At least the Packers aren’t peaking too early.
All I Have To Say
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The Next Logical Step Down The Slippery Slope
State Representative Frank Boyle of northern Wisconsin gives insight into the proper role of the citizen:
Boyle told the board he first met Leggate in 1984 when she was a secretary at City Hall. He said she costs the state $24,000 every year she’s in prison and she needs to get back into the work force and generate tax revenue, especially with the state facing a deficit in its next budget.
This person, a convicted murderer sentenced to life, should return to society so that she can generate tax revenue.
Government seizes private property to whomever it thinks will generate the most tax revenue for it. What logically stops it from next using its citizens in the best, most revenue-enhancing way?
More on the outrage at Boots and Sabers.
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Further Tales of Psuedobachelorhood
Courtesy of Spoons.
While the mice are away, the cats will play…with Spoons, who has nothing better to do.
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Another Helpful Error Message
Here’s a friendly error message courtesy of Amazon.com:
Browser Bug?
Attention: There appears to be a bug in the web browser
you are currently using. Here are some ways to get around the problem:
- To return to the page you were previously on:
–click the BACK button on your browser’s navigation bar until you
reach the desired page. - To checkout –click on the shopping cart icon at the top
of the page and proceed through the checkout process using the standard
server (instead of the secure server). You can phone or fax the credit
card information to us.
Your Web browser is Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; rv:1.7.3) Gecko/20040913 Firefox/0.10.
Error handling by blaming the user and the user’s Web browser. Swell, Amazon. Undoubtedly, your developers have convinced your project managers that this is acceptable, when it’s clearly not.
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Book Review: Instant Replay: The Green Bay Diary of Jerry Kramer
by Jerry Kramer / Edited by Dick Schaap
I bought this book for a dollar at the cheap bookstore in Springfield (you know, the one on Glenstone. Come on, people, work with me here; the name’s not important, the six for five dollars hardbacks in the very back are). As the football season geared up, I thought this would be a worthy read, and hey, it was. Packers partisanship aside, it’s a good book.
The book chronicles the 1967 football season from the point of view of the veteran guard. He kept notes and recorded his thoughts on tape every day from the training camp through the end of season. It reminded me a lot of Blue Fire: A Season Inside the St. Louis Blues which I read last year; however, the two differ in that instead of a sportswriter, the point of view is all player.
So in our daily capsules, we get inside the concerns of a 31 year-old football player, slightly afraid that he’s losing a step to the younger players. We’re coming fresh off of the Packers second consecutive NFL championship and their win in Super Bowl I. Kramer’s got lots of outside investments that he worries over, and he mentions from time to time what’s he’s reading during the season. But the book does focus on the Packers, playing with Lombardi and with the loss of Paul Hornung to the new New Orleans Saints expansion team.
As I mentioned, the book’s told in a diary style, with each day having its paragraphs or pages whether Kramer goes hunting or participates in the Ice Bowl. This makes it easy to read in short chunks, although the pace and voice really make it entertaining enough to read in larger doses.
Since the book chronicles an era before my birth, part of its charm lies in its details about a world I’d never know. Green Bay and Milwaukee described in the late 1960s and no mention of the War in Viet fucking Nam, man. Which differs, strangely, from the football season 2004, where the whole world’s talking about that war. One does get a point of contrast between some aspects of the game then and the game today–no agents, limited free agency, and so on. And on the field: well, let’s just give this some eighties kid perspective: the Jerry Kramer’s biggest concerns in the opponents he needs to block are Father Murphy, Webster’s adoptive father George Papadapolis, and Officer Moses Hightower. That’s just weird.
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Question
Is
fighting
?
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Don’t Do Us Any Favors
Those of you who didn’t start watching the debates at 6:30 on CSPAN missed their interview with the University of Miami president and her remarks from the lowered microphone that she’d arranged classes, other acadaemic stuff, and a voter registration drive to get students more involved in the carnival that took place at University of Miami yesterday.
Donna “I Am Not Bowzer” Shalala.
Former Secretary of Health and Human services under William J. Clinton.
Former head of University of Wisconsin (Mad).
Organizing voter registration drives.
Thanks, Shalalala.
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With So Many Words, How Could You Pick Just One?
Thomas Eagleton opines in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch in a piece entitled IRAQ: One word says it all: disaster:
We do not need to recount yet again the history of the war in Iraq. It will go down as one of the most ill-conceived military undertakings in our history.
It doesn’t really get better from there. Instead, the former senator and even more former vice presidential candidate to George McGovern (for crying out loud) pontificates on how history will judge Iraq because Eagleton’s got the long range vision. Which he demonstrates by savaging George W. Bush politically and talking about the short term impact of the war.
Beg your pardon, Senator, but I disagree. I see differences between this war and the telewars of this century held up for cheap political points by forgotten (and hopefully, soon-to-be-forgotten) senators.
I expect that history will judge the Iraq war much like it judges the Spanish-American War, The Mexican-American War of 1848, the Mexican incursions in 1910, or more recently the invasion of Panama; a small war remembered by a few historians and unfortunately not many citizens. Or history will judge the Iraq war like the reckless Iwo Jima incursion: a small battle with its own costs in service of a greater war. But history will not, no matter how hard some self-appointed men of history try, judge Iraq as a carbon-copy of Viet Nam.
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Opening Fire with the Forward Moonbattery
The Bush administration, which rules the world and all of nature through Haliburton and Enron and Martha Stewart Omnipedia with the full support of the Optimists International and Boy Scouts of America, has decided to distract voters from its horrible environmental policies which are turning the northwest into desert and are strip mining all of the sanity from the northeast by temporarily closing the ozone aperature that its supporters at Coppertone paid for.
It’s the only possible explanation!!!1!!!
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Yeah, Me Too
Instapundit reports reports over 8,000,000 hits last month and predicts that he’ll see a traffic drop after the election.
Hey, this site had 3,000 hits last month, and I think it will drop after the election, too.
Actually, I think it will drop this month without an Instalanche to spur about a third of the total monthly traffic in a single day.
But I don’t write for the casual Internet readers. I toss off my insights for my own gratification and for you, the discriminating Internet reader.
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Something Stink in Suburbia? The Critics Love It
Has anyone else noticed how metropolitan critics absolutely rave about television shows, novels, movies, and other art that celebrates how suburban life with suburban homes, commutes, and families suck? The San Francisco Chronicle’s Tim Goodman gushes over Desperate Housewives.
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Other Live Bloggings of Note
Get old by Internet standards reflections here:
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Debablogging: The Wrap
So when the pizza guy brought my pseudobachelor dinner this evening, he pointed to the Bush Cheney sign in the yard and was happy to see it (he explained in with a light Newyorican lilt in his voice). He said Bush was going to bury Kerry tonight. I’m disappointed he didn’t.
I think Bush and Kerry did about what we would have expected. Bush was on message, sometimes almost fumblingly so, Kerry was not intolerable. Kerry might have elevated his discourse from flip-flop to paradox, but he didn’t speak in French.
Kerry raised himself to nearly human, or perhaps lowered himself to nearly human, but you still get the sense that he’s not quite sincere, not quite earnest. Bush is. And I’ll still vote for Bush.
Unlike Instapundit, I don’t think Kim Jong Il will be nervous if Kerry’s elected. He’s about sanctions, resolutions, and Bush is about popping you one if you deserve it. Friends, that’s a capital fear for other nations to have, particularly those with opposing viewpoints.
This liveblogging experience brought to you without the aid of alcohol, because until I get a fridge in this office, it’s a long trip to the kitchen for a refill. This evening’s entertainment also brought to you without the skill of touch typing, which is why your content is thinner here than with the pros. But thanks for coming anyay. I should have listened to my beautiful wife and used that Mavis Beacon she bought me when I was but a young man of eight and twenty.
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Debablogging 35
Bush’s statement:
This is more than the next four years; this is the next hundred years and civilization. No draft. No vetoes over foreign policy. I believe, I believe, and then we, we, mountain metaphor and valley.
Earnest, and he ends it very presidentially. His best performance of the debate, and he trumped Kerry’s response.
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Debablogging 34
Kerry’s statement:
I served in Vietnam. I believe in strong aliances with weak countries. Also, I have many plans. And messages.
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Debablogging 33
Didn’t Kerry say Saddam wasn’t a threat earlier in the debate? Now he says that Saddam was a threat, but that’s not the point.
He’s just paradoxed the whole debate. Wait, didn’t the debate start at 8 pm CDT? Why does my computer clock say 5:34? The space time continuum has ruptured!
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Debablogging 32
On Putin, Kerry reminds us he served in Russia, mentions it’s important, and then goes back to North Korea.
Bilateral talks with China.
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Debablogging 31
The Putin question:
Bush: Centralization in Russia in response to terror is bad, and I’ve said so publicly. Russia’s an ally, though, and Bush invokes Beslan. Calls Vladamir by his first names, and values his personal relationship. A good, even-tempered response. Will Kerry want preemptive invasion to save the Russians and secure the nuclear material?
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Debablogging 30
In response to the nuclear proliferation thing, Kerry has plans and messages, but Bush has accomplishments.
And missile defense. Concrete things.
Kerry responds: I am a magician! I will wave my wand and North Korea and Iran will roll over.
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Debablogging 28
Kerry’s not going to proliferate, and he’s going to cut ours.
He didn’t say it; just that he’s not going to build nuke buster bombs, but considering he’s been in favor of nuclear disarmament, he’s going to be all over it.
Because it sends a good message.
Of weakness.
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