankee roots by the fact that I say Merrimac instead of Virginia. I also say Bull Run and Antietam.)

NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

We hates it! We hates it!!!! First nasty wicked false mens plays tricksies with our Preciousssssss.....Now they play tricksies with, ach, ASLAN!!

It burns! It burnssss!!!! Misery!!! Nasty, filthy wicked sneaks!!

HT to, sssssss, Lawren Millses.

Moment in History Watch - Iraqi Division

Here is a copy of the new Law of Administration for the State of Iraq for the Transitional Period. (HT to Dean). Even if you don't normally follow our links, you really should take time to read this. It is history in the making.

A quick run through the document leaves me with the following impressions.

First, as Steve-O will attest, the vast majority of Americans have no clue whatsoever what a special place the United States is and how delicately preserved - from a historical perspective - the basic rights and freedoms we assume to be natural really are. By this, I mean that we take, say, freedom of expression utterly for granted. We seldom stop to ponder how many hundreds and thousands of years of struggle and bloodshed it took for the West, and the United States in particular, to arrive at the point where you or I can stand on a street corner and shout "George Bush Is A DOOFUS!" without fear of government soldiers coming to haul us away, and how alien this and other basic freedoms are still to large parts of the world. (This, btw, is why people who call the Founding Fathers hypocrites for not abolishing slavery drive me insane, but that's a different rant.)

Having said that, consider this new Iraqi Constitution as an effort to transplant a shoot of the Liberty Tree into a completely alien soil, and think about what an awesomely daring and dangerous experiment this really is. The fact that this document exists and has been ratified, is in and of itself a truly historical milestone, even if in the end Iraq does not succeed with its present attempt at democracy. It may not now, but it will some day. Like Dean, I am thrilled that the Iraqis have come this far in so short a period of time.

Having said all this, I have four general impressions after skimming the document.

The first is a chilling sense of What Came Before that haunts the language of the piece. Any time a law has to spell out provisions for the restoration of withdrawn citizenship (Article 11), basically bar an entire class of war criminals from government office (Article 31) and concern itself with repatriation of entire classes of residents (Article 58), you can readily surmise that the country has been through a very bad patch indeed.

The second is delight that the Constitution contains provision for so much personal autonomy - many of our own Constitutional rights are readily evident, including free speech and assembly (Article 16), Fourth and Fifth Amendment protections against search and seizure and self-incrimination and protection of due process (Article 15). I am amused to note that the Miranda warnings are built right in to the document. (Article 15 (E)). On the other hand, Charlton Heston would have a cow over the gun ownership restrictions incorporated in Article 17. I am also pleased to see that so much attention was paid to the separation of powers, but among three branches of the federal government (Chapters Three through Six) and between federal and local authorities (Chapter 8).

My only real criticism (and it is comparatively small) is that some of the document smacks of what I call UN-ism. Article 14, for example, speaks of the right to "security, education, health care and social security." And Article 23 seems to be infatuated with international treaties and agreements and international law as a source of basic rights. How 'bout rights naturally endowed by the Creator? And Article 30 states that it is the goal of the legislature to have women constitute no less than 1/4 of the members of the National Assembly. I'm pretty sure we don't even make that figure. This kind of pegged level of representation is hardly consistent with true democracy.

Finally, I am impressed with the obvious efforts of the drafters to deal with the issue of Islam, incorporating it as a source of law without making it dominant. (Article 7)We'll see how this goes in practice. I am a bit mystified by Article 7(B) which states, "Iraq is a country of many nationalities, and the Arab people in Iraq are an inseparable part of the Arab nation."

All in all, the document makes clear that the drafters are trying to establish a free and fair interim governing structure until permanent arrangements can be properly made. The deadline structure, including the various mechanisms for extension, seems to indicate that the drafters are more concerned with getting things right than with botching the job in order to meet a date certain. At the same time, they appear determined not to let the process stagnate.

What can I say about this other than well done and best of luck for the future? Of course, the Constitution is just a piece of paper and everything depends on the way in which it is implemented. But so far - so far, mind you - I have seen nothing to indicate that the parties involved are not genuinely committed to its success.

'Course, I'm just a Dubya Stooge. The Left knows what's really going on. Heh. (HT to Michelle at A Small Victory.

Today's Choice Cut

Much to do this morning in the Butcher's Shop, so perhaps we can backload a little bit later this afternoon.

In the meantime, tho, I give you Mr. James. Lileks.

ARRRG! or, Jeebus and Jim Rockford

Swinging in to rejoin blogworld after some, well, real work, and the first thing I do is accidently hit "delete" instead of "post" adding Yips to Rob's post on what a numb-nut Tom Shales is. GRRR.

Actually, it's not just his dumb-arse comments on "Judas" that deserve scorn and ridicule: this is a man who makes a living as a tee-vee critic who, reviewing the first episode of CSI, predicted that it would be lucky to last its first month. He also predicted the first episode of Survivor would be its last. Let's just say he's not exactly a genius and leave it at that.

Only a couple of thoughts about the "Judas" show: first, how can they top Harvey Keitel's Judas from Last Temptation? I mean, Harvey Freakin' Keitel--it's surprising they didn't have him biting Jesus' ear off or something. Second, Tim Matheson as Pontius Pilate? I mean--it's bad enough he betrays President Bartlett and shags the noble CJ, now he has to go sentence the Messiah to death? What a career downer. I guess Chris Noth wasn't available, after his star turn as Pompey in last year's disaster epic Caesar. Last, the guy playing Jeebus--was it just me, or is he a dead wringer for the guy playing Shaggy in Scooby Doo. [I've heard of "social worker Jesus" but "crime-solving perpetually stoned surfer Messiah" is a new meme][ed. Jesus as private detective? But wouldn't he be able to, you know, solve everything since he's God and all?--ed. Sure--but imagine the car chase scenes! It would put Rockford Files to shame!] But then again, I can see how playing Greg Louganis' gay lover, not to mention the role of "Skipper" in Slapshot 2 could prepare one to be the Son of the, er, Most High.

Robbo Responds: Ach! Sssss! The Precious! The PRECIOUSSSSS!!! Lost, it is, lost! Misery, Misery!

Here I was being all clever about Libs who promote this Big Lie meme and who wail about anti-Semitism when it comes to the Passion, but suddenly turn a blind eye when it comes to Palestinians murdering Israeli school children!

Sheesh.

BTW, so she doesn't think Technorati is playing mind games with her, here is Jen's piece on the Shales review that I linked to earlier. I say again: Tom Shales is a jackass.

Late Afternoon Required Reading

All you really need to know to understand the flap over the 9/11 ads. Krauthammer and Lee Harris.

Meanwhile, Steven den Beste is at the helm of the U.S.S. Clueless, carpeting the Maginot Candidate with photon torpedoes. Among the many other good reasons to do so, you should read this column because den Beste manages to sneak in a Douglas Adams quote.

Go. Read. This material will appear on the final exam.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

My Llama-senses tell me that Steve-O is in the back somewhere swinging his butcher's knife like a whirling Dervish, so stand by for one of his Llama Supremes to arrive soon. In the meantime, feel free to browse amongst the offerings out on the counter:

MAGINOT LINE PICNIC ITEMS

Interesting item from Randall at Judicious Asininity about the parade of Dems who would love to be Kerry's running mate, but unfortunately are washing their hair and getting their oil changed that day. Too bad, but maybe next time. I think this speaks volumes about what some folks on the Left really think of Kerry's chances come November.

So who will Kerry dragoon on to the ticket? Frank J has some hi-larious suggestions. John Fund has an idea too.

Speaking of Kerry's chances, check out what Hitch is telling the Brits. Yeeowch.

Finally, Drudge links to this story in which the Haughty French-Looking Massachusetts Liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam, claims that certain unnamed foreign leaders are quietly cheering him on. "I've met foreign leaders who can't go out and say this publicly, but boy they look at you and say, 'You've got to win this, you've got to beat this guy, we need a new policy,' things like that," he said.

I'm going to take a pass on the obvious Kim Jong-Il and Aristide jokes. I've got a very strong feeling that these "foreign leaders" smell like garlic and cheese, are up to their necks in Saddam's blood money and think Jerry Lewis is God's gift to Mankind. Bastards.

NEVER MIND THE VICE PRESIDENT, WHAT ABOUT THE CO-PRESIDENT?

The Wired Press has a hi-larious send up of Mrs. Ketchup that was good enough to fool Will Collier.

OLD ENOUGH TO KNOW BETTER, TOO YOUNG TO CARE

Well here is a nice intergenerational over and under for you.

First, Jim at Snooze Button Dreams posts author Charles J. Sykes rules of advice for kids. I think a copy of these rules should be stapled to the forehead of everyone under 21 years of age. I also think a copy should be stapled to the forehead of every parent of everyone under 21 years of age. Kids don't learn this stuff from their peers or from popular culture. It's up to those of you out there raising them (I include myself in your ranks) to see to it that these things are driven into the little slackers' minds.

But you older duffers shouldn't let this little public service announcement go to your heads and sit back with a smug smile on your faces, because Boomer Death Watch is up and posting again. I am occasionally asked my views on the generation that just proceeds me in this journey through life (I missed the cutoff by a month). I think "Die, Boomer Scum" sums it up nicely. Never have I seen nor heard of nor read about a group of people so self-centered, narcissistic and devoid of any sense of maturity as this lot. And to think that these people are going to be hoovering my wallet pretty much until it is empty....... (HT to the Cranky Professor, who has every reason to be.)

And speaking of arrogant Boomers and Limousine Liberals, read this piece from the Captain's Quarters about Babs Streisand trying to duck out of paying legal expenses after her ridiculous invasion of privacy suit against a man taking pictures of the beach near her house got tossed. I hope Babs gets tossed in the clink for contempt of Court over this. Perhaps she could share a cell with Martha. Heh.

AND SPEAKING OF MARTHA

Okay, only in part, because he does not linger on any one subject, but flits from place to place as the whim takes him, how about a helping of Jay Nordlinger's Impromptus?

LAST BUT NOT LEAST

Taranto has been assimilated. Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.

Cold-Miser Is Messing With Me

March continues its pattern of psychotic weather here in Your Nation's Capitol.

Yesterday afternoon witnessed the removal (for the season) of the back window from my Jeep. I have no A/C (on the principled grounds that such a thing would be preposterous in a convertible), so once it starts warming up a bit, it is best to have the back window open so that the car does not get too stuffy. Occasional cooler temps can be dealt with by a combination of coat and heater.

So what is it doing today? Flurrying, that's what.

Sullivan Agonistes Watch

Andrew comes out of his funk with a piece of Kerry-bashing that reminds us why we started reading his posts to begin with.

Given Sullivan's take on Kerry, you would think that he couldn't possibly consider voting for the man. Wonder if this will have any effect on the opinions of those folks who responded to Dr. Horsefeathers' contest to pick the date when Andrew formally declares his alliance with the Dark Side.

Tick...Tick...Tick...Tick...Tick...

We have been seeing a great many more articles like this one of late about the closing of the noose around Osama's neck. HT to Viking Pundit, who also links to this from Newsweek. Also, check out this related story from the indispensible Command Post.

Even if you discount about 75% of the information given in any one article or report, it still seems clear from the general "noise" that things are hotting up in the Hindu Kush.

I did not particularly like the fact that we decided to let Pakistan's Musharaff off for pardoning Dr. A-Bomb Khan. But even at the time I understood that decision. It seems increasingly clear that this was a bargain worth making.

Out on the limb prediction: Osama captured or confirmed dead some time in the next couple months.

Today's Online Test

Just how Libertarian are you? Well, you can find out right here.

I scored a 41, which means "Your libertarian credentials are obvious. Doubtlessly you will become more extreme as time goes on." Somehow, I don't think it's going to be in the way envisioned by the test.

I also expect Steve-O will score higher on this than I did. Right Steve?

HT to the gang in The Corner.

Blogging Announcement

A big Llama YIP! YIP! YIP! goes out today to the New England Republican, who has kindly added us to his blogroll. Go on over and check out the reports of this Conservative resistance fighter deep inside Kerry territory.

Also, HT to Rocket Jones for his kind words about us. Rocket wonders about our name. Keep wondering, my friend, and come back often, just in case we decide to explain ourselves.

YIP! YIP! YIP!

Today's Choice Cuts

I spent all day yesterday out in the yard slaving away on my first big Spring Project. Specifically, I was clearing a dilapidated old dog house and some brush out from behind my back fence in preparation for sowing some wildflower seeds this year. The brush clearing was complicated by the presence of a very aggressive native creeper of some sort that criss-crossed the entire area (about 30 by 50 feet) with long, strong roots that splayed out about 5 inches down in the soil. Some of these beasts were better than 40 feet long. The only way to get them out was to pull hard, and I frequently had to stop pulling one root when it ran under another - which I would then have to pull up to get out of the way.

By the time I was done, the area looked as if it had been attacked by a horde of Samurai Gophers.

The result was that I was so sleepy last evening, I could barely see straight, much less think. And I am in so much pain this morning - from aching fingers to sore feet - that getting up for another cup of coffee is a major effort. Still feeling kinda groggy, too, so sparkling wit is at a bit of a low ebb.

Just thought you'd like to know. Now, let's see what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning:

MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH - PEANUT GALLERY DIVISION

Pejman whacks Kevin Drum and whacks him hard over Drum's proposed Kerry Campaign theme.

Meanwhile, Kaus is working on a new Kerry Unification Theory that would 'splain the flip-flopping. He also cites to an editorial in yesterday's WaPo by Marjorie Williams, one of the Left's own, who wants no part of any attempt to justify Kerry's behavior as a good thing.

And Dr. Horsefeathers has a good snark at the expense of Maureen Dowd, who apparently has a new crush. Yeah, I remember girls like that. My technique was Symphony tickets. Worked like a charm.

AD-GATE UPDATE

Michelle at A Small Victory lifts one out of the park regarding the flap over Bush's 9/11 ads, which we have been following here. 'Damn right. Dean has some good thoughts too.

SHOOT, DAMMIT!

In general, I have been pretty unconcerned about Bush's relatively low key response to the Kerry attacks this early on. But when Barnes and Kristol seem this concerned, I start to get worried too.

WHAT MEDIA BIAS?

A great post over at OxBlog today about the Media's coverage of events leading up to today's signing of the Iraqi Interim Constitution. I think the spin is considerably more conscious than stated here, but I also think the OxBloggers are on the right track.

TODAY'S REQUIRED READING

A terrific piece by Donald Sensing discussing violence and redemption in The Passion of the Christ, Saving Private Ryan and Schindler's List. When I read it, I just said "wow."

TODAY'S BARGAIN SPECIAL

Psst! Wanna buy Canada? We got yer Great White North right here!

Good day, y'all.

Musical Interlude

I stumbled across the following short review by Jennifer Howard in today's WaPo. It is brief enough to quote in full:

Piano Notes: The World of the Pianist, by Charles Rosen (Free Press, $13). Concert pianist and music critic Charles Rosen takes the piano very seriously indeed. "In difficult technical passages...the problem is to disengage the mind and allow the body to take over on its own. This is certainly why Liszt advised his students to read a book while practicing...Only when one can play in tempo the skips in La Campanella or the octaves at the opening of the development section of the Tchaikovsky Concerto in B-flat Minor while thinking about what to order for dinner, can one pay attention to the interpretation. The situation is not essentially different even with works like the Chopin Etudes, for which the tone color is an essential part of the technical difficulty: a provisional decision must be made about the interpretation, and the hands learn to play the passage without any further interference from the taste or intelligence of the pianist. Then, at last, the interpretation can be refined." Rosen brings the same seriousness of purpose to almost every aspect of piano-playing, whether he's exploring the secrets of the instrument's sound, meditating on the role of conservatories and competitions, or pondering what happens in the recording studio.

I have one of Rosen's books, The Classical Style, in which he compares the works of Haydn, Mozart and Beethoven on a theoretical basis. Also, I've played the piano myself for nearly 35 years, sometimes in competition or concert. I wholeheartedly agree with the above passage - in a funny way, there has to be a detachment between hands and mind. The fingers have to be able to deal with matters of technique on their own, while the brain focuses its energy on matters of interpretation and delivery.

My current training in this regard is to play with my two year old sitting beside me. My fingers are on their own while I keep up a continual stream of shooshing to keep the girl from banging on the keys, flipping the pages of the sheet music or trying to shove her binky in my mouth. Oh, and I also try to pay at least nominal attention to the music. As Mrs. Thing said, "So anyway, Beethoven was really rather glad when he went deaf..."

If you are at all interested in music, read Rosen's book.

Gratuitous Domestic Blogging (TM)

Spent the day in the real world - trip to the hardware store, afternoon planting seeds for my indoor nursery and playing with the kids in the yard in between rain showers. Actually went for a run for the first time in donkey's years this evening. All I can say about that is "oog."

I am amazed by my oldest's manual dexterity. The girl is a few weeks shy of six years, but was using a pair of long tweezers to pick up very tiny seeds from a paper and drop them in very small holes in the starter trays. Hands moved quickly, accurately and expertly. I had supposed before now that the girl was destined to be a lawyer, given her argumentative temperment and quick wit, but who knows - maybe she'll turn out as a brain surgeon instead.

Just want to say a few words about Home Despot. I dunno what experiences you people might have had, but the service at their store on Baron Cameron Avenue in Reston, VA has been sliding down hill ever since they bought the place from Hechingers. These days, it's like buying hardware and supplies from the post office. I was one of two people in line at a register this morning. After the clerk had dealt with the first person, he closed his damn register right in front of me! Vanished so fast I couldn't even get a word in. Bastard.

I think the general philosphy at this place is, Hey, not happy with us? Go ahead and drive 20 miles to the nearest Lowes. Your choice, buddy.

Bastards.

Mea Culpa

It suddenly occured to me this evening that we were not carrying Ed's MonkeyWatch on our blogroll. This is especially egregious, given that Ed was about the first one to blogroll us.

Anyhoo, the fault has been corrected. If you are at all interested in monkies, apes or soon-to-be-former Governor Rowland of Connecticut, go on over there and browse.

YIP! YIP! Or as Ed would say, "WOO-HOO-HOOO!!!!"

The "Band of Brothers" Story We Won't Be Hearing on NPR

A thought popped in my head this morning when the clock radio went off, that I've been trying to get out of my head unsuccessfully. So let me get this out so I can get back to work.

The radio [my wife's] was set to NPR Morning Edition, which it usually isn't--one of the kids must have been fooling around with the dial and moved it over a notch from the station that usually comes on. Anyhoo, while lying there listening to the report about the Bush ads showing the flag draped stretcher from ground zero, interviewing families who thought it to be so insensitive, a thought crystallized: I could hear the whole report, the way they do the annoying background sound transitions, the somber tone.

It was the report they'd run on NPR if a Republican with John Kerry's service record was running for President. It would be in response to the "band of brothers" commercials Kerry runs, showing the grainy Super-8 clip of him in greens, loping along carrying an M-16, talking about VietNam, with the quick clip not of the Silver Star but of the Commendation Certificate.

And I could hear the NPR reporter tracking down the brother of the VC that Kerry killed in that firefight, when he left the boat to shoot the guy on shore. The guy who was probably wounded, after the boat had opened up on him with their forward machine gun. The wounded VC that Kerry shot--in the head? in the chest? did he try to surrender? why didn't Kerry take him prisoner?--and I could hear the tone of the report.

They would track down the "brother" of that guy, and ask him what it was like since his brother was killed, the terrible hole that left in the family. Sure, it wouldn't make a difference if the guy was related--remember, this is NPR and this is "serious" coverage. There would be that somber tone about Mr. Kerry exploiting this terrible tragedy in the life of this family in which he had killed her father, his brother, her son. Maybe even dig up a grainy picture of him as a baby, before he was killed by John Kerry. Sure, it's radio, so we'd just have to take the correspondent's word for it.

It would be just horrible, of course. You could hear the somber tone of the music at the end of the report---that haunting piano stuff they use, before transitioning into something lighter. The tone would be clear--these horrible Republicans, exploiting these tragedies for their own craven gains.

But we won't hear that story--because Kerry is a Democrat.

Should this type of story run? Hell no. But since Kerry is a Democrat, we don't have to worry about that now, do we?


PS--The Democratic press squealed quite horribly about Lincoln "exploiting the noble dead" in the campaign of 1864. When I get a chance, I'm going to dig into Lincoln's letters and speeches from the fall of 1864. I'm sure if Terry Mac had been chair of the party then he would have complained about the March to the Sea being a campaign stunt...

Nostalgia Time

These five questions were posited by someone called The Friday Five. Rather unbelievably, I can actually answer them:

What was...

1. ...your first grade teacher's name? Miss Mayshack, Coker Elementary, San Antonio, Texas. She had a big beehive hairdoo and I was madly in love with her.

2. ...your favorite Saturday morning cartoon? What else could it be? The Bugs Bunny/Road-Runner Show. I mean the big multi-hour version, complete with the "On With The Show" intro, the backstage antics and the full, pre-PC versions of the cartoons. (No excising Elmer Fudd shooting Daffy over and over again!)

3. ...the name of your very first best friend? His name was Tim Edwards. God only knows what happened to him.

4. ...your favorite breakfast cereal? Cereal? You jest! I was a two fried eggs on toast man from day one. And on special occasions, I got the eggs fried in bacon grease. Would probably kill me now, but boy was that good!

5. ...your favorite thing to do after school? Star Trek and Lost In Space reruns. Geek in the making.

Just in case you're interested.

(HT to Jen, who is also thinking of organizing a Virginia Bloggers Meet and Greet.)

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

Steve-O skitters off claiming he's "on the final push for a conference paper" and then gives himself away by protesting too much in the P.S. Heh. Funny thing is, I'm almost positive he said the same thing when this opened up a few weeks back.

Well as long as we're riding that theme, let's open up the After 3's with a little cinema today.

LLAMA BUTCHERS GO TO THE MOVIES

The gentlemen at OxBlog have a thoughtful review of the movie M*A*S*H*. I think they hit on an interesting point. No doubt some folks who saw the movie when it premiered took it for a specifically anti-Vietnam statement. But what comes through years later is the same kind of frustration over Institutionalized SNAFU found in many movies and books about military life throughout the modern age, including Catch-22, Piece of Cake and (for that matter), Goodbye to All That. This is what makes the movie worth watching, not any pointed 1970-era posturing.

Like some of these other works, M*A*S*H* deals with the absurdity of the situation through black humor. In fact, the theme of the movie can be best summed up in the words of Staff sergeant Gorman, played by Bobby Troup, whose entire contribution to the dialogue consisted of the following:

"Goddam Army..."
"Goddam Army..."
"Goddam Army jeeps..."

And speaking of Hollywood and politics, check out this article about John Rhys-Davies, who played Sallah in the Indiana Jones movies. (Yes, yes, he was also in that nasty, wicked, tricksy, false blockbuster that just scooped all those Oscars, but I refuse to dwell on that.) Aaanyway, Mr. Rhys-Davies proves to be a small, sparkling point of light standing out in the midnight gloom of Hollywood liberalism. In short, he gets it.

THE GREAT KARNAC IS NEVER WRONG

Yesterday, I mused that the victims' relatives and firemen flap-jawing about the President's use of Twin Towers footage in campaign commercials was probably motivated by more than just personal sensitivities. Well damme if I wasn't spot on. John Hawkins at Right Wing News has been doing some digging. Thought as much.

So what about the ads? Robert Prather at Insults Unpunished says Dems should stop their whining. Tacitus agrees and says let the ads roll. Spoons, on the other hand, is being difficult. I'm not really sure why talking about 9/11 is okay, but showing pictures of it is not. There's no sensationalism here - this is what happened. I'll be interested to see if he changes his opinion in light of the, um, pre-manufactured feel the outrage is beginning to give off.

Meanwhile, Glenn, as usual, has a big ol' comprehensive round-up of things, including some thoughts on how bloggers are moving back the goalposts for this kind of media attack. Heh, indeed.

UPDATE: I had meant to recommend the Wall Street Journal's take on this business as well, except that the link requires registration. Fortunately, the New England Republican has got the piece up on his site. Go read.

ALL THINGS KERRY

I'm keeping pretty quiet on the Maginot Line this afternoon, but a couple of new items have wandered into my ken:

First Fritz scoops us all by revealing the identity of Kerry's running mate.

Also, we have yet another Kerry nick-name to play with, "Waffles With French Dressing" - courtesy of C. D. Harris. I'm really going to have to start cataloguing these things.....

SULLIVAN AGONISTIS WATCH

Horsefeathers goes us one better in our on-going observation of Andrew's sulking by establishing a contest to predict the date on which Sullivan in fact goes over to the Dark Side.

HI, KETTLE? THIS IS POT

Allah is in the House with the two people in the world you would want least to get stuck between on a cross-country flight. Brrrrr......

THE MISANTHROPE IN THE CORNER

Flo King is picking on children! Whaaaa - make the bad lady stop!!! Whaaaa!!!!

BLOGGING MEET-AND-GREET

What with some technical glitches and scheduling conflicts, we are only now getting around to it, but here is this week's Carnival of the Vanities, hosted by Dodgeblogium. As always, this is a great way to meet some new talent. Go on over and browse - there are lots and lots of entries this week. Seriously, you need to keep up with this stuff. Or else.

AND THE CLOSER

Taranto has been assimilated. Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.

Today's Required Reading

Tony Blair. Go. Read. Right now.

More Later

I'm on the final push for a conference paper that I need to get sent out, so there'll be radio silence from these quarters until some time tomorrow. But there's good stuff in the pipeline: reflections of the neat stuff you find in the papers of Supreme Court justices, in honor of Harry Blackmun's papers opening up this week at the Library of Congress, plus a full electoral update on the pollsters versus the bookies, fair game in ads, and much more (what about the creeping danger to our national security of a BJ and the Bear movie?). Plus, more Sullivan agonistes, designed to lift the spirts of our favorite yet somewhat cranky lately blogger. I leave you in Robbo's more than capable hooves.


PS to Robbo: No, "final push for a conference paper" does not translate as "sneaking out for a matinee of Starsky & Hutch...

Polarized Insanity

Well, it appears now that John Ashcroft has acute gallstone pancreatitis. From what I gather, this hurts like sin and will sideline you for a while, but unless complications set in, is not particularly life-threatening.

Earlier this morning, my office was full of rumors that Ashcroft had, in fact, suffered a heart attack, that he was in critical condition, that he was dying, that he was dead.

The horrifying thing is that some people were gloating over this. Lots of chatter along the lines of, "Well I'm not saying I'm happy he's dying, but at least it gets him out of the Justice Department...." And they were smiling, even laughing!

Jesus. Mary. Joseph.

Useless But Interesting, Dept.

Here is a comparison of the world's prominent subway systems, to scale, showing their relative sizes. If this were a colony of mutant cannibal spiders, looks like DC's Metro would be somewhere in the middle of the food chain.

HT to Reen.

"Work-Person Like"

John at TexasBestGrok has today's legal writing rant. While I've never seen the particular gem about which John fumes, I know exactly what he means.

Actually, I would think even substituting "person" for "man" is not good enough for the Offensensitivity Police, because it still contains the masculine "son." I have argued before that, logically, the word should be "peroffspring" in order to be consistently PC.

Fortunately, I choose not to adhere to that code. When people get their shorts in a wad over this kind of thing, my general response is simply to tell them to grow up.

Today's Choice Cuts

Friday again. As I lay in bed this morning, I was quite convinced it was actually Saturday and very nearly rolled over and went back to sleep. Fortunately, one of the more sensible voices in my head persuaded the rest of them that this was not right.

Now that we have all that sorted out, here's what the Llama Butchers are reading this morning:

FRIDAY SERIOUSNESS

The superb Victor David Hanson reviews the Truman-like accomplishments of the United States under Bush's first watch. We are in the midst of the greatest new international undertaking in 60 years. The results of this effort could be stupendous. But if we stop halfway, all hell will literally break loose. I don't think John Kerry and the Libs understand this. If the Maginot Candidate somehow flukes a win in November, I don't think it is going too far to say that I will start to seriously fear for my own life again. This must not happen.

Lileks,who is in Full Screed Mode today, gets it too.

FRIDAY MAGINOT CANDIDATE WATCH

Pejman flags a bizarre bit of rhetoric on the part of the Haughty French-Looking Massachusetts Liberal, who by the way served in Vietnam. So far as I can understand what the hell he is talking about, Kerry now says he was misled into supporting the Iraqi war because he reckoned Bush was lying when, in fact, Bush was telling the truth.

Um.....okay. Hey, Senator! Care for a game of poker?

FRIDAY LATHER, RINSE, REPEAT

Tara Ross in The American Enterprise is today's "Bush Has Let Us Down" Conservative. My response - go back to Lileks above. HT to Volokh, who did the same thing.

FRIDAY PUNDI-FUN

The Krugman Truth Squad is taking on the World's Most Dangerous Liberal Pundit again. This time, the KTS explores Herr Doktorprofessor's taste for Orwellian language. War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Good is Bad.

FRIDAY DOMESTIC BLISS

The ever-delightful Meghan Cox Gurdon stares into the Black Hole of School Volunteerism. I know from personal experience that, once caught in its gravitational field, no force in the Universe will save you from getting pulled in.

Good day, y'all.

WESCREW Watch

The recent warm weather has brought out the crews on the Potomac and awakened memories of my own time on the water as well. Amazingly, although it's been over fifteen years since I rowed, even as I whizz by on my way up the George Washington Parkway, hundreds of yards away and ensconced in my own portable metal ecosphere, I need only a single glance to be filled again with the sights, sounds and feelings of rowing.

I can plainly hear the chug of the accompanying launch, the whoosh of the slides, the creak of the oarlocks, the feedback from the coach's bullhorn, the grunts and gasps of the oarsmen, the yelling of the cox.

I can smell the mixture of outboard exhaust and river water.

I can feel again the blisters on my palms being ground afresh, the sweat streaming into my eyes (and under my contacts) to the point of practically blinding me, the harsh rawness of lungs and throat trying to keep up with the demand for air and the complaints of my knees about to blow under the strain.

And best of all (sometimes), I can recapture that feeling you get when you realize you've conquered exhaustion, that you're going to keep going no matter what, not just because you have to but because you want to. I don't think anything else compares to the second wind of an oarsman in the middle of a race.

Aaah.

'Course, for Steve-O and myself, early spring rowing was something hideously different from these balmy cruises on the Potomac. The Connecticut River Valley in early March is, well, an inhospitable place. We used to row off floating docks owned by the City of Middletown and anchored on a long boat ramp. But the city would not put the docks in the water until most of the ice on the river farther upstream had floated down. So for the first couple weeks of spring practice, we would have to wade out into the water to launch the boats and take them out again. This involved taking off socks and shoes, rolling up tights and sweats and walking barefoot -frequently on ice and snow - and out up to our thighs in water not much above freezing itself.

On top of this, it seemed like there was always a howling northwest wind. The Connecticut River takes a big eastern bend at Middletown. The north wind gets caught in this bend and funnelled in an easterly direction by the surrounding heights. In practical terms, this meant that no matter where you went, you were going to get caught in the wind and the waves. To my half-numbed mind, it frequently felt like the wind was always blowing against us, no matter which way we were headed.

I have never been so freekin' cold in my life.

But what a lot of fun.

AAAANYway, what with the miracle of modern technology, Steve-O's and my old crew now has its own website. Here is this year's schedule. I hope in the weeks to come to keep track of the results and to provide you, our reading public, with personal anecdotes of my own time in the lists, as well as useful and amusing snarks about the Coasties, Trin-Face and other orc-like enemies of Wesleyan Crew.

In the meantime, Akalaka-ching!

And The Horse You Rode In On!

Glenn has the post-mortem on Ted Rall's encounter with the blogsphere.

Yikes!

James Joyner lays down the law regarding blogrolling. (I am very happy to say that we are on James' blogroll already!) I think his analysis is correct: I've seen enough of the blogshere to know that two-bit junk and at-ti-TUDE don't stand a chance in the 'sphere.

It's the wonder of nature, Baby!

Full Speed Ahead

Insta-Glenn gets it regarding the "controversial" commecials highlighting 9/11.

God Damn AOL

I have noticed recently that my AOL Internet access (from home) has developed a peculiar tic - Once it decides it cannot access a particular site, it also decides it cannot access any other site. It's as if one bad link serves as a poison pill for any subsequent linkage. Only thing to do is to shut down completely and then start the access process all over. With dial up, you can imagine what a pain in the backside this is.

Christ, I hate that.

Anyway - we are considering going with Comcast's cable-modem broadband. (Verizon DSL does not seem to reach out as far as us.) Does anyone have any useful advice/comments/tidbits that would inform our decision? Or else advice regarding alternatives such as satellite broadband?

Comments would be welcome.

Thankee.

No Sh*t, Sherlock!

I'd have thought that just about anybody over the age of about 16 would have known this already! Then again, perhaps the pharma company scientists were such utter dorks that they thought concocting this project would be a clever way to score with study volunteers.

Two things occur to me.

First, the old saying was that women trade sex for love and men trade love for sex. But for years this has been treated as heresy, punishable by castration, by hard-core feminists. Could it be that thousands of years of empirical observation, now backed up by some scientific quantification, could actually trump socio-political dogma? Naaaaaa.

Second, where does one sign up to be in a study pool like this?

HT to Dean.

Today's After 3:00 PM Half Price Specials

CARNIVAL OF THE BLORG - WEEK 2

Once again, it's time to roam the blogrolls, seizing upon the best and the brightest of previously un-encountered sites. Today's host-roller is Venomous Kate. Let's have a look at who's been assimilated today, shall we?

POSTS THAT APPEAL TO OUR POLITICAL SIDE

Dr. DNA of the Voodoo Lounge has a serious vocabulary lesson for the lexiconographically-challenged Ba'athist Broadcasting Corporation.

Justin Adams of Curmudgeonry has taken up the Sullivan Agonistis Watch.

Meanwhile, Fritz of On The Fritz has yer Kerry Cabinet line up right here. My favorite - Carrot Top for Secretary of State.

On a more serious note, Dave J, the Left Coast Conservative harshes hard on the NY Firefighter who mouthed off about Bush's 9/11 campaign ad. (I posted on that myself below.)

NB - At lunch today with six libs ranging from moderate to crack-pot, much of the conversation swirled around the 9/11 ads. Also Kerry campaign strategy. Finally, one of them looked at me and said, "Oh, sorry. Didn't mean to go on about this so much in front of you." I smiled thinly and replied,"Ya gotta dream, Baby!"

POSTS THAT APPEAL TO OUR APPRECIATION OF THE DIFFERENCES BETWEEN GOOD, BAD AND UGLY

Rocket Jones brings us the "Ig Nobles," which I had heard of before but forgot about. Why can't I get in on one of these projects? (HT to John at TexasBestGrok for the recommendation.)

Jim at Snooze Button Dreams has remarks on one of my particular pet peeves - the inanity of corporate inspirational messages. TWITCH! Uh, oh....it's starting again...TWITCH! TWITCH!

Meanwhile, Anna of Primal Purge takes us on a tour of the attractions at MichaelLand (and I ain't talkin' Dukakis, here). Eeew.

POSTS THAT APPRECIATE COFFEE IS A FOOD GROUP

Sam Moore of the Brier Patch has the right idea about coffee. As much as I hate the electric grinder too, the alternatives (canned? freeze-dried?) are too appalling to contemplate.

POSTS THAT REMIND US OF DAVE BARRY

The Tuning Spork (!) of Blather Review has a great post on squirrels in the attic. What does that produce? "The sound of clawed, maniacal rats with blowdryers on acid succumbing to spring fever (it finally got above 50 degrees today!) echoing through the house."

POSTS THAT BRING US TRANQUILITY

MaineLife is a pleasant respite in the midst of all this bloggy insanity. Mom and Dad will especially like it. Yes, we're "from away" too.

POSTS THAT JUST PLAIN TICKLE OUR FANCY

A Little More To The Right has great photos of a seriously elevated tee.

POSTS THAT RECIEVE NO RESPITE FROM US, EVEN IF THEY AREN'T NEW

Taranto has been assimilated. Resistance is futile. We are the Blorg.