Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in Dirk's LiveJournal:

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Thursday, January 25th, 2007
10:25 am	Nonbinding resolutions and testicular truancy So it looks like the only thing the Democrats are going to do about the Iraq escalation is pass a nonbinding "Sense of the Senate" resolution condemning it. I'm not sure why I expected something different from the Democratic Party than I have been getting for the last 20 years or so, but I did. I really thought that after the November landslide, the new Senate and House leadership might creep back to their Capitol offices, blow the dust off the boxes containing their generative organs, and decide to do what the people overwhelmingly put them in power to do, which is bring the Bush administration to heel. Not only did they not do that, they can't even muster the gumption to put a legislative check on the escalation of this overwhelmingly unpopular war. Would someone like to tell me the difference between the following two scenarios: 1. A Republican Senate signs off on increased funding for the escalation. 2. A Democratic Senate signs off on increased funding for the escalation, but then passes a nonbinding resolution saying they don't like it. That's right -- no difference at all. No difference to the thousands of American soldiers who are in harm's way. No difference to the enormous flow of money we are pouring into this sinkhole. No difference to the Iraqi civilians who are caught in a crossfire and overwhelmingly want us out. The only difference is that a bunch of gutless American politicians will be able to say "hey, we told him it was a bad idea" when 2008 rolls around. You know what the absolute worst part is? It won't even work. The voters know spineless political calculation when they see it. They'd rather vote for someone they disagree with on some issues, but who is willing to take political risks, than for a candidate who tries to be all things to all people. (And they're probably right to feel that way.) Why haven't the Democrats figured this out after more than a decade of being the minority party? Is there lead in the water supply in Washington? Maybe the Republicans got the word and only drink bottled water when they're in town. Somebody should check into it. If the Senate chamber was on fire, all the doors were locked, and I was standing outside with the only key, I would yell through the door that I was definitely contemplating letting them out, all options were being weighed, and I expected my advisory committee to return a nonbinding resolution any minute now, thank you for your patience. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, January 24th, 2007
8:47 am	My confident predictions for 2008 ... are both in the form of a negative: Neither current "frontrunner" will win their party's nomination for President. I already discussed why Hillary has no chance in the primary (three reasons: Iraq, Iraq, and Iraq), and McCain has now shot down his chances with his blatantly cynical posturing on the escalation. The guy has been saying all along how the problem is that "we need more troops", and now that his bluff is being called, he is frantically looking around for another suggestion-that-won't-be-followed-in-a-million-years to use as an "I told ya so" distancing tactic from Bush's policies. Apparently that means amping up his criticism of the administration, especially the ever-unpopular Rumsfeld and Cheney. Conservative primary voters, who are not stupid, are less than amused, even unlimbering the heavy artillery normally reserved for use against Democrats -- an accusation of "emboldening the enemy". Ouch. So with the two Beltway-anointed contenders both sunk before they've fairly begun, who will be appearing on our Presidential ballots twenty-one months from now? I have no idea. I'd go further and say that anyone who picks a winner this far out is fooling themselves. It's like trying to pick who will win the Super Bowl in 2009. There's no reason not to have a favorite, though, and my favorite right now (on the Dem side) is New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson. He's not the most charismatic guy in the world, but he was a very well-respected Congressman for fourteen years, and he has been an extremely effective governor. He "gets it" when it comes to Iraq and pulls no rhetorical punches ("we're not helping and we need to get out"), he believes in taking action to mitigate global warming (he has extensive environmental bona fides from his stint as Secretary of Energy under Clinton), and he's willing to think outside the box on health care, which very few politicians on either side of the aisle are inclined to do. He is certainly "electable": he was just reelected with 69% of the vote, including 40% of the Republican vote(!), in his state, and he has tremendous appeal to voters in the all-important Mountain West, who have not yet seen one of their own in the White House. He is also Hispanic, which is a positive electoral boon these days. Does he have a chance against Obamania? I don't know, but I'm pulling for Bill. Obama says all the right things, but he is inexperienced, and something about him just rubs me the wrong way -- an overly sincere, car-salesman vibe. Richardson is a workhorse, not a show horse. He has negotiated the release of American prisoners from Saddam's Iraq, and he just brokered a peace deal in the Sudan (which unfortunately fell apart rather quickly, but you can't win 'em all). He's a fair bit to my right on social issues -- who isn't? -- but least he's pro-choice and supports civil unions for gays, which is certainly the most we'll see from a major-party candidate. Of course, the sheepdog-molestation pictures will probably be hitting the Web any minute, now that I've written this. Sorry if I jinxed you, Bill. (Comment on this)
Sunday, January 21st, 2007
7:59 am	Tom Friedman: Useless Shite FRIEDMAN: Look, I understand people who opposed the war. Some opposed it for military reasons, because they’re against war, some opposed it because they hate George Bush, some opposed it because they didn’t believe Arabs are capable of democracy. I wasn’t in that group. I really believed that finding a different kind of politics in collaboration with people in that region was a really important project. ASHBROOK: And do you really believe – FRIEDMAN: I’m really sorry. Next time — Next time Ishwar [caller], I promise, I really promise, I’ll be a better liberal. I’ll not in any way support any effort to bring democracy to a country ruled by an oil-backed tyranny. I promise I will never do that again. I promise I’ll be a better liberal. I will view the prospect of Arabs forging a democracy as utterly impossible. They’re incapable of democracy. I agree with you on that now. Ooh, I love hearing Super Serious Beltway Pundits get chainsaw-fucked by actual human beings. That's the best one since Jon Stewart delivered the coup de grace to Tucker Carlson and Paul Begala on "Crossfire". Fantasy courtroom a la Cintra Wilson: I hereby sentence the defendant, Thomas Friedman, to be sealed inside an Iraq-shaped pinata, which shall then be suspended from the ceiling of the Capital Dome. Defendant is to remain pinata'd (with an air hole -- we aren't savages here) until such time as President George Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney, and former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, each blindfolded and armed with a stick, are able to extricate him. May God have mercy on his soul. (Comment on this)
Saturday, December 23rd, 2006
6:37 pm	Propaganda It's a common misconception that propaganda is designed to make people believe something that the propagandizer wants them to believe. In fact, propaganda with that intent is almost entirely useless. Those of us who lived through the 80's will remember what is perhaps the best-ever example of failed propaganda: the advertising campaign for New Coke. Remember all those commercials featuring a messianic, billboard-sized Max Headroom assuring crowds of the faithful that New Coke was the greatest innovation since sliced bread? Despite all those millions of ad dollars, New Coke made Coca-Cola lose so much market share that they were forced to abort it entirely, and bring back Old Coke under the reassuring moniker "Coca-Cola Classic". (Coke cans still say this today, and if you ever wondered why, well, now you know.) Propaganda is indeed a powerful means of control, but it's not a railroad switch that can divert people's tastes or beliefs in an arbitrary direction. It's more of a rheostat that can amp up, or damp down, existing trends and attitudes. To put it another way, propaganda only works if there is already something for it to work with. The Nazis certainly whipped up hatred of Jews through skillful use of propaganda, but they didn't create the hatred itself -- it had existed in Christendom since medieval times. The Nazis simply brought it into the socially acceptable mainstream. Therefore, you can tell a lot about people's hidden hatreds and insecurities by noticing what propaganda works on them. Lee Atwater was universally reviled among Democrats for the Willie Horton ad campaign that helped sink Michael Dukakis in 1988; but the ads would have had no effect at all, had a strong undercurrent of racism not already existed among white suburban voters. And today, the pronouncements of a lunatic like Ayman al-Zawahri are only accepted uncritically by those with a strong predilection to do so -- including, apparently, just about everyone on the American right. If you read right-wing blogs, as I occasionally do (or, as in this case, when I am directed to them by someone else), you will find an astonishing willingness to take terrorists' propaganda at face value. When al-Zawahri proclaims that "Democrats aren't the ones who won the midterm elections, nor are the Republicans the ones who lost. Rather, the Mujahideen -- the Muslim Ummah's vanguard in Afghanistan and Iraq -- are the ones who won...", conservatives immediately seize it as confirmation of their deeply-held -- though rarely spoken in polite conversation -- belief that liberals despise America, and share the same goals as her direst enemies. What I would like to ask my conservative brethren is this: have you really thought this opinion through? Does it make sense to believe, as the Nazis believed in the 1930s, that a large and productive segment of your population is secretly dedicated to the destruction of your society? Would there be any rational reason at all for American liberals to root for an Islamist takeover of the West? (Some conservatives have recognized this particular brick wall of cognitive dissonance, but have gotten round it by saying that liberals simply "don't realize" what the rule of Islamic law would mean; apparently, therefore, we are not only treasonous but stupid on a scale that defies human understanding. It's a wonder we can even tie our shoes.) Or is it, perhaps, more likely that people like al-Zawahri might have an agenda when they make statements like this? An agenda that might involve sowing hatred and dissension among their sworn enemies, and impeding those enemies' ability to have a clear-headed discussion of how to beat them? I know this is a stretch, but is it just possible that these propagandizers might not actually care who wins our elections if they can subvert our political discourse so badly that it doesn't matter? I know that answering these questions honestly means confronting deeply-held biases, and believe me, I sympathize -- we all have them. For the sake of our country, though, I urge you to confront them. I urge you to read the writings of people like Glenn Greenwald while keeping your mind open to the possibility that he loves America just as much as you do. I am not asking you to agree with him. Robust political disagreement is essential to democracy. But please, please consider the fact that there is nothing more poisonous and destructive than a paranoid distrust of people who are, in the final analysis, on your side. (Comment on this)
Monday, December 18th, 2006
9:55 pm	One of these men is kidding "That was the ultimate American dream. During that Persian Gulf War, I was sitting in my living room, naked, with a can of Budweiser and a three inch steak watching the war, live, on TV. I had a six foot erection with a giant cheeseburger on the end of it. I ate so much meat during the war that by the time the war was over three weeks later, I was like, No no no. We need to keep fighting. Make a couple of stops on our way home from the Persian Gulf. First stop! Vietnam! Surprise the fuck out of those people, huh?" - Denis Leary, No Cure for Cancer "In 1991, for those who keep insisting on the importance of sending enough troops, there were half a million already-triumphant Allied soldiers on the scene. Iraq was stuffed with weapons of mass destruction, just waiting to be discovered by the inspectors of UNSCOM. The mass graves were fresh. The strength of sectarian militias was slight. The influence of Iran, still recovering from the devastating aggression of Saddam Hussein, was limited. Syria was—let’s give Baker his due—”on side.” The Iraqi Baathists were demoralized by the sheer speed and ignominy of their eviction from Kuwait and completely isolated even from their usual protectors in Moscow, Paris, and Beijing. There would never have been a better opportunity to “address the root cause” and to remove a dictator who was a permanent menace to his subjects, his neighbors, and the world beyond. Instead, he was shamefully confirmed in power and a miserable 12-year period of sanctions helped him to enrich himself and to create the immiserated, uneducated, unemployed underclass that is now one of the “root causes” of a new social breakdown in Iraq. It seems a bit much that the man principally responsible for all this should be so pleased with himself and that he should be hailed on all sides as the very model of the statesmanship we now need." - Christopher Hitchens (Comment on this)
Monday, December 11th, 2006
7:55 pm	Hillary I am completely stumped as to why everyone thinks Hillary Clinton will be the Democratic nominee in 2008. If it comes down to a race between her and Barack Obama, as seems increasingly likely, she will probably not make it through the first 4 or 5 state primaries. Who, exactly, is going to vote for this woman? People who support the Iraq war -- all, what, five of them? Iraq will loom even larger in 2008 than it does now, since Bush adamantly refuses to draw down any troops. (Sucks for the troops and for America as a whole, but it's probably the best electoral gift he could possibly hand to Democrats.) Let's compare quotes between Hillary and Barack: Hillary (go to CodePink's website for more details): November 15, 2005. In advance of Bush’s major policy speech on Iraq, Clinton issued her own letter on the war. Clinton admits that it was a mistake to have voted to give Bush authorization for the war and says that there can be an eventual “drawdown” of forces with a “smaller footprint” on the ground. She does not mention ending the Iraq occupation. For the full text of the statement go to clinton.senate.gov/news/statements November 2005. A few days after Representative John Murtha (D-PA) bravely called for the redeployment of troops currently in Iraq, Hillary offered this response: an immediate U.S. withdrawal from Iraq would be “a big mistake.” July 2005. Senator Clinton called for increasing the size of the army by 80,000 soldiers. msnbc.msn.com/id/8573139/ February, 2005. Senator Clinton said the US should not set a deadline for troop withdrawal because it would “play into the hands of the insurgents.” February, 2005. Senator Clinton made the somewhat dubious statements that much of Iraq was functioning well, that elections there had succeeded and that the insurgency was failing. abcnews.go.com/Politics/wireStory?id=515943 April, 2003, October, 2003, and June 2004. Clinton voted YES on Senate measures authorizing increased funding for the war in Iraq. October, 2002. Clinton voted YES on House Joint Resolution 114, “to authorize the use of United States Armed Forces against Iraq.” The measure passed the Senate 77-23. Rather churns the stomach, doesn't it? And here's Obama on Iraq: OBAMA (October 12, 2004): The Bush administration could not find a connection between Saddam and Al Qaeda. WMD are not found in Iraq. And so, it is absolutely true that we have a network of terrorists, but it takes a huge leap of logic to suddenly suggest that that means that we invade Iraq. Saudi Arabia has a whole bunch of terrorists, so have Syria and Iran, and all across the globe. To mount full-scale invasions as a consequence is a bad strategy. It makes more sense for us to focus on those terrorists who are active to try to roll them up where we have evidence that in fact these countries are being used as staging grounds that would potentially cause us eminent harm, and then we go in. The US has to reserve all military options in facing such an imminent threat- but we have to do it wisely. There are plenty of other quotes I can't find right now, but Obama opposed the Iraq war from the very beginning. If you think that he would not use this as a cudgel to beat Hillary's brains in in a primary campaign, you know nothing about politics. Support for the Iraq war among Democrats is somewhere under 10%. Does anyone seriously think Hillary has a chance of being nominated by a party that knows she helped "triangulate" us into the biggest foreign policy disaster of the last 30 years? And then, of course, there's the fact that she is completely unelectable and we all know it -- the only person more hated by evangelicals than Hillary is Bill himself, so her chances of winning a general election would be pretty much zilch. Obama, though no doubt not beloved by right-wingers (there is a great deal of overlap between the constituencies of conservative Christians and racist assholes, after all), would be less likely to draw them to the polls specifically to vote against him. Even if Obama doesn't run, some other Democrat will beat Hillary. Or at least I hope to Christ they will. I don't think I could take four years of one of George Bush's ideological descendants occupying the White House. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 21st, 2006
5:57 pm	Bodily Fluid Disposal Kit That's the actual name printed on a little cardboard box sitting on the top shelf of a closet at my office. I looked for the companion boxes "Bodily Part Disposal Kit" and "Murder Weapon Disposal Kit", but couldn't find them... (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 16th, 2006
9:48 pm	Commandments So I keep hearing a lot about this Ten Commandments thingy. Some guy named Roy Moore, who used to be a judge or something, says that they are the "moral foundation of our law" and wants to hang them in all the courthouses. Wow. Since I had never actually sat down and read them verbatim before (this is true), I thought I'd take a look at this purported treasure trove of moral wisdom. Want to follow along with me? 1. "I am the LORD thy God, which have brought thee out of the land of Egypt, out of the house of bondage. Thou shalt have no other gods before Me." Hmm, OK. Not really moral per se, since it doesn't involve an obligation to any being upon whom I could have an influence. Showing disrespect to God would be more likely to be a problem for me than for God, I'd say. Also, it seems just a tiny bit... odd that the Creator of the Universe is so preoccupied with getting the proper recognition for His work. And what's this "other gods" business? He's worried about competition? 2. Thou shalt not make unto thee any graven image, or any likeness of any thing that is in heaven above, or that is in the Earth beneath, or that is in the water under the Earth. Thou shalt not bow down thyself to them, nor serve them: for I the LORD thy God am a jealous God, visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children unto the third and fourth generation of them that hate Me; and shewing mercy unto thousands of them that love Me, and keep My Commandments. More in the same vein. You're a "jealous God"? Jealous of what exactly? And don't all the idolaters supposedly find out how wrong they were once they're dead anyway? It has to get better. Let's keep reading. 3. Thou shalt not take the Name of the LORD thy God in vain; for the LORD will not hold him guiltless that taketh His Name in vain. Uh huh. This is getting weird. No mention yet of being nice to people. Maybe in the next one. 4. Remember the Sabbath Day, to keep it holy. Six days shalt thou labour, and do all thy work: but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the LORD thy God: in it thou shalt not do any work, thou, nor thy son, nor thy daughter, thy manservant, nor thy maidservant, nor thy cattle, nor thy stranger that is within thy gates: for in six days the LORD made heaven and Earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day: wherefore the LORD blessed the Sabbath Day, and hallowed it. Strike four. Jeez, are we ever going to get to the moral bit? So far it's just blah, blah, blah about how big and mighty God is and how important it is to not work on certain days and not say certain words. I'm starting to wonder if the aim here is really to placate a deity, or... here's a thought... maybe somebody here on Earth has a vested interest in making sure people stick to their rituals and superstitions! Who could that be? Perhaps the Roy Moores of 2000 BC. 5. Honour thy father and thy mother: that thy days may be long upon the land which the LORD thy God giveth thee. Finally! OK, this one is fair enough. Not exactly where I'd start a treatise on moral law but at least it makes sense. 6. Thou shalt not kill. Sure. But has any culture ever said "Go ahead, kill whoever you want"? I'm guessing that punishments and taboos about murder predate these Commandments by at least a hundred thousand years -- heck, even chimpanzees kill or ostracize murderers. Which means this is not so much a "foundation" as it is just another brick in the wall. And there is no mention of when it is OK to kill, like maybe when someone is trying to kill you, or when society needs to punish someone for killing. Wait -- maybe that's the moral foundation Roy Moore is talking about! Maybe these ancient Jews were actually pacifists! 7. Thou shalt not commit adultery. Well, of the three "moral" commandments we've had so far, I have to say I'm unimpressed with two of them. I wouldn't call exhortations to marital fidelity or parental respect foundational. I'd say they proceed from a more general injunction to respect other people -- as Kant said, to treat them as ends in themselves rather than as a means to some further end. I wonder when we'll get to that part? 8. Thou shalt not steal. 9. Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor. Still waiting. We're getting caught up in the niggling details here, God. I mean, you could make a list a mile long of individual things people shouldn't do -- thou shalt not hit thy neighbor on the head; thou shalt not kick thy neighbor where his legs meet; thou shalt not entice thy neighbor to sit, having the intention to yank out his chair as he so doeth; thou shalt not liken thy neighbor to any portion of a donkey; thou shalt not leave the droppings of thy camel on the street where thy neighbor might step; thou shalt not misreport the earnings of thy carpet business so as to defraud thine investors... I get the feeling we're missing the big picture here. Maybe the last one is a doozy. 10. Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor anything that is thy neighbour's. Hmm. Not exactly. And I'm a little disturbed how the "wife" is lumped in with the slaves and livestock. Surely God is not implying it's morally OK to treat half of the human species like cattle? Well, I'll fall back on #6. That, at least, is a good one. One out of ten ain't... well, actually it is pretty bad, isn't it? And I'm a little curious about the punishments God thinks are appropriate for breaking these rules. Maybe you get locked up for #6, fined for #7, a stern talking-to for #3, and so on. HOLY CRAP! I just read a little ways further on and it turns out God says you are supposed to kill people for breaking ANY of these! That's the sickest goddamn thing I've ever heard! (Oops, I just gave myself a death sentence! See what I mean?) So what about #6? Thou shalt not kill, UNLESS the guy you're killing went to work on a Sunday? Well, so much for the "ancient Hebrew pacifists" theory. And I'm getting a sinking feeling about all the stuff that's left out, like slavery. Let's read on and see what God thinks about that. HOLY CRAP AGAIN! "Slaves, obey your masters"? It sounds like God thinks slavery is A-OK! This is the foundation of our moral law? Whoever wrote this book couldn't find his ass with both hands and a flashlight, morally speaking. I mean, there's stuff in there about the accepted procedure for fathers to sell their daughters into slavery! The biggest asshole in twentieth-century America has nothing on these characters. Actually... maybe this is starting to explain a lot. I mean, George W. Bush is really big on the Ten Commandments, isn't he? Maybe there's a reason for that. By the standards that prevailed back then, tossing innocent people into solitary confinement for five years with no due process and no access to attorneys or courts actually doesn't seem that bad. Neither does denying condoms to people who are being ravaged by AIDS or killing 50,000 civilians in a pointless foreign war. Yep, it's all starting to come clear now. To the authors of this book -- who quite definitely and obviously were not Gods -- life was pretty cheap. No wonder they're venerated by the people in our time who think it's pretty cheap too. (Comment on this)
Sunday, November 5th, 2006
4:37 pm	Howie Last post I mentioned the 50-state strategy and what a good idea it was. Basically, Dean's idea was this: find qualified candidates in as many House races as possible, whether California or Nebraska, and spend money on all of them. It flies in the face of conventional political wisdom, which is to spend money only on races you think you can win. In previous years, a Democrat running for Congress in Wyoming would have gotten nothing but an encouraging letter from the national party. This year, Gary Trauner is poised to unseat Republican Barbara Cubin in a state where Democrats are only 29% of the electorate. There are stories like that all over the country. Dean's accolades will, of course, have to wait until November 8, but there is little doubt at this point that his strategy was a winner. Why? That's the interesting question. Why does it make sense to throw money at hundreds of races where Democratic chances are slim? Most pundits and analysts claim it's to force Republicans to spend money all over the place too, thus lowering the bar for the "competitive" races. That's nonsense. If anything, forcing your opponent to spread cash around is a negative side effect of this approach. The real reasons the 50-state strategy is a winner -- and I'm quite sure Howard Dean knows this -- are the law of diminishing marginal returns coupled with the simple fact of odds. The law of diminishing marginal returns says that the more you spend on something, the less you get back for each dollar you spend. In politics, the primary reason for this is media saturation: buying ten hours of ad time on a local station will help a lot, but buying fifty hours will not help five times as much. You are reaching fewer and fewer new viewers with each hour you buy (and progressively irritating the ones you have already reached). Therefore, spreading your cash around multiple races will get you more bang for the buck. (This is why, as I alluded earlier, forcing your opponent to spend more widely is not a benefit to you.) How do odds come into it? Money spent on a political campaign is nothing more or less than a gamble. And the law of diminishing marginal returns says that you are getting a better "price" (i.e. odds) on races where you have spent no money versus races where you have already dumped a bundle. So which are you better off doing, in gambling terms: getting even money as a 6:5 underdog, or getting 3:1 as a 2:1 underdog? (If you can't answer that question, don't gamble.) In previous years the DCCC would spend furiously on all those 6:5 races, neglecting all the wonderful pickup opportunities that they were less likely to win, but getting a far better price on. The reality is that a qualified Democratic candidate is not going to face insurmountable odds against winning, even in the most heavily Republican districts. House races, especially, are a lot more about individuals than they are about parties. Dean realized this and decided to gamble on underdogs. Way to go, Howie. (Comment on this)
Saturday, November 4th, 2006
7:25 pm	Election Picks House: Dems pick up 20 seats and take control. A Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is not in serious doubt at this point. They only need 15 seats, and 20 is probably a conservative estimate. Howard Dean's 50-state strategy is one of the great political brainstorms of all time. Senate: Dems win 21 of the 33 contests, Lieberman (I) wins in CT, Jeffords (I) wins in VT, GOP retains control with a 50-48-2 majority. (Jeffords and Lieberman caucus with the Democrats, but Cheney's deciding vote breaks a 50-50 tie.) Governors: Dems win 21 of the 36 contests, giving them the governorship of 29 states. I would like to believe that the GOP could lose the Senate, but in order for that to happen, they'd have to lose 6 out of the 8 competitive Senate races (AZ, MD, MO, MT, NJ, TN, VA, and RI). That's even granting the Democrats a lock in PA and OH -- and in reality, I think Santorum's (R-PA) and DeWine's (R-OH) chances are better than Pedersen's (D-AZ) or even Ford's (D-TN). The national party has all but written off those two races. And yes, I have put my money where my mouth is, picking up 51 Tradesports contracts at 50.0 ($5 each) on a parlay of House Dems and Senate GOP. A nice side effect is that I'm happy whichever way the Senate goes on election night. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 28th, 2006
4:18 pm	Ugh politics First of all, I do think it's likely that the Democrats will take control of the House on Nov. 7th, unless Diebold decides to intervene. The Senate is a longer shot but is also a definite possibility. Does that make me happy? Not particularly. I just don't think it will change very much. The biggest problem is that a lot of the "Democrats" who are challenging red-seat incumbents are actually DINOs (Democrats In Name Only). They are Republican-lite, and they only stand a chance because their constituents are so sick of Republican scandals that they will vote for a conservative Democrat. Exhibit A is Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford (D), who reacted to the recent NJ Supreme Court ruling on gay marriage with the following press release: "I do not support the decision today reached by the New Jersey Supreme Court regarding gay marriage. I oppose gay marriage, and have voted twice in Congress to amend the United States Constitution to prohibit same-sex marriage. This November there's a referendum on the Tennessee ballot to ban same-sex marriage - I am voting for it." Great. So a candidate in Tennessee, who is ostensibly from the liberal party, goes out of his way to denounce a pro-civil-rights court decision in New Jersey. Talk about having no principles at all! Even a principled conservative would abstain from criticizing another state's internal affairs. And Supreme Court decisions are based on the state Constitution, not on politics, so Ford's criticism is incoherent in any case. Tell me how it's going to benefit anyone to have this guy in the legislature. Yeah, yeah, I know, it will give the Dems those crucial seats to have a majority so they can pick committee chairmen and blah blah blah. So what? Even Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly insisted that a Democratic majority will not be investigating the Bush administration, or, God forbid, actually impeaching the asshole. This despite a recent Newsweek poll that shows 51% of the American people are in favor of impeachment. What the fuck is that? The Republicans have spent decades pushing deeply unpopular issues, like a repeal of the estate tax, at the behest of their corporate masters. Assuming that Pelosi would like to see Bush impeached (and I'm sure she would), the only explanation for why she's not going to do it is that she's a wuss -- or maybe her own corporate masters don't want her to rock the boat. So why should I care that she becomes Speaker Pelosi? I'm not even positive that she should be. The best I can say is that she'd be an improvement over Hastert, which is true of 99.9% of the human race. What liberals in this country need to understand is that we have to stop giving unconditional support to mediocre (or worse) candidates, just because they have a "D" next to their names. Believe me, I am as disgusted with the Bush administration policies as anyone, but I would rather see us address the root problems than just the current personalities. George W. Bush did not appear in a vacuum. He was made possible by a political climate that sees "liberal" as a dirty word, "civil rights" as synonymous with "terrorist coddling", and "anti-Iraq war" as "anti-American". Why do red-state Democrats run in terror from the "liberal" label? Many pundits act as if this is a simple, unchangeable fact of nature: dogs hate cats, pigs hate rats, and red-state Americans hate "libruls". These pundits need a history lesson. Dwight D. Eisenhower, uber-Republican, repeatedly described himself as a "liberal" while campaigning for President sixty years ago, and won handy majorities in most of today's red states. Barry Goldwater was soundly defeated by LBJ in 1964, primarily because Goldwater's self-description as a "conservative" was considered radical. Not so long ago, conservatives -- especially social conservatives -- were essentially a fringe group within the GOP. But they bided their time, marshalled their troops, voted only for truly conservative candidates, and lo and behold, today they run the party. If liberals want to effect true political change in this country, we have to do the same thing. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 26th, 2006
9:52 am	In defense of poker There are three main objections I have had leveled against me (mostly by my parents, but from other people too) when I tell them that a substantial portion of my income is from poker. I want to address them here, just to get it off my chest. You're taking advantage of degenerate gamblers. Well, yes, I am. Undoubtedly I have beaten people out of money they couldn't afford to lose. I will in the future, too. I don't feel the least bit bad about that. First of all, no one is putting a gun to their head; they are freely choosing to play poker with the mortgage, or their credit card cash advance, or whatever. I don't make other people's decisions for them. Second, it's not like the degenerates would quit if I did. Even if poker didn't exist, gambling addicts would be blowing their money on something. Better it should go to me than to the casinos or the racetracks or the back-alley craps games. And finally, the number of poker players who really have a gambling problem is quite small. It's estimated that 70 million Americans play the game. How many news stories have you seen about people losing their homes or families over poker? I've seen maybe six or seven in my entire life. Even if the problem is being underreported by a factor of 1000, still only 0.01% of poker players are actually blowing the family savings. Any guesses on how that compares to the percentage of drinkers that are alcoholics? You're not doing anything useful or helping the economy by playing poker. Allow me to quote the estimable Congressman Barney Frank, D-MA: "If an adult in this country, with his or her own money, wants to engage in an activity that harms no one, how dare we prohibit it because it doesn't add to the GDP or it has no macroeconomic benefit. Are we all to take home calculators and, until we have satisfied the gentleman from Iowa [Rep. Jim Leach, R-IA] that we are being socially useful, we abstain from recreational activities that we choose?... People have said, What is the value of gambling? Here is the value. Some human beings enjoy doing it. Shouldn't that be our principle? If individuals like doing something and they harm no one, we will allow them to do it, even if other people disapprove of what they do." Seriously, this objection is more appropriate to Communist China than to the United States. I would also add that playing poker does help the economy because it provides employment for dealers, floormen, chiprunners, cashiers, etc. etc. etc. (Even online poker employs tons of people, just not in the United States -- and whose fault is that? All those poker sites would relocate here in a heartbeat if the USA would rescind its blinkered ban.) You're not working for the money you win. I beg to differ. Becoming a winning poker player takes a great deal of work, not to mention a fair amount of "tuition" in the form of initial losses. If it were easy, everyone would be doing it. No one would argue that a chess champion or a professional athlete hasn't earned his or her money; why do they try to tell me I don't earn mine? (Comment on this)
Sunday, October 22nd, 2006
9:15 am	How Low Can You Go? It seems that the Pope is set to abolish limbo: According to the BBC's Religion and Ethics site, the church held that before the 13th Century, all unbaptised people, including new born babies who died, would go to hell. This was because original sin - the punishment that God inflicted on humanity because of Adam and Eve's disobedience - had not been cleansed by baptism. This idea however was criticised by Peter Abelard, a French scholastic philosophiser, who said that babies who had no personal sin didn't even deserve punishment. It was Abelard who introduced the idea of limbo. The word comes from the Latin "limbus", meaning the edge. This would be a state of existence where unbaptised babies, and those unfortunate enough to have been born before Jesus, would not experience pain but neither would they experience the Beatific Vision of God. But limbo has long been a problem for the Church. Unease has remained over reconciling a Loving God with one who sent babies to limbo and the Church has faced much criticism. [...] Some argue that the question of limbo has taken on fresh urgency because it could be hindering the Church's conversion of Africa and Asia, where infant mortality rates are high. An article in the UK's Times newspaper this week suggested that the "Pope - an acknowledged authority on all things Islamic - is only too aware that Muslims believe the souls of stillborn babies go straight to heaven". In other news, scientists are set to abolish the germ theory of disease: Dr. Julie Gerberding, head of the American Centers for Disease Control, is expected to announce within the next few weeks that diseases are not actually caused by microbes. The so-called "germ theory" was developed in the mid-nineteenth century to address apparent problems with existing medical thinking, such as the fact that patient mortality rate was higher with treatment than without it. Though initially slow to be accepted, it has come to dominate the outlook of the entire medical-science field, thanks to high-profile inventions such as the microscope and the polio vaccine. Scientific opinion was split regarding the upcoming pronouncement, with some professionals lauding the increased "comfort level" the general public is likely to feel if they no longer believe in tiny, ubiquitous, invisible creatures that can potentially kill them, and other doctors and scientists lamenting the billions of lives expected to be lost and the fact that the germ theory is, strictly speaking, true. "This will be a great boon for science," insisted I. Nelson Whatsisname, lead fellow of the Institute for Science and Public Relations. "One of the major reasons for people's rejection of scientific thinking is what we call the 'ick factor', and getting rid of the germ theory will go a long way toward addressing those concerns." There is no official word on what will replace the defunct theory, but early reports from the CDC indicate that new medical treatments are likely to place more emphasis on leeches, trephining, and animal sacrifice. (Comment on this)
Saturday, October 14th, 2006
3:35 pm	Philosophy It's a beautiful morning -- well, beautiful for Oregon: grey, overcast, and peaceful. I just finished my yoga and Zen practice and I feel very alert. It's striking how restful meditation is for the mind. Most of us go through our daily lives in a constant whirl of mental activity. Planning, daydreaming, calculating, rehashing the past, worrying about the future; all of that is so exhausting, and yet we don't realize how tired we are until we give it a rest for a while. Even in the midst of meditation, the mind wants to grasp everything, thinking thoughts like "what's the purpose of doing this?", "what is Buddha nature?", even "where do thoughts come from?". Those are interesting and useful questions, but there is a time and place to consider them and the meditation cushion is not it. Charlotte Joko Beck wrote in Everyday Zen that, when she is arguing with a friend over some point of the dharma (or anything else), she recognizes when the discussion has become fruitless and just says "Let's have a cup of tea". Meditation is like saying that to yourself. It's not a cop-out or an evasion, it's just a setting-aside. Meditation is telling the mind "Go ahead, think about whatever you want; I will watch without getting involved." It's paying attention without being wrapped up. It took me a really long time to understand that, because I am a very intellectual and partial person by nature. I have strong and well-informed opinions. It's difficult to extricate myself from that -- but I am so grateful that I continue to make the effort. Yoga is relatively new to me and it's interesting to bring the body into spiritual practice. Yoga has helped me recognize that my existence is never static. If nothing else, I am always breathing! In yoga you soften on the inhale and exert or contract on the exhale, so it forces you to remain aware of your breath, bones, and muscles. I like it a lot, but it has seemed to have some negative short-term effects. I get angry very easily these days. The smallest impediment or slight will bring up a bubbling reservoir of frustration, like a nonverbal roar. My yoga teacher says this is normal because I am stirring up the "dust" in my body, like vacuuming a house. Eventually it will settle and things will be more peaceful again. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 6th, 2006
11:01 am	Thoughts on the Internet Gambling Prohibition Act I hope everyone recognizes that it is impossible for the US Congress to actually eliminate online poker. They have not even been able to eliminate the recreational drug trade, despite decades of trying and widespread popular support. Poker and drugs are apples and oranges, but the basic truth of the market applies to both: where there is a demand for something, there will be a supply. And in the case of internet gambling, trying to attack the supply is problematic. The ability of the US government to enforce its laws against foreign nationals living abroad is extremely limited. It is absurd to think that a poker site executive from, say, Costa Rica could be extradited and prosecuted in the US for running a gambling operation that is perfectly legal in his own country. Extradition happens according to treaty, and all extradition treaties have a clause that says the offense must be a crime in both countries. Otherwise, the USA would be extraditing people to Saudi Arabia to face prosecution for blasphemy! Sure, site employees' travel plans will be limited (no changing planes in the US), but I think that's a cross they will bear in exchange for a slice of the $12 billion online poker industry. Saying that this will result in only "shady" operators being left in business also ignores market forces. Reputation is inarguably the greatest asset any online gambling site can possess, and that's not ever going to change, no matter what the law is. The most reputable sites will be the most successful. They will only be "shady" in the sense that they are outside US law, not in the sense that your money isn't safe there. So online poker will definitely continue to exist. Will it still be healthy? Personally, I do not foresee a sharp decline as a result of this bill. There will be an immediate contraction caused by Party, 888, and perhaps a couple of others leaving the market, but smaller sites will quickly step in to fill the void. It is even possible that Party and 888 will sell their US player lists to other sites. After the initial shakeup we will probably have a situation very close to what existed in September 2006: one or two very large poker rooms, perhaps three or four second-tier ones, and a slew of little guys. This actually seems to be the natural equilibrium of poker in general, judging by the similar distributions of B&M rooms in Las Vegas and Atlantic City. Competition for business (i.e. deposit bonuses, promotions, and rakeback) may not be as fierce, because a lowered advertising profile means fewer first-time players -- this is similar to the way sign-up incentives for cell phone companies have decreased over time -- but the market for online poker is well-established and the existing player pool is large. Also, unlike some commentators, I do not think that advertising for online rooms will go away completely. I don't see anything in the Act that would invalidate the "dot net" subterfuge -- companies advertise "pokerxxx.net", which is a play-money or instructional site, in the confident hope that players will wander into "pokerxxx.com" by mistake. Since advertising a play-money site is not illegal, the companies and advertisers are thus protected. Most major US advertising channels, such as cable TV networks, already insisted on this prior to the passage of the Act. Mostly, though, I'm skeptical that the sky is actually falling simply because the doomsayers are singing a song I've heard many times before. Right before this legislation passed I wrote about "The Death of Poker" and how often it has been wrongly predicted. Basically, it boils down to the fact that winning players tend to grossly underestimate the desire of losing players to keep giving away money. In my experience, the losers are usually the ones clamoring the loudest to be able to play, and the ones who will sit at the table for fifteen- or twenty-hour stretches trying to "get even". This doesn't necessarily mean they are degenerates or addicts; they are usually gambling with money they can afford to lose; they just have a naive hope that things will turn around for them. Those of us with a "+EV" mindset would not keep playing if we couldn't win, but we tend not to recognize that most gamblers don't think that way. And poker, whatever else it is, most definitely is gambling. The real key to understanding this law is to realize that it does not make online gambling a federal crime. John Q. Public can still place a bet from his living room without fear of legal repercussions, provided that a) he can figure out a way to get the money to his offshore account, b) the offshore site operators are willing to flout American law, and c) either gambling is explicitly legal in his state or is illegal but is not enforced (and the vast majority of state prosecutors have even less interest in going after a single small-time internet gambler than they would in shutting down a kitchen-table poker game). This effectively makes the Act toothless. Unlike Prohibition or the war on drugs, the feds can't pick a few individual American gamblers to "make an example" of. If they could, I'd agree that online poker would shrink dramatically. But they can't. Courts have ruled already that the Wire Act of 1961 does not apply to internet poker (as well it should not, since it was written to address sports betting by telephone), and federal prosecutors are not eager to create more negative precedents by trying to push that angle. The 2006 Act does not update the 1961 Act, and therefore only has three lines of attack: trying to get banks to stop gambling transactions, trying to get ISPs to block the IP addresses of gambling sites, and prosecuting the operators of those sites. The banking and ISP industries worked (and are still working) to ensure that the first two provisions place as little onus on them as possible, which means there will certainly be workarounds and loopholes -- possibly even ones that already exist, such as Neteller. The third provision I have already addressed. The one major negative potential impact I can foresee is if the feds are able to aggressively prosecute Americans who are affiliated with offshore sites, e.g. the Full Tilt pros like Howard Lederer and Chris Ferguson. Although this would be completely unrelated to prosecuting individual internet gamblers, the general public might not make that distinction, and be scared out of playing. It all depends on how the American pros respond -- if they get good legal advice, they will quickly sever their ties to the sites and everything should be fine. But if they decide to gamble (and hey, that's what they do), they could potentially do great harm to the industry if the government manages to make charges against them stick. I will close by mentioning the argument of some poker sites that they are not covered under the Act because they are not "in the business of betting or wagering". This has to be understood for what it is -- a fig leaf. There is no question that the operator of a poker site, were he foolish enough to set up shop inside the US, could be prosecuted under the Act. However, it doesn't sound good to simply say "Nyah, nyah, can't get us, we're in Antigua", so the sites came up with a thinly plausible loophole defense that allows them to piously claim compliance and avoid the appearance of directly challenging American law. The obvious question of "if you're so legal, why are you running your company out of a flyspeck Caribbean island' is best not brought up. :) (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 28th, 2006
12:02 pm	The Death of Poker Poker is about to die. So I have been assured by doomsayers on internet forums, by commentators on the news who assert that the "poker boom" is over now that the WPT's ratings are down, by bloggers who are sick of the game and assume everyone else is too, etc. etc. etc. Here's the thing, though. Poker has existed in its current form since the Civil War. It has gone through ups and downs in notoriety, true, but there has been only one brief period in American history (the bridge craze of the 1950s) when it was not the most popular card game in the country. There has never been a time when the games were not good enough to support a class of professional players -- from the frontier and riverboat gamblers of the 19th century, to the early-twentieth-century high rollers like Nick the Greek, Jack Moss, amd Titanic Thompson, to the road gamblers of the 1940s and 1950s, to the current era of regulated casino poker and the WSOP. With the advent of online poker, the games are becoming even more prolific and lucrative than ever before. If poker is dying, somebody forgot to send that memo to the tens of millions of customers of the major online sites, and the tens of millions more who play in the poker rooms of Vegas, Atlantic City, California, and Indian reservations all over the country. There was a time that I believed poker's days were numbered -- when I was younger and casinos were just starting to spread no-limit cash games (and most tournaments were becoming no-limit as well). The casino managers were very reluctant to do this, because the conventional wisdom was that the "fish" would get busted quickly in no-limit, the games would dry up, and -- since good players understandably don't want to just push chips back and forth while paying the rake -- all the poker rooms would close. Many players also believed that the tournament craze would be the end of the game, because tourists and casual players would buy into tournaments, make a big score, and never play again, thus taking all that money our of the "poker economy". As it happened, both of these concerns were not only unfounded, but the complete opposite of the way things actually worked out. Pot-limit and no-limit games and tournaments, with their high variance, increase the chance of weak players getting a big win; and those weak players, far from taking the money and buying a TV or a car, turn right around and pump the money back into the games in pursuit of more riches. No-limit tournaments and cash games turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to poker. The drama of all-ins and huge pots is much more alluring to the casual player than the "how can I save a bet" intricacies of limit. And since a good player's edge is much greater in no-limit than in limit, the games became more profitable at the same time. Really, the "death of poker" mantra gets old after a while. I think it comes down to the fact that winning poker players are unable to grasp the mindset of people who consistently lose at the game, but consistently come back for more. There are a lot of those people. Whether they are degenerate gamblers, are very wealthy, think the game is all luck, or are simply fooling themselves about the extent of their losses (this is surprisingly easy to do), there are more than enough of them to keep the games running. Personally, if I couldn't win at poker, I would quit. Most winning players probably feel the same, and therefore reason that the games can't last forever. But the average poker player doesn't feel that way at all. They lose, but they are not about to quit. And more of them take up the game all the time. Poker isn't dying. Congress may succeed in curtailing online poker, at least in America (though that is looking less likely all the time), but poker itself isn't going anywhere but up. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, September 27th, 2006
8:23 pm	Ten Truths American Conservatives Hate 1. If there had been no organized labor movement, Americans would still suffer under deadly working conditions, earning slave wages, with no overtime, health benefits, or paid time off. If unions are "irrelevant" today, as conservatives are fond of asserting, it is only because they have already won most of the important battles. 2. The world's most religious countries are also its most dangerous, underdeveloped, and barbaric. Conversely, a lack of religious belief correlates very strongly with national prosperity and stability. The same is true of American states: the most religious have the highest crime rates, the highest incidence of teen pregnancy and STDs, and the lowest per capita income. Conservatives like to claim that religion holds societies together; in fact, it requires an extremely charitable reading of the data not to conclude the opposite. 3. Evolution is an established fact of science. Human beings are descended from innumerable mammalian (and pre-mammalian) ancestors, the most recent of which bore a close resemblance to modern-day great apes. The theory of evolution by natural selection is as well-supported as the germ theory of disease or Einstein's theory of general relativity. Yes, this does mean that your religion is objectively wrong about human origins. 4. Homosexuality is entirely natural and occurs in many other species besides humanity. It is not, in any sense, a choice on the part of the individual. All efforts to "cure" homosexuality have proven to be either harmful or ineffective. Given these facts, discrimination against homosexuals is as wrong as racial discrimination. 5. Capitalism is a government project. Free markets exist because of, not in spite of, government regulation. Organized political systems, laws, and taxes all predate (by millennia) the existence of currency, little say banks and stock markets. Without an enforceable framework of rules, it is impossible to have the "critical mass" of trust required for contracts, investments, and paper transactions. If you took government out of the market there would simply be no market. 6. Global warming is real and is substantially caused by human industry. If it continues unchecked, we will begin to see catastrophic consequences within the next fifteen to twenty years. This is not just Al Gore talking. This is the consensus view of the world's climatologists, who have spent their entire adult lives studying global weather patterns, and who -- contra the fantasy novels of Michael Crichton -- have no reason to lie about their conclusions. Wake up and help us do something about it before we pass a point of no return. 7. A three-day-old embryo consisting of 150 cells is not a child. To ban lifesaving research out of squeamishness over "killing" embryos is intellectually and morally indefensible. If you doubt this, ask yourself which you would drag out of a burning building: a refrigerator full of embryos, or an unconscious two-year-old? 8. Judges are not supposed to be accountable to the will of the people. They are supposed to be accountable to the law, especially the supreme law of the land, the Constitution. Almost every court decision decried as "judicial activism" by conservatives is, in fact, a necessary protection of the Constitutional rights of a minority from attempted infringement at the ballot box. 9. There were no WMDs. 10. "To announce that we are to stand by the president right or wrong...is not only unpatriotic and servile, but is morally treasonable to the American public." - Teddy Roosevelt (Comment on this)
Saturday, August 26th, 2006
2:34 pm	Right but wrong Bill Simmons, an ESPN writer/commentator (?), had this to say about his experience in the 2006 WSOP Main Event: I believed Mike McD for eight years. "People insist on calling it luck," he kept saying sarcastically. Sure. We all knew better. If poker was about luck, as Mike says, the same guys wouldn't be sitting at the final table of the World Series every year, right? Poker was about skill and intuition. Poker was about reading opponents like a police detective, outplaying and outwitting them, always remaining ahead. Poker was about shifting gears, changing betting patterns, appearing meek one minute and pouncing like a panther the next. Poker was about an accumulated series of gambling experiences, good and bad, that mold you into a real player. You didn't lose because you were unlucky; you lost because you were outplayed. Big difference. That was poker. Or so I thought. You know what poker is really about? Luck. I found this out the hard way in Vegas, on the heels of my abrupt departure from the Main Event at the WSOP. I played a hand perfectly and somehow lost a $20,000 pot. That was it. He's definitely right in one sense. Any given person's performance in a single tournament, such as the WSOPME, is primarily determined by luck. You can completely outplay an opponent, as Bill (arguably) did in his bustout hand, and still lose and be out $10,000. Hence the oft-repeated and erroneous assertion that "poker is not chess". But. Mike McD is also right: a relatively small number of people enjoy major long-term success at poker. (The same guys are no longer at the final table of the Big One every year, but his general point stands.) Their success is not attributable to luck -- not even slightly, really, because over the course of 40 or 50 years playing poker, it is impossible that your luck could vary much from the "average" or expected level overall. Even a bad player who got really lucky and won a major event once in all those decades would certainly plow everything back in entry fees. This seeming contradiction is not really a contradiction at all. In fact, the perfect analogy exists in another form of gambling: blackjack. In blackjack, the dealer's edge is usually less than 1% (depending on the ruleset), so whether the player wins or loses any given hand is almost entirely up to chance. Multiply the number of hands by 10,000 or 100,000 or 1,000,000, though, and you suddenly get a bunch of big, garish buildings in the middle of the Nevada desert, whose sole purpose is to take that $0.01 per dollar out of the tourist's pocket. If Bill Simmons had taken five minutes to think about it, rather than just focusing on his bitterness and disappointment, he would not have written such a silly column. Short-term volatility is not incompatible with long-term profitability*. Poker is chess, actually. The only reason people fail to see the similarity is that they have a perspective problem. Don't compare one hand of poker to one chess match; compare a million hands of poker to a million chess games. The best player will win at both. *In fact, I would even go a step farther and say that short-term volatility is the reason for long-term profitability. If the underdog never won at poker, bad players would never bother to play, at least not for money. That's probably why the top poker players are multimillionaires and the top chess players make only a fraction of that. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 20th, 2006
12:05 pm	Driving My dad was an airline pilot for about 20 years. When I tell people this, they usually ask "Isn't that dangerous?", to which I reply "Yeah, he had a three-hour drive to work." Blank stare. "Oh, did you mean flying the plane? No, that's not dangerous." Unless you are a soldier, driving is far, far, far and away the riskiest thing you will ever do. The leading cause of death in people aged 45 and younger is accidental trauma, and the leading cause of trauma is... you guessed it, car accidents. Read the Wikipedia entry on them (seriously, it's interesting): http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Car_accident So. That being the case, why do people act so fucking stupid on the road? They speed. They run lights. They weave in and out of 70-mph traffic while chattering away on a cell phone. They don't signal or even look before changing lanes. They, for Christ's sake, get stinking drunk and then get behind the wheel of a car. Do they have any inkling at all how incredibly irresponsible and dumb they are? Does it flash through their mind in the instant before they T-bone a school bus or underride an 18-wheeler? DO THEY FEEL THE LEAST BIT BAD ABOUT THE PEOPLE THEY ARE TAKING WITH THEM TO THE GRAVE? (Deep, even breaths.) Anyway. A friend of mine once told me I drive like a little old lady. I replied "The thing about little old ladies is, they're old." Get it? If you ask me, the electric car revolution can't come soon enough. Hopefully those things will only have a top speed of 50 mph or so -- that's plenty fast enough for anyone and it would make our roads a hell of a lot safer. If you have to go somewhere far away, fly. Just had to get that off my chest. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, July 12th, 2006
2:12 pm	Teh funny Cheap and easy humor: insert the word "penis" into any sign glimpsed while traveling down the road. It is amazing how funny this can be, at least if (like me) you grew up on a diet of Beavis and Butt-head. Some examples: Bally Total Penis Fitness Classic Penis Pianos Thai Penis Flavor (is there really a difference between ethnicities?) One Hour Penis Cleaners Corporate Penis Center (1 Comment |Comment on this)