That'szszs Deszszspicable

But wait, there's more!

Adventures With MATA

[No, I'm not back. I just wanted to relate this story which is both hilarious and illustrative.]

Saturday, I took the bus from my apartment to Mark's. We were heading out to the Battle Bunker for some gaming. When I got on the 53 at the North Terminal, the driver was talking with someone (apparently a friend) about driving the number 11 bus. I backed up and re-read the number of the bus I was boarding before I gave her my transfer, because I have been known to board the wrong bus and her conversation made me wake up. She laughed and I smiled.

I took a seat roughly in the middle of the bus. Up ahead of me, on the parallel bench was a woman whose expression I instantly recognised. It was the naked, frank way she looked right at me, and the glinting light in her eye, and the huge smile splitting her face. She was mentally ill. I worked in a drug rehab center for ten years and I know that look. But she seemed in a happy place, so I relaxed.

As the bus wound down to the Parkway, she would occasionally say something in a loud mumble, the kind almost loud enough to understand but you have to ask them to repeat it clearly. She was vocalising her internal monologue, the odd thought in her mind popping out through her mouth. She kept looking around the bus at the other passengers, with that blunt smile, but no-one was engaging her.

Then the fun started. A woman I recognised from previous Saturday trips on this bus got on along the Parkway. She has the air of a country woman who now lives in the city, hard and closed in. A bit farther down Faxon, she suddenly leaps up and begins shouting something incoherent.

After a moment, she's saying, "Stop the bus! That's my daughter!" She grabs the bell cord and then runs to the front of the bus. She begins talking in a rushed, loud voice about her daughter just missing the bus. The driver pulls over.

Now I know who the daughter is. She gets on the bus at a later stop than her mom, bringing her young son, and they ride out Summer to the antique minimall area then get off together. Looking back, listening to the mother, it's clear the daughter is now about three blocks back, turning away from her missed bus.

The country woman is now haraunging the driver, to get her daughter on. She asks the driver to back the bus up! When that fails, she demands the driver wait while she goes to get her daughter and bring her back. The driver quietly explains she's on a schedule and needs to get moving again.

Seeing her daughter walking away, not seeing the stopped bus, the country woman climbs back on, loudly complaining and fussing the whole time. She never stops. "I've been told by drivers (later "a driver") that you can wait up to two minutes. It's hard in this world for everyone and we all have to stick together and help each other. Now she's got to wait a whole hour for the next bus. You're running early and she was at the stop at the usual time." Blah, blah, blah. On and on, non-stop, loudly.

After nearly ten minutes (or so it seemed), the driver finally couldn't stand it and they began to argue across the bus. At top volume. The country woman kept saying, "That's all I'm going to say." before she'd launch into another tirade. At one point, in response to a threat to report her behavior from the country woman, the driver said, "You can't get me fired! No one can!" (Which I thought a very revealing statement, indeed. Union? MATA protectionism? Bravado?)

The bus is tootling down to Summer and Hollywood now, and they're still going at it. The rest of the passengers are getting tired and uncomfortable, but no one's saying anything. The mentally ill woman is wide-eyed and po-faced.

The bus stops to pick up passengers. One is a middle-aged, silver-haired white guy in work t-shirt and jeans and cap, with some tools sticking out of his back pocket. He's not lean and hard, though, but soft and slightly overweight. He immediately asks what they are arguing about and suggests they stop it and let the driver drive. He takes a seat on the opposite bench from the mentally ill woman.

Some passengers take the opportunity the silver-haired guy offered to suggest the driver drive and they get moving. But the argument continues, and the white guy occasionally inserts his wisdom and advice. Things are growing heated.

The bus turns off Summer into the Binghamptom loop. And then it all goes to hell. The mentally ill woman, who is black, suddenly says something to a young white girl across from her, ending in a phrase that the whole bus hears: "White bitch." Dead silence from everyone.

Then the mentally ill woman, responding to something the white guy said that I didn't hear, got up and began to berate the white guy in a strong, clear voice. She ended by being three inches from his face and in the same powerful voice ended her tirade with "white bitch."

He flinched and floundered a second, then the ill woman suddenly threw back her right arm, cocked high and ready to slap the living crap out of him. The bus was now pulled over, all conversation but this was gone. But the ill woman then let her hand fall and sat back down.

The driver announced to the bus that we all needed to stop it, or did she need to call the police? Several riders in the back immediately piped up that they'd seen a police cruiser just ahead, around the block. It could be there in a moment. But the driver talked quietly to the ill woman and she stayed seated and fairly quiet, the odd mumble her only noise. After some adjustment, the bus continued.

One rider, a middle aged woman with a dignified bearing, made some general statement to the bus about MATA drivers, responsibility and being at the stop on time, which others in the back supported with ragged agreement.

The country woman stayed completely silent, seething (I looked at her once.) inside herself. The silver-haired guy was also silent. At one point the mentally ill woman got up and walked to the driver's side, then sat down before pulling the bell cord. After she got off, the young woman she'd called a "white bitch" said she had seen the ill woman around downtown a lot. Whatever that was supposed to mean....

At this point, we're going well down Summer. As every passenger from the back gets off, they exclaim their support for the driver and wish her well. I expressed my support for her, more quietly to her, when I got off. The country woman hasn't said a word, thin-lipped and hunched over.

High drama on the 53. Is it any wonder that -- given the choice at all -- folks don't ride MATA, no matter how they are enticed or bullied by the social engineers of the world? Being in someone else's vehicle traps you in their world, with all their problems.

One time, about fifteen years ago, I was taking the 50 Poplar back to the downtown from shopping out East. It was packed, with some folks standing in the aisles. I was the only white person on that bus, that day. (That's going to happen in a city like Memphis. I'm not complaining here, just pointing out something that's relevant in a moment.)

I had my headphones on, to screen out folks who might try to start up a conversation, but no music playing. I could hear everything clearly, but no one else knew that.

Seated right behind me was a very old guy who was obviously a long time drunk. He was completely shizzled, right on the edge of nodding off. He was mumbling to himself and, after a while, he kept mumbling about "white m*therf*ckers." When I didn't react, he got louder. I stole glances around the bus and folks kept eyeing me to see if I heard or how I was going to react. I kept an oblivious smile on my face and just sat there. The bus was otherwise quiet. No one said anything, to him or me.

After a very long while, the old man finally got off the bus. The person next to him called the driver back. The old man's seat was puddled with urine.

Ever since, I've always checked my bus seat before sitting down. I wonder how many bus seats Carol Coleta, Willie Herenton, Kevin Kane, Henry Turley, Pitt Hyde or Barry Lendermon have had to check?

Riding MATA requires certain skills. If you depend on the bus to be somewhere at a certain time, you are in trouble. If you expect it to be early, it will be late; if you depend on it to be late, it will be early. That's where the country woman and her daughter made their mistake. Even if the busses cross at a certain stop at the same time, and you have a transfer, don't depend on the timing. I've missed many busses that way. One is late or the other early.

Never assume that just because a bus has a street name on it that it will travel that street. The Summer bus detours part of its route through Binghampton. The 50 Poplar bus detours through the UM area. The 2 Madison winds all over the place near the downtown. If you pick the wrong block, then you're screwed. There will be no bus for you.

Every once in a while, there will be no bus at all. You will be at the right stop, at the right time. Other busses will come by, just not your's. Busses occasionally crash, break down, or have incidents like mine where police are called. I once waited thirty minutes downtown for a bus that never came before I started down to the North Terminal for another (Any!!) bus to get me home. Turns out my bus had an accident and bus traffic had been rerouted temporarily. Who knew?

Now, in that case and in all fairness to MATA, the MATA investigator on the scene immediately offered to give me a ride. Just like that. She was very nice and I was truly appreciative.

But that was a unique situation. I once stood in the middle of Poplar, waving my arms at the speeding bus driver trying to get him to stop for me, only to watch him zip right past with nary a pause. He saw me, too.

Some folks ride MATA because they have to. Some, like me, because we choose to. (I gave up my car about fifteen years ago by choice, in order to live a low-cost lifestyle. I get by thanks to friends and MATA.) Riding MATA takes adjustments and adaptations, as well as learning some skills and accepting some missed rides. But in today's "have it your way" culture very few want to make those adjustments. Fewer still want to be forcibly pushed up against the very kinds of people they tried to keep away from.

Anyway, that's that. And now, back into the Outback to continue the walkabout. Later y'all.

Everything But What I Want to Know

I was out this evening and it wasn't until I got home that I learned Ophelia Ford's Senate vote tomorrow has been blocked by a Federal judge.

But every story I've seen so far -- state and local papers, television news -- has omitted the most important part of the story: On what grounds was Ford's request for an injunction filed, and on what grounds was it granted? Why is a Federal judge intervening in a State matter?

Did everyone just miss that part somehow? How about, you know, reporting the news? Jeez but y'all newspeople are just getting worse and worse.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Ah, the Tennessean reports:

Ford's court complaint says the Senate discriminated against her and other black voters in her district because of their race and denied them the right to vote. The Senate took an initial vote Tuesday to unseat her....

In her complaint to the court, Ford says Roland does not prove the questionable votes are illegal and that the Senate vote hinged on "unproven residency and mistakes caused by election officials." ...

The complaint lists Ford and three other District 29 residents, including two who are black, as plaintiffs.

All 33 senators, along with Roland, are listed as defendants, but Ford does not bring allegations against the 14 who voted against the ouster.

The complaint says that the Senate's actions "unfairly discriminate against Sen. Ford, the African-American plaintiffs, on the count of their race" and that the vote "denies the right of individuals such as (the) Plaintiffs to be eligible to vote and have their vote counted."

Finally, the complaint says the 17 senators who did vote to unseat her "would deny the right to vote on account of race or color."

Of course, race is justification enough for the Feds, and an easy accusation for the Fords to sling.

Gotta wonder how Harold the Younger is feeling about his auntie stirring up the race pot with the very voters he needs to get seeing past race in order to vote for him. Heck, with him telling USA Today recently that he's "white" (and so Ophelia is "half-white" by that math) you're forced to wonder how they can even navigate this muddle.

Fords: Free entertainment for Tennessee.

THURSDAY UPDATE THE SECOND: As the comments on Bob Krumm's blog note, since when does the Federal judiciary have the power to tell a State legislature how to conduct its internal business? Can someone explain that one for me?

Adam Groves takes a stab it. More thoughts (and links) here.

Parting Thoughts

Parting Thoughts

1) Let's clear up this pretense that television news shows and local papers are some pure expression of the First Amendment. They are not. They are in the business of selling a commercial product -- namely their readership -- to businesses with another product to sell. The "news" (or in the case of the Commercial Appeal, "information you can use") is the hook to get eyeballs to their product; more eyeballs means higher ad rates. Getting certain groups of eyeballs, as determined by market research consultants, also means higher ad rates.

Protestations that the news is pre-eminent over the business side of things is a case of the tail thinking it wags the dog. How many newspapers and television stations hire consultants to juice up their presentation to attract more eyeballs? How many bring in consultants who tell them how to pursue and uncover hard to report stories? Exactly.

News is a commercial enterprise. Learn that and you'll begin to better understand what you're watching and reading. They do not serve you, but the needs to make a profit and stay in business.

2) Just for fun, for the people in the local media who read this blog, I have a hypothetical: You learn that there is a terrorist cell in Memphis. They take you to their meeting place, where you see a few of them and hear them discuss not blowing up something, but setting up a network for later terrorists to come into, who will then begin bombings, etc.

Do you go to the police immediately? Do you call your News Director first? Do you do the story and never contact the police? If you just do the story, when the police and FBI later contact you, do you give them all the information they request? What would you do, and why?

3) Ophelia Ford will not lose her Senate seat. Get used to it. The Senate committee investigating this will send a strong -- though toothless -- rebuke to the Shelby County Election Commission. The Senate will place all responsibility there, as they certified the election and therefore Ophelia Ford. Anyone who thinks the Senate will refuse to seat Ford isn't looking at all the other senators who might one day face a similar challenge. You expect them to set a precedent for their own ouster?

4) I am now fully convinced that the Tennessee Republican Party doesn't want to run a successful candidate against Phil Bredesen for governor. We are seeing the same thing we've seen in the past two second-term gubernatorial elections in Tennessee. Both Ned McWhirter and Don Sundquist faced token (and that's being kind) opposition from the opposing parties in their re-elections.

Here we are in the middle of January of the election year, and no candidate! It's far too late to mount any kind of strong, effective, wide-based campaign by now. No one has come forward and no one seems too worried about it.

It's not what some Republicans are trying to claim -- that Bredesen is a formidable candidate. He's not. He squeaked by Hilleary and has come under all sorts of fire since. Bredesen is wide-open vulnerable on ethics, corruption and his handling of TennCare. He took state-shared revenues from Tennessee municipalities to balance his first budget. That move precipitated a lot of the budget crises we've seen across the State. The State has been running large surpluses ever since, but has never restarted revenue sharing.

The Assembly could, under strong Republican leadership, both restart revenues and cut the state sales tax by 1/2%, and still run surpluses! Yes, a half-percent cut is miniscule, but it's the symbolism of it, the statement of seriousness in really cutting taxes for Tennesseans, that is the gain. A gubernatorial candidate who aligns with Senate Majority Leader Ron Ramsey could start a powerful wedge to use against Jimmy Naifeh in the House. It's a winning platform, and a strong one, so it's no surprise no one in Nashville has advocated it.

I am certain that we are being set up, for the third time, for another run at the income tax. As others have noted, the Assembly seems to want to devolve some taxing authority down to the cities. Shelby County, at least, is interested in enacting a tax on business payrolls, which is not precisely an income tax but functions that way. Seeing how differently worded variations of the privilege tax go through the State courts will help to illuminate the path for writing a successful State income tax. I'm sure of it.

Look back to the various plans that were put forward when the income tax was last debated. There was only one common feature to every proposal -- eliminating the Hall tax on investment income. There a reason for that: the enormously wealthy who live off investment income want their tax burden relieved. Yes, all you hear about are the "grannies having the stocks taxed" but the real hits are to the ultra-wealthy. These are the folks who provide the real cash, and the real power, to the elites in the leadership of the Democrat and Republican parties in Tennessee. That's a big part of why the income tax keeps coming back.

The other is the more prosaic. An income tax is nearly invisible, especially as compared to the sales tax. How many times have you gone shopping for stuff, keeping a total in your head, only to be shocked by the final, after-tax, total? Now, how many of you can say how much you take home every week? But can you tell me how much is taken out in various taxes before that? Exactly. Most folks can't. Most folks think of "what they earn" as their take-home pay, not their actual pay. When an income tax increase comes along, it works out to a few dollars, or tens of dollars, per paycheck. Doesn't seem so bad, right? Not until you multiply that by every paycheck you got that year.

The Republican Party leadership this time is as bought and paid for as the Democratic Party leadership was in 1998. You will see the income tax revived in 2007. Mark my words.

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And so, I take my leave. I'm out on walkabout. I'll check comments, once in a while, but basically (unless something is really worth it), I'm on hiatus for real.

Y'all take care.

Here's a Thought

Whenever property taxes in Shelby County come up, especially when the talk is about raising them yet again, the topic always comes to the problem of senior citizens on fixed incomes being stuck with increasing bills they find harder and harder to pay. Well here's a thought: Seniors should refuse to pay.

Let a group of retirees go to court and then to jail. See what happens next. (Of course, the County's not stupid. They'll use foreclosure, which is a long, boring process, rather than allow something dramatic like news footage of some granny being taken through 201.)

Still, I'd love to see a group of seniors play a bluff with the County on this.

The Great Gulf War

Glad to know I'm not the only one who sees parallels between Nazi Germany's rise in the 1930's and events in Iran today. No less a person than Niall Ferguson writes:

The optimists argued that the Cuban Missile Crisis would replay itself in the Middle East. Both sides would threaten war - and then both sides would blink. That was Secretary Rice's hope - indeed, her prayer - as she shuttled between the capitals. But it was not to be.

The devastating nuclear exchange of August 2007 represented not only the failure of diplomacy, it marked the end of the oil age. Some even said it marked the twilight of the West. Certainly, that was one way of interpreting the subsequent spread of the conflict....

Sharon's stroke happened at the worst possible moment, and Netanyahu may not pick up the slack in time. America is already making noises about leaving Iraq too soon. Our military is stretched hard at the moment. The American public is at the traditional point of losing interest, and being hustled along by Democrats and their allies in the media.

Ahmadinejad is a Hitler analogue. Reprising Chamberlain's "peace in our time" overtures isn't the way to go. Pre-emptive action is, but can we follow through? I'm not sure.

And that worries me.

A Desire Named Streetcar

The Cato Institute has released a study on public transportation that should be read by Memphians who have already had the Madison Trolley inflicted on them, and have the Airport "light rail" system waiting in the wings.

Prior to 1964, when Congress began subsidizing transit, the industry was mostly private. Since then, the industry has been almost entirely taken over by state and local governments. Today more than three of every four dollars spent on transit come from taxpayers, not transit riders....

The nation's mass transit system is a classic example of how special interests prevail over the needs and interests of voters and taxpayers. Total inflation-adjusted subsidies to transit—buses and trains—have more than doubled since 1990, yet total ridership has increased by less than 10 percent. Train ridership has dropped dramatically while automobile use has skyrocketed.

I've only skimmed it, so I don't have much more to add yet.

Remember this: the Madison Trolley is presently being subsidised in large part by Federal dollars. Slightly more than a million dollars a year in Federal money will go away in a couple more years, to be picked up by the City of Memphis. Similar operating subsidies apply to the Airport line, and will go away over time, leaving Memphis to pay for something that few use.

There are only two reasons these rail / trolley things happened. First is an activist group determined to turn downtown Memphis into Manhattan on the Mississippi. The Belz / Turley group have massive investment both downtown and in the Mayor, and expect results. The Smart City crowd want to build an island of prosperity for themselves at the expense of the rest of Memphis. The trolley / rail thing is part of the illusion of progressive city planning.

Also, local builders and contractors want those millions of Federal dollars. It doesn't matter to them if the thing gets used or not, or how successful or remunerative it is. Their only concern is the building of it, which they profit from immensely. If the choice is between having millions of dollars flow into the community to build another white elephant or not, they choose to build.

It will mean traffic tie-ups for years, again. It will mean higher taxes for Memphis, to pick up the slack in coming years. It will mean higher bus fare and declining service from MATA. It will mean expensive maintenance, if that happens, or more likely it will mean slowly deteriorating rails and roads until the City Council is presented with an expensive crisis.

The City really wants the line to tie in Downtown, Overton Square and Cooper-Young, even if that means the imposition of rail lines, stops and wires in spaces that can't handle them. They will destroy OS and C-Y in order to make them prosperous feeders to Downtown. The smarter choice, along Lamar, will play havoc with already congested traffic and present more pedestrian dangers, but it's the "wrong" kind of neighborhood to regenerate, if you know what I mean. And I know you do, if you're a Memphian.

But hey, at least we'll be necklaced by this albatross and can claim our rightful place alongside other "world class cities" because of it. Somehow that's more important than civic and fiscal responsibility.

The Tent Grows a Bit Smaller

And so it ends for yet another Tennessee blogger. The other tentpole of the Tennessee blogosphere is calling it a day. Bill Hobbs, along with the also-deceased South Knox Bubba, were the twin tentpoles helping to hold the tent up. With both of them now gone, the blogosphere here in the Volunteer state finally shatters into a million constituent parts, most likely never to regain any organising principle of such force ever again.

I suppose it was inevitable, but it's still sad.

Proof of Alternate Dimensions

Senator Ted Kennedy seems an unlikely source of proof that alternate dimensions -- worlds very much like ours where events happened slightly differently, like the South winning the Civil War or someone else winning a presidential election -- exist. And yet, in a press roundtable this week, he did:

Briefly, Kennedy rewrote the outcome of the 1964 election. "This nominee was influenced by the Goldwater presidency," he said. "The Goldwater battles of those times were the battles against the civil rights laws." Only then did Kennedy acknowledge that "Judge Alito at that time was 14 years old."

Had this been Bush, it would be proof of his idiocy ala Reagan. But from Ted, well it's just proof that his brain is still sloshing around in booze.

I've Been Podcasted!

Jungle Kitty is a Star Trek fanfiction writer who used to be very active on the alt.startrek.creative newsgroup back when I was also active there. I stopped writing fanfic, though she did not. She's now teamed up with a friend (Lene Taylor) to do a podcast about their Number One Obsession: Captain James T. Kirk, and the actor who plays him, William Shatner. The podcast is called Look At His Butt!

I've been listening for a while now, not because I'm a Kirk fan -- I preferred writing TNG and Voyager stories -- but because they are so damn funny. I'm only mentioning it here because in the latest podcast they briefly talk about me and a story I did called Star Trek: Clambake! It comes up after the mid-show break, around the 26 minute mark. Go and download the podcast and give it a listen. (It takes about an hour at dialup speeds; much less for broadband.) They have the rare ability to make it seem like you're a part of their conversation, not that they're talking to you.

While you're at the Trekiverse archive reading Clambake!, go to the Search tool and enter my last name (Hollihan) to see more of the 3 dozen or so of my stories archived there. I'm really proud of them. I fell away from writing fanfic, which I regret, but during the decline I started to construct and write my own ST series, Star Trek: USS Goddard (or maybe Star Trek: Discovery Corps; I keep wavering) which I think had a lot of potential. I want to go back to it someday and take it up. (The website is incomplete and missing a lot of stuff, so don't sweat broken links or missing graphics.)

Anyway, yes you read right, I'm in a podcast called "Look At His Butt!" Laugh amongst yourselves. Thanks to the ladies at LAHB for the too-kind words.

The Iranian Problem

It's not making much news in America it seems, but Iran's coming acquisition of nuclear weapons is prompting some gloomy predictions of what comes next.

Part of the "no news" has been a recent trip by high level American administration officials to Turkey, widely assumed to be securing permissions for flyovers and staging if action in Iran becomes necessary. Until Sharon's stroke, it was assumed that Israel would be taking action against Iran as they did in the 80's against Iraq, with US blessing.

The article and discussion linked seem to think the appropriate model is Europe in 1918, but I think it's more like Germany in the mid-30's. Iran's leader is open, defiant and unapologetic in his desire to see Israel erased from the world and the Jews exterminated. The American media may demurely look away, hoping he's not really serious, but the evidence is that he is. We can nervously pretend he's not a wolf, but given a chance he, like Hitler, will go for our jugulars.

We in the West tend to forget that Iran is the modern day successor state to the ancient Persian civilisation, which has controlled most of the Middle East throughout history. I don't think Iran has territorial ambitions, but I do believe they have economic ones.

Read the discussion. It tends to the spectacular and apocalyptic, but there's a lot of meat to chew on. This year looks to be The Year of Tenterhooks.

Read This Essay

Yeah, I know, gone on walkabout, not back soon, blah, blah, blah. But I read this Mark Steyn essay and demand that you read it too. It talks about multiculturalism, demographics, liberal democracy, Islam, government largesse and the future. The outlook is very, very worrying.

He touches on topics and projections that I've sometimes talked about here. How American military might made the European social safety net possible, to everyone's detriment. The death of "Europe" within a century. The displacement of Western liberal democracy as the central guiding force of history. How demographics are driving that future more than academic theory.

The only thing missing in Steyn's essay is an examination of secularism vs religiousity. European, Anglosphere and Asian birthrates are plummeting in those nations most driven by secularism, where the influence of religion is waning or waned. Look to South America or Southeastern and Pacific Asia, where religion is still strong in daily life, and you see more marriage and larger families. They do not face the demographic doom we do.

In fact, America's birthrate is just above the replacement rate only because of our laissez fair immigration policy. Look at population growth solely by Americans and you see that we, too, are below the replacement rate. It's only the massive influx of Hispanics, and secondarily the high birthrate of African-American women, that kept us above that line. Factor that out, and we're in Europe's boat as well.

It's a stunningly powerful essay. Read it and think on it.

Nap Time

I'm going back on hiatus again. Don't know how long.

I'm just not following the news any more. I haven't picked up a paper in at least a month; haven't been to their website but maybe a handful of times in the same period. Not watching television news, except sporadically. (And I'm still not watching WMC/5 at all. They still have that abominable hypocrite Susan Adler Thorpe as a commentator.)

I make the regular blog reading rounds, but a lot of the "second tier" stuff I used to keep up with has fallen away. Lots going on, I'm sure, but so what?

I'm just not informed, nor do I particularly feel the need to be. The world goes on just fine no matter what I think or say. The political leadership are secure in their positions; the voting populace appears to be just fine with 'em. It's all cozy and financially rewarding. The road to hell is well paved and we're riding in a cushy vehicle with wraparound seating, a CD/DVD player, cruise control and noise-cancelling technology.

I've tried to at least keep a hand in, but the quality and type of posts over the past month or two have obviously been crap. Traffic has drooped by half.

Depression, burnout, lassitude, laziness, apathy, hopelessness, seasonal affective disorder. Call it that and more. It's hard to care.

So I'm off to bank the fires and hope for rekindling. It'll probably happen; don't fear. I'm just not sure when. I wouldn't check by here too often, as I plan to walk away for awhile.

Take care and I'll see ya when I return.

Impeach Bush Now!

That's what Bob Krumm is saying:

It’s like cussing. Several years ago I went to Kuwait for four months to live in the desert surrounded only by other cavalrymen. Like everyone else there, my language was atrocious at the end of the tour. Whether used as adjective, exclamation, or punctuation, the F-word made its way into my every sentence. I was trapped in my own feedback loop of swearing. However, it didn’t take me long after my return to remember that civilized people don’t talk that way.

What those within the Impeach Bush-crowd don’t understand is that, similarly, civilized people don’t use the I-word all the time.

Oh, but they’ll learn. When they push the issue in Congress, and it comes to the floor of the House for a vote, boy, will they learn.

Just like when Representative John Murtha stepped forward to declare: "Withdraw immediately." (He only later, under the heat of scrutiny, changed it to "Move away, real soon, carefully.") and the Dems leapt all over it, only to scamper away when the declaration was put to a vote on the floor of the House. (Twice!)

Democrats are "stuck on stupid." Republicans should take advantage of that. Play their bluff again. Put a motion on the floor and watch them scamper away again. Let America see that they aren't serious, just partisan. Again.

It shut up the "Withdraw now!" clamor, and it will shut down the impeachment talk.

Go for it!

Quote for the Day

That Crawford Tillinghast should ever have studied science and philosophy was a mistake. These things should be left to the frigid and impersonal investigator, for they offer two equally tragic alternatives to the man of feeling and action; despair if he fail in his quest, and terrors unutterable and unimaginable if he succeed.

H.P. Lovecraft in From Beyond

Back Into Battle

[I posted this to BoardGameGeek earlier and decided to crosspost it here.]

Back in my high school and college days, I used to play some D&D games and a few Avalon Hill hex-and-counter wargames. I fell out of that crowd, and haven't played in twenty years.

At the start of 2005, though, my friend Mark was looking for a regular opponent for the table-top miniatures game Epic: Armageddon so he introduced me and bought me a starter pack. I've really taken to the game -- I went from total unfamiliarity with the Warhammer 40K universe to regularly beating Mark in one year -- and it has sparked a regeneration of interest in gaming in general.

First, I tracked down an old AH favorite game, Afrika Korps, on eBay and bought it, though I haven't played it yet. Then I found the Memphis gaming group this month and got together with some of them. We only had time for Ra, but I found myself really enjoying the game and the people. I'll be going back when I can.

I've also restarted playing chess, to sharpen my analytical skills. So far I'm only playing a computer program until I can get decent again.

Today, Mark and I... well, we went directly into the deep end of the pool. He found a copy of Flat Top, an old favorite of his, another AH hex-and-counter game about WWII naval battles in the South Pacific. He'd already made a copy of the rule book for me to study, so we just dived in. We began with a scenario (remember that), a shorter, simplified, "game within a game," called "East Solomons."

Set up alone took nearly two hours, though some of that time did include tracking down loose chits. Running through the rules, making sure everything was correctly ready, and fixing my plane errors took another hour. (When the rules called for "34" planes, I took thirty-four chits, not thirty-four points worth. Oops!)

We managed to make it through the game from 1AM until 11AM in about 6 hours. Ten turns of a 66 turn scenario. We made a lot of mistakes, and unevenly applied the rules we remembered to apply when we remembered; we also inadvertantly or not left out a lot of rules and procedures, but we did it!

Yeah, we bit off a lot to chew but we definitely had fun, in that "my brain hurts" kind of way that wargamers experience until one day the game just clicks and play suddenly becomes transparent. Or as transparent as a chart, counter and "formation box" heavy wargame like Flat Top can become.

First lesson? Start small. This game may have been the wrong place to start, but Mark's an old Navy man so he "gets" the theme and we both like wargames. We were smart to begin with a scenario and not the whole enchilada here. Even so, we joked about why admirals need staffs.

Second lesson? We need more tables! It takes three: one for the game boards; one each for our "formation box" charts and all the other charts and rules we need. Both our apartments are small and cramped, and mine has a friendly, inquisitive cat, so we might need to find some public space that will let us take it over for a day. (Hah! Maybe we just need to clean up the clutter in our apartments.) Any ideas?

Lastly, I had forgotten how absorbing hex-and-counter wargaming can be. I've already had that sensation of utterly losing myself in play with Epic and I like it. This one will take some work to master, but wandering around the Pacific, looking for carriers, watching for his aircraft, was a lot of fun.

Now I need to take that Afrika Korps box down and get all the pieces ready. Maybe we can try that one as a joint-unstiffener before we wade back into Flat Top again.

Yeah, my brain hurts right now, but I'm a happy guy. I was pretty dumb to not be gaming all these years.

THURSDAY UPDATE: Mark has posted his thoughts on the grueling endurance test that was Flat Top.

And Now The Truth Begins to Emerge

I hate publishing a whole article, rather than excerpting it here and linking there but I think this one is short and sweet:

U.S. President George Bush decided to skip seeking warrants for international wiretaps because the court was challenging him at an unprecedented rate.

A review of Justice Department reports to Congress by Hearst newspapers shows the 26-year-old Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court modified more wiretap requests from the Bush administration than the four previous presidential administrations combined.

The 11-judge court that authorizes FISA wiretaps modified only two search warrant orders out of the 13,102 applications approved over the first 22 years of the court's operation.

But since 2001, the judges have modified 179 of the 5,645 requests for surveillance by the Bush administration, the report said. A total of 173 of those court-ordered "substantive modifications" took place in 2003 and 2004. And, the judges also rejected or deferred at least six requests for warrants during those two years -- the first outright rejection of a wiretap request in the court's history.

And there you go. Now we begin to understand what was happening and why.

I'm still waiting to learn how many Executive Orders the President signed bypassing FISA courts, and how many innocent, non-terrorist related people were infringed.

Joke of the Day

In heaven, the policemen are British, the chefs are French, the lovers are Italian, the engineers are German, and everything is run by the Swiss.

In hell, the policemen are German, the chefs are British, the lovers are Swiss, the engineers are French, and everything is run by the Italians.

Update for Linkers

Just so you know, I switched off the hotlinks for the bloggers bash graphics. For all hotlinking actually. If you need the "New Memphis Mafia" button accessible for your site, just let me know and I'll hook you up.

They Support the Troops, Except When They Don't

It's a mantra from some on the Left: "We support the troops." Except, of course, when they don't:

Just as the seemingly intractable nature of the war has led to a growing recruitment crisis, so the United Services Organisation, which has been putting on shows for the troops since the second world war, is struggling to get celebrities to sign up for even a short tour of duty....

Newton said many celebrities have been wary of going because they think it might be seen that they are endorsing the war. "And I say it's not. I tell them these men and women are over there because our country sent them, and we have the absolute necessity to try to bring them as much happiness as we can."

Fear is also a factor. "They're scared," country singer Craig Morton, who is in Iraq on the USO's Hope and Freedom Tour 2005, told USA Today. "It's understandable. It's not a safe and fun place and a lot of people don't want to take the chance."

Say one thing, do another. For some, partisan politics trumps all.