Welcome to Daily Contentions... Born in February 2003, DC is a daily-updated weblog covering a wide variety of issues, contemporary and timeless-- always with a unique perspective and open attitude.
WASHINGTON, April 29 — Iran and the United States have begun to reveal new strategies in their nuclear dispute that seem bound to escalate their confrontation, as both nations seek to turn to their advantage a highly critical report that portrays a nuclear program proceeding at full tilt, in growing secrecy.
In many ways, what has unfolded in the past three days resembles cold-war deception and brinkmanship, with some decidedly new twists for a very different nuclear age. As in the early days of the cold war, both sides have tried to write the rules on the fly, using every tool available — from American threats of sanctions to Iranian threats to cut off oil. Read the NYTimes article from which this was taken...
This is the anthem for the 2006 Notre Dame football team... because I say it is: By the last breath of the fourth winds blow Better raise your ears The sound of hooves knocks at your door Lock up your wife and children now It's time to wield the blade For now you have got some company
The Horsemen are drawing nearer On the leather steeds they ride They come to take your life On through the dead of night With the four Horsemen ride or choose your fate and die
You have been dying since the day You were born You know it has all been planned The quartet of deliverance rides A sinner once a sinner twice No need for confession now Cause now you have got the fight of your life
The Horsemen are drawing nearer On the leather steeds they ride They have come to take your life On through the dead of night With the four Horsemen ride or choose your fate and die
Time has taken its toll on you The lines that crack your face Famine Your body it has torn through Withered in every place Pestilence For what you have had to endure And what you have put others through Death Deliverance for you for sure [Now there's] nothing you can do
So gather round young warriors now and saddle up your steeds Killing scores with demon swords Now is the death of doers of wrong Swing the judgment hammer down Safely inside armor blood guts and sweat
The Horsemen are drawing nearer On the leather steeds they ride They have come to take your life On through the dead of night With the four Horsemen ride or choose your fate and die
First of all, Chris offers this substantial correction to my original post on the controversy surrounding the Bush family house:
"Lucas, a couple of corrections to your post. The Bush family had only lived there since March/April of 2005 when the house was finished being built. The man, Michael Michaels, who bought the house was not an agent, just a guy trying to funnel Bush to a particular agent who was then going to get Bush to be apart of Michaels' sports marketing firm."
Secondly, we have this article which suggests that USC either knew or should have known about the problem surrouding New Deal Media buying a house for Reggie Bush's family.
Third, we have the landlord of that house confirming that the Bush family did not, in fact, pay any rent at all during their stay in the house.
Finally, on a different story, USC's new frosh QB has been charged with sexual assault and has been suspended by the university.
The conventional wisdom among Washington's punditry is that an overturning of Roe v. Wade would ultimately hurt the Republican party politically, because it would remove an issue that drives the faithful to the polls.
I've always taken issue with this argument, because even after Roe, the abortion issue will remain--primarily as a state issue rather than a federal issue.
Writing in the New Republic, Ramesh Ponnuru crafts a level-headed argument to this regard. Check it out.
The Colts' new stadium, planned to be completed for the 2008 season, seems to be an excellent design. Named Lucas Oil Stadium, it will be the first NFL stadium to have a retractable roof that retracts towards the sidelines and not the endzones. Also, it will be built principally from brick and limestone, helping it fit in well with Indianapolis's architectural scene. Indy doesn't have a lot of great buildings architecturally speaking, so it'd be nice if it could get a good theme going.
Another nice touch is the building's orientation. Instead of facing due east-west or north-south, the stadium is to be oriented at an angle on its plot. One of the endzones will face downtown, and with a windowed front, fans inside will get a view of the Indy skyline whether or not the roof is open. I can't wait to go to a game there.
I've been thinking a lot about gas prices lately, and here are some of my thoughts.
- Oil companies are making record profits, not because of any conspiracy, but because of basic economics: supply is limited, while demand continues to rise in the U.S. and skyrocket in China and India; until the market responds to high prices with a decrease in demand, profits will be high. In other words, at some price, Americans will start taking concrete measures to reduce their consumption of gasoline.
- As a follow-up, I'd be very interested to see how much money oil companies are investing in alternative energy sources. If they are making record profits, but not investing significantly in alternative energy, possibly with the hopes of getting government hand-outs in the future to do such research, then the government needs to take measures to encourage such investment.
- This market formulation, while accurately describing the economics at work, does not address non-economic concerns regarding our dependency on oil from the Middle-East--namely, national security and environmental issues. Thus, the government must cautiously address these issues and not allow the market to be the only engine driving supply and demand.
- This is the outline of the basic problem. A solution, how the government and private sector should address the problem, is a matter that our nation must have a productive dialog on.
...
Finally, you might want to check out this interesting site, www.gasbuddy.com. It includes a county-by-county map of average gas prices around the nation. Zoom in on the map and you can even see the data split by zip codes. Pretty cool.
Chris has the story... Apparently, when Reggie Bush started at USC, his family moved into a home owned by a man who wanted to be his agent and who started a sports promotion company. The Bush family lived there for the last 4 years.
USC has referred the matter for investigation by the PAC-10. NCAA rules forbid situations like this and penalize the school if they occur. If all of the allegations are proven correct about the relationship between this man and Reggie Bush, the NCAA could potentially force USC to forfeit all of its games while Bush played there.
I doubt this will happen. I'm guessing USC will just lose a few scholarships in upcoming years.
The weekend up at Notre Dame was great and the weather was perfect for the Blue-Gold scrimmage game on Saturday... a nice change-of-pace from BG games of the recent past.
Here are a few photos from Saturday. I'm really pleased with how they turned out. My camera performs a lot better under the sun (though don't they all, really?) and the optical zoom came in handy to take close-up shots from the stands.
...a view of the pre-game tailgating. 41,000+ were in attendance at the scrimmage, a record
...Touchdown Jesus supervising the festivities
...one of the backup QB's (can't remember which one) fumbles the ball, as Roncalli alum and ND second string D-tackle, Pat Kuntz, 96, manhandles the guy for the ball
...ND QB and Heisman frontrunner Brady Quinn, 10, standing next to wide receiver Jeff Samardzija, 83
I'll be gone (and not posting) this weekend, as I'm travelling up to Notre Dame today, so in order to view the Blue-Gold spring football scrimmage tomorrow.
Chinese leader Hu Jintao met with President George W. Bush today at the White House. I certainly welcome this move, as I think it's important for our two nations to maintain a healthy and productive dialog--a dialog not only on economic matters, but also on human rights, protection of intellectual property, environmental matters, etc.
As Hu visits American, several parties are putting pressure on him to change certain Chinese policies. Microsoft chairman, Bill Gates, subtly directed a suggestion at Hu this way: "It is my belief that industry and government around the world should work even more closely to protect the privacy and security of Internet users, and promote the exchange of ideas, while respecting legitimate government considerations."
Gates' inclusion of the word "legitimate" in that statement seems significant to me. But will Microsoft put actions to those words and stand up against some of China's policies which are illegitimate?
Afterwards, once Hu was set to speak at the White House, a chinese woman in the crowd stood up and protested him. She yelled: 'President Bush, stop him [Hu] from killing'... 'Stop persecuting the Falun Gong.' ... 'President Hu, your days are numbered, No more time for China's ruling party.'
Finally, a website has been set up to call for the release of Chinese blogger and filmmaker Hao Wu from custody in that country. Go here to learn more.
TNR's Michael Crowley has a brilliant piece in this week's issue, entitled "In defense of boredom." [free registration required to view his column... but it's worth it, because TNR has a lot of great free pieces each week]
In this column, Crowley talks about how a plethora of entertainment and communications options has minimized our 'down time.' While recognizing that many philosophers have supported the notion that idle hands are the devil's workshop, Crowley says that times of boredom are nevertheless important in our lives, particularly in breeding creativity and imagination. But I've said too much; here's his second 'graph (should have been his lede):
These are tough times for boredom. Television stalks us everywhere, from SUV back seats to elevators. We squander hours online, plunging through Internet wormholes. (Recently, I found myself at the website of the Argentine Air Force and suddenly wondered, like an awakening drunk, how did I get here? In slow moments at work, I don't lean back and contemplate the Big Picture; I check in on Gawker.) We burn time trading moronic instant messages and emails; one friend regularly sends me links to stories about misbehaving chimps. And, now, the proliferation of handheld diversions--the BlackBerry, the video iPod--is dealing a death blow to the idle moment. Especially in Washington, it has become permissible to check one's BlackBerry mid-conversation. And, just between us, I may once have glanced at mine at a urinal.
After explaining some benefits of boredom, Crowley wraps-up his column on a psychological note:
Granted, few of us are likely to have blinding existential insights just because we're out of BlackBerry service range. For me, boredom tends to produce ruminations more along the lines of whether I should move to a new apartment. But it's a start. In this moment of anti-boredom triumphalism, there's something creepy about our constant flight from ourselves. Our fear of boredom suggests a kind of self-loathing. What are we so afraid of? Anyone who can't bear a few minutes of his own company should probably ask himself why before buying a ticket to V for Vendetta.
Anyways, read the whole thing... especially if you're bored and looking for something to do :-)
Bionic humanity is coming, not with the bang of a huge, secret government program of the Steve Austin variety, but on the little cat-feet of a collection of new developments.
He then calls these developments "cool." I don't necessarily disagree with Mr. Instapundit, but I would prefer not to just pursue this technology blindly, but rather to use a caution fitting of our humanity.
Scrappleface: generals ask media chiefs to step down
By Luke
Scott Ott, editor of the brilliant satire site Scrappleface, has a brilliant piece that says that U.S. generals, retired and active duty, are calling on the major media chiefs to step down:
"I believe that it's time for them to step down," said one unnamed retired three-star general. "The editors of The New York Times and Washington Post and the news producers at CNN, CBS, NBC and ABC should resign effective immediately."
"They've formed a tight cabal that focuses only on news that reinforces their neo-journ ideology," said another unnamed general. "Despite the urgent need for actual reporting from Iraq, they have failed to put enough boots on the ground in country." ...
So the state of Indiana has a new slogan,'Restart your engines!,' which is meant to remind folks of Indiana's racing heritage as well as conjure up feelings of rejuvenation in association with the state.
Personally, I'm a fan; it's certainly better than our old slogan of 8 years, 'Enjoy Indian!' ... How boring! ... But the new slogan's price-tag? $90,000. That's how much the state paid an advertising agency to test and research the slogan. Worth it?
This list of 7 songs with logical or factual mistakes in their lyrics, courtesy of The Onion, is pretty funny.
My favorite is how U2 screwed up...
U2, "Pride (In The Name Of Love)"
It's probably difficult to work the assassination of a civil-rights leader into a songÂÂbut if anyone can do it, Bono can! Unfortunately, he fudges the facts a bit in the last chorus of this song, when he sings about the killing of Martin Luther King Jr., "Early morning, April 4 / Shot rings out in the Memphis sky." King was actually shot on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel at 6:01 p.m., which makes Bono off by about 10 hours. But he did get the date and the city right. Oh, and the pride part. Which isn't bad for a Nobel Peace Prize nominee.
Ahh, gotta hand it to Bono. 'But he cares, Luke, shouldn't we all like him because of that and buy all of his music!?' ... No.
Gingrich worries about GOP's chances in '06 elections
By Luke
Newt Gingrich has openly expressed concern regarding the Republican Party's outlook in the 2006 congressional elections. The primary gist of his worrying is this: many Republican faithful may stay home in November, because they feel disaffected by the party's lack of fiscal discipline.
An unmotivated base is a dangerous thing to a party in power. I share Newt's concern, and if Republicans do not respond, 2006 could be like 1994 was to the Democrats.
Update: The Wall Street Journal wrote a good editorial on who in the Republican party is primarily responsible these days for the lack of spending restraint:
Unlike the collapse of the immigration bill, this fiasco can't be blamed on Senate Democrats. This one is all about Republicans and their refusal to give up their power to spend money at will and pass out "earmarks" like a bartender offering drinks on the house. The chief culprits are the House Appropriators, led by Committee Chairman Jerry Lewis of California and his 13 subcommittee chairmen known as "cardinals." If Republicans lose the House--and they are well on their way--Mr. Lewis deserves the moniker of the minority maker.
For weeks, the Republican Study Committee, a group of fiscally conservative Members, had been negotiating a spending outline with the House leadership. But when they finally struck a deal last week, Mr. Lewis refused to go along and threatened to defeat the budget on the House floor if Speaker Denny Hastert brought it up. With Democrats opposing the budget as a matter of party unity, GOP leaders gave up and left town for Easter recess without a vote on their budget blueprint for 2007.
More instruction from the Indonesian Playboy story
By Luke
Last week I wrote of how the release of a tamed down version of Playboy in Indonesia--and the reaction of Muslims in that nation--could be instructive regarding the cultural gap between some Muslims and the West.
For those losing faith, some perspective on the conflict ongoing in Iraq, from someone who's actually been there (and been outside the Green Zone).
"I scratch my head when so many back home are unable to make the moral distinction between the ideology that gave birth to the greatest country on Earth and the ideology of our enemy in Iraq. I am sometimes fearful that this moral blindness may one day lead to the downfall of our republic. I only hope I'm wrong."
After days of panic, you will experience relief again this week, when directors at the Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists realize their mistake in setting the Doomsday Clock ahead for daylight saving time.
A new generation of cell phones with wi-fi support is being developed. These phones would be able to connect to a local office or home wireless network in addition to their normal support for cellular links. According to this Slashdot post, these phones could use the local wi-fi hotspots to lower the burden on the normal cell network or when the cell service is weak or unavailable in a building.
Nevertheless, the magazine has been denounced by several Muslim groups in the country and protests have begun. One fundamentalist group threatened to forcibly remove the magazines from stores. One of that group's member said, "Even if it had no pictures of women in it, we would still protest it because of the name."
From the CNN article: Muslim leader Yusuf Hasyim said the magazine posed more of a threat to Indonesia than the terrorism from al Qaeda-linked militants that has killed more than 240 people in the sprawling country in recent years.
Finally, the article also says that pornographic video CD's, while illegal in the country, are basically sold in the open at markets.
...
How may this story instruct us on the clash between Islamist fundamentalism and the West?
First, these groups' claims of moral superiority seem somewhat hollow, since they are more concerned with material produced by Western entities than that already being produced inside their home countries.
Second, in any society there is a disconnect of some size between the values that society publicly purports to uphold and the values that its constituents actually practice in their personal life. Arab and Islamic nations are no exceptions, though the size of the disconnect may be smaller.
Third, the West, because of its freedoms, tends to present an image of a society more corrupted by immorality. Further, we export that image throughout the world because of our global economic prowess. This presents a final question: how accurate is that image?
"What we've got here is failure to communicate. Some men you just can't reach... So, you get what we had here last week, which is the way he wants it! Well, he gets it! N' I don't like it any more than you men." *
Look at your young men fighting Look at your women crying Look at your young men dying The way they've always done before
Look at the hate we're breeding Look at the fear we're feeding Look at the lives we're leading The way we've always done before
My hands are tied The billions shift from side to side And the wars go on with brainwashed pride For the love of God and our human rights And all these things are swept aside By bloody hands time can't deny And are washed away by your genocide And history hides the lies of our civil wars
D'you wear a black armband When they shot the man Who said "Peace could last forever" And in my first memories They shot Kennedy I went numb when I learned to see So I never fell for Vietnam We got the wall of D.C. to remind us all That you can't trust freedom When it's not in your hands When everybody's fightin' For their promised land
And I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war
Look at the shoes your filling Look at the blood we're spilling Look at the world we're killing The way we've always done before Look in the doubt we've wallowed Look at the leaders we've followed Look at the lies we've swallowed And I don't want to hear no more
My hands are tied For all I've seen has changed my mind But still the wars go on as the years go by With no love of God or human rights 'Cause all these dreams are swept aside By bloody hands of the hypnotized Who carry the cross of homicide And history bears the scars of our civil wars
"We practice selective annihilation of mayors And government officials For example to create a vacuum Then we fill that vacuum As popular war advances Peace is closer" **
I don't need your civil war It feeds the rich while it buries the poor Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh And I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war I don't need your civil war Your power hungry sellin' soldiers In a human grocery store Ain't that fresh I don't need your civil war I don't need one more war
I don't need one more war Whaz so civil 'bout war anyway
Yesterday marked the anniversary of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. This gives me pause to think about how alive his message still is today. Certainly a lot of progress has been made against racism, but what about the more subtle forms of racism out there?
When the Dubei ports deal was killed, could there have been some anti-Arab racism at work? Is there at least some racism behind certain conservatives' opposition to Mexican immigration? When Kanye West said that President Bush doesn't like black people, was he being racist in the other direction?
I pose these matters as questions, because to allege racism is to probe into a person's intentions and their beliefs; I am hesitant to speculate as to what is in a person's heart. As the old "easy to spot" racism fades, we must be more vigilant for subtler forms of racism and racism in different directions.
"It is fascinating. In the West, you have bigger homes, yet smaller families; you have endless conveniences -- yet you never seem to have any time. You can travel anywhere in the world, yet you don't bother to cross the road to meet your neighbours. I don't think people have become more selfish, but their lives have become easier and that has spoilt them. They have less resilience, they expect more, they constantly compare themselves to others and they have too much choice -- which brings no real freedom."
Gggreeeeaaaaattttt! Microsoft has created an operating system with security flaws that allows tons of malware, and that OS becomes dominant. But not only is the OS subject to malware, but the problem is so bad, it forces organizations to have to reformat their computers.
There has to be a better way! Oh wait, there is one: Apple Computer. (p.s. they also make kick-butt mp3 players)
This is the product of hoosier, Paul Musgrave, via In the Agora:
People from New York look down on people from Chicago who look down from people from Indianapolis who look down on people from Evansville who look down on people from Poseyville who look down on people from New York.
As someone whose grandfather came to the United States from Mexico long before it was, let us say, fashionable, I think I'm in a unique position to offer some insight into the immigration debate that has boiled over this past week.
My grandfather immigrated to the U.S. from the area around Guadalajara around WWI. To this day, I'm not sure if he came legally or not (obviously things were a lot different back then), but we do know he was in his early teens. He got a job on the railroad, and worked his way from Los Angeles to Chicago to Cleveland, and finally, to Youngstown, OH. There he married my grandmother, a daughter of Italian immigrants, and had five boys. He retired as a supervisor at the railroad, and passed away in 1992 after a long and full life.
I tell you his story because I think it's typical of most Mexican-Americans, and indeed, most immigrants. All they desire is to work, to raise a family, and to participate in American society. That being said, let me opine on a few of the hot-button issues.
Amnesty
Polls show that the majority of Americans are firmly against any kind of blanket amnesty given to illegals. Well, do the math. Estimates are that there are 11 million illegal aliens living and working in the United States. You can't deport 11 million people. You can't put 11 million people in jail. Even if we could somehow figure out a way to achieve such a mass exodus, the nation would not survive the economic and social impact of displacing that many people.
Face it: decades of lax border controls have already granted amnesty to those already living in the United States. At least, it's amnesty in that we cannot expel them or imprison them. What alternative do we have then?
I believe (and this may shock some of you) that President Bush has the right idea. Bush's plan, embodied in a bill being pushed by moderates in the Senate, allows illegal immigrants to stay in the country and join a guest worker program. After paying an indemnity, learning English, and maintaining employment, the immigrant could become a citizen eventually. This plan is certainly not amnesty; it's not a presidential pardon. But it effectively deals with the practical realities on the ground: illegals get to stay, employers keep their workforce, and finally the government is able to keep track of things.
Border Enforcement
The other part of Bush's plan deals with the border. Obviously, the U.S. has always been a nation of immigrants, and we need to make sure to allow for easy access to legal immigration. But to have legal immigration per se means that other methods of entering the country are illegal, and should be stopped. One of the key hallmarks of any nation's sovereignty is control of its own borders, and right now, that's something we don't have.
Do we need a fence? Probably not, it's probably too expensive, and might not even be that effective. What we do need is a vastly increased presence of border patrol agents, and better technology to stop those trying to cross the border and those trying to sneak illegals across the border. Bush's plan pushes for these essentials that will make the border more secure.
Some might say it's racist to have such stringent border controls on our south, while we maintain such lax ones to our north. I say that this would be true... if we had a massive problem with illegal Canadian immigration. And last time I checked, it was Americans (of the liberal persuasion) who were making a run for the True North.
Assimilation
Finally, there is some fear that the new presence of so many Latino Americans will somehow destroy the cultural identity of the U.S. The recent riots in France by Muslim immigrants have added to this anxiety. And the demonstrations in Los Angeles, where more people were waving Mexican than American flags, did not help either. But I think there are fundamental differences between us and France (again, shocker!).
For one, our economic system is much more flexible than theirs, which means there's much greater potential for upward mobility in America. For another, France is a secular nation coping with immigrants who are not only very devout, but of an entirely different religion than the majority. In America, our society is much more open to religion, and as Latinos are almost uniformily Catholic, they are merely joining what is already the largest religious denomination in the country.
The bottom line is that we need not fear for the future. To be sure, there are some bad apples among the illegals, but implementation of Bush's plan roots them out while preserving the good ones. Many sons and daughters of illegal immigrants are in Iraq and Afghanistan right now (disproportionately so, in fact), and they are fighting for our freedom and for the freedom of those who were once oppressed. What we should strive for is a just and practical solution to the immigration problem that will finally grant freedom to their parents.
On this date in 1783, famous American author Washington Irving was born. Irving, probably best known for his short stories, "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow" and "Rip van Winkle," was one of the first American authors to gain regard in Europe. He also is thought to have mentored Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, and Edgar Allan Poe. [read the full Wiki on him]
"They who drink beer will think beer."
- Irving from "Stratford-on-Avon"
"A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use."
