It Looks Like This (sorry, no ice cream) 

Take me Out to the Ball Game

It is said that a sign of insanity is to repeatedly do the same thing while expecting a different outcome. By that standard, Ken Macha must surely be insane. For what must be the twentieth time in the last season and a third, he removed Tim Hudson, his best pitcher, from a game he was leading, only to watch the bull pen lose the lead. Can there be a more incompetent manager in the major leagues?

MTV...Can you spell sell-out?

According to this, not only does MTV show us programming with no redeeming social value or thoughtful content, but they don't want ads run there to have any worth either.

Send them your thoughts at, well, actually, I don't know. I couldn't find a place on MTV's site that asked for feedback. Arrogant bastards.

Kerry v Nader

Here we read that John Kerry is going to try to "lure" Nader supporters. But as you read the article you see that the best rationale given is that by voting for Nader people are strengthening Bush. I have two problems with this. One, it's just wrong. By voting for Nader instead of Kerry, you are failing to strengthen Kerry, but you are not strengthening Bush except by the relative strength Bush now has compared to Kerry without your vote. This is a distinction that Kerry and his supporters (and Gore supporters) are apparently too lazy or dumb to make. My other, greater problem with what Kerry is saying is that he is not saying, at least as far as the article describes what he is saying, that Nader supporters should vote for him because he stands for the things that Nader stands for. The best he is offering is that he is closer to what Nader stands for than Bush is. I wonder if that will be good enough.

No Responsibility

If memory serves me right, one of the arguments used to justify the execution after the second world war of General Yamashita for war crimes committed by his troops during the war was that even if he was unaware of and unable to halt the atrocities committed by troops under his command, he was still ultimately responsible for them. I think that is a sound principal, though I have never quite accepted that as a rationale for executing somebody, especially when, as in the case of Yamashita, it is applied to somebody who no longer retained control over the troops committing the atrocities. The principal though, that responsibility should be traced as far up the chain of command as can be rationally sustained, is sound. The Bush administration, however, despite having been swept into office by a conservative movement that has for decades bemoaned the loss of a willingness to accept responsibility, seems to not embrace it at all. Nobody of any consequence in the Bush administration is willing to accept responsibility for the Abu Ghraib outrage, or any of the other fiascos and crimes tied to this administration. Instead, we get the Shrub calling Rumsfeld's performance "superb." As my man Inigo Montoya would say, I do not think that word means what he thinks it means.

How did we slip off the high ground?

One of the most distressing things to me about the Abu Ghraib scandal is the reaction of so many Americans, in the press, on the blogs, in the Senate, to the effect that we really didn't to anything that bad. You know, "compared to Saddam...," "compared to 9/11," etc. Seeing this kind of reaction, coming from so many sources, makes me wonder, just what the hell is it that we Americans are supposed to possess that makes us think we're so special? It used to be that we could proclaim that we upheld freedom and democratic values and that we eschewed, even sincerely condemned things like torture and hegemonistic wars. But now our government does those things in our name and not only does the vast majority of people not get righteously upset about it, but a very vocal and in some cases influential and/or powerful minority (Imhofe, Lieberman, Limbaugh, et.al.) shrug it off as if it ain't no bad. And this attitude is justified because we have been attacked, as if to imply that it's then okay to go blindly flailing away at anybody who looks like an "evil-doer." All of this makes us as a nation and a people look ignorant and fearful. So, back to my question...what is it that we can claim anymore to make us feel that we are special?

Whose fault?

Does it strike anybody else as maybe a wee bit inconsistent that many of the same people who a month or so were insisting that BushCo was in no way responsible for 9/11, that only Al Qaeda bore that onus, now insist that the press is responsible for Nick Berg's death?

Negroponte has to be rejected

With the revelations of prisoner abuse and murder in our Iraqi prisons I hope Congress takes a long hard look at John Negroponte, our newly named ambassador to Iraq, and then quite roundly and publicly rejects him. With his record of complicity in human rights abuses in our client nations in Central America in the 80s, you can bet the rest of the world, the Arab world in particular, will be watching this nomination to see if for once, this administration, hell, this country, is willing to walk the walk.

Cars and Bikes

In the last few weeks in my community, two bicyclists were killed in separate incidents when struck by drunken drivers. Somehow this has prompted a debate in the letters section of the local paper about bicycle safety and who is to blame for the fractious relationship between cyclists and drivers. The way I see it, it doesn't matter who is at fault, it is incumbent upon cyclists to always assume the worst and ride defensively when they are sharing the road with drivers. Many cyclists feel otherwise. They feel it is up to drivers to adjust to cyclists. I'm not too optimistic this will happen.

While riding my bike to the park the other day, I took a shortcut through a grocery store parking lot. It was a Sunday afternoon and I only saw a couple cars I needed to look out for. One of them was stopped at a stop sign and, although I had the right-of-way, he pulled out in front of me just before I reached him, causing me to have to brake and swerve behind him. There's nothing particularly notable about this; I expect all drivers to do that so I was ready for him to. What was disappointing, though, was that he had a bike rack on the back of his car. If this is how we treat cyclists when we are behind the wheel, how can we expect drivers who don't ride to treat us courteously?

Save The Music

This fellow is Jordan Zevon. His father, Warren, quite famously passed away of cancer last year. Two months ago, his mother, Tule Livingston Dillow, less famously but no less tragically passed away as well, also from cancer. In their memory, donations can be made to VH-1's Save the Music Foundation.

American Psychos

Matt Bivens [link=]comments[/link] on the revelations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners and asks why we are shocked by this when our government has openly acknowledged that we have been using questionable tactics to get prisoners to talk in Afghanistan, Iraq, and Gitmo. A WaPo article revealed this about a year or so ago. I remember reading the Post article and being outraged and wanting to comment about it somehow, but being unable to put it into words that would get through to people that this is wrong. The difference is the pictures. You can't look at these pictures and believe that this is acceptable behavior for Americans to engage in. Well, unless you're Rush Limbaugh and similar slime.