The (no) Bunk Post

Moving to Tumblr

2011-03-09T20:19:00.000-05:00

I've created a Tumblr page in an effort to consolidate all the blogs and various social media I use.

I hate that there isn't commenting on Tumblr, but, I may still make longer posts on this platform.

http://debunkpost.tumblr.com/

Stay tuned as to whether I get sick of it or not!

No Longer My Congressman

2011-01-25T15:46:00.000-05:00

Republican’s Regressive Attitude Hits a Little Too Close to Home - The Hoya - Opinion

The Decider, In His Own Words

2011-01-10T15:40:00.000-05:00

Last week I finished Decision Points, the Bush (43) memoir, and after some reflection -- all 477 pages of it -- my takeaway from the book by the most divisive president in my lifetime is: the man did what he thought was right. That should be the basis for any president and his decision-making, but not surprisingly, the book is full of puzzling moments, just like his presidency. Having it be wrapped around the critical decisions he made actually makes the book more interesting than a conventional memoir, so he gets style points.

The Good

- Bush did a lot for Africa + fighting diseases, and almost no one remembers this.
- The chapter on the financial crisis is one of the first behind-the-scenes --though brief -- accounts of what they did, and he actually deserves a lot of credit for (somewhat) stabilizing the crash.
- Reading his thoughts about September 11th is refreshing, because he doesn't exploit it.

The Bad

- It's incredibly frustrating to read the chapter on Iraq, and by extension, the chapter on Afghanistan
- The way it's written, Bush takes a ridiculous amount of credit for all the countries that have become some form of a democracy over the past nine years.
- He had this broad domestic agenda that got wiped out as soon as he went to war, and it shows, because he doesn't talk much about anything besides those.
- When he talks about the 2000 and 2004 elections, my blood boils.

The Puzzling

- Bush had many well-qualified candidates for vice president, and then somehow chose Cheney. The same goes for a lot of other cabinet positions...he let his loyalty to Bush (41) get in the way of picking people that actually knew what they were doing.
- He still has the problem of referring to his faith way too much; meaning, his faith is what got him elected and guided him through the presidency.

I chose to read the book in the first place because Bush was the first president I ever voted for, and I needed some kind of closure. He put us all through hell, and I wasn't expecting 400 pages of "I'm sorry," but I needed to know what the man was thinking as he was leading the country. No matter how candid and personal a memoir from Bush is, he'll always be this guy to me:

Delayed START Could Be Costly | The Hoya

2010-11-24T12:40:00.000-05:00

Delayed START Could Be Costly | The Hoya

Precisely How I Feel About Government

2010-11-19T10:57:00.000-05:00

This man is a genius:

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Exclusive - Philip K. Howard Extended Interview

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show Full Episodes

Political Humor

Rally to Restore Sanity

SCOTUS Takes on Video Games

2010-11-11T08:27:00.000-05:00

Op/Ed number two has appeared in The Hoya. The editor picked it apart quite a bit because the original was so long but alas :(.

Op/Ed Pieces For the Win

2010-11-08T10:48:00.000-05:00

I've begun contributing to Georgetown's paper, The Hoya. First piece ran two weeks ago. Another coming in the very near future.

Video Games, War, and the Supreme Court

2010-10-07T12:27:00.000-04:00

It's no surprise that video games about current conflicts around the world are yielding far higher revenue than Hollywood movies about those same conflicts.

The bigger issue, though, will be heard in front of The Supreme Court in a few weeks.

Schwarzenegger v. Electronic Merchant Association/Entertainment Software Association will impact the future of video game retail sales, at least in California for the short term.

G4 has a nice summary of the arguments, broken into three parts. I was fortunate enough to get a preview of the case from The Chamber of Commerce, because their Litigation Center is helping with the case, and I took home a copy of the brief.

Adam Sessler chimes in, too: http://g4tv.com/thefeed/blog/post/707646/Sesslers-Soapbox-Gaming-is-Not-a-Crime.html

The basic summary is that the state of California wants to restrict the sale of M-rated video games to minors. Next thing we know, we'll be forced to refer to the Taliban as "Opposing Forces" in the new Medal of Honor game. Craaap that already happened!!

The First Amendment seems to be a popular little guy this year, and that makes me uncomfortable.

Lunchtime Reads

2010-10-07T11:57:00.000-04:00

Marketplace has been following campaign contributions heavily this year, ever since the Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission ruling from the Supreme Court.

The Center for Public Integrity has published a piece detailing how corrupt the system has become, and it's not just the Republican money machine.

The Citizens ruling was one of those head-scratching SCOTUS decisions, because now what's happening is that corporations, rather than just donating money to both parties, are shelling out money to outside interest groups, and remaining anonymous in their donations. Our political system just got more about dollars rather than ideas.

It's rare when Thomas Friedman writes a column that is actually intellectual, and this one is a winner.

Vanity Fair, another fine source of feature journalism that I read as much as I can of, has a new piece telling us that John McCain is basically a broken politician.

Brief Plug

2010-10-07T11:39:00.000-04:00

I don't feel like combining my other two blogs into this one, because it would be really hard to keep track of everything I write. This will significantly increase when I start writing Op-Ed pieces for Georgetown's The Hoya, and I may even start writing web pieces for Marketplace's Tech Blog (if the editor returns my messages), and I plan to write a few more things for Navylogblog.org (really hard to get inspired for that blog, will take suggestions).

My DC blog is at http://gobluefromdc.blogspot.com

History blog that I don't update very much is at http://stack-o-papers.blogspot.com

Obama in Rolling Stone

2010-10-05T11:09:00.000-04:00

Two great pieces from the latest issue of RollingStone Magazine. I forgot how much I enjoyed their political reporting, especially Matt Taibbi's. Rarely is there a piece that I find uninteresting, and often they are more well-written than the established publications.

President Obama gave Jann S. Werner an Oval Office interview. I'm not completely sold on Obama's drive to prevent a GOP majority in November, because as one reads his comments, it's almost like he is in campaign mode as opposed to actually leading the Democratic party. I also think pushing the "we've completed 70 percent of what we set out to do in our first two years" line is a little overconfident. Yes he got financial reform, health care, and education items passed, while making major decisions on the wars, but can he really say that those items account for 70% of his agenda? What about all the concessions he made just to get those things passed? Granted that isn't entirely on him, but, the major reason for him even being in the Oval Office is because he wanted to fix Washington. I don't see that yet.

Taibbi wrote a phenomenal piece on the inner-workings of the Tea Party machine. It's more depressing than anything to read how he traveled around Kentucky meeting with people who are so upset with government spending that they are throwing their support behind young Rand Paul, but they can't defend why they themselves draw on Medicare, or want a tax cut...it's more about them wanting stuff taken away from others so that they get more for themselves. Paul himself is exposed as wanting to reign in spending, yet doesn't see an issue with his comments that personal physicians like himself are entitled to make more money.

CNN Fires Sanchez, Ratings Up 3000%

2010-10-05T10:45:00.000-04:00

Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed watching indispensable journalism as much as the next guy:

Rick Sanchez is the greatest journalist of all time.

But now he's been fired, because he apparently hates Jews, and Jon Stewart. It's always something with those folks!

Sad to see a reliable source of entertainment on America's worst news network have such a fitting end to a very comical career. Place your bets for where he ends up next. I'll take 5-to-1 on "Entertainment Tonight," with an over-under on a new show on FOX called "Rick Sanchez on Ice!" showing up in January.

No Right to Be Here(!?!) And Other Failures

2010-08-18T16:13:00.001-04:00

A lot of Americans don't know what is in the Constitution. Some of those same people also don't know what is within reason for proposals to amend said Constitution. Currently there is a push by some parts of the political establishment and so-called populist movements to interpret or amend the Constitution to permanently prohibit gay marriage in any form, and deny American citizenship to the children of people who immigrate to this country, be it illegally or properly.

Is this what America is?

Has America also become a country that has people working tirelessly to stop construction of a mosque two blocks from Ground Zero? The argument against the mosque is one of intolerance, not reason -- protesting because the terrorist Muslim faith would dare build a sanctuary on top of an American burial ground, is not logical.

That is not what America is.

Give Me Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Huddled Masses...but not your babies.

The Fourteenth Amendment reads:

Section 1. All persons born or naturalized in the United States, and subject to the jurisdiction thereof, are citizens of the United States and of the State wherein they reside. No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

I understand there is slight ambiguity in that first sentence, but at the same time, it's self-explanatory. If an immigrant has a child while living in America, they become a naturalized citizen. It would seem logical then, that Republicans want to repeal the Fourteenth Amendment, or at least that part of it, as a means to an end for immigration reform. Arizona passed an immigration law that essentially subjects its citizens to on-the-spot inspection of papers, so whether that in itself is unconstitutional is a separate issue.

It seems the absolute opposite of progressive when our Congress discusses such a thing as basically denying immigrants the right to have children.

It's also very alarming when 22 states try to copy Arizona.

That's not America.

Does the Constitution Define Marriage?

Not in explicit terms. However, remember the Fourteenth Amendment? The last part of Section One is a telling line:

...nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Which law you ask? Proposition 8, declaring that marriage of gays was prohibited. The Equal Protection Clause exists precisely for these occurrences, right? If a judge rules that Prop. 8 violated the U.S. Constitution...where does it become an issue? California has no official definition of marriage, so, legally, gays can get married. They're citizens just like anyone else. Take Massachusetts as a case study. It has no definition of marriage, and therefore recognizes gay marriages, and affords the two people entering into a legal bond all rights they are entitled to, BECAUSE OF THE FOURTEENTH AMENDMENT. So of course a segment of our Congress would want to take away that right.

That's not America.

The Right to Build a Place of Worship

President Obama threw himself into a hornet's nest over the weekend, because he sounded off about the so-called "Ground Zero Mosque." In actuality, the thing is a community center, that would have a few other services besides a place of worship. It can be a school, a gathering place, a restaurant, and a safe-haven.

George W. Bush was never criticized for saying America was at war with a radical sect of a religion, not the religion itself. Why is it when President Obama makes a similar comparison, he gets slammed? I imagine it's mostly because of where this thing is going to be built, no? It might be in bad taste, but it's also a true test of American inclusiveness. Obama said:

“Muslims have the same right to practice their religion as everyone else in this country. (Applause.) And that includes the right to build a place of worship and a community center on private property in Lower Manhattan.”

One snippet of reaction that encapsulates much of the GOP backlash:

A House Republican aide: “Did the Japanese build a monument of the Rising Sun over the USS Arizona? … But this president showed us all long ago he has no sense of what regular Americans in flyover country care about.”

The Daily Show pointed out that there are already hundreds of mosques in Lower Manhattan, and there is already a mosque eight blocks from Ground Zero.

Jonah Goldberg of The LA Times would have us believe that the uproar over the mosque doesn't exist.

However, Muslims actually do live here.

Some conservatives are even destroying their own arguments.

The First Amendment to the Constitution reads:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If we can't follow even our own freaking First Amendment, what does that make us?

Not America.

Pentagon Papers Lite

2010-07-26T16:15:00.002-04:00

On the heels of the Washington Post's investigation into the intelligence community our government has come to depend on, comes another nugget that fell into the laps of The New York Times, The Guardian, and Germany's Der Spiegel. It's being called "The War Logs," or, "The Afghan War Diary," and there's been a big surge in media coverage to interpret this sudden release.

A note on WikiLeaks. MotherJones has a feature story in their August issue called "Click and Dagger," in which it does make mention of the Pentagon Papers, and it's just ironic that the site got its own version of those documents:

It took nearly two years for Daniel Ellsberg to get the Pentagon Papers into the public domain. "As a leak, it's almost an example of what not to do," says [founder Julian] Assange. "By the time he got the info out, it was of little political consequence." The basic model hasn't changed much since then: Most whistleblowers still need a sympathetic reporter or politician to get the word out.

There is a warning in that paragraph for the present situation. The political consequence of this Afghan Diary might be too little too late, because, as The White House was quick to point out, the details of these documents refers to a time period prior to President Obama's decision to both call a three month policy review and send 30,000 additional combat troops. And what's missing? There was no reporter that these documents were leaked to, no face to put it in print. Today The White House elaborated on the leak at the press conference, saying it could do "potential harm" to the war and relations with Pakistan.

The War Logs, and subsequently, the specific documents that number 92,000+ (note that there appears to be an agreement between WikiLeaks and the three publications to not publish their respective stories/investigations at the same time, nor can they have access to all the documents right away) are not an indictment of a failed military operation that has lasted nine years. I think the aim of the anonymous leaker was to get hard information about what has happened so far out into the open. Many publications have deep access to the US military, but rarely do they get physical information that identifies operations that have taken place deep in the mountains of Pakistan, and how difficult maintaining order within the regions of Afghanistan really has been.

Many have already said, either on Twitter or on blogs or in print, that these are most decidedly not the Pentagon Papers of this war. At first glance of some of the substance of the documents, it gives names, places, and other things that appear top secret, but maybe that's in the eye of the beholder. I'm sure Pakistan would not like some of what is in there, and there's always potential to miss something and have some name get out that wasn't supposed to, and endanger someone's life. The Pentagon Papers were about proving to America that its adventure in Vietnam was not worth the cost in blood it had paid. The papers were released at the tail end of combat operations, so there was not much that could be done to reverse the policy. It was a first-hand account of the government's thinking, and gave hard evidence to the long-held suspicion that American officials did not think the Vietnam War could be won. There is a stark difference between learning that you've been lied to by your government, and learning that your government and its military has been up to far more than was originally told. It's like finding out your high school teachers actually had lives outside the school during the summer.

The primary effect of this Afghan War Diary is one of transparency, not shock. We know what the grand plan for Afghanistan is, and we know what the President wants to accomplish. There isn't a whole lot of discrepancy towards the endgame, and the reason we're still there is because the administration implicated in these very documents did not fully understand the hornet's nest they were poking with the biggest of sticks, the US military, but this isn't a indictment of the overall strategy. The Obama administration might be concerned about how the public interprets this event, but I say bring it on. Too many don't believe in absolutes, and Afghanistan is an absolute, and it took an anonymous leak of things we already know to get it back into the conversation. I'm hopeful to see how journalists go forward with this information.

I Have Not Yet Begun to Fight!

2010-07-05T12:30:00.001-04:00

I've published another piece on The US Naval Memorial's blog...the site doesn't appear to be working correctly so I pasted the piece below:

America's First Naval Hero
by Kevin Bunkley

Fireworks go with our Independence Day like peanut butter with jelly, but the American Navy during the Revolutionary War made what I consider to be the America's first display of naval firepower.

The Continental Navy, the third of the original three branches of service (Continental Army and Marines were the others), was arguably the most vital to keeping the machine of revolution lubricated. The American frigates kept sea lanes open for supplies from France, and harassed British privateers attempting to cut off those supplies. There wasn't a professional sailor among the bunch, with the exception of one now-famous naval hero. Possibly the first real hero of naval history, John Paul Jones gave America the roots of what would become The United States Navy and its track record of able seaman overcoming insurmountable odds.

Jones himself was a Scotsman, but it took an unorthodox journey to get him to the American colonies. He ended up in Virginia after fleeing the authorities hunting him for a murder charge, and pledged to join the rebellion the engulfed the American colonies six months later. Benjamin Franklin then gave him a commission, despite having no battle experience, no crew, and no naval training. Jones, a lieutenant, commanded theBonhomme Richard, a small privateering ship, and he made it all the way to the coast of England.

Jones and his crew caused a panic in Britain, destroying several frigates, thus forcing King George to commission a frigate that would come to be linked to Jones's most heroic moment. The H.M.S. Serapis was sent out to find and kill Jones, and when they found him, Jones fought to win. Half the Richard crew deserted Jones, and the Serapis severely damaged Jones's ship. The British ship commander wanted Jones to surrender, but he instead tied himself to his ship's mast, and shouted to the British, "I have not yet begun to fight!" Jones sent the Richard to ram the British ship, and with his ship in flames, fought the British hand-to-hand with whatever remaining crew he had, and took the Serapis for the Continental Navy. Despite being labeled a "desperado" and "bad fellow" by the British press, Jones became a legend in the colonies on September 23, 1779 when he beat the British.

The tale ends bitter sweetly, because Jones found little appreciation from the Continental Congress. He asked that the United States of America officially create a fleet of ships to rival the fleets of France and Britain, but it fell on deaf ears. The true naval fleet wouldn't be created until John Adams convinced President Washington to authorize such an undertaking, but Jones was no longer on American soil.

John Paul Jones left America for France, to advise the French navy in fighting the British, and even got all the way to Russia, to fight in Catherine the Great's navy during her ascent to the throne. He died in France in 1794, having earned a more notorious reputation abroad than in his adopted America, but his legend is intact. The US Navy likely has more of the spirit of John Paul Jones than any of the nations he interacted with, and has likely fought dozens of its own Serapis-style battles, but a large reason for the Navy's existence can be traced to an ornery Scotsman who was determined to fight.

Gaming's New Year

2010-06-16T10:16:00.004-04:00

Once again E3 has arrived, putting to rest for another year the notion that video games destroy the minds of our youth, and ruin the lives of people like myself. Let's see President Obama or Hilary Clinton/Joe Lieberman try to squash this celebration of entertainment capitalism, right!

I'm simultaneously hopeful and worried for the future of gaming. Hopeful because of stalwart companies like Electronic Arts and Sony putting out great pieces of art. Worried beyond my years because of what Microsoft, Nintendo, and now Ubisoft are staking their financial futures on in the form of family-friendly, gimmicky, motion-controlled "games."

In the interest of keeping order, I'll go day-by-day instead of company-by-company.

Day One

My picks, in no particular order:

Worst Press Event: Microsoft. The mind-boggingly frustrating and stupid event filled with Asian people waving at the Kinect device had me laughing most of the time. Yes, Bungie showed up to demo "Halo: Reach," but that was the high point. Lukewarm feelings toward the mystery Crytek/Microsoft project codenamed "Kingdoms," but with no real game footage, that's going on the shelf for now.

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Call of Duty: Black Ops

Thumbs Up To... (1) Electronic Arts for their "Medal of Honor" and "Dead Space 2" reveals. The Modern Warfare 2-killer is coming to rule you all, and DS2 looks like a prettier and much louder version of the first game. (2) Bioware's brief "The Old Republic" segment, and I wants my spaceship ASAP. (3) next Ghost Recon game for the (likely) stealth integration that looked very very realistic.

Video Game - E3 2010

PS3 Games - E3 2010 - Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

Surprise! Credit Ubisoft for unveiling a clever-looking "Rayman" game. Can't say I'm a fan, but the art looks cool, and unique games at E3 are a dying species.

Honorable Mention: Battlefield Bad Company 2 is getting a Vietnam expansion. Exploding shacks and rice paddies for the win.

Sleeper Games: "Witcher 2", "Driver San Francisco," and "Bulletstorm."

PC Games - E3 2010 - The Witcher 2: Assassins of Kings

PS3 Games - E3 2010 - Bulletstorm

LOL Moment: Ubisoft's strange "thermal scan-esque" fitness game demo. WTF!?

Disappointment: No Valve...yet; Microsoft's ESPN collaboration. Seriously, isn't ESPN 3 already offering all that stuff?

Day Two

Worst Press Moment: Nintendo's god among men Shigeru Myamoto looked thoroughly pissed when the demonstration of "The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword" was having some trouble with the Wiimote feedback. Obviously it wasn't his fault, but I think everyone in the room was biting their nails hoping that the problem was due to wireless interference and not some inherent problem with the software.

Thumbs Up To...(1) Nintendo! You didn't spend 30 minutes telling us why the Wii heartbeat sensor is the next big thing in gaming. Hooray! (2) That guy from the Sony commercials showing up on stage to mercilessly give some laughs at the expense of Microsoft and Nintendo. (3) Bioware! They showed up on G4's stage and gave a very lengthy look at SWTOR.

Part 1

PC Games - E3 2010 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Part 2

PC Games - E3 2010 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Part 3

PC Games - E3 2010 - Star Wars: The Old Republic

Thumbs Down To...(1) Sony. Good lord, do you really need to spend almost half your event showing us montage videos of both games and reasons why Playstation Move is (probably) going to be pretty cool?

XXX
Surprise! Holy crap Nintendo is making a new Donkey Kong game, Goldeneye, *and* a Zelda game!?

Wii Games - E3 2010 - The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword

Honorable Mention: Sony is bringing back "Twisted Metal" ... I never played it before, but it got a big reaction from the crowd.

Sleeper Games: Portal 2, but on the PC, where it belongs; Nintendo has announced a new Mickey Mouse game, and it actually looks cool.

LOL Moment: Nintendo rolling out a horde of gorgeous women with the new 3DS chained to their belts. Security!!

Disappointment: Sony...you didn't announce the new Deus Ex game, or a price cut to the PS3 Slim. Boooo!

More Games to Pay Attention To:
Fable III

Xbox 360 Games - E3 2010 - Fable III

Portal 2

PC Games - E3 2010 - Portal 2

Rage (!!)

PS3 Games - E3 2010 - Rage

PC Games - E3 2010 - Rage

FreepGate/PracticeGate/Day of (Slight) Reckoning

2010-05-25T19:17:00.002-04:00

*Addendum* Rosenberg wrote the massive post-press conference story, and even when the University itself calls out the Free Press in their response, illuminating the garbage in the original Rosenberg story, not one mention of it in the recap of the press conference.

I'm attempting to look at a larger issue here: the failure of a group of (supposedly) professional journalists to put out a totally factual story, to instead try to sell a few extra newspapers.

The context here is of course, the NCAA investigation into the Michigan football program's compliance with the limits on official practice time, and issues with monitoring said practice time (i.e. quality compliance staff not doing what they are paid to do).

Sidenote: Did you know that college athletes devote a lot of time to athletics??

Related Documents: UM's formal response to the NCAA (PDFs), and the original notice of allegations.

OK. Mike Rosenberg was a good journalist before writing that above story. He attended Michigan, and wrote for The Daily's sports page while he was here. Not sure if he had some bad weed that week or if he took a conversion trip to Columbus, but he should know better. He baited two freshman football players into twisting their words around to get Rich Rodriguez in trouble, and it's no secret that Rosenberg was never a fan of the Rodriguez hire. Rosenberg inferred from Hawthorne and Stokes's comments that clearly Michigan was exceeding the number of allotted practice hours, and unnamed players backed up his assertion. We have since learned that some of those players were disgruntled Carr recruits who didn't like putting in the work, or just players who wanted to support Rodriguez and got fooled. This included Morgan Trent, Terrence Taylor, possibly Terrence Robinson, Charles Stewart, and Tony Clemons. Mark Snyder, who usually covers day-to-day Michigan football developments, got completely sucked in by the allure of a smash story, and reported information that wasn't verified.

All the quoted players also made it appear as if everything they were doing as part of offseason activities, and workout regimens, was mandatory. Again, if you're a journalist with half a damn brain, doesn't something go off inside said brain saying, "gee, I wonder if I should ask the coaches what's required of their players?"

They in turn printed information about: how Sundays were brutal on players, how they had to do every workout activity, and skip class if needed, and all this added up to approximately eight hours each day during the week and after games, and nine hours every Sunday. Even I know that if you coerce a player into telling you what you want to hear, that doesn't make it true.

Yes, Michigan did admit to violations on this issue, simply because the NCAA did find that two quality control staffers weren't following the rules -- but not nearly as damning as Snyder and Rosenberg made it out to be. They got their information from dubious sources, and used what was a detailed investigative piece to take a shot at the school and at the coaches. For what reasons, I don't know, but they succeeded in making Michigan out to be the villain of college football, and an exception to the rule that all the giants of the sport have ever done anything out of line.

To base a story on a simple lead of 'voluntary workouts exceeding NCAA rules' is bad journalism, and The Free Press, and Mike Rosenberg and Mark Snyder and their editors, will all eat their hats, and their own shit, when they realize every school in the country likely treats voluntary workouts as being 'voluntarily mandatory.'

That USA Today story linked above should be put on Rosenberg's and Snyder's pillows, because they were clearly blinded by their pursuit of a bogus story. Michigan or any other school would never force players to break rules, but by the example of a school in East Lansing, clearly Michigan is the devil.

And I'm the unemployed journalist.

Status Report

2010-04-19T16:49:00.063-04:00

Spring football scrimmages are always perplexing to me. It is hard to tell whether all starting players on the offense are playing against all potential starters on defense. The situation in Ann Arbor on Saturday seemed to be a mixed bag. Denard Robinson was sent out with 1st team offense against a mix of backup DB's and the starting linebacker corps., and Tate Forcier was sent out with a ton of Freshman against equally mixed defense.

No one got injured, and I imagine the coaches didn't pull all the fancy plays out of the book. It's difficult for me to place where this Michigan team stands in comparison to last year. I definitely think the team *will* be better. How much better is dependent on how Rodriguez uses the weapons he has, because the team has all the pieces to be good.

Random Thoughts

QBs: If Tate ever gets pulled in a game because of poor play, the opposing team better watch out. Denard looked scary good, and was zinging passes all around the field, and cut upfield if everyone was blanketed. I doubt Robinson would get the starting job, but stranger things have happened. Devin Gardner on the other hand, better not ever see the field. He walked out amidst a rousing cheer, and fumbled his first snap, and threw an interception a few passes later.

RBs: Vincent Smith didn't play, and Mike Shaw and Fitz Toussant didn't really do much. Mike Cox ran in a TD with some nifty moves, so perhaps he will step up in games.

WR: Roy Roundtree stole the show again this year, and he's got the most ability. Jeremy Gallon made some awesome leaps to grab high balls, and Daryl Stonum was a non-factor. The beauty of this group is that there are so many of them, after being thin two years ago, that Rodriguez won't have any problem putting in the right guy for specific plays.

Defense: Hard to judge. DBs looked better, and Obi Ezeh was all over the field. Don't really know much beyond that.

Rodriguez has got to get all the pieces locked in, because this is do or die time...and anything less than six bowl-eligibility-making wins is going to draw the wrath of the fanbase.

Preaching the ET Gospel

2010-04-18T13:35:00.000-04:00

At one point during the evening, an elderly man said Thomas Friedman reminded him of an evangelist. In a good way, I hope, because last night at Lake Michigan College, Friedman tried to convince 3,000 people to testify and convert to his Green Religion.

I had the good fortune of hearing Friedman speak once before, at Eastern Michigan University, when his latest book had just been published. Listening to him is an experience, because it's not like listening to most journalists or even heads of state. It's a lot like listening to a distinguished professor give a semester-ending lecture, but he has such worldly knowledge that one is compelled to hang on every point.

"In 2007 and 2008, mother nature and the market hit a wall," said Friedman bluntly.

One has to understand that the reason Friedman gives this speech everywhere he goes, is because he's trying to help reverse the vanished legacy of the greatest generation, a legacy left for us, but we in turn "ate through the greatest generation like hungry locusts," said Friedman.

Much of his material can be found right in the pages of his book, but there are some worth being pulled onto this page.

The overall metaphor for what Friedman envisions is twofold. (1) picture of a billboard he showed onscreen. It was a car advertisement in South Africa, claiming "German engineering. Swiss Parts. American Nothing." (2) The Doha & Dalian condition -- meaning there are little Manhattans sprouting up all over the globe, and two of those are in Doha, Qatar, and Dalian, China.

All these forces and variables are clashing together, toward a situation where energy consumption, population growth, and climate, converge and produce a world that is far different than our current world.

Friedman is opportunistic. That is, if America seizes all these "megaproblems" as said opportunity, to find a way to produce clean electrons, at scale, and transfer from the Information Technology Revolution to the Energy Technology Era. Simple, right?

The large problem thus far of American efforts to get in on this trend, is this. "If it's a revolution, why is no one hurt?" Friedman asked rhetorically. I take that to mean our leaders have not been aggressive enough, and if we as a country truly wanted to end addiction to oil and bad energy habits, why are those bad habits allowed to still operate?

Friedman wants palpable change, not just 192 signatories on some vague legislation that puts loose regulations on carbon emissions. The secret lies within costs and scale. Figuring a durable price on carbon in turn leads to scale, and once scale is achieved, the revolution begins. By that he means the market begins to respond to the scale, and things can be produced for the masses. Its what Friedman calls being "Democratically Chinese."

The Aftermath

2010-03-22T16:54:00.000-04:00

It took about twelve hours for those who are vehemently opposed to health care legislation to start their push to kill it. Before it has even been signed no less.

The vote last night has caused me to consult some sources, and I've found some important spots for where to read all the pertinent legislation, and where things stand.

NYT has a comprehensive page that is tracking the legislation.
They also have a map of the official Roll Call record.
And a page that shows what has been changed in the new bill.

Go here for the text of the original Senate Bill, H.R. 3590.
Go here for H.R. 4870, the Reconciliation Bill.

Whew that's a lot of information.

Once the bill is signed, there are twelve states that are ready to pounce on this thing, and take it to court. The Florida and South Carolina Attorney's Generals offices have filed a suit in U.S. District Court to challenge not only the constitutionality of the legislation, but also to force it to be thrown out of Congress, and thus repealed. Which erases all the work the President did the past few weeks.

Even Michigan is pissed off, because our Attorneys General Mike Cox has joined a similar suit, that would exempt the state of Michigan from this new federal legislation, effectively denying all its citizens the chance to buy healthcare when they need it. Thankfully, he needs 340,000 signatories on a petition to put it on the ballot in November, according to Michigan Radio this afternoon.

The other suit is in reference to the Tenth Amendment of the Constitution. South Carolina's Attorneys General was on MSNBC explaining his reasons. These reasons included, "It's the right thing to do," and, something to the effect of "I don't want government takeover of healthcare."

The Tenth Amendment to the Constitution reads:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

I think the grounds for the suit is that since national health care was never put into the Constitution, it is the right of each state in the union to devise their own. And, since there is no prohibition of States doing so, then it is doubly their right to do it themselves. The plaintiffs argue that this legislation infringes on States' rights, and cannot be implemented.

It seems to me that the point of contention within the actual legislation is the "individual mandate" and its tax penalty, and the supposed requirement of states to spend more on healthcare services.

The mandate doesn't take effect until after 2014, but basically the penalty is a flat rate of 1% of personal income, or, about $95 a year for most people...however it does jump to about $395 per person one year later, and as much as $2,085 per family after 2016. I'm guessing they came up with this mandate to help defray the cost of some of the other policies like Medicare expansion and creating the insurance exchanges. How is this any more outrageous than any existing tax brackets that we Americans currently adhere to?

Second, the requirement that states MUST spend more on healthcare services. It seems the thinking here among the plaintiffs is that most states couldn't possibly afford to increase Medicaid program spendings, with tight budgets and all. Perhaps that is why the government is essentially paying for states to pay for it? The bill simply requires all states, by 2013, to pay primary care doctors the equivalent of what Medicaid already pays them (possibly to eliminate the more expensive forms of Medicare that is an unnecessary cost?)

At this point and time, I don't see how that in particular is an overreach of the federal government's power. I think these states are forgetting that part of the bill institutes policies for allowing STATES to create their own insurance exchanges, so that people without employer-subsidized healthcare can get it. And if that doesn't work, the bill creates TWO separate insurance offerings, overseen by the exact same office that does the Federal employee health care exchange, The Office of Personnel Management. One is even required to be a nonprofit agency, essentially creating the exact same thing federal employees get, but separate, with individually calculated premiums. It's just like Obama has said: if the health insurance that he and members of Congress get is good enough for them, it should be good enough for the rest of America. It's the "public option" but in a much more competition-oriented form, and if the States bitch about creating statewide insurance exchange or joining a regional one, then don't pay for it! Your people have the option of going to this insurance market, you fools!

Christianity & The Founders

2010-03-09T22:21:00.002-05:00

*Update: The Texas Board of Education caved, and curriculum will now be dictated by a Christian-centric view.

*EDIT: I realize Protestantism is a denomination of the Christian faith, but for these purposes, when the claim is that America was based around Christian principles, that is a distortion. I contend that the Republican principles from which America was born are in no way directly taken from the Bible.

Far be it from me to criticize religion, organized or otherwise, but, the rate at which modern Christianity seeps into the public domain, as well as our politics, is alarming on an historical level.

How Christian Were The Founders?

Of course Texas is at the heart of the argument...but the larger issue is the conception among evangelical Christians that somehow our founding fathers would fully endorse the pattern of letting religion take over things like public school and science. It is no irony either that the first state to enact statewide curriculum guides in 1998 is the same state aiming to totally alter how their children learn in grades K-12.

I can see it now: thousands of kids taught to believe that The Bill of Rights answers to The New Testament, humans came from God's tears, and liberalism is the work of Satan.

Is that where we want our educational system in America to go? I sure don't. I seem to remember something in The Constitution protecting the state from the influence of religion, and vice versa, in the interest of creating the most free society on the planet. There was one society that tried to govern in the name of God, and England ended up losing its position as the most powerful nation on Earth...because it's most important subjects separated from the crown, and founded a society based on ideas that come from the mind and not God. Even the fucking Arabs came up with mathematics and laws and architecture and philosophy, while maintaining a safe distance from Allah in matters of state.

It seems a fundamental contradiction of ideas when people in the 21st Century are attempting to overpower all other religions in America in the hopes of returning "Gods work" to its true heirs, when in 1776 men of all faiths protected the persecution of Quakers, Baptists, Christians, Protestants, and you-name-its. Thomas Jefferson for one was a staunch defender of the First Amendment, fully resistant to the idea of a president taking involvement with religion.

I personally believe the founders, since their ancestors came from a predominantly Protestant country, are Protestant first and Christian second. There's an academic quoted in that article who says "98 percent of Americans of European descent identified with Protestantism."

I once saw a documentary film called "Constantine's Sword," in which the author of the like-titled book, James Carroll, travels old Christendom seeking an answer as to why the religion he once knew from the clergy has become so different. Perhaps its because people like the Air Force or Gerry Falwell or Pat Robertson act like prophets when all they're really doing is preaching radical Christianity the same way a Muslim cleric preaches radical Islam. I say that because that has happened: the Air Force has had a problem requiring cadets at its school in Colorado Springs to attend religious services, even if they do not belong to the Christian faith. All done in the interest of converting cadets to this altered Christianity

Some think John Winthrop was envisioning a nation that advanced God's work through Christianity. Indeed, the United States of America was to be a "City on a Hill," as a beacon to all free men, but, was it founded on a bedrock of Christian teachings? The First Amendment would indicate that it was not. The Constitution's inherent purpose is to defend against a national denomination, no?

A pretty fascinating debate about some pretty large concepts. If there's one thing that makes me sad, though, it's that conservatives in Texas want Christianity incorporated into teachings of American History, so as to distort all subsequent events since America's founding to reflect a particular view. It's alarming to think what that leads to.

Set the Record Straight

2010-02-25T17:35:00.001-05:00

The most overused line in the health care fight has been, "something has to be done". Well, today was a step toward something. The White House is trying to get everyone to put their grievances out on the table.

As I watch this health care summit unfold on live television, I don't doubt that *something* will get accomplished. Either the Democrats will muscle a terrible bill through the Congress, by way of reconciliation (not out of the question at this point), or, our Congress will grow some balls and make a compromise. I don't care which path they choose, but get your heads out of your asses and realize that there is a world outside of your respective chambers. This was a remarkable thing, for a President to convince Congressional leadership to let what would otherwise have been a closed-door meeting, be aired on national television (of course CNN and MSNBC resorted to talking over them half the time, so I watched it on the internet).

It boils down to something Senator Chris Dodd said today, saying in effect, "There are enormous costs associated with our being here (referring to people losing insurance or their lives each day while their government sits on its hands). And Keith Olbermann said last night, it amounts to, "an American cry for help."

A lot of issues came up during the discussion, and thankfully, there was little mention of socialist plots or death panels. The Republicans take issue with the cost and the access to coverage, and the Democrats take issue with the quality of coverage and how it's handed out.

The White House Health Care reform site lays out the need for reform, and of course the President's plan is a slightly less costly version of the House bill.

All of these politicians hammer on the point that the American health care system is the best in the world...but why do only federal employees and the wealthy have access to its full spectrum of benefits? That's wrong.

I discovered some alarming things over the course of the day, involving horror stories of people not being able to pay for coverage. Either people's coverage is abruptly cancelled, or Medicare stops covering seniors' care, or people are denied coverage in the first place.

No one knows this about me save for a few select individuals, but, without health care, neither of my parents would likely be alive -- or else they would be in danger of succumbing to some terrible things. My mother has Blue Cross Blue Shield through her employer, and without that coverage, my life would be an entirely different set of circumstances right now. My Dad had an early prostate cancer diagnosis, and it was treated immediately (a few years ago), and all the costs were paid for. Upwards of $50,000 when it was all finished, with surgery costs, hospital stay, and the tests before and after the surgery he had.

The rest of those alarming things involve insurance companies denying coverage on the grounds of preexisting conditions. Among things that people have been denied coverage from include things that my family has, either in family history, or currently. Prostate cancer, Uteran cancer, Acne, pregnancy, having been treated for depression, and lung/heart disease.

I once had a mysterious low white blood cell count problem a few years back, and that would likely crop up in a reason to deny me coverage, if something is not done with this reform. I'm taking medication for depression, and have acne breakouts -- all things that can deny coverage in some states. Presently, if I got sick, and the right insurance company looked at my medical history and saw that I am seeing a psychologist, they would deny me coverage on the grounds of me having been treated within the last six months by said psychologist. All those are "preexisting conditions" to some companies.

My mother now has uteran cancer, and is being treated. A total hysterectomy in September removed the immediate threat, but her full program is not over. The University of Michigan health system diagnosed a middle stage aggressive cancer that would have killed her had it not been found. What would have happened if her insurance company declared that a preexisting condition? I've looked at her medical bills, and it's enough to put us in the poor house. Chemo visits are thousands of dollars, and one shot she gets is about a thousand dollars each time. My sister-in-law is pregnant, making my brother -- who is covered under *her* insurance, and "expectant father." That is grounds for denial in some states.

And lastly, my grandfather. He's 91 years old, and he almost died last week. His heart nearly stopped working, but quick action on the part of whatever doctor he saw saved him. But then they found other infections, and lung cancer. He's on Medicare, and he was in the emergency room, followed by the regular hospital, for one full week. Why can't people who are half his age have access to Medicare, or an insurance exchange, or something modeled on the federal employees' program? My grandfather would have died on a hospital bed instead of being able to get Hospice care to help him go peacefully when the time comes, if he didn't have Medicare, and because that coverage didn't decide to classify that lung cancer as a preexisting condition, since the man smoked socially for sixty years. If my family is fortunate enough to have survived all these scares, and if I'm fortunate enough to avoid a scare with my well-being, people that are way worse off than us should be as fortunate. It's just wrong not to try and have that fortune be the norm.

If the Congressional Budget Office says this plan is budget-neutral, that should be good enough. I don't want to hear another year of people whining about some socialist takeover of the health care system (Eric Cantor), or that it federally-funds abortions (John Boehner), or that it removes any choice people have to get the best care for themselves (John Kyl), or that it costs too much (Mitch McConnell). It's all bullshit, and they know it.

Politics shouldn't decide whether someone gets treated for an illness. The people who are lying on a hospital bed dying because they can't pay to get better should decide that. This is about "life panels" as Olbermann put it, because this is a bill to improve lives, not take them away. Starting over is the real death panel.

I Attempt to Review a Video Game

2010-02-24T16:35:00.000-05:00

Mass Effect 2 released last month, and its Metascore is sitting at 96/100. No surprise, since we fans have waited three whole years for the middle child of the sci-fi sequel.

There's an inherent paradox within game reviews: people rave about wonderful games, but ignore the larger flaws, in the interest of keeping alive the pandering to the masses to give a game a positive mark. See: Bayonetta, Uncharted 2: Drake's Fortune, Gears of War 2, Halo: ODST -- you get the idea. Games earn critical acclaim almost out of a compulsion of said industry to bow down to the hype being manufactured by the games' publishers.

Mass Effect 2 (xbox360) reviews at Metacritic.com

That being said, Mass Effect 2 avoids the "quick fix" pitfall, and presents a complex, and complete, epoch within a larger narrative. Don't let anyone tell you that it drags on and on, as Seth Schiesel of The New York Times said in his review...the game engages you in such a way to where you feel a deep connection to the characters. I wanted to help them, and see to it that they survived the course of the game. Only Bioware can make a game that has characters that are more real and more compelling than most people we encounter in our daily lives. They have stories to tell, knowledge to share, and most important of all, bloodlust to exercise.

Bioware aimed for a more real-time experience, and they got it. Pauses in the combat are gone, everything can be hotkeyed, and the framerate never -- I said never -- drops. Voice-acting is exceptional, with some pretty well-known people chiming in with small roles along the journey, as well as the big gun, Martin Sheen, anchoring the main crux of the story. Unlike the first game, the story is a little murkier, and, the decisions are equally as murky. When you think you want to do something heroic, you end up doing something cold-blooded. The story even has a fair amount of surprise, and major plot developments are reserved for when you aren't expecting it. Very rarely do I play a game where by the end, I'm actually rooting for everything to turn out OK.

As is to be expected with such a huge (read: ambitious) game, there are slight flaws. A few graphical glitches here and there, but nothing that will break the game. During my playthrough, the audio cut out a few times during some dialogue scenes, which was a nuisance, because if there aren't subtitles, one may miss critical information. Sometimes the combat didn't go as expected, and I was left scrambling around not knowing what to do, or, I would unknowingly commit some egregious error and would be forced to reload to an earlier point, or hope that an autosave kicked in right before that point. Planet scanning is somewhat cool, but can be annoying if one is forced to do a lot of it in one sitting. Here's hoping DLC comes out of all these planets that aren't able to be explored yet.

My personal favorite from the game is being able to choose research upgrades on the Normandy's computer. People complained that the role-playing element had been eliminated, but, it's right here! Just because there's no more irritating inventory system or the character customization has been altered doesn't mean there isn't a way to choose how to play the game. It'd be nice if there were more weapons, yes, but to remove the unnecessary complexity of managing everything in the game is genius. The character classes function much better without having to spend time tweaking how it behaves. There's a set number of abilities, and choose carefully how the level points are spent, and it's a piece of cake after that.

If Bioware's goal was to outdo every single facet of the first game, mission accomplished.

Participant Democracy

2009-12-15T17:20:00.001-05:00

I initially laughed at the idea in my email, but then I took it seriously. For the first time ever, I wrote a letter to my Senators, at the request of Organizing for America (formerly Obama for America), in the form of a holiday greeting card.

Dear Senators -

As you sit on the plane back to Michigan, and reflect on the (likely) failure of the health care reform, because you let Joe Lieberman and a small group of Republicans prove your incompetence, take some time to wonder how many families might spend Christmas without a loved one or someone they care about, because they were tossed to the curb the minute the vote (likely) failed.

It may seem insignificant to persons with government health insurance, but I won't forget that you didn't help close the deal the next time it's time to vote in an election. I could be wrong, and the bill will make it to President Obama's desk before the holiday, but it sticks in my mind more when it is this close, and politics prevailed over moral impetus.

It will be enlightening when in another six months, I will turn 24 years old, and have no health care coverage. Thanks, as always, for proving my painfully accurate distrust in the ability of government to actually do anything of any sort.

I'm so thankful this holiday season for the stunning incompetence my government is putting on display. I'm also SO glad that the failure weighing on your shoulders hasn't gotten heavy enough to force your hand into doing something about it, and if I didn't know better, I'd say the motivation was never really there in the first place. If it was, I would have a job, health care, and a restored faith in the America that now only exists in the history book lying on my table.
Remember Remember, the 25th of December, the day Congress ruined Christmas.

Happy Holidays, Failures!

An Unpublished Work

2009-10-25T20:09:00.002-04:00

It looks like this will never be published on UWire.com, so I'll put it on here.

====================

Piling Up the (Campus) Pork

By Kevin Bunkley

Pork has a special place in the backrooms of Washington, D.C. -- and it isn't at the front of the buffet table. It finds its way into the back pockets of nearly every politician on Capitol Hill, and now it's coming to your dormitory. Rep. John Murtha (R-PA), who is notorious for getting pork projects for his home district for defense contractors, has now managed to bring some pork to a college campus -- his alma mater, Indiana University of Pennsylvania. The Washington Post reported on a $53 million earmarked project to build a new facility to house the Murtha Institute, a group that has no mandate whatsoever for what it should use this money for.

State Universities, places that one would think are above shady political practices, are starting to get thousands of pork projects appropriated to them for the strangest of projects. Higher education has no room for federal earmarks that do nothing -- it only makes the best secondary education system in the world look as corrupt and inept as the politicians who give them the money. University Boards of Regents and Presidents are above this, and should not let Washington politics get in the way of following their own ethics. College campuses get federal funding -- our tax dollars -- to give an education, not give a few close friends of a Senator or Congressman some new digs to push paper around in.

Earmarks are not inherently bad in theory, because there have been some useful earmarks approved by Congress. The University of Michigan received millions for a new children's hospital, energy research, and cancer research. To end those would of course be foolish. It's getting easier and easier, however, for members of Congress to drum up support for the more silly of projects among their constituents because it is money for their district, and that usually means jobs. Pork projects, on the other hand, have no public benefit, and for one thing, the categorization of these grants should be designated as such. Voters may not be so keen on giving a university a million dollars to study textiles when there is no direct university involvement in such an industry.

The types of projects that are penetrating college campuses range from the stupid ($800,000 for oyster rehabilitation in Alabama), to strange ($196,000 for reducing pig odors and waste), and to the self-promoting (Sen Charles D. Rangel (D-NY) got funding for a Public Service center named after himself). And there are thousands more just like those. These are attached to the useful higher education funding bills, and almost always pass because, who wants to be scrutinized for voting against funding such a thing as a college? Certainly not an elected official.

The Chronicle for Higher Education's 2008 report on higher education earmarks says that it was at its highest total ever, at $2.3 billion. In 1990 it was a mere $270 million. It can only go up without any oversight or control. Congress must take a hard look at what's being lobbied for, and prioritize according to merit, not personal influence of high-ranking committee chairs or even alumni. During the 2008 campaign, McCain, Obama, and Clinton wanted a moratorium on earmark legislation, but of course a problem presented itself: the vote was thirty-one shy of a majority, so the legislation to end stupid legislation died on the Senate floor. Fix it by forcing Senators and members of Congress to add any and all earmarks they voted for, in addition to ones they introduced, to their public disclosures of all financial information. It would certainly give me pause if I learned that my Congressman had pushed through $80 million in projects to a university in my state, as Sen. Thad Cochran of Mississippi did for his home state. Why are our elected officials given a pass for something like that just because it's "helping" higher education in their home state?

Universities are as much to blame as the Congressman and Senators who get the earmarks. Most major universities have lobbying offices in Washington, D.C., off Capitol Hill, with the explicit purpose of getting this money. Some use it to get meaningful projects, like medical research or automobile research, or IT development, and others, in Indiana-Penn's case, use it to create shell organizations with no real benefit to their campus community or the country. A true crackdown on abuse of lobbying influence is simply yanking federal funding from universities that are building more "Murtha Institutes." A university has every right to lobby the federal government for money or help on issues, but isn't it a little dishonest to use that influence to directly lobby a member of Congress, specifically because they don't have to submit their research proposals to third-party NGOs that present them to review panels? Such a glaring loophole is a direct result of to much power given to a Senator or Congressman. When a powerful member like Murtha or Rangel proposes such a wasteful use of money, his committee must have the sense to vote to strip him of his chairmanship.

If Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AL) can get $986,000 for berry research at The University of Alaska-Fairbanks, then there are some serious loopholes in the way our colleges and universities are funded. Someone like Senator McCain could put some real pressure on all his friends if he re-introduced that bill for a moratorium on earmarks to universities with the stipulation that those who do not vote for it face having their earmark voting record disclosed to the public. It's political blackmail, but it's no different than others blackmailing voters into supporting such wastes of money by advertising that it's good for higher education. America prides itself on having the finest secondary education system in the world, and that image is disappearing faster than the pig stench in Iowa that got more money than some whole schools did.

Universities and our government are equally guilty, but universities in particular can take the high ground and eliminate the middleman. Carefully read the legislation, and refuse to lobby for anything with pork attached. And when the request for funding dies in the House or Senate, the universities are exempt from scrutiny and blame gets put squarely on the politician for letting a higher education bill fail because it didn't benefit them in any way. The loophole of no peer review for bills brought in by specific members of Congress has to be closed, for the sake of preserving what earmarks are for: us. Universities wouldn't be good at anything without them, but it's quickly destroying the image of a university as this infallible public institution, and lumping it exactly where it shouldn't be: in the same boat as our Congress. The merit of an American college degree will soon be lower than their approval ratings should this problem go unattended.

Nobody Does it Better

2009-10-19T22:51:00.000-04:00

Came a feature story in the Washington Post on Sunday: one of those rare times when Bob Woodward does actual reporting instead of getting in everyone's back pocket to get fodder for whatever book he's writing. Thank goodness the Bush administration is no longer around, too, otherwise he would be sidetracked writing a fifth Bush expose !

Woodward and Gordon M. Goldstein have combined some interviews they did a long time ago with Robert S. McNamara, and MacGeorge Bundy, each prior to the mens' deaths. It's a detailed explanation of the internal debates over Vietnam, and it's definitely done with the present situation in Afghanistan in mind.

"The Anguish of Decision" (note that the print version of this story had a great photo of President Johnson & McNamara seated next to each other, both with expressions of total exhaustion and mental conflict on their faces.

Obama's War

2009-10-13T23:42:00.000-04:00

PBS just wowed me with the season premiere of "Frontline."

In the book "The Gamble," by Thomas Ricks, the final section was called "Obama's War," hinting that in his view, President Obama's national security legacy hinged not on success in Iraq but success in Afghanistan.

After watching this program just now, I couldn't agree with that sentiment more.

It focused mainly on the challenges of the new counter-insurgency strategy developed by General Petraeus, and the issues with Pakistan. They had an embedded war correspondent following a unit in the Helmund Province, one of the areas that General McChrystal would like more troops sent to to interact with the local populace and force the Taliban out of hiding.

The whole (!!) program is available online right now, and they have some other goodies on their website.

My man Steve Coll was interviewed (his blog can also be read on The New Yorker site), much to my delight, as well as top ambassadors, generals, and regional experts.

"Frontline" is one of those programs where I go, "WOW, this is on PBS!!" and it proves the worth of public broadcasting and radio, exponentially.

Things That Make The World Explode

2009-10-09T20:46:00.002-04:00

Figuratively speaking.

In under 14 hours, both the American media and the international media have exploded over President Obama's receipt of the Nobel Peace Prize.

Obama, at the Rose Garden, said in essence:

I will accept this award as a call to action, a call for all nations and all peoples to confront the common challenges of the 21st century. These challenges won't all be met during my presidency, or even my lifetime. But I know these challenges can be met so long as it's recognized that they will not be met by one person or one nation alone.

NPR aired Rush Limbaugh's comment during their hourly news updates, in which Limbaugh said Obama's award was a bigger embarrassment than Chicago losing the Olympics bid.

But how much do we really know?

The Nobel Committee is a majority of liberal politicians, but international peace is kind of de facto liberalism to me anyways. The Norwegian government elects each member of the Nobel Committee, and, politically, it's about on par with the British Labour Party, not the American Democratic Party. If Obama were a British politician in the 1990s before Tony Blair, he never would have had a chance in hell.

Obama has lofty goals for his Presidency, and if he meets half of them, he deserved this award. The one that sticks out to me is his push for the elimination of nuclear weapons. That's on par with Woodrow Wilson's creation of the League of Nations. Times two.

This isn't about politics. It's about a vision for the world. A commentator on NPR's website said that Obama owes George Bush for this award because Bush screwed up America's image so much that it was a cakewalk for Mr. Obama to give a few speeches and suddenly be given a Nobel Prize.

Fox News, the bastion of intellect, put an op/ed on their website diminishing the Nobel Prize down to a laundry list of photo ops and speeches.

It's remarkable that Obama won for his vision for the world, and I'll be curious to see if a journalist ever gets ahold of the "portfolio" that the Committee referred to when making it's selection.

Obviously, they saw the same thing that a majority of Americans saw on November 8th.

I'm just sitting back and watching a sitting American President win one of the most prestigious things in existence for the first time in 90 years. If anything, reduce it to that, and you'll all feel better.

I wonder though, should Obama have declined the award??

No. He did the right thing in using it as an impetus to continue his work. However, it remains to be seen what he will do with the large sum of money he gets along with the award. He should donate it to one of the foundations that helps families of fallen soldiers, or something similar.

Before I left Ann Arbor...

2009-10-05T16:12:00.002-04:00

I wrote a little column for a tiny little publication called Consider Magazine.

It was published today, have a look. I previously posted a few drafts of this piece, but it looks fancier on the website.

http://consideronline.org/2009/10/05/has-google-become-too-big/

Epic Pregame Videos

2009-09-29T10:04:00.000-04:00

This season the Michigan football games have featured a new pregame video each week, and they are actually really good. It would help if the new speaker system were installed this year, because there's spots where the audio gets really crackly and overloaded just because it's blaring out of about four speakers on top of the press box.

The videos can be viewed here at Oldhat.tv (warning: contains spoilers to old games), and give them time to buffer because there's a lot going on onscreen. Go Blue !

So Long, "Star Wars"

2009-09-18T13:53:00.000-04:00

President Obama has surprised me again, totally breaking pattern on another national security challenge that he had previously not come up with solutions for.

The President effectively erased all hope for those in Washington that wanted to see the initialization of President Bush's aim to create Ronald Reagan's dream of a missile defense network to guard against nuclear attacks aimed at the United States. Hawks lovingly referred to the proposed program as "Star Wars" in honor of President Reagan, but the technical term is the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).

The SDI Program's technology combines the use of satellites with x-ray lasers, aerial reconnaissance, tactical missiles, and a whole host of other toys to shoot down Inter-continental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) armed with nuclear warheads or even biological agents.

Upon first taking office, President Obama was proposing putting a missile defense shield in the areas around Poland, and the Czech Republic, nudging up dangerously close to the Russian border with Eastern Europe.

Not so, anymore, though, as President Obama yesterday gave a very encouraging speech that drew approval from Russia's biggest power-wielder. The U.S. will scrap the original plans for the missile shield and instead focus on having medium and short-range antimissiles that can reach Iran to protect Israel. The Russians would also take down a proposed defense base on their border in Kaliningrad.

To me this is a giant step forward in normal diplomatic relations with the Russian Federation. I don't doubt that if the program had continued on its original course, the United States and Russia would have been in a (Cold) War of not defense buildups but words and oneupsmanship. President Reagan always called the Soviet Union the "Evil Empire," but there's so much more information available about Russian politics during the 1980s and 1990s that it just makes them look like a nation trying to find its place in the world and to define their nation itself.

Bravo, Mr. President.

Darth Cheney Reprise

2009-08-31T16:05:00.001-04:00

*Updates*
24 hours later, the White House and some politicians are hitting back at Cheney.
My favorite comment comes from Chris Matthews:
"Chris Matthews, at the opening of MSNBC's Hardball, said Dick Cheney is 'attacking the Obama White House for investigating the abuse of prisoners. He is taking the unusual role of defending the CIA itself, an agency he bullied and ridiculed for eight years in his role as vice president. And is he's getting hit by John McCain, who has two advantages over Cheney. One, he knows what it means to be tortured. Two, he knows what it means to serve his country.'"

Reuters also says Obama's National Security Adviser, General Jim Jones, is trying to prove Cheney wrong. Oddly enough, General Jones wants a pullout from Afghanistan. But just because the top commander in Afghanistan didn't request more troops in his report, doesn't mean Obama isn't listening. I know for a fact that Obama holds David Petraeus in utmost regard, he's not going to cause an embarrassment.

Original Post:
Good summary of the former VP's comments:

And lastly, John McCain's comments on "Face the Nation" yesterday.

Best of Ted

2009-08-28T12:04:00.003-04:00

In my mind the most important thing Ted Kennedy ever did was help change the voting age to 18, suddenly giving a political voice to millions of young people that previously had none.

He was liberal, yes, but he was a broker. He was the one who got people to agree on things, and now only two days after he's gone, the Senate and House have descended into chaos. Democrats are on a kick that they ought to pass health care reform as a symbol of the man. Republicans are on a moral stance that health care shouldn't be politicized (kind of hypocritical, no?). Senator Orin Hatch of Utah said it most simply on ABC News: "some are saying let's pass the bill in honor of Ted, but I'm saying, hold on a minute, he would want us to pass something that's good."

Kennedy's morals were always above the rest it seems, when he said during debate of the voting age law, "If at 18 you are old enough to be drafted to fight for your country, then you should be old enough to elect leaders that might send you to do so."

CIA Addendum

2009-08-26T12:37:00.008-04:00

*Further Update* Vice President Cheney, on Fox News Sunday, said he thinks AG Holder is being extremely partisan, acting on a political play to hurt America's capacity to fight terrorism.
However, John McCain, god bless him, said, "I think the CIA interrogations aided Al Qaeda in recruiting...and hurt our ability to make alliances abroad, and, according to the FBI, there were other ways to perform these interrogations [within the law]."

*EDIT* I forgot to also reference the other set of "torture memos" released in April that was from a CIA Counsel. These are the documents Cheney repeatedly refers to when he wants to make the case that torture "saved American lives."

This will be much less complex than the previous post, but it's important information nontheless. I was shocked with some of the wording by reporters and some of the comments from the sources in the newspapers today about more details in this investigation.

Three things are happening: (1) The White House is in a squabble with Dick Cheney, (2) Congressional reaction to the investigation, and (3) how much of the information is being kept quiet by the Obama Administration.

Clearly Obama hates America.
Per ABC News:
"former vice president Cheney said yesterday that the probe 'serves as a reminder why so many Americans have doubts about this Administration's ability to be responsible for our nation's security.'"

POLITICO tells of a Republican Congressman who said the following:

"You wonder which side they're on"

And again, Michigan's own Pete Hoekstra, stirring the fire, said:

"We need a CIA that is focused on keeping American troops safe and winning this war, not worried about what politicians and the Justice Department in Washington, D.C. may do to them for doing their job"

They were in fact not doing their job, Congressman. They broke the law. But it was in the interest of national security so therefore it's okay in your book. Dang fool.

WaPo columnist David Ignatius is worried that the CIA will have its hands tied (or perhaps, shackled?) the next time there is something at stake. It's interesting that a CIA agent would want to call a lawyer before dumping gallons of water in someone's face. And Joe Scarborough, a man I typically respect, foolishly said this morning on his TV show, "the best and brightest are running out of the CIA this morning."

The two most bizarre editorials come from the two biggest papers. I have never read a New York Times editorial and thought, "do they know what they're saying!?" They want it to become political, even though they understand it can't be, and want the higher-ups to be prosecuted. WaPo also says essentially, "Obama caved in to Bush" (my words).

Darth Cheney claims he was right.

Despite the former Vice President saying the above comment, his biased biographer says:
'The Weekly Standard's Stephen Hayes, who has written a sympathetic biography of Cheney, said on Fox News' Special Report, "The document that was released yesterday that describes pivotal information gained from detainees as a result of interrogations is actually dated June 3. The one that Cheney requested was dated June 1st. There is, I'm told by an intelligence source, more information in the June 1st one.'"

Apparently, Cheney didn't tell us everything? He is glad some Agency officer waterboarded Khalid Shaykh Mohammed 183 times in order to find out information that might have been false. I read that as, his claim that without these interrogations they would have gotten nowhere is totally false. LA Times agrees.

Obama knows more?
While all of this is shocking, there seems to be some conjecture among the media that Obama isn't doing enough. The appointment of a career CIA officer to oversee the interrogation rules and their changes isn't a reason to freak out and say nothing is going to change.

POLITICO also says, Obama is in bed with the Bush administration on investigating the CIA.

Strangely, The NYT and Wapo have concurring articles that suggests the CIA was in control of the interrogations, and even did some cleaning house when Khalid Shaykh Mohammed almost died.

There is obviously a lot we *don't* know, but it just seems like the media reversed some of its approval of what Obama did, and also got some absolutely STUPID politicians to offer the other viewpoint. However, the larger issue is that this is turning into a political mess. Am I wrong?

<3 Bioware <3

2009-08-25T22:03:00.006-04:00

The first substantial footage of "The Old Republic" from Gamescom '09

Of course Blogger doesn't like G4's videos, so link here.

I'm curious to know if they're planning on having players from both "sides" be able to go through that same quest at (nearly) the same time. It would be really great if among those Republic troopers popped out a human-controlled player to fight with...but maybe they've thought up another way to do that.

The United States Does Not Torture

2009-08-25T12:08:00.007-04:00

Right???

RIGHT!?

NO!?

Dammit!

The Inspector General of the Central Intelligence Agency says otherwise.

That report is the focus of a plethora of media coverage at the start of this week, and the ensuing legal mess after it will occupy my mind for a long while. Some reporters are flipping out about this, but The New York and LA Times have the most neutral stories; NYT focuses on the decision to declassify the report, while the LAT details Attorneys General Eric Holder's plan for an investigation. The wording of "preliminary investigation" is always ominous, because it's clear the AG wants to eventually do a full investigation as to whether federal laws were violated by CIA agents, and whether it would warrant prosecution. In the NYT piece, meanwhile, Holder is quoted as saying, “As attorney general, my duty is to examine the facts and to follow the law," yet makes a clear distinction that he's not trying to backtrack and pick apart everything that the Bush administration authorized, as President Obama said publicly.

He's only after what was legal and what was not, but why is he appointing a special prosecutor from a US Attorney's office in Connecticut, when he clearly doesn't want to go on a witch hunt of CIA interrogators that were authorized by the Bush administration to torture terrorist suspects?

Holder is perfectly okay with not being very popular within the Central Intelligence Agency, but is it really up to the Department of Justice to police the CIA? No, that's for the White House to dictate as of now. If the CIA is going to be ordered to turn over control of oversight of interrogation and detention of terrorist suspects, the AG has to just let the National Security Council, a direct arm of The White House, stay within the limits of the law. It's not the job of the Attorney General's Office to interfere with internal CIA discretion...but I'm perfectly OK with him stepping in when the legality of torture is in question.

Too often the CIA claimed its methods were in the interest of national security, and when Michigan's own Congressman Pete Hoekstra says review of interrogations has been "exhausted," I take issue with that. There are laws to be followed, and one example of when the law was not followed was with cases of rendition. Rendition is a loose policy for transporting suspected terrorists to countries that don't follow federal or international law, so that those prisoners can be abused to extract information. The President put a semi-stop to that this week, too, by reforming how renditions are exercised.

The CIA sidesteps federal law, but Attorneys General Holder has every right to order an investigation when a detainee is not being given his rights under international law. The Geneva Convention sometimes applies, also, but there are semantics as to who exactly is a Prisoner of War. And that's what led to the release of both the Justice Department report and the CIA Inspector General's report. Inter-agency communication -- or the lack therof recently -- led to intelligence mistakes. Holder is correcting those gaps by saying the information currently available renders a review of torture techniques. He MUST be careful and not go after CIA agents, but to just go after the *process* and what wasn't done to ensure the law was being followed. He's trying to find the source of who made the decisions, because there's documents detailing that these torture techniques were authorized by the Justice Department, who (previously) had legal oversight over the CIA.

In lamen's terms: Did the CIA infer too much as to what was authorized by our own government? And I suspect too that some questions will be directed at our former Vice President, Dick Cheney. The CIA can claim all it wants that these methods produced concrete information:

"One of the reports calls the program 'a crucial pillar of U.S. counterterrorism efforts' and describes how interrogations helped unravel a network headed by an Indonesian terrorist known as Hambali. The other report details information elicited from Kalid Shaykh Mohammed, chief planner of the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, saying it “dramatically expanded our universe of knowledge on Al Qaeda’s plots.'”

But I want to know why the law wasn't followed, and that's what Prosecutor Durham's job will be. It's not good when the CIA themselves say their conduct in treatment of prisoners was "poor and inhumane."

At the top of the list is the use of waterboarding, but here's the problem: The Justice Department -- specifically former AG Alberto Gonzales -- authorized the use of waterboarding! Holder has to do two things: find out who (CIA agents that is) disobeyed what was allowed by the Justice Department, and find out which specific cases have legitimate claims to a prisoner's rights being violated by things that the Bush Administration authorized (legally or not).

When referring to waterboarding or water dousing, the CIA IG wrote:

"Such detailed guidelines reflected concern throughout the C.I.A. about the potential legal consequences for agency officers. Officers “expressed unsolicited concern about the possibility of recrimination or legal action” and said “they feared that the agency would not stand behind them”

In a nutshell, that's what I think Holder is looking for: the officers that voluntarily violated the law and making sure the guidelines are changed and followed. Not finding out all the Bush officials who authorized the stuff in the first place...because it was the CIA that tried to cover up bad treatment of prisoners. The Bushies just didn't ask about it, that's not a crime.

It's important how he will describe these actions. He cannot stand there and say "well, the Bush administration accepted this policy, so we're going to prosecute them," because at the time it was the law; instead he has to say "The CIA broke the law in cases X, Y, and Z, and here's what we're doing to correct it so it doesn't happen again." Let the CIA handle reforming its practices, because their director, Leon Panetta, has said they will do so:

"The program had produced crucial intelligence...but harsh methods will remain a legitimate area of dispute.”
He's standing by his employees, but also recognizing that there has to be some examination.

The United States does not torture. Even John McCain wanted that to be a policy of this country. Sometimes following the law is more important than intimidating the crap out of a scared prisoner that just divulges false information to be spared of this:

The CIA IG report is mostly a blacked-out mess, but there are some pretty unsettling things. Just running down the table of contents, there is a section on techniques such as water dousing, use of smoke, pressure points, mock executions, hostile takedown (abuse), shackles, and stress positions. Then it explains the effectiveness of these techniques, and concludes that said effectiveness of capturing other terrorist suspects or preventing attacks "cannot easily be measured."

The Agency says they captured a big-name terrorist, Abu Zubaydah, and under pressure of preventing more terrorist attacks, sought to locate a facility where they could torture him. The details of his interrogation are blacked out, but they are careful to note that he was provided medical attention, and that they foresaw no legal issue, as they had followed all approved techniques.

There are specific cases of "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" -- EITs -- on a number of suspects. They admit to waterboarding a suspect named Al-Nashiri, and Mr. Zubaydah, multiple times, and actually videotaped the procedure (part of the group of tapes that were destroyed by CIA or overwritten with blank recordings)...but they claim the waterboarding lasted no longer than "10 seconds" each time.

These same two men were subjected to further treatment. The details are slim, but it involves one of them being naked, hooded & shackled, while an Agency debriefer (interrogator) threatened to use a handgun and a power drill on them. The Agency officer denies this next part, but the IG claims they threatened to rape Al-Nashiri's mother in front of him, and when interrogating Khalid Shaykh Mohammed, they suggested they would kill his children.

The next 40 pages are blacked out, and the last few pages detail that these methods in turn lead to the capture of some other terrorists, and that any agents who exceeded authorized interrogative methods were given domestic assignments (such as one man who beat prisoners with the butt of a rifle). The only method I could find that was explicitly "not approved" is an instance where two debriefers, one claiming that he knew what he was doing, choked a man to the point of suffocation by strangling the carotid artery, and shook him awake when he was about to pass out. They then staged an execution of a fellow prisoner that was actually disguised guard, but deemed it "ineffective," but didn't report it.

The United States Does Not Torture.

Right?

While I Was Away...

2009-08-21T11:05:00.003-04:00

After spending three days in Washington, D.C., there were some big things that happened while I was there. Bob Novak passed away from brain cancer, the Pan Am 103 terrorist was let out of prison by the Scottish government, and "60 Minutes" creator Don Hellman passed away.

I'm there for three days and all this happens!? Don't want to imagine what else would happen if I actually *live* there!

Afternoon News Lull

2009-08-11T17:52:00.002-04:00

I don't see how Obama can't invite Israel to a nuclear summit. The only solution is to negotiate a disarmament for a more stable Middle East. The United States is sworn to protect Israel but not if it decides to fire a nuclear weapon at Iran...

Obama is paying more attention to Afghanistan, but the casualties are still rising. For the love of God, Mr. President, DO continue to listen to David Petraeus because it will work. The civilian surge that General McChrystal also wants is a necessary supplement. Not going to destroy the corrupt government we installed there without people on the ground to dismantle the opium farms and get elections going.

Google Isn't Evil...just, ill-tempered

2009-08-11T16:14:00.002-04:00

Updated version of an earlier piece:
The Google Democracy

By Kevin Bunkley

In an era of liberal government and blank-check spending, business is often the first casualty. Not so with the nation's most beloved internet company, Google. Since its IPO in 2004, Google has added an infinity of o's to its name. Critics often warn of some doomsday-like event in which Google unites with the federal government to penetrate every waking moment of our lives, and everything in them is sold to us by Google. I had my money on Microsoft becoming "Big Brother" first, but as Google grows, and grows...and grows, some would have you think this is bad for business and bad for our lives. In the age of globalization, a bigger Google can only further plug America, and the rest of the world, into each other.

Google's market value and subsequently, market share, is larger than Time Warner, Viacom, its subsidiary CBS, and The New York Times Company. They have every internet service imaginable, a cellular phone, and, in my estimation, the most important advertising operation in the world, AdWords. Competitors -- chiefly Microsoft and Yahoo -- warn of a monopoly business in violation of antitrust laws. Is that why the two companies just signed a ten-year deal to join their laggard search technologies to grab that market share back...after Yahoo's own project with Google was canned by the federal government?

The June issue of Wired magazine, had an article detailing Google's ascent to the powerhouse of online content and advertising and just how the company makes its money. In short, a complex mathematical formula causes a continuous cycling of the advertisements that are being clicked, and opens it up to bidding amongst the companies that want our dollars. Stimulating competition for ad prominence is an economy in itself, and it put a hole in the traditional model of going to an agency to buy ads in newspapers or online. Flattening the playing field has never been in the interest of too much power, but in the interest of advancing how commerce is conducted. The fact that an search engine start-up came up with this before Madison Avenue executives did is an indication that Google may have certain financial advantages in the modern economy.

These divisions have all the makings of a company that is beyond its reach. "Google's mission to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
and useful,' so charmingly visionary in a startup, now sounds to some
people downright predatory in a company of nearly 12,000 employees," wrote Rob Hof in a 2007 Business Week piece. Corporate innovation is cyclical. IBM was at the front of the computer revolution, Microsoft at the integration age, and now Google is helming the internet phase. It's impossible to argue that a company that has made using the internet far more simpler than it was, has become too big and powerful. The only things that can limit Google are people who don't want to join the 21st Century.

Google's sole purpose is to provide information. It's easy to see why their projects to digitize entire University libraries, mainstream books, and other print media are contested as being too accessible at no cost (sometimes known as the "Wikipedia syndrome"), but look at who Google's toughest critics are: competitors and others who stand to gain nothing from the project. If Google were still a start-up search engine with a very small user base, would Microsoft and Yahoo throw a fit? Before allowing the Michigan Digitization Project, the University of Michigan filed suit on behalf of an author's guild since the company was seemingly in violation of intellectual property rights. Michigan is now the biggest advocate of digital book scanning, as economist and Michigan librarian Paul Courant led the charge to keep up with Cornell, Stanford and Columbia allowing access to their library collections. He wrote, simply, on his blog, "I believe Michigan and Google are changing the world."

Google only threatens the traditional information infrastructure that was devoid of balanced competition for almost ten years. Now, the rest are playing catch-up to Google's methods. The problem area is, that if Google has no competition at all, it would become too powerful with seemingly infinite ad revenue, and that creates a real vacuum. Google has expressed interest in cataloging everything in the world...but would we as a nation want their satellite data and information on our defense projects available to the tech-savvy web searcher? The existence of other companies keeps Google in check, not the self-restraint of its board. If Google were too powerful, Microsoft would be kaput.

The growth of the company has in a way led to a smarter internet, and collaboration that has produced amazing technological devices and services. Atlantic Monthly in July championed pharmacological research that suggests the ever-increasing amount of information on the web is making humans, as a species, smarter. In regular speak: without Google, our lives are a jumbled mess, and we're unable to maintain our fluid intelligence or think deeply. I would feel stupid and uninformed without Google Reader and Blogger software to occupy my internet-browsing time. And show me a University student anywhere in the country that wouldn't rejoice at being able to pull up a hard-to-find book for a term paper on their personal computer. Google's services are too numerous to effectively contain. Not when what is being dealt with is out there in cyberspace. Sharing news, video and documents is integrated into society, and can't be easily yanked out. Google yielded by allowing the Universities to maintain control of their collections, because of cries by academics over a single entity having too much power to control information.

Google may come uncomfortably close to high levels of government or an organization when it asks to be allowed in, as it did with China last year, or when it wants to abduct an entire archive of information as it did with the University of Michigan's Library. It may act as infallible and impervious to error or going too far (street-level satellite viewing), but Google is a tool of our globalized world. Google tells us what we are searching for, and how society is behaving. Their information helps us live.

There won't be another Google anytime soon, so the one we have has to be allowed to conduct its business how it sees fit, minding certain rules of course. Only when it swallows up Facebook and Twitter will there be true cause for alarm.

Thbthbthbthb Lou Holtz

2009-08-05T10:53:00.004-04:00

*Update* Well 'ol Lou decided not to run. Probably better for everyone.

When former Nebraska head coach Tom Osborne won a seat in Congress, I thought, "How 'bout that, a respected sports figure entered politics to try and help his state."

When Lynn Swann tried to win the Governor's race in Pennsylvania, I thought, "How 'bout that, a former football player has the freedom to pursue elected office."

When I just read that former Notre Dame head football coach Lou Holtz wants to run for Congress in Florida, I thought, "Good lord a crazy old man wants to enter politics."

It's his right to run, but the Orlando Sentinel and POLITICO are illuminating some problems, and say that Holtz could decide in the next few weeks. I know nothing about the incumbent in the district, but I suppose if she isn't getting things done, any alternative is good. The Florida GOP is mainly touting Holtz as a recognizable face that would bring in a lot of money...and as we all know, money is more important in politics than actual politics are. Holtz had a problem automatically selecting Notre Dame for every single debate held on "College Gameday" and did so on purpose to help sway college football voters.

If he's half as good at swaying a real electorate to vote for something as he is in forcing people to put Notre Dame in bowl games, Florida is in for a treat.

The New Washington?

2009-08-04T17:00:00.005-04:00

There are hundreds of articles about ethics and fundraising/campaign reform since President Obama took office, but do we know it's actually being done?

POLITICO says that some lawmakers are cutting back on the number of elite golf outings around D.C., outings that are typically used as informal power plays or money grabs. Golf is a social game, and I can't imagine some of the discussions that go on around the greens at some of these outings. It always makes me think of either something out of a Tom Clancy novel or scenes in movies where the President and important diplomats or spies are playing golf and decide the future of the nation or a savvy political scheme as they play the back nine.

I don't want President Obama to stop playing golf, that's for certain. It promotes the game, and fitness, and he's pretty darn good at the game!

Essentially if they made some changes -- which some have already begun to do -- everyone could be happy. Hold the majority of these events on public courses, especially if it has to be done in a home district of a participant; if possible, hold them closer to D.C. so that airfare doesn't have to be paid for by taxpayers; cut out expensive planning firms in the decision-making process, and lastly, invite everyone!

The Junk SIde of "$$$ 4 Clunkers"

2009-08-04T10:25:00.007-04:00

*Update* Most of the people taking advantage of the rebates are buying foreign cars...but ones that are assembled in USA. And a Toyota model is the top-selling vehicle.

Last night ABC News reported on some of the difficulties car dealers and buyers are having with the Cash for Clunkers program that was saved from the fire by Congress two days ago. In it, they reported that some dealers are not getting reimbursed for the cars they scrap, buyers are not getting the rebates fast enough, and other used car dealers are crying foul that they could be re-selling some of these "clunkers" for a small profit.

Newsweek asks, "Is it still a good time to buy a car?"

NYT Lede Blog describes the difficulties smaller dealerships are having.

Some Republican Senators and Representatives oppose this program just out of principle, with no real basis, but personally I think it's hurting the network of car dealers by driving their profits down. Sure, there were 250,000 cars sold in the past week or so, but is it really fair to call that a victory when it is somewhat artificial because it was brought on by what amounts to a firesale on automobiles?

I never approve of propping up a market, and it seems that is what's happening. It's tough to find middle ground, because it's getting people to buy fuel-efficient cars (me included, though I didn't use this program), but there's a big downside in the form of hurting small businesses by having them wait in limbo for money that may never come to them.

The government could do one simple change: set up a wholesale market for these used cars, and export them overseas where there is demand. Before everyone shouts me down as hating the environment, there's an upside: In the Middle East, anyone besides Saudi royalty drives around in cars that are worse than most of these cars people here are turning in. The poor and middle-class clamor for a nice big, more fuel-efficient American car to drive around in -- the very same cars that are being sent to scrapyards all in the interest of a tentative government-backed rebate program that's a serious financial risk to the market it's inflating.

DoD Gets Its Way

2009-07-31T11:43:00.003-04:00

Three stories of note today for something I wrote about previously. The Congress is dealing with the health care bill, saving Cash for Clunkers, and defense spending, all at once, prior to going on recess at the end of the day today. Defense spending was approved yesterday, and SecDef Robert Gates's excellent budget plan was essentially thrown out, save for the F-22 "Raptor" fighter jet program.

$636 Billion Defense Budget
Obama had warned them
House Dems Caved

President Eisenhower once said in his farewell speech that the nation had to be aware of the "Military-Industrial Complex;" In other words, the vast network of lobbyists that have Congress' ear when it comes to approving defense projects and getting pet projects for Senators or Representatives' home districts. For example, say John Murtha (D-Pa) wants to get a contract to build engines for the F-35 fighter jet in his home district so that he can get a few hundred people employed. While that's not a terrible thing to get jobs for your constituents, it's a problem when the committee you chair pushes earmarked defense spending to, say, Northrup Grumman, because the lobbyist that asked for it has them as a client.

Oh, wait, that actually happened.

I was watching an episode of "The Simpsons" recently, from Season 6 -- "Bart's Comet." The comet is threatening Springfield, so the Congress assembles in Washington to pass a bill to help them, but before it's called for a vote, a Senator raises his hand and makes a motion to attach some unwanted earmark to the bill. Then they all hate it and vote the bill down. Cut back to anchor Kent Brockman, who says, "Democracy. Doesn't Work."

Who Knew A Nonprofit Could be Awesome?

2009-07-29T15:22:00.003-04:00

Take a few moments and dig around the following websites:

americanprogress.org
campusprogress.org

TIME Magazine dubbed them "the most influential group at this moment in history" recently.

I would dub them one of the more awesome nonprofits out there. The "internships" page had me laughing out loud at some of the information they willingly put on there.

When the World Looked Up

2009-07-20T09:51:00.003-04:00

Lots of moon-landing related material on the interwebs today, but it doesnt feel quite the same since Cronkite is gone. He covered it the best of any journalist at the time, but what's important to remember about the moon landing is that it is seen as man's greatest achievement. People often forget that it was essentially brought on by the national will to beat the Russians at something, and before the Apollo program, NASA was a joke. But the men they found to conquer the new frontier were giants among men, and deserve all the credit in the universe for their courage.

Tonight Discovery Channel has the miniseries about the Apollo program with the new landing footage, History Channel has a new docudrama, and TCM is showing the great space exploration films, including my personal favorite "The Right Stuff."

Take a moment to look up at that rock tonight, and imagine when man touched its surface.

He Told the Truth

2009-07-18T09:52:00.002-04:00

Walter Cronkite was my favorite TV journalist, and I hate that he's gone. The castle of professionalism that was CBS News was started by Murrow, and made immortal by Cronkite.

In the newsroom in the sky at 92 :(

Where'd Michigan Journalism Go ?

2009-07-16T22:55:00.001-04:00

Where'd Michigan Journalism Go ?

By Kevin Bunkley

A year removed from the University of Michigan and subsequently The Michigan Daily...the job market for young writers is one from hell. Publications are closing up, tenured staff are re-interviewing for jobs someone half their age -- and salary -- could do, and here I am stuck in the middle with my hat in my hand waiting for that phone call. As I've navigated this search, however, certain things have entered my mind, and one thing consistently bothers me. Am I at a disadvantage because I come from a school with no formal journalism program? It wouldn't seem so, but, once upon a time Michigan did have a journalism program. It was before most people reading this were born, but it did exist. A return of a formal journalism program may just help others who come after me get a job when they get that block M diploma. The Daily plays a role, but the administration must recognize that even Daily staffers want some teaching from experienced professionals.

What happened to Michigan's journalism program? The only evidence I ever heard about it was when Michigan State Journalism Professor, and University alumnus Joe Grimm told me that he obtained a Bachelor's in journalism in 1975 from Michigan. It's a mystery as to why the University phased out its undergraduate journalism program, but The Michigan Daily was clearly a more viable way to encourage journalism on the campus with no financial cost, since The Daily is independently run by a board.

This decision has negatively affected mine and others' experiences for learning journalism. Yes, The Daily is essentially a regular newsroom and actual writing experience is far more valuable than sitting in a classroom, but that only goes so far. An editorial board member such as myself does not do reporting that often, so a journalism program would have been the perfect supplement to learn ethics, multimedia and how to get a job after graduation. However, I was pleased to learn of UM-Flint starting a journalism program in May. It focuses more on online journalism, but one thing is important: the students wanted it, and the administration yielded. If there was enough interest among students at the Ann Arbor campus, I would hope the administration would be as supportive.

I have no factual information as to why the journalism program was eliminated, but I have a theory. From what Mr. Grimm wrote to me in the email in which I first learned of this extinct degree, I believe the program was a casualty of the times it lived in. Graduates of Universities from 1973-1976 experienced a terrible economic recession. The policies of Presidents Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter exploded inflation and unemployment rates, and state funding for its public universities was in a pinch. The University of Michigan almost certainly had to eliminate some academic majors, so journalism was likely one of those that was cut to balance the budget. I imagine that thereafter, The Michigan Daily picked up the slack as soon as the economy improved in the Eighties, and the Board of Regents probably never saw any reason to bring the journalism program back.

Two things must happen so that everyone who isn't a straight reporter doesn't have the same difficulties I have been plagued with: The University must either consider reinstating the program in full, or else lobby the Knight Wallace Fellows to start a program that allows a group of students to interact with the journalism pros that come here each Winter to improve their craft. At the very least I would have jumped at the chance to have a journalism minor that was overseen by the Communications Department, one of the most lacking departments in the entire University -- its reputation for easy courses to fill credit hours is not undeserved. The second is that students themselves need to ascertain whether there is enough mass interest for such a program, because if it is only half full that doesn't serve a purpose, The Daily far surpasses a half-strength official field of study. I implore all the persons who regularly read The Daily, but have thought themselves too unprepared to join the staff, to think about whether they would pursue a degree in journalism.

There are thousands of good writers walking around this campus, and if the University wants to better equip all of them to be effective American citizens, they'll look into restarting a journalism major in the interest of claiming a major role in providing a dying industry with a tidal wave of new talent that is just begging to be hired like I am.

Equality in College Hockey

2009-07-16T22:52:00.001-04:00

Equality in College Hockey

This postseason the Michigan hockey team had an early exit from the NCAA tournament at the hands of the Air Force Academy, effectively closing Yost Ice Arena for the year. Only seven months until the Wolverines are back on the ice, but there's a revenue stream the University is overlooking. We could still be enjoying college hockey this year if it weren't for a glaring hole in the list of varsity sports supported and funded by the University Athletic Department. Many universities have it but Michigan does not: a women's college hockey team. There may be informal club teams, but wouldn't it be more appropriate if a second Michigan hockey team was occupying Yost Ice Arena after the Men's Hockey team finishes their season? The main benefit of course being that the University itself gets to attract a whole new demographic of students, and strengthens diversity on campus and could serve as a model for major college athletics for women everywhere. It's the least the University could do when it's trying to scrounge up interest in what I call the "other" sports, meaning, anything that's not football or basketball.

Major women's hockey programs are not unprecedented in NCAA athletics, but not on quite the same stage as Michigan's. The Big Ten has two major programs, and the NCAA has total oversight of awarding a national champion, and instead of the traditional conferences there are Associations just like in Men's Hockey. Minnesota and Wisconsin have nationally-recognized programs, and Wisconsin won the 2009 National Championship back in March, but why doesn't Michigan have a program?

Consider a scenario: Athletic Director Bill Martin authorizes funding for a varsity-level Women's hockey program. Said program joins the WCHA, and Martin pulls away one of Red Berensen's assistants or someone from another program. Suddenly an entirely new group of high school graduates are compelled to apply for the University with the hopes of playing hockey on the national level for a power school that has the name weight of the University of Michigan. Athletic recruiting has always been an enrollment tool for this University, and adding another varsity-level sport can only improve the diversity and quality of the student body.

I view this as another showcase for the University. Attendance at many women's sporting events -- and even men's -- is lower than what it should be (with the exception of women's softball). The athletic department only needs to offer tickets to a women's hockey game for half price when a student or alumnus buys a ticket to Yost Ice Arena to see the men's team. Granted there are certain logistical issues with use of Yost Ice Arena at the tail end of the season, but the University always works those things out. They've done it with Crisler Arena for men's and women's basketball.

My family has a line of enrollment at the University, starting with my father, and I have one cousin who would love to attend Michigan, but she is not too keen on going to a school where she can't play hockey. She has repeatedly told me she would instantly apply to Michigan next year if they offered more than a club hockey team. If one extrapolates that out beyond my family circle, the University has glaring holes in its appeal. There are thousands of people who would love to come to Ann Arbor, but can't make that commitment due to the University not offering an athletic sport or an academic field. This issue goes beyond ice hockey, and if the University is so concerned about maintaining a high level of diversity in the student body, post-Proposal Two, it should think of expanding its offerings to bring in more students. It can't survive on the merit of simply being "Michigan" forever, it has to constantly improve or change its image to adapt to the needs of potential students. A women's hockey program is a small microcosm of what it must do. When it makes those kinds of changes, a thousand "my cousin"s will come flocking to the best puclic University in the country.

Latest Reading List

2009-07-14T11:01:00.002-04:00

The internet is a wonderful place, and here's a list of some of the recent gems I regularly read:

Nifty "Star Wars" webcomic
James Fallows's blog
Game | Life
The Feed
Politico 44
Political Bulletin
Robert Schlesinger
The Opinionator
Larry Kudlow
Joystiq
Kotaku

The (Virtual) Iraq Question

2009-07-14T10:00:00.000-04:00

I forgot I had this post in a draft...

This was in Newsweek about a month ago...and I'm planning on writing a larger piece about it, possibly even in defense of the item.

Dan Ephron writes about a videogame being developed that recreates the battle in Fallujah during Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It's definitely a First Amendment issue, and I think I'm OK with this game developer doing this...it's not that much different than the 12,000 World War II games that have been made since "Medal of Honor" first showed us that it was possible to create an appropriate game depicting a real-life horrific event.

One of the Best in the Business

2009-07-13T21:08:00.002-04:00

Michigan was blessed to have the courageous Bob Woodruff give the commencement address last year, and it was the first time I became aware of what a good reporter he is...I hadn't watched him very much while he was the lead ABC News anchor before his horrible injury, but he seems to trumpet the harder stories, to make the public aware of things that need to be reported on (soldiers returning from Iraq with brain trauma or PTSD).

Well, Woodruff has gone back to Iraq on a tour with the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs (much more relevant gig than his weird special about Earth in the year 2100).

Back Into the Hornet's Nest

When Will They Learn

2009-07-13T09:31:00.004-04:00

NCAA 10 comes out tomorrow -- usually it comes out towards the end of August, they must be getting better at tweaking the previous year's version -- and two things come to mind: why won't EA fix some of the glaring things that don't make it feel like a college football game, and why isn't there any competition for a college football game?

My biggest pet peeve for the NCAA games is the sounds of a college football game that they put into...the game. Crowd noise has always sounded pretty good and realistic, but not until the last few years have they added particular crowd chants, but they sound terrible...like a slow-motion cheer. I played the demo of '10 just yesterday, and in the Florida-Oklahoma game, the crowd cheered, "Boooomer Soooooner," only it sounded like it was being played on a cassette player. This is pretty inexcusable considering EA has been making/updating this game since 2001 (When Charles Woodson was on the cover), and doing it on next-gen consoles since 2006. And the other glaring error that I have considered writing many-a letter to EA about, is how the fight songs sound. They are cheap, slow, emotion-less recordings pulled off of a computer, and they sound like crap. "The Victors" sounds particularly bad because it's nowhere near as
fast as it actually is, and it feels like listening to a MIDI recording on a Nintendo or something. For the last several editions, they've even reused most of the commentary, so I've come to be able to predict exactly what Nessler, Corso and Herbie say on particular plays.

The solution is easy: one or two other companies need to get into the college football game business. 2K Sports makes everything else, why can't they make college games? EA has such a monopoly on the NFL and NCAA that they stifle anyone else from trying to compete.

The question becomes: Will the Forcier be with NCAA '10? I think not.

I won't be buying another edition of NCAA Football until EA gives half a crap to make it representative of the college football experience.

Our Congress at Work

2009-07-12T21:19:00.003-04:00

I wouldn't want to be the people that have to write government legislation, because the sheer activity of reading it (same goes for the President's budget) is excruciatingly painful.

On June 24th our the House passed the Waxman-Harkey Climate Bill, HR 2454: American Clean Energy and Security Act of 2009. Why they threw security in there is kind of strange, maybe they wanted a bit of continuity from the Bush years...

The entire bill has been released to the public, and here it is. A lot of it doesn't make sense to me, but I'm not a politician. By the time it was passed in the House, they had stripped it down so much or made provisions to the bill, it's a shell of what it could have been in terms of changing energy policy.

Some things are good, some things are confusing, and some things are dumb. Instead of getting a Green New Deal, it seems we got a Green Almost-New-Deal.

The Last Great SecDef

2009-07-06T10:53:00.001-04:00

Via my other blog:
Donald Rumsfeld wishes he had a shred of this man's integrity.

Robert McNamara died overnight at the age of 93.

I always liked McNamara. He was one of those Washington figures that almost everyone respected, and some liked him more than President Johnson. It's rare that a man serves in the same position for two consecutive administrations, but McNamara was Secretary of Defense for Kennedy, and then Johnson when he assumed the office, and his full term in 1964. Vietnam War policy didn't change all that much until Richard Nixon, and it was McNamara who came up with the plan of attack against North Vietnam. What sets him apart from most war hawks, especially Vietnam-era war hawks, is that McNamara recognized in 1967 that the war was going to end badly, and pushed for a troop freeze and an end to bombing North Vietnam. Johnson hated this, as did the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and McNamara resigned that November.

The most terrifying thing that haunted McNamara, and could have caused him to rethink the war was this: he witnessed one morning a man who would later be identified as a Mormon farmer that had driven all the way to Washington, standing on a ledge outside McNamara's office window...and he doused himself in gasoline and lit himself on fire while holding his infant child, and threw the child to screaming onlookers as he died.

McNamara was haunted by Vietnam, and he tried to exercise his demons, but he never fully escaped the guilt he felt by inflicting so much destruction on a country that just wanted what America had once fought for themselves.

In 2003 this documentary won an Academy Award, and deservedly, because Robert McNamara had 2 hours to explain to America why he failed, and the tears in his eyes throughout the film are indication that he never quite wanted the political life that had been thrust upon him.

The connection to the state of Michigan is fitting for McNamara's middle name (Strange). He became the President of Ford Motor Company in 1960, and was actually good at the job. He lived in Ann Arbor, and appreciated the University of Michigan community (oh if only he had become a guest professor)...but shortly thereafter President Kennedy came calling...

Google

2009-07-04T17:26:00.001-04:00

The Google Democracy

By Kevin Bunkley

In an era of liberal government and blank-check spending, business is often the first casualty. Not so with the nation's most beloved internet company, Google. Since its IPO in 2004, Google has added an infinity of o's to its name. Critics often warn of some doomsday-like event in which Google unites with the federal government to penetrate every waking moment of our lives, and everything in them is sold to us by Google. I had my money on Microsoft becoming "Big Brother" first, but as Google grows, and grows...and grows, some would have you think this is bad for business and bad for our lives. In the age of globalization, a bigger Google can only further plug America, and the rest of the world, into each other.

Google's market value and subsequently, market share, is larger than Time Warner, Viacom, its subsidiary CBS, and The New York Times Company. They have every internet service imaginable, a cellular phone, and, in my estimation, the most important advertising operation in the world, AdWords. Competitors -- chiefly Microsoft and Yahoo -- warn of a monopoly business in violation of antitrust laws. Is that why the two companies just signed a ten-year deal to join their laggard search technologies to grab that market share back...after Yahoo's own project with Google was canned by the federal government?

The June issue of Wired magazine, had an article detailing Google's ascent to the powerhouse of online content and advertising and just how the company makes its money. In short, a complex mathematical formula causes a continuous cycling of the advertisements that are being clicked, and opens it up to bidding amongst the companies that want our dollars. Stimulating competition for ad prominence is an economy in itself, and it put a hole in the traditional model of going to an agency to buy ads in newspapers or online. Flattening the playing field has never been in the interest of too much power, but in the interest of advancing how commerce is conducted. The fact that an search engine start-up came up with this before Madison Avenue executives did is an indication that Google may have certain financial advantages in the modern economy.

These divisions have all the makings of a company that is beyond its reach. "Google's mission to 'organize the world's information and make it universally accessible
and useful,' so charmingly visionary in a startup, now sounds to some
people downright predatory in a company of nearly 12,000 employees," wrote Rob Hof in a 2007 Business Week piece. Corporate innovation is cyclical. IBM was at the front of the computer revolution, Microsoft at the integration age, and now Google is helming the internet phase. It's impossible to argue that a company that has made using the internet far more simpler than it was, has become too big and powerful. The only things that can limit Google are people who don't want to join the 21st Century.

Google's sole purpose is to provide information. It's easy to see why their projects to digitize entire University libraries, mainstream books, and other print media are contested as being too accessible at no cost (sometimes known as the "Wikipedia syndrome"), but look at who Google's toughest critics are: competitors and others who stand to gain nothing from the project. If Google were still a start-up search engine with a very small user base, would Microsoft and Yahoo throw a fit? Before allowing the Michigan Digitization Project, the University of Michigan filed suit on behalf of an author's guild since the company was seemingly in violation of intellectual property rights. Michigan is now the biggest advocate of digital book scanning, as economist and Michigan librarian Paul Courant led the charge to keep up with Cornell, Stanford and Columbia allowing access to their library collections. He wrote, simply, on his blog, "I believe Michigan and Google are changing the world."

Google only threatens the traditional information infrastructure that was devoid of balanced competition for almost ten years. Now, the rest are playing catch-up to Google's methods. The problem area is, that if Google has no competition at all, it would become too powerful with seemingly infinite ad revenue, and that creates a real vacuum. Google has expressed interest in cataloging everything in the world...but would we as a nation want their satellite data and information on our defense projects available to the tech-savvy web searcher? The existence of other companies keeps Google in check, not the self-restraint of its board. If Google were too powerful, Microsoft would be kaput.

The growth of the company has in a way led to a smarter internet, and collaboration that has produced amazing technological devices and services. Atlantic Monthly in July championed pharmacological research that suggests the ever-increasing amount of information on the web is making humans, as a species, smarter. In regular speak: without Google, our lives are a jumbled mess, and we're unable to maintain our fluid intelligence or think deeply. I would feel stupid and uninformed without Google Reader and Blogger software to occupy my internet-browsing time. And show me a University student anywhere in the country that wouldn't rejoice at being able to pull up a hard-to-find book for a term paper on their personal computer. Google's services are too numerous to effectively contain. Not when what is being dealt with is out there in cyberspace. Sharing news, video and documents is integrated into society, and can't be easily yanked out. Google yielded by allowing the Universities to maintain control of their collections, because of cries by academics over a single entity having too much power to control information.

Google may come uncomfortably close to high levels of government or an organization when it asks to be allowed in, as it did with China last year, or when it wants to abduct an entire archive of information as it did with the University of Michigan's Library. It may act as infallible and impervious to error or going too far (street-level satellite viewing), but Google is a tool of our globalized world. Google tells us what we are searching for, and how society is behaving. Their information helps us live.

There won't be another Google anytime soon, so the one we have has to be allowed to conduct its business how it sees fit, minding certain rules of course. Only when it swallows up Facebook and Twitter will there be true cause for alarm.

Jeebus Be Praised

2009-06-13T23:33:00.002-04:00

Was browsing MGoBlog, and it appears Bill Martin is some kind of two-face. He has gone ultimate form for the hockey and basketball scheduling for 2009 and 2010, but the football scheduling is still inexplicably mediocre (though it has been rumored we are floating Tennessee for the 2010 opener).

2009 Basketball season just added Kansas to the schedule

2010 hockey, on the heels of the epic December Michigan vs Michigan State game in Michigan Stadium, will play the final game while the student body is *still* in town thanks to Spring Break being a week later than usual...so Michigan gets a senior night game that the students can actually witness.

Woo!

Bye Tiger Stadium

2009-06-11T23:56:00.001-04:00

I attempted to write this for Preservation Wayne. Fingers crossed as to whether they publish it or not:

The Lost Battle for Tiger Stadium

By Kevin Bunkley

Normally an economically-crimped city wouldn't spend 400,000 dollars over using a 3.8 million dollar grant, but the city of Detroit is full of surprises. It's new mayor, the honorable Dave Bing, was mute on a major issue that stood before him, and now, after a week-long fight, Tiger Stadium will be no more. The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy worked hard to protect what was still standing of the stadium, and at the end of a long and difficult road to preservation, more powerful business interests won out. 27 million dollars worth of it. The Conservancy had Ernie Harwell, and they had Senator Carl Levin (D-Mich.). They had the money (almost), and they had plans. The city was gracious in the amount of time it granted to attempt to finish raising the money, but political and economic pressure did in the final push to save the old ballpark on Michigan and Trumbull. It's hard to decide where more blame resides between the office of the mayor or the members of the Economic Growth Corporation, but the only thing that will be left is the fleeting memory that another historic site, both for the country and the state, will be buried beneath new, sterile structures designed to bring in dollars.

"The retention of this historic gem has and could draw positive attention to Detroit and your administration," The OTSC said in a letter submitted to the mayor's office. "On the other hand, the demolition of the remnants of Tiger Stadium would increase the negative impressions of Detroit and your administration. The impacts on future development interests in Detroit would be put in jeopardy," the letter continued. But a long tradition of community pride and the potential for a beacon of restoration has been lost at the end of this process, and the story of Tiger Stadium deserved a better ending.

Baseball had been played there since 1896. The Tigers moved in in 1912, and remained there until 1999. It hosted American League Championship games, and housed the Lions (the old Lions) for two decades. It is as old as Fenway Park, yet stood vacant for ten long years -- a generous epoch of time for certain Detroit-area individuals to devise some sort of use for the structure. Anything other than complete destruction would have been a win, given the circumstances under which its life was threatened. At times it was used for smaller baseball events or community activities, but it was in such disrepair, it became hard to justify leaving it standing. The Conservancy advocated for saving at least the most vital parts -- the field, the facade, things that still identified that spot in downtown Detroit as the spot in which Cobb, Gibson and Kaline made Detroit cheer. Why is it that its sister park, Fenway, can be refurbished and modified, but Tiger Stadium cannot even be partially saved for the benefit of a community that cherishes it?

Former team owner John Fetzer never would have wanted Tiger Stadium destroyed. His generosity in 1978 allowed the Tigers to continue playing there for twenty more years, by allowing the city of Detroit to lease back the stadium to help finance renovations. I myself know he wouldn't have wanted this fate. I once worked in the Kalamazoo building that bears his name. I've stared at the World Series trophy he won as the owner of the team, and never thought the stadium that hosted those championship years would be torn down.

The battle to save the stadium went on for far too long, and was plagued by inaction by too many people in important positions. Former mayor Kilpatrick notwithstanding, present Mayor Bing and even Mike Ilitch are responsible for the large stadium slipping through their fingers. Mayor Bing is to be comended for not voting in the 6-1 decision by the Economic Growth Corporation that authorized the full demolition, but failed to recognize the merits of saving the structure. "Most of the stadium was demolished in 2008, but what remains still carries historical significance," Conservancy board member Gary Gillette said in an article that appeared in The Michigan Messenger.

The city turned away a four million dollar fund, and a potential net gain of 22 million dollars, to provide itself with a prominent empty lot in a city overpopulated with empty lots. This newest one being in plain view of the hub of Detroit's rebirth. The paradox of a city that is attempting to cleanse away its unsightly side allowing a glaring and ugly public dispute over historic property to create a wedge between leadership and its constituents is nothing short of shocking.

In the end, the Conservancy ran out of time in an environment where time was not a constraint. Suggestions were floated for turning the site into a space in which the field would remain along with parts of the structure, in the interest of creating a green space in a downtown that has no true green spaces. The OTSCG put forth an exceptional effort, but the Detroit City Council and the Office of the Mayor washed their hands of any involvement in saving Detroit's premeir landmark. The demolition has begun, and with it go the hopes that Detroit would back up its rhetoric for reinventing its districts with tangible action. May the empty corner on Michigan and Trumbull forever serve as a reminder that when historic preservation and public officials don't find common ground, the result is one that neither side wants, and in turn everyone suffers; There's only so many "Most Endangered Places in America," and when we fail to save them, the result is always the same: an empty lot.

To Me It's the Electronics Envy Expo

2009-06-04T12:46:00.013-04:00

*Apologies* some of G4's video embeds aren't working because they use shockwave. Grr Blogger...

Prepare for information overload. There is a lot of it, with my trademark spin included.

E3 has been going on, and two things always come to mind: I can't get G4 here, and I daydream about being a games journalist.

Microsoft, Sony, Nintendo all had entertaining press conferences...but I was blown away by Sony in particular. Not only was their CEO good at giving the presentation, they actually had impressive games and technology to show off. Some complained that (a) half the stuff had been leaked prior to E3, and (b) that he spent too much time on going over Sony's financial numbers. I hadn't seen any information leading up to E3 so it was fresh to me, and I actually like seeing financial reports of the big game companies (call it an old habit from my Junior Achievement days...Mr. Hinkel would be proud), but it just reminds me that these are companies that are seeking a profit and have goals for the upcoming year, and are concerned about their consumers' needs.

Sony Presser

Meet Milo:

Video Game - E3 2009 - E3 '09 Live

Ubisoft is working on two big franchise updates. Splinter Cell Conviction is finally near completion, and they came up with in-game storytelling to eliminate the need for "briefing sessions" for the first time. "Assasin's Creed II" enters the Renaissance with Ezio, and promises to be more varied than its predecessor.

Video Game - E3 2009 - PlayStation 3

Video Games | Assassin's Creed II | E3 09: Exclusive Developer Walkthrough

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

In the "holy crap it actually exists" department, "Alan Wake" exists and is looking mighty fine.

Holy Crap Alan's Here

The game with the most intriguing interface and combat goes to "Heavy Rain." I've dreamed of a game in which combat is basically on-the-fly and the plot is shaped by the main characters' choices, and this game does it. Finally!

Lots and Lots of water

The one good Xbox 360 franchise not named Halo is coming along nicely with "Mass Effect 2" that has beefed up combat and a darker storyline.

ME2

Bungie demoed "Halo ODST" but it wasn't anything spectacular, and it's already confirmed that they'll be charging $60 for add-on content. But they announced another game that could be the mystery Peter Jackson game.

Reach

Microsoft also snagged a brand new "Metal Gear" game. I can't decide if I'm excited for this because I've always liked that Playstation laid claim to Metal Gear

MGS Rising

"Modern Warfare 2" looks like they started from scratch rather than making "Call of Duty 2/3" with modern skins and maps.

Video Games | Modern Warfare 2 | E3 09: Microsoft Press Conference Stage Demo

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Lastly, LucasArts rolled out physical evidence that a "Star Wars" MMO not named "Galaxies" is coming by 2010. Besides the Sony stuff, this was the most exciting piece of video, because it's Blizzard-quality and suggests it might actually be cool.

Video Games | Star Wars: The Old Republic | E3 09: Jedi vs Sith Cinematic HD

XBox 360 | Playstation 3 | Nintendo Wii

Biggest disappointments:
VALVE I HATE YOU. They announced one game: "Left 4 Dead 2," due in November. I really don't think this game needed a sequel, but what do I know. It's not like people were expecting them to say when Episode 3 of HL2 was coming.

Nothing big from Microsoft as usual, just some sequels and Halo milking up the wazzoo. No new IPs of any kind or indication that they are making an original game.

EA didn't do anything special, and PC Gamers get the shaft as usual from all three big companies. Blizzard nowhere to be found.

Quizzical look goes to Bioware for how they presented "Dragon Age: Origins," and for not having "Old Republic" footage.

Pure Hatred to Peter Molyneaux for creeping me out with the "Milo" presentation

Biggest Moments: The "oooh" from the crowd during the "MAG" demo, the cheering for "Final Fantasy XIV," and of course the "Halo" stuff.

My most favorite item from the convention: Actually, it's "God of War III," I was awestruck by the amount of stuff going on onscreen at one time, and it reminded me of Diablo...and it convinced me to make the investment in a PS3 as soon as the price is slashed. When a game can cause a Playstation avoider such as myself to want to get one, then Sony has accomplished their mission to get more people to buy their products.

I only wish E3 could get a few "darkhorse" games from some smaller developers each year. "Sins of a Solar Empire was never shown at E3, yet it's a fantastic game.

An Attempt at a Music Commentary

2009-06-02T17:55:00.004-04:00

Notice I went against saying "review" there?

Since the release of "Stand Up" in 2005, Dave Matthews Band has had a roller coaster of existence. I learned from a piece on CBS Sunday Morning that a year ago, Dave Matthews was ready to quit the band. Then Leroi Moore passed away suddenly, and Matthews rallied his band and got them to finish working on their latest album.

Part tribute, part return to their roots, "Big Whiskey and the Groogrux King" has finally emerged into existence.

It plays like a jam session, especially the two keynote tracks, "Funny the Way it Is" and "Why I Am," but it is a polished jam session. My complaint with "Stand Up" was that it sounded like a Dave Matthews Band hip-hop album for most of it ("American Baby" aside), and that was because they hired Eminem's producer, Mark Batson, who let the band sit around and smoke weed and work on the album. And so did he.

Leroi Moore's spirit hangs over "Groogrux" like a guiding force, and I think DMB knew it had to get this album right. The artwork on the cover invites us to a Bayou-style party, with Dave and the gang as the trumpeters. You can't help but dance along with the Groogrux King, as Matthews signs in "Why I Am."

Matthews himself sounds a lot better, too. Occasionally Dave has a problem sounding like some kind of monster with a beard, but this time he has a combination of his "Crash" voice and his "Crowded Streets" voice.

The only direct nod to Moore is a brief intro track of only his saxophone, and it is an eery little omen that sets the rest of the album up. But that's what makes it great. Rather than being a somber or dark collection, the band actually sounds like they're having fun again. Considering they were on the brink of destruction, Matthews deserves every bit of credit for keeping it all together to get the album out.

After several listening sessions, the album has everything that diehards like myself wanted, and some new sounds courtest of some horn players, Tim Reynolds, and Matthews on a banjo. The best thing about DMB is that the whole band is comprised of talented musicians who can also sing and play every instrument imaginable. The beauty of "Big Whiskey" is that it's got the jam session sound and great lyrics again.

It might not be as great as "Under the Table and Dreaming" and "Crowded Streets," but that's all relative when listening to DMB. Their work is viewed as a whole instead of epochs. And "Big Whiskey" proves that they're still doing what they do best.

What Has Happened to MTV!?

2009-06-02T13:59:00.004-04:00

Twenty years ago, "Music Television" debuted to blaring rock music, a moonman planting a flag, and no sight of Carson Daly or Paris Hilton anywhere.

Sunday night, my worst fears were confirmed as I watched the MTV Movie Awards. MTV's audience has become an army of tween girls and tool guys.

This fact was confirmed by the following: awards were given to "Twilight," and "High School Musical 3" (lovingly referred to as an all-gay school by Andy Samberg). No awards to "The Dark Knight" or or any other remotely good movie. The best award was the fake award to the sound engineer (Mr. Carl Berman) who bleeped out all the cursing and vulgar words.

Still, this was a Movie Awards Show for the ages. It was the first legitimately good show since they made the decision a few years back to finally do it live again...and it appeased my complaints since they no longer leak who all the winners were before the show even aired.

The Movie Awards may not have been around as long as the far-superior Music Awards, but there is something refreshing about devoting a whole show to the cult movies and sillier movies of the year. Sure it's often poorly-written, hurried along, and filled with lame jokes, but it's a fun time. Most of the time it depends on who the host is. Andy Samberg gets my approval because he's fully comfortable with being a complete goof and actually is not afraid to say shocking things.

MTV Shows

Still, the Movie Awards are an interesting corner of pop culture. MTV has never been socially relevant...catering more to the fraternity/sorority crowd and the college demographic that we all love to hate. But MTV's relevance still says something about the times we live in: giving TV shows to women who won't ever have to struggle to find a job, or trumpeting the existence of the fraternity pretty boy who was born into affluence, is not that far off from the actual pitfalls of society. This fact became absolute truth when Miley Cyrus won Female Breakthrough, and had a complete country bumkin moment as she struggled to piece together coherent sentences.

Perhaps more importantly, the Movie Awards say something about consumerism and the pursuit of advertising dollars. It shouldn't surprise anyone that the two movies that made millions of dollars and are terrible win the golden popcorn. Is it MTV pandering to the viewers that will blindly buy fifty dollars of "Twilight" crap, and aspire to become the next Zach Efron, or is it a fundamental flaw in what people my age perceive as worthwhile entertainment? The Best Movie winner was determined by text voting, in the mold of American Idol, rather than merit. No wonder "Dark Knight" didn't win. Rather than doing the noble thing and giving Heath Ledger props for best male performer, they trot out Efron to thank his millions of screaming fans in the theater. Here is a kid that has more money than I will ever see, and is it alarming that MTV has switched over to the flashy and mass-appealing as opposed to the culturally shocking and anti-establishment refuge for teenagers and college students? Definitely.

The Movie Awards of old are certainly gone, but this year was a step in the right direction. Never have I seen such a stark contrast in two camps of culture than I did on this show. During one segment, thousands of girls are screaming for Robert Pattinson (by the way, does anyone else besides me remember that he was in Harry Potter #5 and played a character that dies?), and in the next segment, three credible actors sing "My Dick in a Box" and "Jizz in My Pants" behind an orchestra...followed by hottie Hayden Panettiere cursing like a sailor.

It was like watching a clash of two vastly different culture titans, and at the end they both decide to make out with each other. If that's not a signal of the times we live in, I don't know what is. This is not to say MTV is attempting to become socially progressive, but it was just hysterical that they mixed these two worlds that if ever mixed in mainstream society, the world would likely implode on itself.

The Movie Awards of old wouldn't have faked this, they would have let it happen, just like when Madonna and Britney Spears kissed that one time.

When Mike Myers, Ben Stiller, Jimmy Fallon, Sarah Silverman and Jack Black served as hosts for the Movie Awards, there were better movies out at that time, yes, but they embraced them, celebrated them. Now I fear a movie like "Austin Powers" wouldn't even make it onto a Movie Awards ballot because a majority of MTV viewers would say they hadn't seen it. In a few days I'll be seeing "The Hangover," and if MTV is listening, they'll put it in next year's show, because it's the kind of comedy that has been absent from theaters since "Anchorman."

The perfect summation for my feelings about the state of MTV and of our pop culture, is when Michael Bay marched onstage with Megan Fox in tow, a guy in the audience shouted, "I love you Micheal Bay!" Ten years ago Michael Bay was praised for "Pearl Harbor," and is now a god among the MTV masses. Myself notwithstanding. Either I missed something or I'm just not in the business of appreciating terrible movies (But yes, you will find a copy of "Pearl Harbor" in my basement that hasn't been touched since I first got it).

I'm happy MTV has gotten away from the days of "TRL" and "Spring Break," even though I willingly admit to watching both those things on occasional afternoons because it was cool at the time. But I am sure there is a whole demographic of people my age that want the old MTV back. But as long as they keep the Movie and Music Awards the same obscene and hysterical escape that they are, I'm willing to believe that MTV knows what it's doing.

Prediction for next year's show: "New Moon" beats out "Star Trek" by a 2 to 1 margin, as the average age of an MTV viewer is stable at a ripe sixteen.

Conan's Here !

2009-06-02T10:29:00.002-04:00

A great show, and I was impressed with his choice of cold open.

OMFG

2009-05-13T10:16:00.002-04:00

Arizona State University, you just earned yourself the honor of "The Michigan State of the West"

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All In Favor? All In For Michigan.

2009-04-28T10:35:00.004-04:00

If I could think of one accomplishment to have in my young life, it'd be starting a cry for Bill Martin's head on a maize 'n' blue platter. The news on WTKA this morning is that Michigan is likely going to open its 2010 season -- the first season with the fully completed skyboxes -- against the University of Massachusetts. Huh?

2007: Appalachian State; 2008: Toledo; 2009: Delaware State; 2010: UMass

It seems that the quality of nonconference opponents is inexplicably going down from year to year, with the probability of losing and being nationally embarrassed going up exponentially. And the kicker is that Bill Martin is the one that keeps suggesting all these crappy teams to invite to the Big House, and the athletic department just does whatever he says. I swear Martin just digs out his Blackberry and scrolls through the list of his AD friends and thinks, "Hmm, which one can I invite to the Big House this year??? I'll pick Southwest Northern Middle Alabama State Technical Vocational College! That'll draw a sellout crowd of (now) 106,701! Weeee off to play on my yacht and get more money for the University!" True story.

I fully acknowledge that Mr. Martin has made the athletic department consistently profitable, but...really? This is freakin' Michigan people...it's not exactly hard to get people to give money to the school. This is a case where Ohio State actually looks better than Michigan does in scheduling. Yes, they play every school from Ohio each season, at home, but they willingly go play a top five team each and every year, including on the road every other year. When is the last time Michigan played a nonconference team that was nationally relevant? Oh right it was two seasons ago when we played Oregon. The athletic director at the time was one William C. Martin, president of the United States Sailing Foundation. Has he met his 2009 self??

Michigan's big nonconference opponents, year by year since 1997:

1997: Colorado (good team); W 27-3
1998: Syracuse (good team led by Donovan McNabb); L 38-28
1999: Syracuse (not quite as good); W 18-13
2000: #14 UCLA; L 23-20 -- whenever the score of a Michigan game is 23 to 20, it's a loss.
<<>>
2001: Washington (clusterf*&k of a game); L 23-18
2002: #3 Washington AND Utah; W 31-29 (go Phil Brabbs!) and W 10-7 (lol)
2003: #22 Oregon (Michigan ranked #3); L 31-27
2004: Unranked San Diego State; W 24-21
2005: Unranked N. Illinois; W 43-17
2006: Unranked Vanderbilt; W 27-7
2007: Appalachian State (the fill-in team) AND Oregon; L 34-32 and L 39-7
2008: Utah AND Toledo (fill-in team); L 25-23 and L 13-10

Note that Michigan's quality of bowl game reached has declined since 2003 with the exception of the 2004 Rose Bowl against Texas. It's kind of arbitrary, but they've basically alternated between the Outback Bowl and Capitol One Bowl since that date.

It just appears that as Michigan's strength as a football team declined with the departures of big-time players, Martin got cold feet and wussed out at challenging his coaches. Which is a paradox considering we had a god mode team from 2004-2007 and Lloyd was still into it up to 2007.

There are some that applaud cupcake scheduling, but I don't want Michigan to be sitting at 11-1 two years from now at the end of a season, and have the College Gameday guys sway the BCS folks from putting Michigan in the title game when it's a dead heat between them and like Texas and Florida and have Michigan get voted out because they played Eastern Michigan, a 6-6 Notre Dame team, and Idaho.

I want to see a team from a power conference on the schedule each year. I want to see West Virginia, Florida State, USC, Oklahoma State, Tennessee pleading to play with Michigan. It doesn't matter whether it's home or away just schedule the thing!

Michigan Football: Scheduling Teams They Should Beat But Losing Since 2007

I just think Bill Martin doesn't really *fight* for Michigan. He's more concerned about the bottom line than how he gets there.
As if this troubling pattern isn't enough, Michigan is playing Iowa at 8:00 at night this year (televised on ABC nationally), whereas Martin spends $260 mil on the stadium and doesn't even put friggin' lights on in the hopes of having the first ever night game (well, a game that starts when the sun is already down that is). He knows a lot of the old-timers wouldn't go, but then again, a lot of them could surprise. And the others: Screw 'em. Gives a chance for the louder fans to go to a game.

So, with that, I'm starting a petition for the removal of Bill Martin as AD.
What are some other teams you'd like to see Michigan play (besides Deleware State of course)?

Post-Script: I clap for Sailboat Bill that he brought Rodriguez here, but from everything we've learned, it sounds like Mary Sue Coleman put her foot down and made him go after RR after the Les Miles "debacle".

The theme this season is "All In For Michigan." But is Martin?

It Begins. Three days after the Draft the national mockery of the Lions starts anew. Last night on The Late Show Stafford showed up:

Top Ten Thoughts That Went Through Matthew Stafford's Mind On Draft Day


			You don't often hear, "Congratulations, you're going to Detroit"

			Why am I the only one who came to Radio City Music Hall dressed as a Rockette?

			If the Lions win one game this year, I'm a hero

			Anybody dumps Gatorade on me and I'll deck 'em

			Holy crap, I think I just pulled a hamstring

			I didn't think anything could top the excitement of Heidi and Spencer getting married

			Is it me or does NFL Commissioner Goodell look like a young Larry Hagman?

			Why am I here when I could be at that movie where Beyonce and that babe fight?

			Why does Jessica Simpson keep calling me?

			I'd gladly go #2 if it means not having to appear on Letterman

A Guide to Post-College Life

2009-04-25T14:53:00.003-04:00

It's been exactly one year since my Michigan graduation, and having a lot of time on my hands leads to endless brainstorming and ingenious thought about how to make a living for myself.

I have visions for various aspects of entrepreneurship, but not in the conventional sense. It's important to use the tools that are around us rather than use obsolete tactics. For example, now is not the time to have some grand idea to start a business and expect to survive. Instead, we must turn to resources that are there for the taking. The federal government is making it easier and easier to get grants for anything that will have longevity, give people jobs, and get dollars flowing again.

U of M launched a site the other day for rebuilding the economy: www.innovationeconomy.umich.edu

The Development Office is also expanding outreach: www.giving.umich.edu

Michigan also has a big government relations office: http://www.research.umich.edu/contacts/dc/dc.html

My angle? If it were me, and I had the resources to do it, I'd create an integrated online "business," but a non-profit of sorts, that could start a network of involvement with a huge public university such as Michigan. It could be an advocacy-oriented organization, with journalism, fund raising, and reporting, and my baby, historical preservation or education.

The platform is simple: a web-based blog and information service that lots of people would go to for different services. There's a lot of growth in tools of the internet, and I pride myself on being fully integrated into Google, Facebook and Twitter. They're tools to share information, and I wouldn't even think about doing an undertaking like this without those.

Anyway, random brainstorm thoughts for the win as they say.

Plug Time

2009-04-25T14:40:00.002-04:00

Forgot to make a formal link to my other blog that I made live a few weeks ago:

It's over at www.stack-o-papers.blogspot.com

I'm quite proud of my choice of name by the way.

Michigan's Celebrity Former Linebacker

2009-04-24T10:36:00.003-04:00

If you're like me, well, you often wonder, "Gee I wonder what former Michigan linebacker Dhani Jones does during the NFL offseason??" There's finally an answer.

Dhani has a show on the Travel Channel (home of my favorite show, "Man vs. Food" by the way)!

Website: http://www.travelchannel.com/TV_Shows/Dhani_Jones

It's actually an interesting show. But that's just me, I enjoy the types of shows that showcase various parts of our country and the world that I'll never go to. That way I can know things about those areas without ever leaving my chair.

Dhani also has a Twitter page: http://twitter.com/DhaniJones

Future pitches for television shows involving former Michigan football players:

1. Drew Henson stands in line at the Unemployment Office
2. John Navarre changes name to Jason Forcier, attempts to enroll at Michigan again
3. "Gabe Watson Eats the Globe"
4. "Lamarr Woodley Kills the Globe"
5. "Chad Henne Lives as a Neanderthal"

Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.

Michigan Football in April

2009-04-11T17:32:00.005-04:00

I'm a few hours removed from Michigan's first RichRod-run Spring game (one that was open to the public anyways), and the team is already looking much-improved over last year. The format was both interesting and bizarre, but RichRod did a good job keeping the pace going so as to not cause fans to lose interest. It was full-contact hitting aside from big red numbers on the jerseys of the two quarterbacks, and in Tate Forcier's case the red number means, "If you hurt me there's 50,000 fans that will run down here and kill you."

The rules for the Spring Game were the following: Coach Rod started with the special teams units, with light contact and some blocked kicks. For the actual scrimmage, there wasn't any limit to the number of plays or types of drills. It was called in a game-type situation, with actual referees and all the proper enforcements of rules and on-the-fly playcalling, as well as some specific "end-game" scenarios such as down by 8 with a few minutes to go. The offense started either from the 2-yard line or about the 40, and played normal drives, and the defense got points if they were able to get a stop, or got fumble recoveries or pass break-ups.

About 50,000 fans turned out which is refreshing after a 3-9 season. So perhaps in another year or two we could outdo Alabama's famous Spring Game attendence boasts. Most of the credit goes to Rodriguez for being sort of the promoter to get people to come to this event, and people seem to be responding to his efforts to pump up the enthusiasm for the experiences of Michigan games rather than the just the on-the-field action.

Tate Forcier is as quick as you can imagine, throws lasers like Chad Henne, and has incredible awareness in the pocket. He appears to be like a faster and more coachable version of Ryan Mallett. He fakes the ball brilliantly, scampers around when the defense is closing around him, and for the whole afternoon he didn't get sacked for a loss or make poor throws. He did fumble once, and overthrew guys several times, but compared to Steven Threet it's a world of improvement.

Highlights of Michigan Spring Game as I see it:

-- David Cone pulled off a miracle Threet-esque QB run for about 40 yards early on. Woo CONER
-- Forcier throws insanely hard, because guys were dropping balls left and right. And he runs right at the defense and will likely not shy away from taking some hits come Fall.
-- Several key players did not play, including Kevin Koger, Michael Shaw, Jonas Mouton and of course, Sheridammit. I imagine the offense to be in good shape when those guys are healthy.
-- Roy Roundtree caught a total beauty of a pass/bomb from Forcier in the center of the field and streaked down to the endzone. Finally Michigan has a deep passing game again.
-- Forcier did not run any option plays, but did do the zone read play a lot, and already looks like he knows when to keep and when to handoff unlike Threet.
-- Jimmy Potempa gets bonus points for scoring the most TDs of any running back...amidst taking some big hits and not going down. Go Michigan Rudy!
-- I'm concerned about Michigan's safeties. One freshman safety was totally faked out by Carlos Brown on the left sideline, and could not catch him if his life depended on it. I recall now it was Vlad Emelion
-- Most encouraging play of the day came when Forcier snapped the ball from about the 10, scampered around, found no one open, pulled the ball in and charged at the goal line, and dove across the plane while taking a big hit for a score. That's what we want to see come Fall.
-- Brandon Minor made no noteworthy runs, so I expect them to use Carlos Brown, Shaw, and the quick Freshman Vincent Smith (MacGuffie's replacement, oddly also wearing #2) regularly, because they are all really good.
-- Michigan's two kickers seem adequate for replacing K.C. Lopata. I don't remember their names because they're really weird.

Basically, if Forcier chugs along through summer workouts, earns the starting job over Denard Robinson, and doesn't get hurt, I think Michigan is in for a good season.

Alarming Sidenote Unrelated to acutal Football: I am hoping this was just because the stadium wasn't completely full and the skyboxes weren't encased in protective wrapping, but, when the stadium announcer was recounting plays on the field, there was this really awful and distracting echo that was clanging off of the opposite skybox. He would say something, and then you'd hear it clear as a bell rebound off the East skybox structure. I was not a fan. I hope to God that they fix that before the season or else Bill Martin is going to have an angry mob at his doorstep. Moreso.

Best. Week. Evar.

2009-04-08T21:58:00.003-04:00

The most exciting sports week of the year aside from the opening weekend in college football, is Masters Week, because golf equals springtime, and springtime equals the eventual beginning of football season. (See what I did there?)

I get tired of a lot of the sappy, cliched feel-good stories that CBS usually rolls out for the upcoming weekend; ESPN's Tom Rinaldi not so much. If there was one kind of dream journalist I'd want to be in the shoes of for a week, it'd be a golf reporter at the Masters. Spending a week in sunny Augusta with all the food and drink imaginable, talking to pro golfers, and attending all the nifty members-only events sounds pretty darn good right about now.

Golf is the most fun sport to write about, because it's the most personal and the only sport that is about individuals and their personal stories. Of course there is a lot sprouting up from this year's tournament already: Greg Norman is in the field after earning a qualifying spot at the British Open last year, Fred Couples is the sentimental favorite once again after a near-miss at a victory in Houston last weekend, Anthony Kim is in the field for the first time, Jack Newman, a Michigan State golfer, has qualified in the field of Amateurs, and Gary Player is playing the Masters for the final time after 51 outings.

ESPN somehow grabbed the first two rounds of TV coverage for this year, which is fantastic, because I get a kick out of Mike Tirico and Scott Van Pelt and Andy North and Tom Rinaldi. The Masters has the distinct honor of having the best TV coverage of any golf tournament, because the tournament hates coporate interference, so commerical breaks are limited, and that makes me smile.

Things to watch for during Masters Week:
1. Some guy named Woods
2. Greg Norman vs. Freddy Couples in the battle for crowd favorite
3. Which of the amateurs will win low round?
4. Changes to the back nine
5. Tim Clark the Par 3 Champ from today. Will the curse continue?

I can't even put a pretty picture up because all the Augusta photos are copywritten by the Masters tournament.

Final notes: sweet ESPN game for the Masters, Jason Sobel's blog and visit masters.org for everything else.

For this year, I put my pennies on Sergio Garcia, Steve Stricker, Paddy Harrington, and Greg Norman for the darkhorse!

MSU + Detroit + State of Michigan = Unrelated

2009-04-07T21:19:00.002-04:00

*I couldn't even find a decent rioting picture. Lame*

Well I was initially hoping to compose this grand and illuminating piece about how in fact MSU's reaching the Final Four didn't help the state of Michigan that much, but said information doesn't exist at the moment.

The Final Four was estimated to have brought $50 million to the Detroit economy, but I'm wondering if that number was just estimated for what a typical collegiate event would bring to a metro area. I was in Kansas City three weeks ago and the number of people that flooded their downtown area for four days of basketball was amazing. Every restaurant was crammed and the arena was sold out. Rumor has it that anywhere from 30 to 50,000 MSU fans alone swarmed into downtown Detroit for the weekend (hotel occupancy is irrelevant here since that doesn't directly benefit the city), so of course the restaurants and casinos had influxes of occupancy. In this respect I think MSU being there actually helped, because I think it helped the games achieve sellouts. If it were UNC and UConn/Louisville I bet the attendance doesn't go over 50,000.

Where I'm concerned is the cost to taxpayers for policing both Detroit and East Lansing. Granted the costs would be localized to the East Lansing area for the University police and Wayne County for the Detroit Police force. Sadly, the Detroit Police reported few incidents over the weekend and East Lansing was too depressed to create much of a riot (c'mon, only one flaming couch!?) It's fun to imagine that if MSU had won, what the additional cost for all the arrests and fires would have been.

Meanwhile, the MSU police have this hilarious website, and some genius made this riot status site.

The Kind of Politics We Voted For

2009-04-07T12:58:00.003-04:00

The last week or so of President Obama's activities has been amazing. He gave speeches on missile defense in collaboration with the Russians, nuclear disarmament, and conservative government in Turkey. Today, perusing through my US News & World Report Political Bulletin, I came across the following, detailing the unveiling of his military budget that Secy. of Defense Robert M. Gates has been working on:

Gates Proposes Weapons Programs Cuts Defense Secretary Robert Gates unveiled his Pentagon budget plan yesterday to generally sympathetic coverage. News accounts cast the proposed cuts not as a fiscal step, but rather as an overhaul designed to put in the military in sync with current threats faced by the US. ABC World News calls it "the most sweeping change in military thinking in generations." The CBS Evening News likewise reported Gates "is out to remake the US military." The Los Angeles Times says, "Programs primarily used to fight conventional foes...would get less money." The Hill notes Gates "plans to boost the intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance budget by $2 billion and grow the Special Operations forces by 5 percent." The Washington Post says the budget "highlights Gates's long-stated desire to increase spending on surveillance systems and other relatively low-tech weapons that are best suited for guerrilla or irregular war." The Washington Post also reports that "Gates sees this year as a rare opportunity to pursue politically controversial ideas."
CNBC's Hampton Pearson described the budget as "a $534 billion blueprint full of new priorities and a fundamental change in how the Pentagon plans to do business. For example, Northrop Grumman and Raytheon could gain from plans to buy 50 more of those Predator drones. The 2010 budget for the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter is nearly doubled from $6.8 to $11.2 billion to buy 16 more planes. But Lockheed Martin will also see an end to F-22 production. ... The army's Future Combat Systems program will be restructured. National missile defense is also getting a makeover. Both were profitable Boeing contracts." CNBC's Larry Kudlow noted that the budget "led to a big, almost 4% gain in defense stocks. Northrop Grumman up 9%., Lockheed Martin up 9%, Raytheon 8% and General Dynamics 7%." The Financial Times reports that "analysts said investors saw the news as positive because it had put an end to months of uncertainty." The Wall Street Journal reports, "Gates's plans have clear international implications. His decision to increase spending on the F-35, which involves European nations and defense companies...secures the program's future and will help keep costs in check for such allies as the UK and the Netherlands."
The Financial Times, however, notes that "within hours" of Gates' press conference, "politicians raised questions about his proposed cuts and reform plans. ... In a YouTube video recorded in Afghanistan, James Inhofe, an Oklahoma Republican senator, lambasted President Barack Obama for 'disarming America' and vowed to fight the cuts." The AP reports Rep. John Murtha, chairman of the House Appropriations Defense Subcommittee, called the plan "important and overdue." The Hill reports Sen. Joe Lieberman "panned the Obama administration's proposal to cut the nation's missile defense shield."
NBC Nightly News notes Gates "would also scrap plans to build a new fleet of helicopters for the President -- as the President himself has suggested." The Hill reports Gates "acknowledged that there needs to be a new presidential helicopter, but said that the current Marine One still has some life in it."

The chief reason I voted for the President is because of his approach to international relations. I may not agree with his economic policies -- aside from his tough talk on General Motors (for more info google my big brother's NYT articles from the last week) -- or his decision to stand by his bloated 2010 budget, and I don't think he did that well at the G20 Summit because he didn't win consensus on spending money to get out of the financial crisis...but I have been really captured by his foreign policy and some of his ideas on how to engage both Europe and the Middle East. Yesterday he gave a speech in Ankara, Turkey that is summarized thusly:

"I also want to be clear that America's relationship with the Muslim community, the Muslim world, cannot, and will not, just be based upon opposition to terrorism. We seek broader engagement based on mutual interest and mutual respect. We will listen carefully, we will bridge misunderstandings, and we will seek common ground. We will be respectful, even when we do not agree. We will convey our deep appreciation for the Islamic faith, which has done so much over the centuries to shape the world - including in my own country. The United States has been enriched by Muslim Americans. Many other Americans have Muslims in their families or have lived in a Muslim-majority country - I know, because I am one of them."

For a Muslim country to want to join the EU, amidst a struggle with another religious minority, the Armenians, and to get backing from an American President that has to simultaneously stand between Israel and the rest of the Middle East, this is remarkable.
Currently, I am reading Thomas Friedman's first book, "From Beirut to Jerusalem," and the most striking thing about the Middle East, is that underneath all the fighting and protest, is clamoring for secular government that doesn't have to answer to anybody, and Obama wants to give it to them by putting out his hand to anyone that asks.

Forty-One Years Ago...

2009-04-02T20:42:00.002-04:00

This Saturday is the 41st marking of Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King's death. LIFE Magazine has decided to release some eerie photographs of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis, Tennessee taken after the assassination. It's interesting to note, if you watch the film "Elizabethtown," you see Orlando Bloom's character actually go into this motel on his road trip home, and it's been entirely preserved in the state that it was in when Dr. King got up that morning. I don't know about you but I get a little queasy when I look at settings where horrible events have taken place that have not been touched. Of particular creepiness is his personal briefcase sitting on a countertop, as if he had stepped out for some air or gone to get some ice cubes...

The Lorraine Motel on April 4, 1968

An Objective Look: Thomas Ricks' "The Gamble"

2009-03-30T15:37:00.000-04:00

A few weeks ago while I was traveling to North Carolina and subsequently Washington, D.C., I was able to read a book in its entirety. The follow-up book to "Fiasco," Thomas Ricks' "The Gamble."
Keep in mind that "Fiasco" was given a Pulitzer after being published, and I happen to think that this one is slightly better. Essentially it details the military's decision-making process that lead to both the selection of David Petraeus as the commander of U.S. forces and the infusion of 30,000 additional combat forces to Iraq (a.k.a. the surge).

Firstly let me say that I am amazed at the kind of reporting Ricks does. Normally a newspaper Pentagon correspondent doesn't get this kind of access to top officials, but he must have a way with words or something because the number of interviews and access to documents is amazing. The book has a lengthy appendix of documents, slideshows and letters from Pentagon archives that makes the U.S. military look eerily like a simple business enacting a change in policy. But of course it isn't as simple as that, they're dealing with policy of fighting an insurgency in one of the most dangerous places in the world.

In a way the book is a story of the U.S. Army modernizing itself. Military theory has never been a strong point of my studies, but somehow Ricks explains how they arrive at the strategy for the surge. It's eye-opening to read that the Army has actually done its homework and figured out how to fight a war in the Middle East.

I wish the book was as long as Fiasco, just because it's so interesting to read...surely Ricks had more information that he left out. But if it were longer I may not have finished it in the car...
As good a writer as Ricks is, his great flaw is that he doesn't argue for or against anything. In print anyway. A good reporter stays objective, yes, but I always think he purposely doesn't put his personal views in his books because of a fear that people wouldn't buy his books. He's a lot more credible than some people who have written books or articles about what's right or wrong to do in Iraq, but I think there were several spots in the book where he should have flat-out said "This was STUPID."

Where the book needed to be longer is toward the end, in which he brings out some of the current challenges for President Obama. "Fiasco" was great because he presented numerous outcomes for what the U.S. military was getting itself into. "The Gamble" just briefly mentions how Obama is going to have to be the one that pulls this thing out of the fire. I say this because on television, Thomas Ricks isn't gunshy about saying that he thinks the Army will be in Iraq for 10+ more years...which is true, but on a larger scale than what's being proposed. He's a little too much of the "worst-case" when it comes to political issues, but that's just because he has personal conversations with all of these high-up people, and I'm sure if it were me I'd come to the same conclusion. But based upon the information in this book, I'd wager that the current strategy is going to get us out of there by 2011 with a minimal force left behind for peacekeeping.

It's shorter, it's not as ambitious, and it's of course not as original, but this book is the best on the Iraq war that I've read yet.

*Sidenote* Michigan's own Juan Cole appeared on "The Colbert Report" last week!

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NASA Name Contest

RIP Ann Arbor News

2009-03-24T10:00:00.002-04:00

A sad day for the A2 community, as the Ann Arbor News will close its doors in July.

My fingers are crossed that my buddies Geoff Larcom and Jim Carty (when he finishes Toledo Law) will be able to stay in the area and continue their journalistic goodness around here.

Don't think this is an opening for the Michigan Daily to broaden its reach, either. The Daily depends on the AA News just like the AA News depends on the Daily for certain things. The AA News was the best at covering Michigan football and basketball...and I'm a little sad that the Detroit News & Free Press are going to have to pick up the void.

Game 2, or, Day of Sadness, From Kansas City

2009-03-24T09:15:00.005-04:00

Well that was an unfortunate game, but M played as hard as they could given the circumstances.

The fact that a Michigan team whom many didn't want in the tournament beat a Clemson team that could have easily won the ACC, and then was down 1 point at half and down 3 points with under 10 to go against an Oklahoma team that is a number one-caliber team (according to some people), is a wonderful end to Michigan's season.

I've never seen so many fouls called on one team in a basketball game, and couldn't believe some of the calls, but that's beside the point. If the referees wanted to allow a physical game, they should have not been paying homage to the great Blake Griffin the entire game -- I watched the CBS broadcast when I got back to Ann Arbor, and it was so obvious they didn't even care that the game was being called unfairly, they were just amazed at the specimen wearing number 23. It's a sad thing when in college basketball a player that many have designated the next prodigal Son of the NBA is allowed to do whatever he wants, and all three referees look the other way. Listening to some of the other games on Sunday during the drive home, there would be a call, and one of the other referees would run in and overrule it, almost as if they were working as a team to get it right. I didn't see that happen when the ref from the other side of the court called a ball out of bounds on Michigan when it had hit Blake Griffin's foot in front of the ref in the corner in front of Michigan's bench.

When Oklahoma is allowed to play its starting five the entire second half for lack of fear of getting in foul trouble, and Michigan was rotating three guys in every few minutes, there's a disparity in how the game is being called. When Manny Harris is called for a reach-in foul when standing still, Deshawn Sims gets called for trying to get a rebound, and C.J. Lee gets called for diving for a loose ball (my favorite one, because the CBS announcers say, "Oh, if only he hadn't thrown his hip into Griffin, that was a clean play"), there is most definitely something wrong.

It didn't make Michigan lose necessarily, but it certainly was a factor in preventing them of having a fighting chance to win, and that they only lost by 10 says that Beilein is an amazing coach and Blake Griffin can't shut down a team that he was being allowed to bulldoze over. I expect OU to get stomped by Syracuse next weekend, and if the refs treat Griffin the same way, then Michigan has a legitimate complaint to the NCAA.

Yeah...that guy right there. He's a tool. When he's allowed to stay in the game when he bleeds through a sleeve that the referees waited for him to put on, and bleeds through his nose, and plays with blood on his shorts, and doesn't come out of the game, there's a problem. When Sportscenter and every other media outlet refers to OU's win as "not quite a blowout," there's a little bit of bias. But fear not, there's a bright future for Michigan basketball.

Day One from Kansas City

2009-03-19T23:21:00.007-04:00

...And there will be a day two because Michigan took down Clemson in a great opening round NCAA Tourney win!

I sat in row SIXTEEN at the lovely Sprint Centre in the heart of Kansas City, and the Michigan section was crammed full and loud.

After a 10 hour car drive, arriving in town approximately 4:30 pm local time, we wandered down to the great big party plaza to watch the Michigan Band perform (rocked the joint), and moved into the Sprint Centre to watch warmups.

Thoughts:

--Sprint Centre is ridiculously nice...and it's not even regularly used by a sports team.
--Michigan Fans were the 6th Man at this game without a doubt. No one else in the arena was pulling for Michigan, and the one small section was louder than the entire place.
--Manny stepped up and had the game of his life when Michigan needed him most.
--Bonus points to the Michigan cheerleaders for looking hotter than Clemson
--Blake and Taylor Griffin connected for three half-court alley-oops during the Oklahoma-Morgan State game, but Morgan State's band was the most entertaining of the night.

...Michigan has a good shot to beat Oklahoma if they play exactly like they did tonight. just cut down the turnovers. An amazing night, Go Blue !

And They're In !

2009-03-16T16:16:00.002-04:00

**Update** Michigan made the front page of the Washington Times, and I also spotted myself in the video that MGoBlog has up of the celebration...the guy was sitting about three rows behind me, unbeknownst to me :-D

After sweating it out for 40 minutes, Michigan's name finally popped up on the tourney bracket.

Having some embed issues, so here's a link!

Celebration

In. In. And In.

2009-03-13T09:26:00.003-04:00

Come Sunday at 6pm, Michigan basketball erupts out of the ashes and erases not just the tarnish of those men in that picture, but the ten years of suckiness that followed them. Way to go boys.

Jon Stewart Becomes Actual Journalist

2009-03-13T09:01:00.001-04:00

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 1

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 2

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

The Daily Show With Jon StewartM - Th 11p / 10c

Jim Cramer Pt. 3

Daily Show Full Episodes
Important Things w/ Demetri Martin

Political Humor
Jim Cramer

Editorial Commentary!

Silly Me

2009-03-11T22:57:00.003-04:00

Firstly, two important Michigan sports notes...well, three:
- Michigan vs. Iowa, Big Ten Tourney round 1, 2:30 pm Thursday. Michigan wins, and they're in the Tourney I guarantee
- Michigan Hockey's CCHA playoff run starts Friday, 7:35pm vs. Western Michigan. Be there.
- Football Spring Practice is upon us. The skyboxes are actually looking slightly decent, but still huge and unjust...and the wiping clean of a 3-9 season no one wanted is nearly complete.

I haven't had much to say lately...I guess it's more out of laziness, really. I've been reading all kinds of great news stories and blogs and social networking sites, but I could not come up with any angle for any of that stuff I've read. Regular posts will be resuming, likely tomorrow, and I already have some ideas. In the meantime, on a more personal note, I've shifted gears in my life to two things: applying for public-service jobs in Washington (I will get there, Barack!), and deciding where to go for graduate school.

So I'm going to conduct an unscientific poll. For applying to a graduate program, where should I go?

a) Indiana University School of Journalism
b) U of M' s School of Public Policy, or another UM program in which I can write things
c) Somewhere for a History Master's program
d) Living at home with parents and attending Western Michigan University or KVCC Center for New Media
e) Another place I haven't thought of

*Note that the final winner will have no bearing on my actual decision. Haw Haw

Meanwhile, I'm working on an application for interning at the White House...as are 500,000 other people more qualified than me I'm sure. Still cool to think it's that easy to apply to work in the nation's highest office.

Jimmy Fallon is doing a wonderful job with the new Late Night with Jimmy Fallon, check it out some night.

I took a trip to North Carolina two Thursdays ago for a golf weekend, and after one round of play, my Dad and brother and myself discovered North Carolina was going to be drenched with rain, so on an impulse we drove to Washington, D.C. the next day and stayed until Monday. That town is an amazing place to be right now, and the museums and things are all so wonderful, finally. The National Portrait Gallery boasts an entire floor of Presidential portraits, the Newseum, in it's brand new facility a stone's throw from Capitol Hill, is the best spot in the city, and the American History Museum has the original star spangled banner flag in a giant, darkened room with dim lights. And everywhere else has celebrations of Abraham Lincoln's life. If only I could work in the city...

Until next time, read this column I found in yesterday's Wall Street Journal by noted historian Thomas Fleming.

Journalism's Lost Its Medium

2009-02-12T18:21:00.000-05:00

*Second Update* I made a correction to a sentence below about the Ann Arbor News, because Jim Carty himself commented on this post. Awesome!

*Update* Today's Daily has a very appropriate story for this post, with the current EIC's response here; and I also discovered a very deep piece in last month's Atlantic Monthly about the state of the NYT.

In 2007 I wrote a column in the Daily about Journalism's failure as a profession to ask the tough questions, particularly concerning Operation Iraqi Freedom. At the time of course, no one knew the expanse of deception and lies in the Bush White House, but in my eyes, it began what I view as a downturn in the profession that should never run out of material or money.

Something near and dear to my heart then, is the health of the print journalism industry. I write this as Walter Isaacson publishes a very deep cover story in TIME Magazine titled, "How to Save Your Newspaper" -- I get it that the two fields I am most qualified for, journalism and nonprofit/historical work, are on a steep decline. I'm having a difficult time finding any work in either field, and so it's with a heavy heart that I pick up where I left off in that 2007 column and regrettably say that journalism is now losing its bully pulpit, its means for communicating information the Americans want, and need (information on Miley Cyrus and other celebrities notwithstanding). It's the modern-day equivalent of Woodward and Bernstein going to write their Watergate opus, and not having a typewriter. And it's accelerating.

Walter Isaacson's piece explains that a newspaper can be saved with a little restructuring, but I have a problem with this. He did go on "The Daily Show" and make his case to Jon Stewart, but it's a bit like a paradox to me. For example, in 2007 the New York Times did away with charging for its premium content, much to the delight of myself, because I could finally read Thomas Friedman on my own accord. Now, two years later, the Times and a lot of other dailies are cutting costs and staffs. The Detroit News and Detroit Free Press no longer deliver on some days of the week, Newsweek, TIME, Conde Nast and others have axed thousands of employees.

How does an organization like the New York Times all of a sudden fall back on its oath to not charge money for premium online content? I for one wouldn't pay for such a thing when it's already free. Isaacson's framework was charging a simple 99 cents for a pledge to use a site, and that would likely draw in a lot more revenue than chaging 10 or so dollars per month would. Journalism as an industry has become so open-source, that it's impossible to go back to something that would have worked five years ago. The Ann Arbor News has cut a ton of staff (and Jim Carty left to do Toledo Law *tear*), and it's mainly because people just are not reading print newspapers as much. I pick up a print copy of the NYT approximately once a month, and it says something about where media is going.

When I was interviewed for an internship with Automotive News, I was told that they were starting to go for exclusive online content, and thats what The Michigan Daily does now even with a lot of multimedia content and stories that are happening in the evening and overnight hours.

I'm no media mogul, but wouldn't it make sense to put out a product that is dependant entirely on readership, have it funded by advertising revenue, and grow the organization based on the quality of work you do? There's all these bloggers out there like myself who write stuff in cyberspace that would gladly work for the online arm of any publication than work in a big stuffy newsroom that has a 2 AM deadline for print (Michigan Daily).

It was no freak occurrence that President Obama called on a reporter for the Huffington Post in a primetime East Wing news conference...

Abe's 200 !

2009-02-12T17:40:00.002-05:00

I'll be brief: how appropriate that Obama got to celebrate the Abraham Lincoln Bicentennial as President of the United States.

NYT has a great little historical analogy for Abe and Barack

And it made me remember a fantastic piece about where President Obama gets some of his influences for his great speeches and oratory manner.

A while back before Obama was sworn in, I began to think critically about a question: was Obama more of a Lincoln-type persona, or an authoritative FDR-type persona. The easy answer would be Lincoln, since Obama reads more about him and comes from the same state, but a lot of his decision-making in his early days has mirrored that of Franklin Roosevelt. And I don't mean that the country is in a quasi-depression and Obama has to rescue all of us. Those were far different times, and a lot more extraordinary, to me at least. I'm talking about the similar context in which Obama is operating, and the decisions he has to stay true to. The principle of FDR's presidency was that he had to spend money America didn't have in order to get people back to work. As it stands now, Obama is committing $789 billion to invest back into America's infrastructure and programs to have a ripple effect and cause people to apply for credit, buy mortgages, and pay bills.

I can't accurately answer that larger question, but it seems to me that what we are witnessing is a President that has people around him that will come to him and say, "look, this is what was done in the past, and it will work now." The whole reason for celebrating the 200th birthday of a dead President is not to paint the current office-holder as a second-coming, but to acknowledge that a lot of what was done in the past can still be, and will be, applied to our current struggle as a country to dig itself out of a very, very, large hole.

Arthur Schlesinger wrote in his personal journal upon returning from the Soviet Union in 1982, about how different the two societies were when it came to how they viewed their predecessors. He said, "We must respect the dignity of the past, as we must hope that our descendants will respect our own dignity. That Trotsky was subsequently considered an enemy of the state is no reason to deny the reality of his role in the Revolution. History is not a myth to be manipulated in the interests of one or another ruling class. History is a debt of honor we owe to the past."

Both Lincoln and FDR had very dark moments as President. Lincoln suspended Habeus Corpus in the interest of healing the wounds of the War Between the States. Roosevelt made the single biggest government budget (for the times), and it was so big, it was close to Socialism. And his New York brethren hated him for it.

It is through that even-handed humility that the successes, and errors, of Obama's predecessors must be appropriately applied to the present, not out of obligation but out of honor and respect.

Attention

2009-02-11T10:37:00.001-05:00

Michael Phelps, Alex Rodriguez, Tim Geithner, Joe Biden, Tom Daschle, this song is for you guys:

I'm sure the list of names could be much longer but these will do nicely.

Oh Man It's Almost Time

2009-02-03T23:39:00.002-05:00

It's National Signing Day-Eve, and I am pumped for Michigan's chances of landing a top recruiting class. RichRod has been out on the road nonstop since the end of the season, and as a little gift, Michigan got an early verbal commitment.

His name is Quinton Washington, and he's a large, very highly-rated Guard out of South Carolina.

Who says Michigan couldn't recruit nationally??

Oh wait, his name was Lee Corso.

If all the stars align tomorrow starting at 9am...Michigan can score a QB, some O-Linemen, and some skill players, all whom weren't originally going to commit to Michigan. Whatever RichRod did, don't be surprised of Michigan's class pops up in those top ten lists around the interwebs. Tomorrow is going to be fun.

Sweet, Sweet Poetic Justice

2009-02-03T09:36:00.002-05:00

Vice President Biden can officially eat his words, and has sunk even lower on my list of "Politicians I don't respect.":

He was supposed to say, "charge the duties well and faithfully," not the other way around. And Sir Gaffes-a-lot here had a card to read off of...

Nice work, Joe !

Fortune Magazine is Stupid.

2009-02-01T12:18:00.002-05:00

I just found their 2009 list of the 100 Best Companies To Work For...

Do they know the economy is terrible right now??

Companies on the list include Starbucks (laying off 6,700 people as I type this), Microsoft (experiencing one of their worst years ever), and a host of financial companies (who in the hell would work for a bank/investment firm right now??)

It's completely subjective, and I don't agree with the list at all, but, decide for yourselves.

Fortune 100 List

Obama Becomes President...Again!

2009-01-21T21:58:00.007-05:00

Is the Obama presidency already in reruns?

No.

He took the Oath of Office a second time, tonight !
So, story: A lot of media are reporting that this whole thing was brought on by the White House Counsel Greg Craig (best name ever) and Joe Biden's stupidity. At the ceremony to swear in Obama's White House staff, Biden said the following, according to Politico:

“My memory is not as good as Justice Roberts,” Biden said at the swearing in of White House staffers Wednesday afternoon.

The staffers in the room laughed, but Obama stood stone faced and visibly annoyed:

Last night on the air, this happened:
And Fox News anchor Chris Wallace said: "We're wondering here whether or not Barack Obama in fact is the president of the United States. They had a kind of garbled oath. It's just conceivable that this will end up going to the courts."

The White House then issued a statement saying that they had decided, out of thoroughness, to have Justice Roberts come to the White House to administer the Oath once more. Apparently a lot of people, including "professional" Chris Wallace, think that Obama is not officially the President, and that since yesterday, Joe Biden has actually been the President, since the Oath of Office for the President was not properly administered, and was somehow in violation of the 22nd Amendment.

Wrong. The 22nd Amendment was put in place strictly for the two-term limit rule...good 'ol George Washington and Thomas Jefferson didn't want young America turning into a Monarchy.

Additionally, the 20th Amendment was called into question, since some thought that at noon yesterday our country was leaderless, because the Oath had not been given. Article 2 of the Constitution, that lays out the oath, was effectively superseded by the 20th Amendment, which states that the President and Vice President relinquish power at precisely noon on the 20th day in January...regardless of whether the President-elect has taken the Oath.

There's some tricky language, but the 20th Amendment makes distinction between "entering upon the execution of the office" and "term of office shall start at noon." Meaning, that President Obama's term started at noon yesterday, but didn't enter into the execution of his duties until after he was sworn in.

Rest easy, America, Obama is actually our President !

I'm really glad Obama stuck up for Chief Justice Roberts, too...give the guy a break, it was his first inauguration, and he didn't plan on looking like a douche, he wanted to go without notes and look impressive.

Sidenote: I watched the National Prayer Service that the President attended, and...wow.

Day One...

2009-01-21T00:01:00.000-05:00

One final note...I have discovered the best source for all the political information on the new Obama Presidency. Politico has a comprehensive diary of everything that the Administration is doing, and it's immensely interesting to read.

Politico 44

A New Day Has Come...

2009-01-20T11:00:00.015-05:00

Well, I'm sitting here parked on the couch, Krispy Kreme donuts and milk in front of me, awaiting the start of the Inaugural ceremonies, and I thought I'd post some thoughts as I see things on my television screen. I plan on trying to get a peek at each news channel, mainly because eventually each one of them makes me angry and forces me to flip to another one. Look for pull-quotes of stupid things news reporters say, stupid things people in the crowd say, counts of how many times I hear overused words or cliches, and many more random bits of Inaugural-ness. Barack my world, bitches !

- 9:30 am: Merideth Viera on "Today" on NBC keeps saying "There he is!!" when Obama appears on the camera, and said something about history that didn't make sense. One thing to note though, they showed the President-Elect leaving St. John's Church on those screens on the National Mall, and the crowd exploded already...I've been reading that Washington, D.C. is just bursting at the seams with people trying to see this event. The subways started running people at 4 AM, and there's an estimated 2 million people on the Mall to watch...

**After seeing Dubya and Obama and their wives on the steps of the North Poritco at the White House...I wonder what George is thinking. Maybe, "Hmm, you aren't John [McCain]..." ?

10:40 AM: Spike Lee is interviewed on ABC, and along with wearing a ridiculous white fur hat, he appeared to be high...because he couldn't think of where he was. I'll chalk it up to nerves, though. Some chick who was interviewed said she'd been sending blogs to her family every second on her cellphone...something each cellphone carrier explicitly asked customers to NOT do...so we'll see how long the cellular network around D.C. lasts before imploding.
- Over on NBC Governor David Patterson made some awful joke about Michelle Obama being a woman, and no one laughed, including me. Maybe someone forgot to read him the punchline...
Oh, and Ted Kennedy has an ultimate hat on. He looks like Churchill, only the kooky version.

Another important note: I refuse to flip over to CNN at all today, in order to keep my sanity...and to boycott their ridiculous Facebook collaboration to have people instantly update their status so all their friends can see what they are thinking each and every second. I choose to get information from a real news channel, not a gimmicky broadcast aimed at young people who have nothing better to do with their lives...

More to come
P.S. the motorcade is GINORMOUS

11:20 AM: ABC's anchors will not shut the hell up and just let us watch the event. Charlie Gibson is like Biden: long-winded, and tells the stupidest anecdotes and tries to be poignant when it just comes off as arrogant. NBC oozes professionalism right now, as Brian Williams actually apologizes for their microphones picking up some of the chatter on the stage, and someone who is clapping excitedly right next to the microphone. Every channel could learn something from Brian Williams' class.
11:28 AM: Laura Bush says "Hey Everybody" as she comes down the steps. Haha.

*How awesome would it be to have Marine Corp guards around you all the time, a Marine Corp band that basically follows you everywhere, your own Cadillac limo, and an infinite number of Secret Service agents blanketing you at all times. When I watched Obama's train rally in Delaware the other day, I was amazed at the number of agents forming a half circle around him.

I can't get over the image of Obama's two daughters, and Michelle Obama, walking down those stairs, just that image of this new American family that has arrived...I'm not going to say Kennedy-esque like all the media does, but you know our politics have changed for good when you look at that image.

11:37 AM: George W. walks onto the stage, to a very very ligth applause, and no reaction from the enormous crowd whatsoever. I think he's just glad to be done with this job so he can let Obama deal with everything now. And I don't mean to sound like a jerk, but it's somewhat fitting that Cheney is in a wheelchair after some kind of moving injury yesterday...

More later

11:39 AM: Joe !! I'm sorry, but if I hear one more mention of how Joe Biden loves freakin' Amtrak, I am going to punch something. Biden is a good man, but he's a two-faced politician. A year ago he didn't even like Obama, and now look where he is. I don't know whether it's a testament to Obama's grace or Biden's ability to swallow his pride in order to advance his own career...

11:45 AM: Obama is introduced, and oddly, the announcer says "Barack H. Obama" Was this intentional??

12:08 PM: The Chosen One is sworn in...and look what I found...the words to Hail to the Chief! Sing it with me !

Hail to the Chief we have chos-en for the na - tion,
Hail to the Chief! We sa-lute him, one and all._______
Hail to the Chief, as we pledge co-op - er -a- tion_____
In proud ful-fill-ment of a great, no-ble call.____

Yours is the aim to make this grand coun-try grand-er,
This you will do, That's our strong, firm be-lief.__
Hail to the one we se-lect-ed as com-mand-er,
Hail to the Pres-i-dent! Hail to the Chief!

12:12 PM: Holy crap, President Bush #41 wins the prize for most ultimate hat!!
And NBC loses points for showing Mayor Ray Nagin of New Orleans two times in the last hour

12:45 PM: OK, I caved...I flip to CNN, and immediately flipped back. Their reporter compared this inauguration to Nelson Mandela's...and Campbell Brown says that the crowd is "A Yes We Can kinda Crowd" ... and then on CBS they interviewed some douche who said that humanity's and America's struggle has been going on for "thousands of years," and that he had no idea how many people were here but that he witnessed history. Good god.

12:50 PM: Bush gets on Marine One...I don't know why but he looked grumpy during Obama's speech...almost like "dang, this Barack guy is pretty good. I need a taco." And as he's walking to the helicopter...he just looks like he's pissed that he's a regular citizen again. BUT then he made a joke and he and Barack laughed. Haha good work George.

3:10 PM: And journalists now are clamoring over the fact that Senator Kennedy had a seizure...CNN is in full freak out mode, and trying to question any politicians within earshot. CNN, go fuck yourselves.

Meanwhile:

3:26 PM: An interesting comparison that I have been thinking about. A presidential inauguration is about as ceremonial as it gets in America, but think about how taxing it must be. I remember how exhausted I was after Michigan's commencement...and I am sure that's what it "feels" like...just like it's a college commencement ceremony, just about 10000000 times more intense and fancy. It followed a very similar program that a university commencement does...only Obama's graduating to the Oval Office!
NBC gets bonus points for making a joke about Obama needing nicotine once he got into the limo...which by the way is HUGE. If I were in that crowd I'd be like, "Hey Mr. President! What's your gas mileage! (limo is a Cadillac...NBC had fancy graphics about its run-flat tires)"

Just an incredibly dignified event that makes America look darn good :)
More soon

4:07 PM: He's outta the limo ! Woooo Chosen One
Text of Obama's amazing speech goes here. I'm going to have to replay it several times, but WOW, he is just such an eloquent man...and the fact that he wrote his own speech, and didn't tinker with it...he's a writer and an academic, and he's our President now. I found this great NYT article the other day...and I believe it now more than ever after hearing that speech. Obama the Harvard Man is in the White House now instead of George the Legacy Son.

*My remote stopped working so no more quips about the other news channels failing at covering this thing...but I'm going to dig around for interesting insight from my favorite journalists.

4:30 PM: Bahahaha, Al Roker completed Brian Williams' challenge to get Obama to wave to him. "Mr President! Mr. President! he shouted" and Obama pointed to him and said "It's warm!"
+10000 points to NBC

4:46 PM: The Presidential Viewing Box is quite a sight...the fanciest skybox/luxury suite in the country, that's for sure.

- The Atlantic's endorsement of Abraham Lincoln in 1860
- Chicago Trib's thoughts on the oath of office goof
- Historical perspective on the Inauguration
- ABC News found the cost of the ceremonies

I don't forsee anything else spectacular occurring, so I'm going to sit back and watch the parade.

What a country. Tim Russert said that...don't forget it.

Hmm. Michigan Basketball

2009-01-18T23:19:00.002-05:00

Ohio State 63, Michigan 58

I figure I could blog about this game since I was actually there...

After finally seeing Beilein's team in person for the first time, there's no denying that they are immensely improved over both the Amaker years and last year's horribleness. The problem is thusly: when Michigan's scorers can't hit a basket for minutes at a time like on Saturday night, they dig themselves an early grave that they'll never get out of. They tied cut the defecit to four going to halftime, and then tied it within the first three minutes of the second half. And that was despite not making a shot for what seemed like 10 minutes.

Novak, Grady, Lucas-Perry, Sims: 22 combined points
Manny Harris: 21 points
Stu Douglass: 12 points

I'm smart enough to know that an offense dependent on 3-point shots and getting scorers open for jumpers that doesn't get hardly any production from four of their five main scorers, it can't win a basketball game. Beilein made a great adjustment for the second half by switching to that brutal 1-3-1 defense that seemed to force Ohio State to take longer shots that Michigan was able to grab off the rim...but when Novak had almost as many rebounds as Sims, the conference leader in rebounds, something is amiss. I'll leave the rest of the game analysis to people who actually know what they're talking about. However, if it were me, I think I would make some lineup changes that can help Michigan get points instead of clangs on the rim:

Guard: Harris, Center: Sims, Scorers: Douglass, Jevhon Shepard (who I have not seen on the court since the first few games), Grady/Lucas-Perry (who I think may be getting a little gassed, he was yanked from the game several times)

Meanwhile, at halftime, the 1989 National Championship team showed up! Oh, and the Michigan players wore these slick throwback uniforms that Adidas made:
I may have only been 3 at the time, but the 1989 Michigan basketball team is a pretty remarkable story. Read a flashback from the AA News and the Daily, and then relive the Bill Frieder saga! That championship became the wedge in between some very rough years of Michigan basketball. Bill Freider had assembled a team that could beat anyone, and then he was fired by Bo Schembecler, who told the team that no Michigan Man would leave his school, and made Steve Fisher the interim coach for the '89 season. It is because of that championship that Fischer was able to bring in some guys named Webber, Rose, Howard, Jackson and King for the 1991-'92 season. Michigan was in the NCAA title game with four freshmen, and then made it back the very next year when they were sophomores. For some reason, I always remember those legendary baggy shorts. Everybody who loved basketball wanted a pair of those baggy maize shorts. They became a status symbol...and it was at that point that the Fab Five were icons, and they made Michigan the center of the basketball world for two glorious years. Four years later, in 1997, all the members of the Fab Five were gone, and Steve Fisher had been fired by Tom Goss for a bizarre off-the-court issue...and Michigan basketball fell into the eternal damnnation of college basketball. The '89 team is a reminder that the most unlikely of teams can climb to the top, and that's what Beilein has on this court, is the foundation for a dangerous, dangerous team.

Sidenote: Crisler Arena is a crazy mad hoppin' place to watch a basketball game again. Finally. The place was packed, the court looks great under the new lights, and the new score/videoboard is a behemoth. Not to mention they have the guy that does the PA at Comerica Park now! When it's loud, it is damn loud, and Ohio State was rattled a few times when they had some miscues and got everyone pumped up. I expect Crisler to be a major factor in some coming Michigan victories.

Final note: Charissa Thompson of BTN is officially the hottest sideline/courtside reporter in the country. Pic goes here:
Watch, now Michigan will turn around and stomp Michigan State in the next huge home game on the schedule. I'm just glad that Michigan basketball has some credibility to its name again...even though looking up into that black hole in the Crisler rafters where the 1992 and 1993 Final Four banners once hung makes people hang their heads in shame. No longer can we just joke that the best thing Michigan Basketball had going for it was the new Crisler Arena lights...

Michigan...Basketball!?

2009-01-12T16:55:00.002-05:00

Alright, I'll confess: I'm a believer. Michigan Basketball has now won three more games than they did last season...and I just looked at ESPN's Bracketology and the RPI:

ESPN projects Michigan at a #9 seed in the NCAA Tourney. A 9 seed ! A year ago a 9 seed in the NIT would have been an achievement they were so bad. Interestingly enough, Joe Lunardi has them paired with West Virginia in the South region. That could be an epic tourney game that Michigan could actually win.

The RPI as of their 12th win, since they won #13 yesterday in dominating fashion, is at 33...their strength of schedule has gone down a bit since they played Oakland and Eastern and Savannah State, but the Tourney Committee *cannot* ignore two wins over top 5 schools and if Michigan goes deep into the Big (11) Ten Tournament, a tourney birth is a lock.

Keep the faith my friends...Beilein may have our boys dancing in March for the first time in 10 years.

SEX MULLET

2009-01-07T15:05:00.001-05:00

Happy New Year...but not for THE Ohio State University...

2009-01-06T00:04:00.003-05:00

Number of consecutive BCS bowls Ohio State has either gotten embarrassed in or, well, embarrassed in the last seconds of a game: Three.

Texas won the Tortilla Chip Bowl minutes ago, and all Michigan fans smiled, because we know it means one thing: the Big (11) Ten is officially in the crapper, poised for an epic Michigan return to stomp on the Big 12 and Pac-10.

As the VPs and Marketing people of the faceless sponsoring corporations presented trophies to Texas, I recall how I read a damning article on how much of a sham the college bowls have become (the seemingly incorruptable Rose Bowl included). Yahoo News has the article, and it's very insightful into what our beloved sport is becoming: centered around money, perks, and elimination of the presence of the NCAA altogether (note that the NCAA has nothing to do with the national championship anymore...it's basically a fledgling organization that receives money from big sponsors to have big-time schools compete for a lot of money, and is awarded a completely arbitrary championship that more times than not has been open for debate). We all praise Michigan for not caving to corporate sponsors for Michigan stadium -- the tradeoff was forcing Bill Martin to build the damn skyboxes to get athletic department revenue instead of having a few signs on the scoreboard -- but the parts of college football that we want to see fixed go unchecked in the name of dollar signs. FOX has the BCS until 2010, then ESPN takes over, and even then, they have structured their contract so that a playoff system cannot be instituted. It has to take the mutual might of the universities, the NCAA, and even Barack Obama, to cleanse the best darn sport in the land !

Yahoo News Column.

P.S. Does anyone know what the hell 'G' is ???

P.P.S. Stephen Ross is buying the Miami Dolphins. Amazing!

P.P.P.S. There was an epic mullet spotted on the Texas sidelines. Picture coming.

Fact vs. Artistic License: An All-too Frequent Problem

2008-12-20T23:06:00.003-05:00

This is more a reason for me to gush about how ultimate Wired Magazine is, but I began to think more deeply about what I read in a column in the December issue. Scott Brown, the author, writes about the more-frequent appearances of "Eco-Disaster" films at movie theaters the last few years. Specifically, he cites the newest, The Day the Earth Stood Still, as one of the most glaringly preachy. Keanu Reeves is an angry alien determined to punish the human race for raping the Earth and exhausting its natural resources. Totally plausible, right? It's only natural for Hollywood to latch onto certain issues of our time. Before Eco-disasters it was terrorism (and still is in some ways), before that it was governmental issues, like drug control and oil politics, and before that it was...well, I don't remember. Maybe end-of-the-world scenarios like Armageddon or Deep Impact.

Hollywood likes to be trendy, and obviously global warming is the issue of choice for a lot of actors, producers and directors, but is the point to offer a message or just entertain the droves of movie-goers looking for an often-politically-incorrect story to make them not have to think for two hours?

The real issue here is something that I as a holder of a history degree have a problem with: artistic license to original source material. When filmmakers deliberately change source material so that it's updated or correlates more to something that's current. Case-in-point: Casino Royale is not about stopping a terrorist financier; Actual story: Bond must face Le Chiffre in a game of Baccharat (the game he plays in Goldeneye) to get the secret Soviet Agency SMERSH to take out Le Chiffre for blowing money they entrusted to him on investments in brothels in France, not Montenegro. The producers completely raped the original storyline that connects perfectly to the James Bond we see in Dr. No, in the interest of making a film about terrorism. Terrorism + James Bond = $$$ for Columbia Tristar. When Syriana was made, Stephen Gagan took the basic premise of Robert Baer's superb book See No Evil about the terrible abuses of power by the NSA and CIA in the Middle East in the 1970s and 1980s, and turned it into a film about the government's ties to MidEast oil conglomerates that led to the assasination of a Saudi Prince to push a pro-American brother of his into the throne of his ill father. Quantum of Solace was morphed into a slight commentary on the state of the world's water supply, but an emotion-driven story that doesn't even feature James Bond as the central character. The governor of the Bahamas tells him a story of his revenge on his unfaithful wife and how it left him with little to hold onto in terms of emotional baggage and his ability to put his sorrow behind him.

With The Day the Earth Stood Still, the source material and title refers to what the world would look like had a nuclear war taken place, leaving the planet devoid of life. Keanu Reeve's character is meant to be the one that warns the world's leaders of the dangers of nuclear war. Not disregard for the environment.

I have hope for two important films that open on Christmas Day, though. Ron Howard has already publicly said that Frost/Nixon uses every line of actual dialogue found in the transcripts to the Frost interview of President Nixon. For Valkyrie, there is a lot of material to pull from, as there is a book written by Hans Bernd Gisevious, and some mystery as to which of the German officers in Wermacht Heer was the point man for the operation. Tom Cruise plays Claus von Stauffenburg, but some maintain that General Friedrich Fromm was the only man who could have carried out the final attempt on Hitler's life on 20 July 1944 that would have allowed the German officers to arrest the SS and seize power from Hitler. It will be interesting to see which angle this movie takes, and if it's as accurate as it needs to be.

Why filmmakers feel the need to alter source material that provides all the details to an event is beyond me, but it sure is annoying when they alter something that is recorded fact in the interest of selling a few more tickets. I will be thoroughly ashamed if Valkyrie just places von Stauffenburg at the center of the film and ignores the intricacies of the plan that they had to achieve in order to make their move on Hitler. American filmmakers have already screwed up enough of our own historical events (Pearl Harbor *SIGH*, U-571, the list goes on and on), so I suppose it's time to start screwing up other nations' history.

The Winner Is...

2008-12-17T20:39:00.006-05:00

Was there ever any doubt ?

Runners-Up included: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, French Prime Minister Nikolas Sarkozy, Governor Sarah Palin, and Zhang Yimou (who is he you ask? he's the man that designed all those amazing productions seen at the opening ceremonies of the Beijing Olympics).

I think it was a given that President-Elect Obama would be the person of the year here in America, but...the world? I think Mr. Zhang would have been an interesting choice, given the times we live in (internationally, that is) -- coincidentally, I finished Thomas Friedman's latest book, and he devotes an entire section of the book to China, and it just seems like China is the most up-and-coming place on the globe right now -- why not pick a man that was tasked with presenting "the good side of China" to the world?

Lots of person of the year-related content up on Time.com now so hop over there to check it out...can't exactly argue with slapping Obama on the cover of a magazine for the 32485437078623th time, but that's why I like that they put that excellent illustration on it instead...he's a symbol of the greener pastures that lie in waiting for us Americans. When Franklin Roosevelt accpeted the Democratic nomination in 1932, he said,

"Throughout the nation men and women, forgotten in the political philosophy of the Government, look to us here for guidance and for more equitable opportunity to share in the distribution of national wealth... I pledge you, I pledge myself to a new deal for the American people... This is more than a political campaign. It is a call to arms."

Obama's the guy to call us to arms...roll up his sleeves and take it in the gut for a year or maybe two of his term as President, and I'm guessing that's why he is TIME's Person of the Year.

Job's Done. The Bitch is Dead.

2008-12-11T23:31:00.004-05:00

I'm tremendously proud of our Senate here as the clock strikes 11:30 pm on Thursday December 12th, 2008. It is on this day that the immient implosion of the U.S. automobile industry may become a reality. I truly hope this is the last time I ever have to write about this crap, other than when it's reported that Detroit has been sold to Canada or something.

Approximately thirty minutes ago, I was flipping channels waiting for Jon Stewart to come on, and all the cable news channels were at commercial breaks. Until I flipped across Fox News, and noticed the text on the screen had nothing to do with the rerun of Bill O'Reilly's show that was on. It said:

"Alert; Auto Bailout Loan Dies in Senate, 57-32"

After I was done giggling, imagining the three auto CEO's being awoken in their beds by a phone call from some assistant, saying that this happened, I thought, "Wow, this government actually allowed this thing to fail." And then I thought about Speaker Pelosi fainting in her living room. And then I envisioned President-Elect Obama spouting profanities. Haha

By the way, notice that the vote does not total 100 members? Who were the eleven senators that didn't even vote I wonder??

It appears the big issue that caused such a lopsided vote, was the UAW. The NY Times explains:

The automakers would also have been required to cut wages and benefits to match the average hourly wage and benefits of Nissan, Toyota and Honda employees in the United States.

It was over this proposal that the talks ultimately deadlocked with Republicans demanding that the automakers meet that goal by a certain date in 2009 and Democrats and the union urging a deadline in 2011 when the U.A.W. contract expires.

I didn't even know that the U.S. automakers paid more than the two big Japanese companies. How could they afford to do that if they were on the edge of bankruptcy? And why would the damn union come out and say "Yea, you know how we were willing to do anything to save these jobs? Well, we'll do anything but that." It just breeds a climate of distrust, and there already was quite a bit of distrust leading up to the vote on this bill...and now the average American can look at UAW Chief Ron Gettlefinger, and lump him in the same breath as Wagoner, Mullaley, and Nardelli.

Thomas Friedman once again rails against the bailout in his Wednesday column

Here's what each company submitted as their reformed plans for the second testifying session:

General Motors: Request $18 in loans, reduce its $60 billion debt by half, explore selling Saab, Ponitac, and Saturn, break even in 2012

Ford: $9 billion in reserve loans, launch hybrid and electric cars in 2010, convert truck plants to small car ones, become profitable in 2011

Chrysler: $7 billion in loans at low interest (just to make it through 2009), cut work force and health care benefits, CEO Nardelli will take a salary of $1 (Ha !)

This has turned (wrongly) turned into a political battle, with people in Detroit trying to point fingers at the GOP for killing the industry -- just because Mitt Romney writes a blunt editorial a month ago -- and the fact that no one in Detroit batted an eye when the White House decided to pull the proposed funds from legislation marked for making more fuel efficient technology! And watching Gettlefinger this morning, he is dodging the question coming from a smart reporter. The reporter is repeatedly asking him, "So, are wage cuts an option?" and Gettelfinger just spouts off something about how they're working hard and they love their country.

If the only casualty in this mess is that the UAW is dissolved (fat chance) I would dance in the street. But don't worry, the all-powerful Henry Paulson will step in and just hand these guys a check because Bush told him to.