Author: Brian J. Noggle

In Oakland:

It’s official. The deal that brought the Raiders back to Oakland 10 years ago is an unmitigated disaster. At Wednesday’s news conference announcing the extinction of personal seat licenses, city and county officials smiled bravely.

And why not? It’s better than crying.

As it stands right now, Oakland is clinging to the Raiders with a hope and a prayer, neither of which have proved to be an especially effective tactic in dealing with Raiders owner Al Davis. The team’s lease on McAfee Coliseum expires in 2011, which means it has until then to complete one of the greatest marketing turnarounds in the history of the NFL or the team will almost certainly leave.

As Davis said at the news conference, “We have a deal we can live with — at least for the next five years.”

Now there’s a rallying cry.

The facts are these: Personal seat licenses, which were supposed to painlessly and effortlessly retire the $200 million bond issue used to spiff up the Coliseum-Arena complex, were the worst idea since drafting Brigham Young University quarterback Marc Wilson. The licenses not only weren’t selling, they were less popular than the Denver Broncos. Even the stopgap idea, proposed by several pundits, that the Raiders should take the 10-year licenses and turn them into lifetime licenses, wasn’t going to fly.

So a professional sports team has screwed its fans with the “Personal Seat License,” nothing more than a convenience surcharge on the convenience surcharges inherent with buying season tickets, and has screwed its host city with hundreds of millions of dollars in debt.

And the cities come back for more.

An era of record movie prices, record newspaper prices, and record cable television rates coupled with increasing revenue?

Time Warner Inc., the world’s largest media company, reported an 80 percent increase in third-quarter earnings Wednesday and raised its stock repurchase program to $12.5 billion from $5 billion in an effort to meet shareholder demands to lift its slumping stock price.

The New York-based company, whose properties include the Warner Bros. studio, HBO, CNN, a major cable TV company and Time magazine, posted net earnings of $897 million versus $499 million in the same period a year ago.

Time to levy a federal punitive tax on these businesses! After all, what’s good for the oil companies should be good for the media companies who cheerlead immoral (even if rendered not illegitimate by faux populists in the legislature) profit confiscation and redistribution, ainna?

Senator Harry Reid has confused them again:

“I demand on behalf of the American people that we understand why these investigations aren’t being conducted,” Democratic leader Harry Reid said.

Taken by surprise, Republicans derided the move as a political stunt.

“The United States Senate has been hijacked by the Democratic leadership,” said Majority Leader Bill Frist. “They have no convictions, they have no principles, they have no ideas,” the Republican leader said.

Reid demanded the Senate go into closed session. The public was ordered out of the chamber, the lights were dimmed, and the doors were closed. No vote is required in such circumstances.

UPDATE: Just to be clear, and more pithy, always beware the elected official who, on your behalf and for your own good, does things behind closed doors or without telling you what it is. One would almost expect the elected official to add, furthermore, that it hurts him/her more than it hurts us.

So I understand that Judge Alito, should he become a Supreme Court justice, immediately use the superpowers granted by the robe to spin the earth backwards and turn back the clock, some estimates up to 70 years. Why stop there? I’m unclear why the opponents think that the justices would undo only part of the Constitutional recreation that has occurred…why wouldn’t they turn the clock back 216 years and undo the Constitution? Why not 230 years and undo the Declaration of Independence? Yea, why not 790 years and turn back the clock on the Magna Carta?

Because the events of history are only important as guest stars in the drama that is the narrative of American History, where the eventual and sometimes lucky triumph of the common decent folk can only be corrected by the super-legislature courts with their supreme insight into what should be done, not what the Constitution’s authors meant in their drive to restrain government power.

Instead of judges who base their abjudication on the Constitution, some people want judges who turn forward the clock by any means necessary, whether granted by the Constitution or whether checked by other, elected government officials.

From presiding over the most-watched trial in history to the Supreme Court.

We at MfBJN congratulate Judge Ito!

Eh? Alito you say? I thought they said Al Ito.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Traffic Jam.)

I oppose the Lewis Libby nomination to the Supreme Court.

Just in case NZ Bear ever wants to know.

April 1, 1945: United States Tenth Army invades Okinawa, Japan.

October 29, 2005: United States announces Half of U.S. Marines to leave Okinawa.

After sixty years of resistance, the Okinawan insurgents have thrown some of the American invaders out.

I fear we won’t have enough boots on the ground to weed out the remaining insurgency and to help spread democracy and capitalism to the Far East. Can the ramshackle Japanese government, originally appointed by the US and later selected in a number of sham elections and creation of a faux constitution, handle its own affairs without falling into a bloody religious civil war? Will the native warlords and the militant people live together peacably to build a nation together?

I also fear that it sends the wrong message to other insurgents around the world that if they resist and carp enough, they, too, can cause US political will to crack and to force 7,000 American soldiers to cut and run to Guam.

(Submitted to the Outside the Beltway Sunday Drive.)