Month: July 2006

Zidane is a clown

ESPNsoccernet – World Cup – Zidane sent off in extra time for head butt

Throughout the World Cup this year, France’s Zinedine Zidane has been fantastic. Not only has he played very well, but he’s been classy – When he scores, which he does a lot, he acts like he’s done it before.

And then he headbutted a defender. It looked like the two of them had some words, and then he headbutted him in the chest. So, as he’s already announced his retirement, the last time he left the field, ever, was on a red card when his team really needed him. When that happened, I totally lost interest in the game. I had been rooting for France – Zidane and Henry have been fun to watch, and I’ve never been a big fan of Italy, not since Roberto Baggio’s awful PK miss against Brazil in 1994. But when Zidane left the field, due to nothing but his own inability to control himself, I just stopped caring about the outcome.

It’s too bad he’s retiring – it would be nice to see a big long suspension for him.

36 Pages of Hillary – An Initial Reaction

After 36 pages of Hillary’s book, my only reason to hate her is that she’s not a gifted writer. I’ve read a little about her childhood and schooling, a little about her family.

I’m certainly not going to quit now. I know I can’t make an informed judgement about her (Or anyone) after reading 36 pages. What I would say now is that her childhood wasn’t that interesting, she probably got good grades on the papers she turned in while she was in school, and none of her teachers ever told her to write for a living.

I’m probably being nitpicky, looking for things I don’t like. I mean, who am I to criticize the writing ability of a published author and Senator? I’ve published two stories in my college literary magazine years ago, and a few little articles at the Piker Press, but I have yet to see my own work in Borders.

Still, as a public figure, and a political one, she brings this sort of criticism on herself. And trust me, Hillary, there will be more by the time I’m finished.

A step in the right direction, but not far enough

OpinionJournal – Extra

I heard a quick interview with Republican Congressman Mike Pence from Indiana on NPR this morning, and it sounded like he had some good things to say about immigration. He’s proposing 6 year guest worker visas – at the end to the six years, the worker can apply for citizenship. One would assume that, after working here six years, it should not be terribly difficult to obtain citizenship, and indeed it is good for the country if these workers gain citizenship. Pence wants to revisit automatic citizenship for the children of guest workers born in the US, which I think is a good idea.

But his ideas are not all good. For example, he advocates contracting out processing of these workers on entry. I’m not opposed to government contracting (Disclaimer – I am a government contractor, though the opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect opinions of anyone else unless otherwise noted), it can be much more efficient. But I am opposed to unreasonable expectations:

Private worker-placement agencies–“Ellis Island Centers”–would be licensed by the federal government to match guest workers with jobs that employers cannot fill with American workers. These agencies will match guest workers with jobs, perform health screening, fingerprint them, and convey the appropriate information to the FBI and Homeland Security so that a background check can be performed. Once this is done, the guest worker would be provided with a visa issued by the State Department. The whole process will take a matter of one week, or less.

One week? Come on, Mike. It takes eight weeks to renew a passport for a natural born American citizen, doesn’t it?

I also have a problem with his plan that your first renewal of your guest worker visa requires that you pass an English proficiency test. Why is that? So that the workers can integrate themselves into the community? I think that’s a pretty weak argument. Language is not forced like that. It’s a much more natural process. As workers come here, they’ll pick up English as needed. And it certainly wouldn’t hurt if we Americans made a little effort to learn some Spanish. Communication is not something that needs to be legislated. Give human beings some credit – Americans don’t mostly all speak English because there’s a law saying we have to. We do it because we have a need and a desire to communicate, and that’s the way we do that here. Guest workers will adapt, too, and do what they need to do to communicate.

On the whole, though, I think Pence’s plan is getting close to a compromise that I think most people can live with. He needs to take out the part about building walls around the country. We have enough things that give us a false sense of security, and having useless walls would be another. Does he think that, because they don’t speak English, those who would come here illegally can’t find their way over, around, or through a wall?

Still, he’s heading in the right direction. Now all we need is someone else to step in and lead him the rest of the way.

Researching the enemy

I’ve always hated Hillary Clinton. I don’t even think I can explain why. People argue with me. “Oh, she’s so smart,” they say. I know she’s smart. If she were dumb, I wouldn’t worry about her.

My mom fiancee (EDIT: Ooh, misremembering the source of this is getting me into trouble) actually makes a good point about Hillary – She was already in the public eye when she began her political career. That means we got to watch her turn into a politician. We got to watch as she started saying exactly what she thought the voters wanted to hear (And so far, she’s been right). Most politicians do this soul-selling before we hear about them, so they’re already like that when we “meet” them. And so we can tell ourselves that it’s just the way they are.

Not Hillary. She changed before our eyes. For the record, I hated her before that.

Anyway, I am now determined to figure out why I hate her. To that end, I ordered her book, “Living History”, used at Amazon. I have to say I’m impressed with the seller, who managed to get me the book in about a week for the low, low price of $3.63 shipped. I have to say it does make me happy that only 14 cents of that was the actual cost of the book. It’s not in fabulous condition, but that will only add fuel to my argument once I read it and learn why it is that I hate her.

The Amazon reviews suggest that the book is pretty vanilla – she doesn’t come out and say anything shocking. And this book is from before she was a Senator. I’d rather read about Hillary the Senator than Hillary the First Lady. I’m sure we’ll get that opportunity after she’s through running for President.

So, I’ll keep you posted. We’ll have to see if I can get through it.

A little bit more sensible article at the National Review

Rich Lowry on Catch and Remove & El Salvador on National Review Online

I don’t necessarily agree with all of this, but I can chalk up the disagreements to philosophy rather than insanity.

Advocates of a guest-worker program and amnesty argue that the migrant inflow here from points south is literally inexorable. Actually, illegal migrants are people, and so they respond to incentives and disincentives. Enforcement matters to them, as is being demonstrated by the two different approaches to catch-and-release on the border.

Hey, what do you know, immigrants are people.  I fear the acceptance of this fact is much more difficult than it should be for too many people.

However, I’m afraid that the article is failing to take some things into account.  It blames an old rule that prevented the US from deporting Salvadoreans because El Salvador was in the middle of civil war in the 1980’s.  The rule is still on the books, and Mr. Lowry postulates that many Salvadoreans come here because they know about this law, and they know it’s harder to send a Salvadorean back.  Even illegals from other countries often try to claim to be Salvadorean.  I’m sure this old law is not helping, and it should be fixed.  Old laws that are no longer applicable should be rewritten.

The point he’s missing, though, is that there are other possible reasons that there are more Salvadoreans.  For example, let’s say that one Salvadorean leaves his home and comes to the US illegally and manages to stay because of this law.  He starts working and sending money back home, helping his family.  So his old neighbors see this happening, and they decide to try it, too.  His cousin comes along as well, knowing he’ll have family around to help him get started.

Contrary to popular belief, not all illegals know each other.  If there are strong Salvadorean communities here in the US, they will attract more immigrants, legal or not.

I don’t want to trot out the tired arguments in favor of letting all the illegals stay.  “Were your parents Native Americans?”  “What happened to bring me your tired, your poor?”  Those arguments have been made, and I think they have some validity, but it doesn’t really solve the problem.  I think we do need some control over who’s here and who’s allowed to stay.  But we do not need racist militia in border states shooting at people looking for a better life.  We don’t need a wall across the entire southern edge of the country.  We certainly don’t need a national id card that we all have to carry, all the time.  I will show my id when asked to prove my age at a bar, prove my identity at the bank, to vote, or to prove I can legally operate a motor vehicle.  That’s about it.  I like to think I would go to jail before I showed my id to prove I could legally walk down the street.  A small part of me hopes I’ll have to prove that sometime.  It would be fun to call my mom to bail me out.

I do think we need to do something about illegal immigrants.  But I haven’t yet heard a good solution, and I don’t have one myself.  But someone must.

Am I really a liberal?

I’ve realized lately that most of what I read online has a pretty liberal slant to it.  I think this is a problem, because I really do want a balanced viewpoint.  And I’ve always thought that I agreed with a lot of conservative viewpoints – small government, low taxes, take care of the economy and it’ll take care of the rest . . .

So I’ve gone looking for some conservative websites so I could read some stuff from the intelligent conservatives.  I know they’re out there, although clowns like Bill Frist and Ann Coulter seem to be pushing the good ones into the background.

I tried the National Review.  Wow.  I managed to read one article, which spoke of the Supreme Court decision that said that even captured terrorists have rights, and that was about all I could handle.  The biggest problem was the blind support of our President.

For a little background – I turned 18 in 1996 and I voted for Bill Clinton, flush with pride at taking part in the democratic process.  I didn’t really like Clinton by the end of his term – Hillary gives me the creeps, and if you’re going to get caught cheating, you should at least make the rest of us jealous.  I voted for George W. Bush in 2000, mostly I think because Al Gore didn’t really seem to ever say anything.  After four years of Bush, I started to think that Clinton wasn’t all that bad.  I voted for John Kerry in 2004, not because I like Kerry (I voted for Dean in the primary – at least he seemed to give a crap), but because I was embarassed to have a president who seemed to want to turn the world into a Christian theocracy when no one was paying attention.

Anyway, back to the National Review.  Or actually, not to the National Review.  I’ll try another article or two, but I think I’m done with them.  Where are the Republicans who say, “Whoa, these lunatics in power don’t speak for us.”?  Where are the Republicans who say, “You can’t use 9/11 as an excuse to declare war and then expand the office of the President in the name of national security”?  I need to find them.  I think we’d get along.

Dont call kids fat. Wait until heart disease does it for you

Experts debate labeling children obese – Yahoo! News

There’s a ridiculous bit of debate on whether we should tell kids that they are “overweight” or “obese”, or whether we should use other words so the kids don’t feel bad. The real problem here is that they still use BMI to determine overweight. BMI is a ridiculous, meaningless number. Let’s say I’m in perfect shape. I eat healthy foods and exercise regularly. Then I decide to bulk up a bit, and I hit the gym and gain ten pounds of muscle. According to my BMI, I am now less healthy.

It’s ridiculous. Kids are fat. They eat terribly, and don’t exercise enough. And we want to worry about hurting their feelings?

Perhaps the most insane thing ever said by a Senator (But probably not)

27B Stroke 6

This is going around today, I saw it on Fark, they got it from Daily Kos. In any event, it’s a partial transcript of a rambling diatribe given by Alaskan Senator Ted Stevens that plainly shows he does not understand what “the internet” is. He makes the claim that we need to separate the commercial part of the internet from the part that is “essential to small businesses, to our operation of families”. Now, I’m not sure how “small businesses” aren’t part of the commercial world, but maybe he just thinks that people feel warm and fuzzy about small businesses so it’s okay to lump them in with regular people.

He’s arguing for regulation of the internet so that the bandwith hogging applications (he mentions on-demand movie downloads) don’t interfere with little Billy’s email to Grandma. Okay, fine, I’m in favor of that. But there are a couple of directions we can take here.

One, we can make the big bad corporations build their own internet so that it doesn’t interfere with families. Does that mean I’d have to have two accounts with Cox? One for my “family internet” and one so I can get on Buy.com? Not sure how that helps me.

Two, we can look at why (or if) this is really a problem. Maybe the RIAA and MPAA could stop trying to criminalize Bit Torrent and try using it for their own legal distribution. Maybe we could remove some of the monopolies granted to cable companies and get some real competition. Problems like the ones Stevens describes don’t happen in truly competitive markets. When they come up, someone figures out how to fix it, and everyone else follows along or gets left behind. It’s only when the barriers to entry are set so high that competition is impossible that we run into things like this.

Anyway, his statement would be really funny if it weren’t so scary.

Its the governments fault

Treehugger: So Why is Ford Backing Away from Hybrid Commitment?

Some short-sighted laws intended to encourage automakers to go green is too restrictive.

According to the US Department of Energy’s Alternative Fuels Data Center, these laws create an incentive for auto makers to build cars capable of using alternative fuels by “[giving] a credit of up to 1.2 mpg toward an automobile manufacturer’s average fuel economy which helps it avoid penalties of the corporate average fuel economy (CAFE) standards.

So, it makes sense that Ford would go towards alternative fuels instead of hybrids that use regular gas, but less of it.  It’s certainly possible that, when they wrote the law, they had the best of intentions.  I doubt they did, but it’s possible.  But now that it’s obvious that the law is having unintended consequences, such as pushing Ford away from hybrids, then we should change the law.  It’s already more difficult to make a hybrid than to change an existing car over to flex-fuel, so we don’t need to add artificial barriers on top of the ones that are present already.