Goodnight, Doctor Thompson.

I’ve been scrounging the wires and blogosphere for more on the death of Hunter S. Thompson, self-professed outlaw journalist, and the author of many strange and pointed commentaries on America and the "American Dream," and it’s hard to find anyone with the words to describe the impact he had on American writing, literature, and culture.

Tblogger juniperflux sent me this link to the Associated Press obituary.

James Lileks responds, somewhat coldly, but with some admiration as well: I feel sorry for him, but I’ve felt sorry for him for years. File under Capote, Truman – meaning, whatever you thought of the latter-day persona, don’t forget that there was a reason he had a reputation. Read "Hell's Angels." That was a man who could hit the keys right.

Sadly, Thompson’s latest writings, the column "Hey, Rube!" on ESPN.com fell depressingly short of his earlier work - Hell’s Angels, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72, Songs of the Doomed, Generation of Swine, The Great Shark Hunt, and many others.

But it is that body of work that will be remembered, along with his legendary ability to project himself into a situation, usually while full of mind-altering chemicals, and become an important part of the story himself, and emerge eventually holding reams of scrawled notes and miles of audiotape that he would turn into a gripping commentary not only on what he’d set out to cover, but the state of American society itself – it was this that he eventually came to call "gonzo journalism."

I came to Thompson late in the game, and probably by one of the cheapest channels - Terry Gilliam’s film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, starring Johnny Depp and Benicio Del Toro. I was in college, at a friend’s house. A party was announced down at the riverside, but a friend and I had noticed the opening credits of the movie, with blood spattering across the black screen to form the title. From the first words - We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold - we were mesmerized. The rest of the crowd filtered away, but Joey and I stayed.

I read the book as soon as I could get my hands on it, and was amazed at Thompson’s almost crazed take on narrative. There are moments of hilarity, fear, and reckless use of drugs, but there was something else in there, too... something that strung it all together, but I couldn’t put my finger on it.

I went to a conservative Catholic college, but the library had one book by Thompson - his first, Hell’s Angels. Written before he had plunged headlong into the acid culture of ‘60s San Francisco, Hell’s Angels is a chronicle of time Thompson spent with the Angels, who were then a ferocious group of outlaws who claimed that no law enforcement agency in the country could contain them. Originally setting out to do a freelance newspaper piece on the gang, who had gained notoriety in California after allegations of a gang-rape arose, Thompson eventually wound up spending nearly a year with the Angels, buying a huge Triumph motorcycle himself to ride on with them as they cruised the West Coast striking fear into the hearts of citizens and lawmen wherever they went.

I could go on for ages about Thompson’s work, and how each piece somehow captures a weird, specific moment in time, from the minutiae of his hotel room’s furnishings to the greater conflicts plaguing society at the time, but I think this quote from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, thoughtfully transcribed at Tim Blair, sums it up well:

It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era—that kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run...

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights—or very early mornings—when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder’s jacket ... booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end ... but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was ... You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning ...

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting—on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave ...

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark—that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

That was around 34 years ago, and now, on a rainy Presidents’ Day near his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky, I offer The Good Doctor my fondest farewell, and sincerest thanks for the impact he’s had on me and, I’m sure, countless others.

He wasn’t understood by everyone, he was hated by some, but I know there are those of us who will miss him dearly.

R.I.P., Hunter S. Thompson, 1937-2005.

Jose Canseco: Stool pigeon, baseball hero

Well, it's been a while since I updated here, but I figured I'd provide a preview for the upcoming Turret sports commentary -- you know, for all you faithful readers out there.

Jose Canseco: Stool pigeon, baseball hero
By Spc. Ian Boudreau
Turret sports editor

At different points during the ‘80s, I spent time learning how to ride a bicycle, watching “Thundercats,” and reading “Boys Life.”

But for a couple years I devoted untold amounts of change found in the family sofa and my dad’s pockets to baseball cards. I wasn’t very good about keeping them in order or preserved, and I didn’t know a lot of the players. I do remember, however, opening a pack of Upper Deck cards and finding the coveted image of Jose Canseco.

This was in 1988, and Canseco earned the American League’s MVP award while playing for Oakland, and every kid in my third grade class was green with envy when I brought his card to school the next day.

I left the card in my desk that Friday, and found on Monday that someone – presumably from the weekend’s Sunday school class – had stolen it.

My Andy Warhol 15 minutes of fame in third grade were up, and Canseco’s would end several years later. In his own words, he was “blackballed” from MLB following accusations of steroid use (as well as other erratic behavior, such as a penchant for handguns).

Well, Canseco is back now, peddling a “tell-all” book called “Juiced: Wild Times, Rampant ‘Roids, Smash Hits, and How Baseball Got Big,” in which he calls several members of the 500-plus home run club out for using illegal steroids, including MLB-favorite Mark McGwire and self-professed juicer Jason Giambi.

Canseco’s expressed attitude toward steroid use is blasé at its most critical, and almost adulatory at its least, but he’s certainly aware that he’s adding even more fuel to the flames of the ongoing steroid controversy in the major leagues.

Now, folks may be scratching their heads wondering, “Where does Jose Canseco get off snitching on current baseball players? Isn’t this a case of sour grapes?”

Well, in a word, yes. But it’s a valuable case of sour grapes, if you ask me.
No one might have been willing to publish Canseco’s tale two years ago, but with the recent BALCO testimonies leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, steroids use is a hot-button issue in professional sports now, and suddenly analysts across the country are wondering how to stem the tide of illicit drug use in sports.

The increases in testing and penalties haven’t as yet been very impressive, and it’s only effectively created a system where steroid-users have a couple more hoops to jump through to avoid getting caught.

But baseball is going to be hard-pressed to do anything else. Yet, reputations are still at stake, and the “Canseco Method” may prove to be a more effective deterrent than fines, suspensions, and additional testing.

The danger, of course, is that baseball could turn into a juiced version of bloody Renaissance revolutions in France and England, with accusations flying in one player’s word against another’s. But I’d say that the chance to eliminate performance-enhancing drugs from professional sports is well worth the risk.

And there’s no doubt that we’ll be in for some serious disappointments, whether the league decides to pursue accused juicers or not. McGwire, for example, and his many fans will have to give up his cherished record numbers, or at least learn to live with the dreaded asterisk in the books.

One way or another, baseball’s going to have to start working on a zero-tolerance basis when it comes to performance-enhancing drugs. Whether Canseco makes a few bucks off the controversy is immaterial. I’m just hoping that his book is able to put the fear of public opinion into potential steroid users in Major League Baseball.

And to whoever sat at my desk for Sunday school 16 years ago: I want my Jose Canseco card back.

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The people of Iraq have spoken

We, too, born to freedom, and believing in freedom, are willing to fight to maintain freedom. We, and all others who believe as deeply as we do, would rather die on our feet than live on our knees.
- Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on receiving the degree of Doctor of Civil Law from Oxford University, June 19, 1941

Millions of Iraqi citizens demonstrated their position on democracy and freedom yesterday, braving threats of car bombs, mortar attacks, and outright murder to travel - on foot - to polling centers across the country.

At present, precise turnout figures for the 14 million eligible Iraqi voters are unavailable, but the Associated Press reports that election officials said the turnout was higher than the anticipated 57 percent. That means that at least 8 million Iraqi citizens ignored not only the threats to their lives made by "freedom fighters," but also the messages sent by the insurgencies leaders.

"We declare a bitter war against democracy and all those who seek to enact it," Abu Musab al-Zarqawi said in a Jan. 23 Internet recording. "Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion, [and that] is against the Rule of God."

Osama bin Laden declared that anyone who took part in the Iraqi elections "are apostates who should not be prayed over upon their deaths. They cannot inherit, and they must not be inherited from [after their deaths]. Their wives are divorced from them, and they must not be buried in Muslim cemeteries."

These leaders of the violent anti-American faction in Iraq - who have been called insurgents, freedom fighters, rebels, terrorists - have been disavowed by the citizens of Iraq. Regardless of the long struggle ahead required to nurture a democratic Iraq into stability, the people have spoken: theirs is a love of freedom, not fascism. No longer can bin Laden and Zarqawi be considered the heads of the "populist resistance" or the "minutemen" of Iraq. Instead, the people’s overwhelming support for the democratic elections has cast them into a very different - and much more accurate - light: they are terrorists.

Not grassroots organizers of a movement against American imperialism, not the voice of the people who want to throw off the yoke of American expansionism. Their goals are diametrically opposed to the goals of the Iraqi people.

And yet, there are still those who refuse to see the success of the Iraqi elections for what it is. Writers on our own shores feel the need to trivialize what so many Iraqis risked life and limb to accomplish yesterday, to turn it into yet another machination of the Big Bad Bush conspiracy theory.

Take The Nation's John Nichols, for example. In this article, he claims that the entire election has been a "charade." To wit:

That democracy has been denied in Iraq is beyond question. The charade of an election, played out against a backdrop of violence so unchecked that a substantial portion of the electorate-- particularly Sunni Muslims--avoided the polls for reasons of personal safety, featuring candidates who dared not speak their names and characterized by a debate so stilted that the electorate did not know who or what it is electing.

Nichols, of course, ignores the fact that an amazing number of Iraqi voters did turn out for the election, and in doing so slights the risks that they took in order to cast their vote for democracy.

A brief tour through the comments sections of the Democratic Underground reveals even more unconscionable defeatism (however, you've got to be fast, since site moderators are quick to delete "embarrassing" comments or anything from the "opposition"). Thanks to Instapundit for the tip.

For some, no outcome in Iraq will ever be good enough, and no step taken by the current administration will be above reproach.

But in the end, the crying and gnashing of teeth from the western left will amount only to a heap of wasted words and hot air, since the Iraqis themselves have told the world what they want. Every Iraqi citizen with a finger stained in indelible purple ink has stood up against the glorified insurgents and spoken in support of a new era of freedom in Iraq - freedom that has been a direct result of the United States' willingness to give people the ability to rise from their knees and shake off tyranny.

Seymour Hersh - the Sluggard's Bob Woodward

It always warms my heart to hear the rantings of someone who's become so caught up in their own notoriety that they've become unable to say anything coherent.

Take Pulitzer Prize-winning "journalist" Seymour Hersh, who appeared on a Democracy Now! radio broadcast, raving about how the United States has been taken over by cultists.

Hersh never fails to disappoint, at least not when it comes to packing as much bias, innuendo, and uncheckable "facts" into his articles. The radio interview - it's really more of a monologue or diatribe - is no different. To wit:

I can tell you one thing. Let's all forget this word 'insurgency'. It's one of the most misleading words of all. Insurgency assumes that we had gone to Iraq and won the war and a group of disgruntled people began to operate against us and we then had to do counter-action against them. That would be an insurgency. We are fighting the people we started the war against. We are fighting the Ba'athists plus nationalists.

This is wrong, of course. The people we began the war against were Iraq and the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard. America won that fight, and now the Iraqi Army and Republican Guard are being retrained and helping the United States in its efforts against Musab al-Zarqawi and his gang of thugs.

Michael Moore would call them "minutemen," but nothing could be further from the truth. Zarqawi, the bin Laden-appointed "prince" of al Qaeda in Iraq, recently had this to say: "We have declared a fierce war on this evil principle of democracy and those who follow this wrong ideology... Democracy is also based on the right to choose your religion against the rule of God."

It's clear even back here at Fort Knox, Ky., that the war has changed dramatically - shifted gears, so to speak, from a ground war to a house-to-house police action, with occasional flare-ups of activity.

Since Knox is the Army's home of cavalry and armor, the command likes to emphasize the role of the M1-series Abrams main battle tank in the Iraq theater. I spoke about it with the public affairs officer, who wondered what we could do to get more tank photos into the paper. I suggested that it seemed to me that we were past the point where the Abrams would typically be used - namely, making large-front pushes to take over territory.

Tacticians will cite exceptions, of course, and it's true that America's heaviest ground-based weapons platform has been used since operations shifted to counter-insurgency. But generally speaking, the blitzkrieg mode is over, and now the "war" has changed. It doesn't involve maps of entire countries, with broad red arrows sweeping over hundreds of miles of terrain anymore - instead, major activities are establishing security and stability.

What I'm getting at is that we're no longer at war with Iraq - we're at war with Zarqawi and those others who would seek to prevent democracy from taking root in a country that's been traditionally absolutist. I think it's crucial that when the word "war" is thrown around vis a vis operations in Iraq that this distinction is understood implicitly.

So back to our friend Hersh and his desire to eliminate the usage of the word "insurgents" when it comes to who we’re fighting in Iraq. Since the blitzkrieg is over, and we’re finished fighting the nation of Iraq, and since the only Iraq that exists right now is the one whose infrastructure is being administrated by the United States, and since we’re fighting groups that seek to drive the United States out of Iraq, I’d say that by Hersh’s own definition of the word, we are fighting insurgents.

Hersh also lists a couple "facts" in his Democracy Now! interview:

On the other hand, the facts -- there are some facts. We can’t win this war. We can do what he's doing. We can bomb them into the stone ages.

Characteristic. To Hersh, "facts" are just whatever things he happens to believe.

And I’d venture to guess that it’s the same impulse that leads people to believe Hersh whenever he says anything: he makes statements that are convenient to believe if you’re in the Evil Government Conspiracy camp, so there’s no sense in checking facts – we wouldn’t want to weaken our belief system, would we?

Basically, Hersh is attractive to those who feel the need to believe in a dark corporate/cultists conspiracy that’s taking over our country. As Max Boot said in this commentary in the L.A. Times, speaking on comparisons of Hersh to Bob Woodward:

Hersh, on the other hand, is the journalistic equivalent of Oliver Stone: a hard-left zealot who subscribes to the old counterculture conceit that a deep, dark conspiracy is running the U.S. government. In the 1960s the boogeyman was
the ‘military- industrial complex.’ Now it's the ‘neoconservatives.’ ‘They overran the bureaucracy, they overran the Congress, they overran the press, and they overran the military!’ Hersh ranted at UC Berkeley on Oct. 8, 2004.

See, life is more exciting if there’s a Big Bad Wolf to be looking out for... and it’s also more convenient. When all problems can be blamed on a "neoconservative cabal" that’s overrun the government, well, not only can we group everyone who disagrees with us into that disparaging category, we can also paint ourselves to be the downtrodden and repressed – definitely an advantageous position to whine from.

And this mentality is by no means confined to Sy Hersh and his disciples. If I hear the words "librul media’s agenda" one more time, I can’t promise I’ll be able to keep from becoming violent.

As I said, people create these groupings because it’s convenient. The only reason the word "agenda" exists in terms of politics is because of laziness.

Okay, that’s definitely enough for now. Stay tuned!

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Geneva Conventions?

Hah... some perspective on the torture vs. Geneva Conventions debate from ScrappleFace:

Bin Laden Seeks Geneva Ruling on Beheadings

by Scott Ott

(2005-01-07) -- Al Qaeda chief executive Usama bin Laden today requested a formal ruling from the U.N. Human Rights Commission on how to conduct beheadings of civilian and military prisoners in ways that comply with the Geneva Conventions.

"Al Qaeda seeks the global credibility that comes only from adherence to the Geneva Conventions," Mr. Bin Laden wrote. "Specifically we want to know what kind of cutlery is permissible, guidelines for videotaping the beheading and any advice about dealing with crowds as they burn, hang and mutilate the corpses of the infidels."

Sen. Ted Kennedy, on the day after he sharply questioned Attorney General nominee Alberto Gonzales, welcomed Mr. Bin Laden's gesture and suggested that the Bush administration would "do well to emulate Al Qaeda's respect for international protocols on prisoner treatment."

Flushing the Mets' budget

Hey folks. Again, I've neglected this blog in favor of insanity at work and the occasional screed on the tBlog site.

In any case, here's the sports commentary I did for this week's Turret.

The Mets are Flushing their payroll

In the great city of New York, right in downtown Queens at the foot of Long Island, there’s a place called Flushing. It’s a bit ironic, because the name is also a good word for what the township’s Major League team, the New York Mets, are doing to their payroll: flushing it down the toilet.

Their first great move this off-season was to sign Red Sox pitcher Pedro Martinez. When it happened, I questioned his ability to pass the physical examination administered by the Mets’ new doctor. Apparently, the $52 million they signed him for spoke louder than the bum shoulder that’s kept him off as much as on the active roster for the past several years.

If Martinez does anything worthwhile for the Mets, I’ll eat my beret. It isn’t going to happen.
Weighing in with a hefty seven year, $119 million contract is the former Astros center fielder Carlos Beltran, who’s getting a signing bonus of $11 million.

"I hope Houston fans understand, because I’m very grateful to them," Beltran told ESPN.
I almost got coffee up my nose when I read that today. Sure, Carlos. You sound grateful. Just not THAT grateful, right?

I guess being the toast of the town in Houston isn’t quite as valuable as being the tenth player ever to be worth over $100 million.

Beltran is also pegged to be the "face of the Mets" from now on... whatever that means.

But Beltran and old Pedro aren’t the only newcomers to the greater New York City area.

Arizona Diamondbacks pitcher Randy Johnson is moving to the Bronx. This is probably much more upsetting for Red Sox fans than it is for me, but I find it worth noting that Johnson – who looks a bit like a country boy who’s just found himself in the Big City – is already running into "fitting in" problems.

On his way to a physical required for the trade, he grabbed the lens of a photographer who was taking his photo on a downtown Gotham sidewalk.

But we’ve got plenty of time to think about baseball. Right now, it’s really time to think about the NFL playoffs, right?

In the shocking and appalling section, we’ve got the Vikings’ Randy Moss being held to the flames over an end zone stunt in which he pretended to "moon" the audience. He’s probably going to receive a $5,000 fine, which is a little steep considering the fact that he didn’t actually do anything.

But of course, when you consider the fact that he’s making $5 million this season, I suppose it’s not a big deal.

So far, the Vikings have crushed Green Bay, the Colts humiliated the Broncos, and the Jets will be heading to Pittsburgh to take on the Steelers this Sunday. Meanwhile, I predict Peyton Manning will take the Colts to New England, where they’ll suffer a withering defeat.
Happy playoffs!

Millenium War

My dad handed me this article, which appeared in the Weekly Standard. It's by an Army reserve officer named Austin Bay, and raises some very good points, I think.

Bay discusses the term "End State," juxtaposing it with the newspeak term "exit strategy." The end state is the set of conditions that need to be true in order to declare victory. He says that talk of "exit strategy" is philosophically irresponsible, and that there are four acceptable end states in the "Millenium War" (he, like myself, despises the phrase "War on Terror," and not only because Bush pronounces "Terror" funny):

What are the acceptable End States in Iraq? In an essay he wrote for the Wall Street Journal in August, Iraq's interim prime minister Iyad Allawi identified three keys to success in Iraq: (1) security and the rule of law, (2) a prosperous economy, and (3) an "inclusive, collaborative" political system. To achieve it will take years of low-level warfare and continuing security assistance from the United States even after the New Iraq begins to manage its own domestic security. No administration of whatever political stripe should think otherwise.

Another acceptable End State would be what a friend called "a too strong, bulldog Iraq." Don't dismiss the notion out of hand. Here are the attributes: "New Iraq" decides to rearm for offensive capability--and the French or Russians sell it weapons. Angry at perceived Syrian, Iranian, or Saudi interference, a brave new Iraqi government turns to regional assertiveness as a way of solidifying domestic support. The United States could live with this End State, but it would seriously frustrate attempts to spur political evolution in Saudi Arabia and Iran.

A far less acceptable End State would be a "gentle" dictatorship in Iraq, an authoritarian regime that did not threaten the region but held Iraq together by force and smashed civil opposition in the name of domestic security. This would be an ideological defeat for the United States, the defeat salved if this New Iraq were an effective counterterror partner in the region. Early Coalition withdrawal, whatever the reason, would make this End State more likely.

The last acceptable End State, but one that further frustrates long-term American goals, is the oft-debated tripartite Iraq, with Kurdistan in the north, Shia-stan in the south, and Baath-istan in the Sunni Triangle and Al Anbar Province. This would be a dangerous mosaic, but for the sake of oil revenues the Baathists would have to police al Qaeda. Kurds and Shia areas would also destroy al Qaedaites.

If for no other reason, read the article for its remarkably good prose and vivid imagery. Personally, I think Bay has hit the proverbial nail on its proverbial head.

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VDH defends Rumsfeld... successfully

A little while back, on my tBlog site, I went on a drunken rant inspired by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld’s comments during a Q&A with deployed troops in Iraq – you know, the ones about going to war with the army you have, not the army you wish for.

Well, I did think that the specialist who asked the question about scavenging armor from Iraqi junkyards deserved a better answer, but in retrospect, Rumsfeld’s response was actually pretty accurate.

Victor Davis Hanson provides some historical context for our supposed unpreparedness in this article.

VDH also points out what should be painfully obvious: the fact that the United States’ campaigns in both Afghanistan and Iraq have been successful, that despite charges to the contrary, our troops are wearing armor for the first time in U.S. history, and that fully 95 percent of our wounded now survive – many of whom find themselves in the Medical Holding Company on Fort Knox.

I found this paragraph rather insightful, since many of the war’s – and the administration’s – critics often refuse to supply context for their allegations:

Out of the ashes of September 11, a workable war exegesis emerged because of students of war like Don Rumsfeld: Terrorists do not operate alone, but only through the aid of rogue states; Islamicists hate us for who we are, not the alleged grievances outlined in successive and always-metamorphosing loony fatwas; the temper of bin Laden's infomercials hinges only on how bad he is doing; and multilateralism is not necessarily moral, but often an amoral excuse either to do nothing or to do bad — ask the U.N. that watched Rwanda and the Balkans die or the dozens of profiteering nations who in concert robbed Iraq and enriched Saddam.

At any rate, I’ll apologize again for the dearth of posts. I’m at home, enjoying the holidays with the family for the first time in two years, so that’s been the priority. If anyone’s still stopping by to read this, thanks for sticking with me.

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Victims of Mosul attack arrive in Germany

Just about every channel has been providing live feeds from Rammstein Air Base in Germany, showing wounded soldiers being carried on stretchers out of a C-141 transport and loaded onto buses in driving snow.

Glenn Reynolds of Instapundit has linked to this article by The Belmont Club: The Lidless Eye. It's a pretty fantastic article by Wretchard, and it discusses the insurgency's ability to attack "off-limits" targets with what Wretchard calls "public relations impunity."

Which is exactly what happens on a daily basis. A buddy of mine at Fort Knox, who's spent the better part of the last four years in the Middle East (including multiple deployments to Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and Iraq as part of 3rd COSCOM) told me that mortar attacks are frequent enough that soldiers who've been in the area for a while can immediately distinguish between the sound of an outgoing and an incoming round.

Last Christmas, he was at a field hospital with a bad fever, he said, and while he was lying in his cot, he could hear mortars hitting inside the perimeter, some not far from the walls of the tent he was in.

So when I hear insurgents described as Iraq's "minutemen" by certain people, I've got to agree with Wretchard:

The enemy chose the weakest point he could find to attack; exploited the known limitations of the American response; and understood that he was to all intents and purposes exempted from the condemnation attendant to attacking the wounded and medical personnel. The chaplain and the medical personnel knew this and did not mill around expecting the Geneva Convention to protect them from those who have never heard of it, except as it applies to their own convenience. They knew the true face of the enemy; a face which bore no resemblance to the heroic countenance often presented by the media to the world.

It'll be interesting to see which side history remembers the "war crimes" taking place on.

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TIME magazine names George W. Bush "Person of the Year"

Not a huge surprise.

"[E]ven those who may not have voted for him will acknowledge that this is one of the more influential presidents of the last 50 years," said managing editor Jim Kelly.

TIME also gave PowerLine the nod as the magazine's first-ever "Blog of the Year." Congrats to Hindrocket, The Big Trunk, and Deacon.

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Michael Jackson determined to inspire more Michael Jackson jokes

People have been cracking jokes about Michael Jackson since I was in third grade. And now, since he’s set to go on trial early next year, facing child molestation charges, what does the former "King of Pop" do?

He throws a Christmas party for 200 kids at his "Neverland Ranch," that’s what.

What in God’s name could this guy be thinking? "Hmm, I really think people have been making fewer Michael Jackson jokes lately, so I need to throw some fuel on the fire"?

Maybe, "Since I’m being charged with child molestation, I should try to make a case for being completely and utterly insane?"

I’m lost on this one.

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News today - who comes up with this?

I apologize for the distinct lack of activity here. The Army has really been getting me down lately, and I’ve been short on motivation for doing anything other than having a couple beers and going to sleep once I get home from work.

However, all is not lost, and I plan on getting back on the horse in short order. The trouble is, it’s tough to know where to start. It’s tough to know what issue to attack first when CNN.com’s headlines for the day include a bombing in the Baghdad Green Zone (Eight are dead), an attack of the "Beckham Nativity" scene, and the latest on the Golden Globes.

What really baffles me is the order of precedence. I mean, following the lead story of Michael Leavitt taking the Secretary of Health and Human Services position (following his stint as EPA director), we’ve got eight stories slugged under the "More News" header. Of the eight, five are entertainment-related (including the two mentioned above) and one is about hybrids planned by GM/Daimler-Chrysler.

The two remaining are the suicide bombing in Baghdad and a piece on an Israeli helicopter attack on two suspected weapons plants in Gaza.

It really blows my mind to think that the question of "who’s going to get the Golden Globe" ranks nearly as high as "what’s going on in Iraq" in the minds of the newsmakers.

Roundup

I've been tooling around with a commentary for this week's Turret on the BALCO/Giambi/Bonds/steroids issue, and the word that Sen. John McCain has become involved has complicated matters significantly.

First off, it's clear that Major League Baseball needs to clean up its collective act. I'm trying to find where the resistance to stricter steroids-testing procedures by the Leagues are coming from, and apart from the rather obvious corner of players who use them, I can't understand why League big-shots are making things difficult.

It was an easy call to make that the Yankees would sack Jason Giambi after his BALCO testimony leaked to the San Francisco Chronicle, but now what of Barry Bonds? Even if he can maintain the few years he has left in his career, his record-breakings will now be meaningless, even if he does eventually hit more home runs than anyone before.

But he'll never be Babe Ruth or Henry Aaron, because he cheated -- that much seems clear.

I don't think that it's McCain who needs to come sweeping in to the rescue though. Baseball shouldn't be federalized - it's a thing to itself, and we should be able to trust the Leagues, owners, and unions to keep it independent of government.

It's the same way with film. Government doesn't step in on the film industry because of the institution of the Motion Pictures Association of America, the film industry's self-governing agency. They make sure decency is protected (well, at least labelled), and the Fed stays out of the game.

Which is exactly what needs to happen with baseball. Critics will decry McCain, saying that it's unconstitutional for the government to demand urine or blood samples from private citizens without a court order, which is true. I'm no lawyer, but I can't think of a constitutional way to write a law that applies only to baseball players.

But the league owners and unions, if they want their sport to survive this fiasco, are perfectly capable of purging the system of steroids. Commissioner Bud Selig wants the majors to adopt the minor leagues' screening system, which would mean suspensions for first-time offenders. Players would be tested year-round, instead of just during the regular season.

Seems like that's the least they could do. Anything to prevent Federal intervention in baseball sounds like a good idea to me.

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On second thought...

A couple stunned reactions to my last post led me to reread, rethink, and erase it. I realized that I didn't make the point I initially set out to make, and that really I was feeding off the anger I felt at the article by Jensen.

The point, which was lost in the shuffle, was that the fact that the U.S. has a financial interest in the Middle East generally and Iraq specifically does not invalidate the other reasons for the war. I've seen people from both the supporting and opposing sides of the war issue either brush the issue aside as "conspiracy theorist" or trump it up into an enormous "moral outrage," and it was those sentiments I was reacting to.

I don't have a lot of time at the moment, but I'll try to get into what I see as the "real issues" in an upcoming post. Thanks for reading, hope you weren't too awfully freaked out.

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A compelling indictment of Annan

Wretchard has posted a good analysis of the predictable defense of Kofi Annan over at The Belmont Club.

Seems that the L.A. Times' James Traub thinks that criticism of Annan from conservatives is hypocritical given their defense of Donald Rumsfeld after the Abu Graib prison scandal.

But Wretchard notes that Annan's involvement in the oil-for-food scandal is a little different than the prison scandal going on during Rumsfeld's watch as SecDef:

[T]he Secretary General's failure "to sound the alarm over Iraqi swindling and for a slow and grudging reaction when the allegations first surfaced earlier this year" is not primarily about thievery and corruption, although it is about that: it was mainly about flouting international law; it was about subverting the will of the Security Council. It was about Kofi Annan becoming a law unto himself.

It's a good article, check it out.

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