If It's Tuesday, It Must Be Quick Notes
-- I never much cared for Clinton Derangement Syndrome and I have no time--no time at all--for conservatives, however sound, who deny that such a thing existed or exists. It did and it does. For me, when someone begins talking in hushed tones about the suicide of Vince Foster, the covering habits of Arkansas State Troopers or (worse) about who was in that Starbucks in D.C. where everyone got killed, I have the same reaction when someone begins talking about "the Jews." It's paranoia stuff, conspiracy theory craziness, and it's not the product of a serious mind.
And, to be honest, I didn't think that Clinton was a bad President on the merits of many of his decisions. I think he did a reasonably good job with his budget priorities and I think the Welfare Reform Act was a remarkable God-send that only a Democratic President could have pulled off. On many mundane topics of government, President Clinton came across as more-or-less a moderately conservative Southerner.
That said, the current turmoil over the President's appearance on Fox News Sunday did illustrate what I think is a long-standing weakness of the Democratic Party and their standard bearers: they're not used to being treated like dirt.
Conservatives are, and it shows. When a conservative Republican is on a show like Hardball or talking with a reporter from the New York Times, he knows he is in for it, that he isn't going to get a fair deal and that everything he says will be twisted and tortured and given the most negative spin possible. Accordingly, conservatives have learned to roll with such punches and, critically, how to get their message across in such an environment.
Liberals have not, to date, had to deal with any of this on such a large scale. One of the reasons Fox News drives liberals absolutely nuts is because of the simple *affront* of it all. No one talks like that to liberals, not the press and certainly not academics.
Clinton had some good points (and some bad ones) but the over-the-top, shrill denunciations of Wallace, Murdoch and Fox News were the product of an outraged temper of a man not used to being treated roughly. This sort of delicacy keeps liberal pols out of shape in the same way that a football player never knocked around in practice is not ready for the big game.
The media is changing, and liberals should wise up and realize their home field advantage days are long over. The sooner they internalize that lesson, the better off we'll all be.
-- During the entire Seahawks game on Sunday and especially when they were up 42-3, I was wondering "Why is Holmgren continuing to send Alexander out there when Alexander is clearly hurt?"
I just couldn't figure it out. And then, this morning, I learn from the Oregonian's sports page that Alexander cracked a bone in his foot and is out for at least two weeks. What the hell is going on here? I know Alexander is a tough guy and is proud of being the starter, but it's the coach's job to sit a player down when he's hurt for the better good of the team (and the player's own good). It was painful to watch and what I can't figure out is why apparently I'm the only guy who thinks this.
-- Good news for the Seahawks: Maurice Morris can *run* and on almost any other NFL team he would be a starter.
-- My good friend Mark, the Outdoors Pro, swung by my place Friday night and we went out for a much needed night on the town. Much Bushmills and Tanqueray was spilled, much steak was eaten and we did what any two guys our age would do: talked about old girlfriends, flames and torrid love affairs. A good time was had by all, though I must say I think we spooked our waiter a bit when he accidentally overheard some of the tales.
That night, Mark directed me to a YouTube find: an actual video of the Bangles before they began their descent into top-40-dom. You see, kids, once upon a time there was a little music movement near the end of the Los Angeles punk era called the "paisley underground" and it included bands you've never heard of like Green on Red, Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock (Salvation Army) and, yes, the Bangles. This movement was a little bit 60's L.A. pop (Love) and a little bit 60's British mod (Yardbirds) and it was a lot of fun.
Anyway, the video captures the Bangles doing what was then one of their standards. Take a look and you'll see how much the band changed (thanks Prince!). Also note that this version is pre-Michael Steele; the very cute Annette Zilinkas was on bass then.
But here is the thing: as I watched the video I felt the stirrings of memory. After Mark had left I watched it again and then it hit me: it seems so familiar to me because I was there when the video was shot! Yes, it all came back to me: my friend who worked for IRS Records then wanted to get a live crowd shot for the "club" scene, so we all went to some small club and watched the Bangles lip-synch the piece (very, very loudly, as Debbie still needed to actually hit her drums) over and over again. Strange how memory works, isn't it? I obviously remember now that I was there that day, but where did that memory go and how did I retreive it? What a mystery!
[Video Will be Linked Here When a Problem Gets Fixed!][Fixed it for you--Mark]
-- Did you see Heroes on NBC last night? I sat down to watch it expecting to hate it, given that I haven't liked anything science fiction or fantasy that TV has done since the Twilight Zone. By the first 15 minutes, I was hooked.
The characters are interesting and are presented as real people. From the Indian professor to the Japanese salaryman to the Texas cheerleader, these people seemed like actual people to me. Their reaction to their developing "powers" is more realistic than one usually sees in these types of stories. And the two plot twists at the end of the pilot episode sent shivers down my spine.
If they show's creators continue to approach the issue with delicacy and respect and resist the urge to geek it all out, they may have at least a niche hit on their hands here. In the meantime, I can't wait to get my questions answered next week.
Who's the woman in the mirror? What does she do? How does she do it? Is she separate from her twin or the same being? What happened to the loan shark's thugs?
Hiro can bend time and space, but how much and how far and to what effect?
What does the brother's psychic link do and how does it work? What does an Alpha-Male running for Congress do after he finds himself floating in an alley?
Who is the man with the glasses? Does he know his daughter can't be hurt? Who is he working for?
Did you see it? What did you think?
-- This morning at my MAX station I watched as two of our local outstanding young men shuffled into the station. The coming of even slightly cool Fall weather has allowed the Thug population to breakout the oversized coats and hooded sweatshirts that they think makes them look menacing.
(Hey, I'm not complaining. As far as fashion goes, that's as darn near as you're ever going to get to get people to voluntarily wear signs around their necks that read "loser, please stand clear.")
They shuffled around looking menacing, smoking a lot and ended up sitting on the tracks while waiting. (Look at us! We're not scared of no *train*. We break the rules! Do the Dew!)
They eventually got bored with the wait and began shuffling around again. One of them began walking towards me. He gets near me and says: "Excuse me, sir, but you could spare a dollar for train fare?"
I could not spare it.
-- I've been re-visiting a lot of Robert Heinlein lately and have come across some interesting stuff by him that I've never read before. Then I can across this, written in 1959:
"No Department of Defense has ever won a war."
It's now been 46 years since Heinlein wrote that line.
-- I also did not know this: apparently the reference to Somalis as "skinnies" among US Army soldiers during the whole humanitarian operation derives from Starship Troopers. Speaking of which, man, what a movie that would make if it was ever done right.
-- I'm currently reading a biography of Mussolini and it really strikes me how little I actually know about Italian fascism and its particular ideology. I've always assumed and guessed that Italy was just National Socialism's junior partner-in-crime and in a sense that it true, but there is a completely different history here that is just fascinating.
Again and again, though, the number one thing that really leaps off the page at me in any close examination of the West in the pre-World War II era is just how invisible the United States was in the grand debates of those times. None of the grand schemes of Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini involved the U.S. in any way other than mere sidenotes.
Yet, any disinterested economist or statistician worth his weight could only have concluded by looking at the raw data of production and economic output that the U.S. was the colossus of the West. As soon as the U.S. joined the war, it was all over but the shouting. Even without the nuclear bomb, the amount of men and materiel the U.S. could produce would have simply overwhelmed the enemy.
It really hammers home to me how blind ideologues can be. For Hitler, the Jews and Bolshevism were the enemy and nothing else really mattered. For Mussolini, his domestic enemies and the glory of Italy was what mattered. For Stalin, the power of the CPSU was the measuring stick. The agent of their actual undoing sat there, largely unnoticed.
-- Which brings me to something I've wanted to say for a long time, but keep forgetting.
I grew up in southeast Los Angeles County during an era of runaway crime. The 10 o'clock news on KTLA invariably began with a rundown of that day's homicides, which typically reached 6 or 7 killings considered newsworthy. While I was in a very safe bedroom community, my travels took me to other parts of the city.
I saw the guys responsible. They walked with a swagger. They ruled the town. Even the city governments began to divide the city up officially into the gangs' stated territory. Even the police force began to be organized in that fashion: these particular cops were for these particular gangs. Police walked around with stupid "gang enforcement" jackets, signaling to a bunch of rotten little crooks that they are what sets the agenda.
It's hard to believe now, but city officials actually participated in "peace" talks. This or that gang sent representatives to discuss territory, to divide up the city.
The press and the academic community said the cause was hopeless. The gangs and the criminals ruled the city and, they said, until the underlying conditions giving rise to their grievances were addressed by massive government intervention, the problem was only going to get worse. We needed to understand what would drive a young man to think of life in a gang and an early death preferable.
More police didn't solve the problem, nor did more courtrooms. More prisons didn't solve the problem. More and more people died and more areas of our city became no-go zones.
This was how it was. If you wanted peace you had to deliver "justice," which was defined as meaning "what left-leaning public officials and intellectuals thought best." Otherwise, we'd never know peace.
Then the Rodney King thing happened and a jury let the cops off the hook and the city exploded. The police retreated, the gangs strutted through a city conquered.
Then I saw the most amazing thing happen.
I can't put my finger on what exactly it was that tipped the scales. Maybe it was Reginald Denny. Maybe it was the sight of Chief Gates announcing that the LAPD had "withdrawn" from certain districts in the city. Maybe it was the images of hoards of tattooed thugs running around with cases of Coca-Cola and color TVs. Maybe it was all of these or none.
All I know is that I was there and I felt it happen. The collective will of the city stood up and said: enough.
At the end of the day, the ease in which the problem was solved was astounding, even revolutionary, to behold. It did not take an enormous operation, nor some new massive government program to address grievances. Instead, society just flexed the smallest of its sinews and rediscovered its power.
No. At the end of the day the people of the city just decided enough was enough and it was over.
At first, the strutting gangsters couldn't believe it. In one memorable scene, broadcast live on KTLA, a national guard unit at a major intersection closed off the surrounding streets. Residents were told that anything passing the line from the side-streets to the main avenues would be shot.
All though the evening, the masses milled behind the imaginary line. Jeering, laughing, drinking, throwing bottles. Then, three of them got in a car and drove through the crowd, to the whooping delight of the shirt-less young men.
As they pulled onto the main street, a short burst of machine gun fire shredded the car. Most of the crowd fled at that point, of course, but a few of the young men stopped fleeing after a few steps and turned around to look. And I remember the news camera pulling in and focusing on their faces.
I could read the expressions there.
They were: that did not just happen. We rule here. We do what we want. These police clowns are just playing games, no one is serious. We have the fist, the knife, the gun. We put people down, not the other way around.
It was: disbelief. The world is not working as it should. Something is seriously wrong.
To the gangs, the milling middle class Americans around them were invisible, powerless, divided, cowardly, nothing more than prey. And so they were.
Until they were not.
And, to be honest, I didn't think that Clinton was a bad President on the merits of many of his decisions. I think he did a reasonably good job with his budget priorities and I think the Welfare Reform Act was a remarkable God-send that only a Democratic President could have pulled off. On many mundane topics of government, President Clinton came across as more-or-less a moderately conservative Southerner.
That said, the current turmoil over the President's appearance on Fox News Sunday did illustrate what I think is a long-standing weakness of the Democratic Party and their standard bearers: they're not used to being treated like dirt.
Conservatives are, and it shows. When a conservative Republican is on a show like Hardball or talking with a reporter from the New York Times, he knows he is in for it, that he isn't going to get a fair deal and that everything he says will be twisted and tortured and given the most negative spin possible. Accordingly, conservatives have learned to roll with such punches and, critically, how to get their message across in such an environment.
Liberals have not, to date, had to deal with any of this on such a large scale. One of the reasons Fox News drives liberals absolutely nuts is because of the simple *affront* of it all. No one talks like that to liberals, not the press and certainly not academics.
Clinton had some good points (and some bad ones) but the over-the-top, shrill denunciations of Wallace, Murdoch and Fox News were the product of an outraged temper of a man not used to being treated roughly. This sort of delicacy keeps liberal pols out of shape in the same way that a football player never knocked around in practice is not ready for the big game.
The media is changing, and liberals should wise up and realize their home field advantage days are long over. The sooner they internalize that lesson, the better off we'll all be.
-- During the entire Seahawks game on Sunday and especially when they were up 42-3, I was wondering "Why is Holmgren continuing to send Alexander out there when Alexander is clearly hurt?"
I just couldn't figure it out. And then, this morning, I learn from the Oregonian's sports page that Alexander cracked a bone in his foot and is out for at least two weeks. What the hell is going on here? I know Alexander is a tough guy and is proud of being the starter, but it's the coach's job to sit a player down when he's hurt for the better good of the team (and the player's own good). It was painful to watch and what I can't figure out is why apparently I'm the only guy who thinks this.
-- Good news for the Seahawks: Maurice Morris can *run* and on almost any other NFL team he would be a starter.
-- My good friend Mark, the Outdoors Pro, swung by my place Friday night and we went out for a much needed night on the town. Much Bushmills and Tanqueray was spilled, much steak was eaten and we did what any two guys our age would do: talked about old girlfriends, flames and torrid love affairs. A good time was had by all, though I must say I think we spooked our waiter a bit when he accidentally overheard some of the tales.
That night, Mark directed me to a YouTube find: an actual video of the Bangles before they began their descent into top-40-dom. You see, kids, once upon a time there was a little music movement near the end of the Los Angeles punk era called the "paisley underground" and it included bands you've never heard of like Green on Red, Dream Syndicate, The Three O'Clock (Salvation Army) and, yes, the Bangles. This movement was a little bit 60's L.A. pop (Love) and a little bit 60's British mod (Yardbirds) and it was a lot of fun.
Anyway, the video captures the Bangles doing what was then one of their standards. Take a look and you'll see how much the band changed (thanks Prince!). Also note that this version is pre-Michael Steele; the very cute Annette Zilinkas was on bass then.
But here is the thing: as I watched the video I felt the stirrings of memory. After Mark had left I watched it again and then it hit me: it seems so familiar to me because I was there when the video was shot! Yes, it all came back to me: my friend who worked for IRS Records then wanted to get a live crowd shot for the "club" scene, so we all went to some small club and watched the Bangles lip-synch the piece (very, very loudly, as Debbie still needed to actually hit her drums) over and over again. Strange how memory works, isn't it? I obviously remember now that I was there that day, but where did that memory go and how did I retreive it? What a mystery!
[Video Will be Linked Here When a Problem Gets Fixed!][Fixed it for you--Mark]
-- Did you see Heroes on NBC last night? I sat down to watch it expecting to hate it, given that I haven't liked anything science fiction or fantasy that TV has done since the Twilight Zone. By the first 15 minutes, I was hooked.
The characters are interesting and are presented as real people. From the Indian professor to the Japanese salaryman to the Texas cheerleader, these people seemed like actual people to me. Their reaction to their developing "powers" is more realistic than one usually sees in these types of stories. And the two plot twists at the end of the pilot episode sent shivers down my spine.
If they show's creators continue to approach the issue with delicacy and respect and resist the urge to geek it all out, they may have at least a niche hit on their hands here. In the meantime, I can't wait to get my questions answered next week.
Who's the woman in the mirror? What does she do? How does she do it? Is she separate from her twin or the same being? What happened to the loan shark's thugs?
Hiro can bend time and space, but how much and how far and to what effect?
What does the brother's psychic link do and how does it work? What does an Alpha-Male running for Congress do after he finds himself floating in an alley?
Who is the man with the glasses? Does he know his daughter can't be hurt? Who is he working for?
Did you see it? What did you think?
-- This morning at my MAX station I watched as two of our local outstanding young men shuffled into the station. The coming of even slightly cool Fall weather has allowed the Thug population to breakout the oversized coats and hooded sweatshirts that they think makes them look menacing.
(Hey, I'm not complaining. As far as fashion goes, that's as darn near as you're ever going to get to get people to voluntarily wear signs around their necks that read "loser, please stand clear.")
They shuffled around looking menacing, smoking a lot and ended up sitting on the tracks while waiting. (Look at us! We're not scared of no *train*. We break the rules! Do the Dew!)
They eventually got bored with the wait and began shuffling around again. One of them began walking towards me. He gets near me and says: "Excuse me, sir, but you could spare a dollar for train fare?"
I could not spare it.
-- I've been re-visiting a lot of Robert Heinlein lately and have come across some interesting stuff by him that I've never read before. Then I can across this, written in 1959:
"No Department of Defense has ever won a war."
It's now been 46 years since Heinlein wrote that line.
-- I also did not know this: apparently the reference to Somalis as "skinnies" among US Army soldiers during the whole humanitarian operation derives from Starship Troopers. Speaking of which, man, what a movie that would make if it was ever done right.
-- I'm currently reading a biography of Mussolini and it really strikes me how little I actually know about Italian fascism and its particular ideology. I've always assumed and guessed that Italy was just National Socialism's junior partner-in-crime and in a sense that it true, but there is a completely different history here that is just fascinating.
Again and again, though, the number one thing that really leaps off the page at me in any close examination of the West in the pre-World War II era is just how invisible the United States was in the grand debates of those times. None of the grand schemes of Stalin, Hitler or Mussolini involved the U.S. in any way other than mere sidenotes.
Yet, any disinterested economist or statistician worth his weight could only have concluded by looking at the raw data of production and economic output that the U.S. was the colossus of the West. As soon as the U.S. joined the war, it was all over but the shouting. Even without the nuclear bomb, the amount of men and materiel the U.S. could produce would have simply overwhelmed the enemy.
It really hammers home to me how blind ideologues can be. For Hitler, the Jews and Bolshevism were the enemy and nothing else really mattered. For Mussolini, his domestic enemies and the glory of Italy was what mattered. For Stalin, the power of the CPSU was the measuring stick. The agent of their actual undoing sat there, largely unnoticed.
-- Which brings me to something I've wanted to say for a long time, but keep forgetting.
I grew up in southeast Los Angeles County during an era of runaway crime. The 10 o'clock news on KTLA invariably began with a rundown of that day's homicides, which typically reached 6 or 7 killings considered newsworthy. While I was in a very safe bedroom community, my travels took me to other parts of the city.
I saw the guys responsible. They walked with a swagger. They ruled the town. Even the city governments began to divide the city up officially into the gangs' stated territory. Even the police force began to be organized in that fashion: these particular cops were for these particular gangs. Police walked around with stupid "gang enforcement" jackets, signaling to a bunch of rotten little crooks that they are what sets the agenda.
It's hard to believe now, but city officials actually participated in "peace" talks. This or that gang sent representatives to discuss territory, to divide up the city.
The press and the academic community said the cause was hopeless. The gangs and the criminals ruled the city and, they said, until the underlying conditions giving rise to their grievances were addressed by massive government intervention, the problem was only going to get worse. We needed to understand what would drive a young man to think of life in a gang and an early death preferable.
More police didn't solve the problem, nor did more courtrooms. More prisons didn't solve the problem. More and more people died and more areas of our city became no-go zones.
This was how it was. If you wanted peace you had to deliver "justice," which was defined as meaning "what left-leaning public officials and intellectuals thought best." Otherwise, we'd never know peace.
Then the Rodney King thing happened and a jury let the cops off the hook and the city exploded. The police retreated, the gangs strutted through a city conquered.
Then I saw the most amazing thing happen.
I can't put my finger on what exactly it was that tipped the scales. Maybe it was Reginald Denny. Maybe it was the sight of Chief Gates announcing that the LAPD had "withdrawn" from certain districts in the city. Maybe it was the images of hoards of tattooed thugs running around with cases of Coca-Cola and color TVs. Maybe it was all of these or none.
All I know is that I was there and I felt it happen. The collective will of the city stood up and said: enough.
At the end of the day, the ease in which the problem was solved was astounding, even revolutionary, to behold. It did not take an enormous operation, nor some new massive government program to address grievances. Instead, society just flexed the smallest of its sinews and rediscovered its power.
No. At the end of the day the people of the city just decided enough was enough and it was over.
At first, the strutting gangsters couldn't believe it. In one memorable scene, broadcast live on KTLA, a national guard unit at a major intersection closed off the surrounding streets. Residents were told that anything passing the line from the side-streets to the main avenues would be shot.
All though the evening, the masses milled behind the imaginary line. Jeering, laughing, drinking, throwing bottles. Then, three of them got in a car and drove through the crowd, to the whooping delight of the shirt-less young men.
As they pulled onto the main street, a short burst of machine gun fire shredded the car. Most of the crowd fled at that point, of course, but a few of the young men stopped fleeing after a few steps and turned around to look. And I remember the news camera pulling in and focusing on their faces.
I could read the expressions there.
They were: that did not just happen. We rule here. We do what we want. These police clowns are just playing games, no one is serious. We have the fist, the knife, the gun. We put people down, not the other way around.
It was: disbelief. The world is not working as it should. Something is seriously wrong.
To the gangs, the milling middle class Americans around them were invisible, powerless, divided, cowardly, nothing more than prey. And so they were.
Until they were not.
