Smythe's World

Tom Tomorrow picks up on the Clash-Jaguar relationship here.

Keith Olbermann has an interesting piece in Salon about "taking responsibility", the gist of which is that Ann Coulter is at least partially responsible for 9/11, due to her incessant appearances several years ago on the cable news channels over Monica Lewinsky. Although I have taken a pretty hard-line approach to the writings and wisdom of Fraulein Goebbels in the past (see here and here), I can't buy the argument that 9/11 happened because the nation was distracted by ephemera, just as I couldn't agree with the far right's claim last year, that it was all Clinton's fault. By Olbermann's standard, Jon-Benet Ramsey, Elian Gonzalez, and Gary Condit (and the media whores who exploited those stories; damn you, Dominick Dunne !!) are responsible for 9/11 as well, since they also distracted a nation's attention from the pressing goal of confronting international terrorism (in any event, why blame Coulter, who never appeared on his MSNBC show; a more apt villain would be Christopher Hitchens, who was practically a regular during the Lewinsky scandal, and blasted Clinton's going after Bin Laden in September, 1998, as a phony, "wag the dog" threat used to distract the country).

What really bothers me about the Olbermann article, though, was his attack on Pete Rose for denying he bet on the Cincinnati Reds at the beginning of the piece, asserting "Rose is about to complete Year 13 of his nonstop insistence that he didn't do it -- bet on the baseball team he was managing -- even if he signed a document saying he did." O.K., my interest is piqued; when did Pete Rose sign a document admitting he bet on the Reds. Where is that document now, and why hasn't it been released to the public? As far as I know, the document Rose did sign with then-Commission Giamatti explicitly stated that there was no finding he bet on baseball games, much less an admission he bet on Reds games.

I guess it was too much to hope that more than three days could go by without another knuckleheaded Maureen Dowd take on "Hollywood" and California politics. She's often a good writer, but one without a clue about what's going on west of the Adirondacks.

Some random thoughts:

1. With the SF Valley secession vote looming in November, the supporters of the movement ("the seceshers") have scheduled elections for Valley Mayor and the City Council, just in case lightning strikes and the dang thing passes. With the initial polls looking rather gloomy for the cause, those races are having a hard time attracting serious candidates; most of those who've announced so far are perennial GOP candidates for legislative and congressional offices, and even a political junkie like myself hasn't heard of any them. Which gets me to thinking: why not resurrect one of the most significant movements in mid-1980's campus politics at Berkeley, "a Boring Party". I mean, its not like I don't have a lot of free time (eg., this blog), there's little chance the secession vote will pass anyway, and, if I might cast aside my usual humility, I think I might have a little more appeal to the voters than some of the Rotarians, babbitts, and boosters who are running for these other offices. So, without further adieu, I hereby give the go-ahead to my friends Carolyn Hampton, Christopher Parsons, and Matt Cairns to establish an "Exploratory Committee" for my campaign.
SMYTHE FOR MAYOR !!! NEW HORIZONS BECKON WITH MEANINGFUL OPPORTUNITY !!! GO BEARS !!!

2. If this blog is ever published as a "Book on Tape", I want Robert Evans to narrate.

I think I first heard about this idea, which is to re-do old scripts from TV shows with an ensemble cast, a few years backs during a writer's strike. Except they were going to do the episodes straight....

I couldn't resist posting this sob story, written by Cokie Roberts, about how federal judges making $150k a year are underpaid. The kicker is when she complains that judges have lifetime appointments, and, at least on paper make a good salary, but they still have to send their children to college, and besides that, $150k is less than what first-year associates at large firms make. Well, Cokie, everyone with kids has to worry about coming up with the scratch for college, including people who don't have an honorific before their name, and first-year associates, unlike federal judges, sometimes have to work more than four days a week, six hours a day, and usually without the benefit of a team of law clerks paid for by the tax payers. Hey, if a "low" salary gets Manual Real, Royce Lambirth or Lawrence Silberman off the federal payroll, I'm for it.

As I noted over the weekend, the bankruptcy bill has stalled in the House over the abortion issue. If it doesn't get passed this term, don't expect this bill to be revived in its current form by the next session of Congress. God is great.

In defending his hypothesis that welfare reform has led to an increase in interracial marriages between white men and black women, Kausfiles argues, "you don't have to be on welfare, or poor, or black to be influenced by the welfare-conditioned culture of the urban poor -- any more than you have to be poor or black to be influenced by the ghetto-based ideas of NWA and other rappers whose music fills headphones in Scarsdale and Montecito." NWA? Good contemporary reference, old man; I enjoy blasting NWA out of my walkman every day, along with Public Enemy, Husker Du, the Jesus and Mary Chain, and Guns N Roses. It sure as hell beats anything coming out from Paula Abdul or the Pet Shop Boys. And how about that Kirk Gibson blast !!!

Oy! One of the more troubling aspects of a Gore Presidency would have been the fact that this wholly-owned subsidiary (by the way, is that redundant?) of the insurance and accounting industries would have become Vice President. I can't imagine any dumber political advice right now than to be critical of the Democratic Party for not sucking up to corporate America enough.

Comments?

Dreadful, embarrassing column by MoDo in the NY Times this morning, it regurgitates every stereotype the East Coast has about California politics. The theme of the article is about how the front-runners for the 2006 governorship are the Terminator and Rob Reiner, which is exactly the sort of conclusion that someone whose entire knowledge of California comes from Woody Allen and Nora Ephron movies would draw. C'mon, if Arnold wouldn't challenge an incumbent with as much baggage as Gray Davis, why is he going to have more courage in 2006? And Rob Reiner? One of the reasons the GOP nominated and elected George Murphy and Ronald Reagan in the 1960's is that there was almost nothing else to choose from in the state GOP back then. A party as strong as the California Democratic Party right now doesn't need to nominate a celebrity.

A clarification:

In my post last Sunday concerning my dorm reunion, I wrote that most of my friends from 20 years ago now have "spouses and children". In fact, none of my friends from that period is polygamous, or at least none of them would so admit. My apologies to Erik and Chris, especially, for any uncomfortable questions they may have had to answer.

Admittedly, I have mixed emotions about the sudden reversal the bankruptcy bill received in the House last night. While this bill would be one of the most repugnant acts passed by any Congress, since, well, the Fugitive Slave Act, it would benefit me enormously (see yesterday's post). Not only would there be more filings during the six month period leading into the date the law would take effect, but the law itself would add a necessary step in preparing all future filings, the consideration of means testing the debtor.

In most cases, the new law would require almost no additional work, as most people who file would still fall below (or could be shown to fall below, with some effective legal representation) the income standard imposed by Congress. But anything that could remotely complicate a filing will be justification for increasing the fees charged to clients, which (at least in L.A.) are closely monitored by the bankruptcy court and the appointed Trustee monitoring the case. Locally, the amount a debtor's attorney can charge a client in a Chapter 7 case ranges from $750 to $1500, and from $2000 to $2500 in Chapter 13 cases (the type of bk that WorldCom and Enron filed, a Chapter 11 reorganization, is much more rare, and is not really significant to this discussion). Anything higher than those amounts receive judicial scrutiny, and an attorney must be prepared to justify his receipt of any payments over that amount, an often time-consuming and expensive process. If the "reform" bill passes, it will obviously be much easier to charge a client between $2-3k for a Chapter 7, since thorough consideration of the means test will now be an important aspect of representing a client, not to mention fighting off credit card companies once the case is filed (which may justify even greater fees).

From the perspective of creditor's counsel, the "reform" has even sweeter consequences, since it introduces a new prospective client: the credit card company. For the most part, credit card companies take a relatively low profile in most cases under the current law, preferring to make occasional reaffirmation offers (which I generally advise clients to reject; why incur a new credit card debt that you can't discharge, when the whole point of filing was to acknowledge that you weren't able to pay off your debts) and non-dischargeability lawsuits, where the debtor is sued before the bankruptcy court on the claim that they incurred the debt through fraud, such as a false statement on a loan application, or the maxxing of a card in Vegas the day before the filing. Under the proposed new law, credit card companies are going to become players in just about every new case, and will need attorneys to represent them. Such as me.

Anyways, the "reform" is a bad law. Besides the fact that it would harm many consumers who got suckered in by the illusion of easy credit, bankruptcy law attracts many practitioners who are at the low end of the evolutionary scale for attorneys, in terms of their abilities or their ethics, and their clients could really get screwed. Hopefully, its opponents will marshal its efforts in the next month and find a way to kill it in the Senate, where a filibuster might still be possible if we can find 40 members who haven't whored themselves out to Visa or CitiCorp, and/or are fanatical enough about opposing abortion. And I will cheer them on, because sometimes not even I need the money that badly.

A pretty good column in today's N.Y. Times from someone not named Krugman, Rich, or Dowd, about the silver lining on the stock market crash. Since my investment was relatively insignificant ($3k), I can look at the 90% decline in value of 3Com and Palm as a life lesson; I think one of the reasons I've refused to sell is that my "portfolio" serves to remind me that there's no such thing as a sure thing, an easy buck. Hopefully, in the future those of us who are still young enough to rebuild our IRA's will be fortified by this sense of humility, a reminder of the price of hubris.

Yet another mystery...according to Sitemeter, yesterday two separate visitors were referred to my site by having punched in the terms "dogmeat" and "Japan" into the Google search engine.

Undergarments, with a spiritual goal. (with props to Uberchick)

Last night, the House-Senate conference committee came to an agreement on "bankruptcy reform". That is very, very bad news for the country (as I noted here and here), and, since I'm a bankruptcy lawyer, very good news for me; any change in the law will create a rash of new filings and a whole host of situations for people to need my legal service. That Leahy and Schumer support this monstrosity is a disgrace.

Having seen the new ads for Jaguar, I can only say that Joe Strummer must be back on the horse if he needed the money that badly.
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So which Slate columnist is the frontrunner for its "Whopper of the Week" award? Nice try, but next time, hire a fact-checker (or at least, buy a calendar) before getting conned by far-right spin....

On why that flashing thingey at the top of the page (ie. the ad) is part of a much larger fraud....

A good review might get your fanny into a bookstore or a theatre, but a bad one is more fun to read. I think its something to do with schadenfreude. Let's face it, Battlefield: Earth is a helluva lot more entertaining after you read the critics; my favorite review said it should have been called, "Ed Wood's Battlefield: Earth". In that spirit, here are recent book and movie reviews that are absolutely vicious. And as always, thanks Molly....

Other sites have done a pretty effective job debunking Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S., so maybe its time to sponsor a writing contest dedicated to honoring the current N.Y. Times best-selling author. Just make sure that your submission is untruthful and has "lots of footnotes".

To the dedicated fans of 24: She's back (albeit in prison) !!!!

Apparently, I was not the only one who wondered whatever happened to the pin-point accuracy of the Mossad. This blogger inquires into whether the two-month old infant killed yesterday had ties to Hamas.

Anyone with access to C-SPAN should take note that the expulsion vote on Congressman Soprano, err, Traficant, is this afternoon, sometime around 3:00 p.m., to be preceded by his valedictory on the Floor of the House. If you actually have to work today, than by all means, TAPE IT !!!!

Dept. of Corrections: I was informed at the aforementioned Spens-Black reunion that the correct quote from Prof. Jill Schlessinger was "the world is ugly, and the people are sad," not "the world is ugly and the people are sad." I am sorry for the confusion.

In this household, Tuesday night always brings about a certain anticipation, for it's the time the two comedic highlights of my week are published over the internet: the new edition of the Onion, and the posting of this week's "Michael Kelly" column in the Washington Post. The Onion, of course, is probably the most famous satirical website on the 'net. "Michael Kelly", for those of you who haven't indulged in that guilty pleasure, is probably the most hilarious send-up of political punditry since the Times published "A.M. Rosenthal" a decade ago. In the meantime, for those of you who wondered why Bono hasn't been more vocal lately, check out this article.

To follow up on a link several weeks ago (July 4th, to be exact), this article goes even further into a pet obsession of mine, the fine art of obituaries. Beware the kicker at the end....

Hitting the Trifecta, cont'd: Does anyone have the sinking feeling that maybe Sharon wanted the collateral damage. I mean, Israel is famous for being able to whack its enemies with booby-trapped cell phones and the like; all but one of the killers at the '72 Munich Olympics were erased without the necessity of firing long-range missiles at their homes. I'm glad this guy is dead; he and others like him can roast in hell for all I care, and if other warped minds wish to look at him as a martyr, than screw them. But using a sledgehammer rather than a rapier will have an effect far greater than just the murder of the children in the immediate vicinity; it makes retaliation inevitable. Some deaths just cry out for vengeance, whether its a fireman or a child. And as long as the Palestinians use force to assert their claims, Sharon can just assert that he will never give into terrorism, he will grow stronger politically within Israel, and the cycle of violence will continue.

One of the cool gadgets I have on this site is Sitemeter, which gives me a general idea of what my readership is composed; whether they use Macs or Windows 2000, what timezone they live in, what ISP they use, whether they linked to Smythe's World from another page, etc. On occasion, I will get a visitor from outside the U.S., and in almost every instance, its because they linked to the site from another source, like Google or Blogger.

Anyways, just before midnight last night I got a visitor from Norway, at least according to the ISP. I do not know anyone in Norway. That visitor linked here directly, so he/she had to have already known about the site, and decided, while eating breakfast, to find out what my take was on the Hamas bombing, or the Vinnie Baker trade, or whether I passed out at Joxers, or whatever. That is so cool. Whoever you are, whether you are Norwegian, or just a regular vacationing in Scandinavia, feel free to contact me.

IT’S TIME TO READ MY MAIL !!!!

As you might have imagined, I got lots of reaction to Miss Overated 2002.

Some random chick from the "Industry", who works in the legal department for a giant French Multi-National, opines:

My vote goes to Mrs. Chin, er, Mrs. Pitt-- Jennifer Aniston. You are crazy about Linda Evangelista. She is gorgeous. And Paris Hilton is pretty in a Tara Reid sort of way…BTW, in your blog were you referring to Marie Chantal, Alexandra and Pia Miller? You think they are attractive? Have you gone mad? They are HIDEOUS! And all of their marriages were business arrangements whereby their husbands got $$, and they got a nice last name in return.

Evangelista is exactly the sort of model that women are going to think is attractive, which is probably the whole point; after all, she made her rep posing in Cosmo and Elle, not the S.I. swimsuit edition. Paris Hilton is going to have spend some serious trust fund cash on liposuction if she is ever going to look half as good as Tara Reid; her kid sister, on the other hand….The whole point about the Miller Sisters wasn’t that they were gorgeous (although Alexandra isn’t half bad), but that they get hyped for being nothing in particular. As I said, beauty is mostly subjective: there are some women, like Catherine Zeta-Jones, Jennifer Connally, Colleen Lye, Vicki Zale, Gwynnie, Halle B., Phoebe N., the young Kim Novak, Senator Kaye Hutchison, etc., who are simply gorgeous; the rest we argue about. The distinction I was trying to draw was that at least you know why the Miller Sisters were being hyped (ie. marriages to EuroTrash), as opposed to why VF had Gretchen Mol(?) on its cover several years ago. As always, thank you for your input; I love it when you approach a subject with claws bared.

Sir Mix-a-Lot comments:

(Y)ou are gay ... I wouldn't kick Anna out of bed. Anna is a hottie or maybe its just that she is the most beautiful tennis player to come along since Chris Evert. She has everyone else in women's tennis beat by a country mile. You are right about Julia, though; she is overrated.

My over-rated beautiful woman is: Matthew Broderick's Wife, Sarah Jessica Parker? (I would have sex in the city with anyone else but her!)

Also, I actually think most toothpick-sized models are overrated. You know, Sir-mix-a-lot loves those babies wit' back…Sarah Michelle Geller is ugly now that she has lost weight. I liked her better when she was chubby…(W)hile taking a break from writing, I ran across the telecast for the ESPYs. It just so happened that Serena Williams was on the screen accepting the ESPY award for her sister Venus ... I double dog dare you to tell Serena to her face that her blond hair is not flattering. If you had the balls to do that (and didn't mind losing them) I'll bet you that she'd kick your ass!!!!!!! Man is she ripped.

It appears I’m pretty much alone on Kournikova. When I discussed this contest with my therapist, he informed me that, for the first time after a decade of treating me, he could now safely conclude that I had a serious mental illness. Almost everyone else has told me that I am not only wrong about Kournikova, but that I have no taste, that I am a poor judge of women, etc. Nevertheless, I shall stand by my opinion. Her claims to being a sex symbol are due solely to her tangential connection to the world of sports, and even there she compares unfavorably to Ms. Evert or her vastly underrated contemporary, Evonne Goolagong; in fact, depending on the lighting, I would place Martina Hingis, Serena (when she’s not dyeing her hair), and, after enough cocktails, even Mrs. Agassi above her (obviously, the nose would be a problem). To put it another way, if you had the choice between Bridget Wilson and Anna K., whom would you take? And that’s just tennis; we haven’t even gotten around to mentioning Katerina Witt or half the starting line-up of the U.S. women’s soccer team yet. By the way, each of the women mentioned above (except for Ms. Wilson, who has also failed to win a tournament on the woman’s tour) are great athletes too, with all the dedication and hard work that entails. Also, Serena does scare me; I hope she realizes that I'm just kidding.

Finally, this from M.C. Hammered:

I believe Teri Hatcher has to be included as one of the most overrated "beautiful" women. She has eyes that make her look like she has (a disease) and her (breasts) may be real but they are far from spectacular…I believe that the big, fat, ugly, buffalo chicks who were the cheerleaders in Tony Basil's "Mickey" video were hand picked by Basil herself so she would look better.

Your remarks about ESPN Classic are right on the mark! ESPN is owned by the same shmucks that own ABC and they can't get the rights to show even some classic Monday Night games?! I was excited a few years ago when this s*** channel became available but have since become extremely disappointed. The channel SUCKS, SUCKS, SUCKS!!!! Doesn't it feel good to finally right about something, Smythe?

Hold on, M.C., you're not suggesting that Toni Basil is overrated? In any event, why dwell on ESPN Classic, when there are so many other important things in the world we can disagree about? (more)

As a bankruptcy lawyer, I'm supposed to have a take on the big news event today, World Com's double toothpicks filing in New York. Unfortunately, unless that company happens to be leasing space at Fallbrook or Baldwin Hills, it is unlikely I will be able to wet my beak in this week's largest-ever bankruptcy. A good place to figure out why all this came down, and how it could have been avoided, can be gleamed here. By the way, when all is said and done I have a feeling that most of these new economy accounting scams are going to arise out of companies headquartered either in Texas or the Deep South.

I don't know how often visitors to this site check out the links on the left side of the page. Most of them are politically-oriented, with a few odd satirical sites thrown in. One of the sites, The Daily Howler, was pretty much out of commission for the past four months, but has recently come back with a bang; I strongly recommend it to anyone who believes the media might be a little too full of excrement in the way they cover politics and politicians. His two obsessions right now are the collection of mendacity recently published by Ilsa, She-wolf of the S.S., and the Bush-Harken controversy, in which he quite persuasively challenges the claims of some (including myself) that W's stock sale back in 1989 was necessarily illegal or unethical. Since his web-rep was made by his blistering attacks on the media for its coverage of the bogus scandals during the Clinton administration, it is reassuring that there is a website with enough integrity to investigate scandal, and media coverage of same, without partisanship.

Last week, when the NY Times published a pair of columns analyzing W's "bidness" background, the Prez' shills in the media immediately pointed out that the corporate entity that runs the Times basically did the same thing, as if the President and the Times were somehow equal branches of government subject to the same checks and balances (funny, those same pundits never objected to the Washington Post obsequious coverage of Ken Starr, even though it had been represented by Starr in a critical legal case only a few years earlier). Well, the Times has apparently not learned its lesson, because it published an even more eviscerating column on Bush, Chaney, et al. over the weekend. Read, and enjoy....

I suppose this can be filed in the same place as the Overrated Beauty Pageant, or perhaps as another example of the myopia of the East Coast: the alleged "rivalry" between the Yankees and the Red Sox. This weekend, those two American League teams played a three-game series at Yankee Stadium, and each time the sports news updated the score, they would always refer to the two teams as "hated" rivals, as if New York and Boston had beaten each other up over the years in the same manner as Ali and Frazier, the Celtics and the Lakers, Borg and McEnroe, and Germany and the rest of Europe. I'm sure Bosox fans are quite sincere in their hatred of the Yankees, but, after all, isn't a rivalry supposed to be between two relative equals? Hey, chowderheads, the Red Sox haven't won squat since 1918, and haven't beaten the Yankees in any game that really mattered since 1904; no matter how much you might despise the Bronx Bombers, that is no substitute for a true rivalry. Calling that series a rivalry is like calling the Lakers and Sacramento a "rivalry", or any great NHL team and the Flyers a "rivalry". Sorry to rain on your parade, but as much as I also hate the Yankees, putting the Red Sox on the same plane as the Yankees does violence to the English language.

I'm back after a very fun and emotional weekend in the Bay Area, attending the 20th reunion of my college dorm floor, the second floor of Spens-Black, Unit III. As I mentioned last week, I never actually lived on that floor, but was close enough to the residents that I became an honorary member over the years. This was easily the best reunion I've attended to date, in that I actually liked these people, as opposed to reunions I had previously attended for high school and law school. We got together for dinner and a movie Friday, a picnic at Lake Anza in Berkeley the next afternoon, and then had one helluva feast Saturday night, thanks to Ms. E. Honda, another honorary member of the floor. At the end, there was still so much to talk about; without exception, I could have spoken many more hours with each person who attended.

Unlike other reunions, where your old classmates do not seem to change in any superficial sense, mainly because you never cared about them in the first place, it was fun noting the differing paths my long-ago friends have followed: most have spouses and children; a few, like myself, are just older and fatter than we used to be. We have changed dramatically in the two decades since we almost burned down the dorm celebrating a wake after the death of Leonid Brezhnev, but for one weekend, we could get together and remember how we used to be, when all of life's possibilities still seemed to lay before us, and we could count on each other to tolerate our excesses (wink, wink...) As always, The Future Lies Ahead !!!!

Beam me out of here, as Congressman Traficant might say...I'm off to Frisco. Will next post Sunday.

One of the more rancid pundits of the modern age retires. This farewell gives her the sendoff she deserves....

What earthly purpose is served by locking up Jeb Bush's daughter? Although it may be advantageous for some of our political leaders to have the experience of seeing a loved one face jail time under our nation's cruel and archaic drug laws, surely this is not a cross this poor girl (or anyone) should have to bear.

I unsuccessfully linked to this site several days ago, concerning lessons one can learn from even the worst Lifeline / Oxygen / USA TV movies. Hopefully, the problem has been fixed.

My sister's show, Six Feet Under, kicked ass with about two dozen Emmy nominations this morning. Normally, I have almost as little interest in Emmy nominations as I have for the Tonys, Grammys or the Espys. I have never seen an episode, not even a five minute snippet, of The West Wing or Everybody Loves Raymond, and on one hand I can count the number of Friends shows I've seen. My basic TV diet is HBO, ESPN, CNN, Alias, The Shield, The Simpsons, and occasionally South Park and 24. I did see Shackleton earlier this year, but that was mainly for the purpose of becoming the only American to have seen every movie Phoebe Nicholls has ever appeared in. Other than that, I avoid the tube; it distracts too much from the vital public service I perform here.

Anyways, congrats, Cat, and if you see Jennifer Garner at the ceremony, send her my best wishes.

This weekend I am going to a 20th reunion of my dorm floor from college. Except that it wasn't really my dorm floor, and I didn't even live in that dorm until the following year, and I suspect most of the floormates probably thought at the time that I was Jim Christianson's parasitic friend. In any event, since I spent a good deal of my waking hours in my sophomore year at Berkeley with those people, and kept in touch with many of them over the years, they generously decided to adopt me as an "honorary" member of the floor, so invited I am for two days of fun and adventure in the Bay Area. Its yet another milestone in my life, a reminder that I am approaching middle age having lived a life completely different from the one that I aspired to at the time, but I think I am more depressed by the fact that in the years since I first awoke in my own puke the night after I met the floor for the first time, CAL has defeated Stanford only four times in the "Big" Game.

I wonder if this writer understands that his column has just reduced the chance for his desired invasion of Iraq, no matter how necessary it might become.

My father was a Chapter 7 bankruptcy trustee, and as a result had a very unusual perspective about the cycles of the economy. The better the economy, the fewer the bankruptcy filings, and vice versa; when work was slow, he used to joke that I didn't have to worry, hard times were going to come eventually. There is of course nothing funny about the events of the past two weeks; the consequence of the market crashing, and to a lesser extent the media's rediscovery of the "bidness" dealings of the Prez and Dick, will not just mean that people are going to lose a bit of their I.R.A.'s (two excellent takes on this can be found here and here). Over the next couple of years, companies will have less money to reinvest, and productivity and employment will shrink accordingly. After the accounting scandals and the ponzi schemes that many big corporations have been engaged in, ordinary investors are not going to return enthusiastically to the stock market any time soon. In all likelihood, we are going to see one bitch of a recession by 2004.

Let's face it, we're all going to miss this guy. Short of his calling Lyndon LaRouche as a character witness, I don't see how this proceeding is going to be made any less of a circus.

Of particular interest to you intellectual property buffs out there (and you know who you are): although the Dept. of Homeland Security has not been officially established yet, it already has a logo, apparently, according to Mr. Tomorrow.

Its been only two days since I ejected Sullivan, but I nevertheless had to pay his site one last visit, with almost the same compulsion one has to get a last whiff of the month-old carton of milk before you pour it down the sink. And lo and behold, he outdid himself Monday with a post in which he actually boasts about receiving a positive letter of recommendation (or something like that) from Camille Paglia (!?!), followed later by an excruciatingly bad parody of a Maureen Dowd column. Truly, his is the gift that keeps on giving. It's too bad Abe Rosenthal doesn't have a column anymore; along with Howard Fineman, Michael Kelly and David Horowitz, we have the good fortune of living in a golden age of bad punditry.

For those of you who still care, Lindh copped a plea, and will do up to 20 years. Jeez, remember when that used to be such a big story.

For the many followers of Smythe'sWorld in the Bay Area, I will be visiting your hellhole next weekend for my dorm's 20th reunion bash. If anyone wants to get in touch, feel free to e-mail.

Check out this hilarious prank pulled on "Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S." by a fellow blogger.

Its a shame that Vicki has but one birthday a year (or that Deborah celebrates her Birthday Week only once a year). A splendid time was had by all at the happiest place in Culver City, especially that crazy woman who drank five Electric Lemonades in 3 hours. For whatever reason, there were no ballgames on, but ESPN was able to show us, in order, an MLS game, an hour long replay of the Running of the Bulls from Pamplona, Spain, and the World Championships of Poker. Although watching bulls repeatedly gore drunk American tourists never gets old, I have to say that the excitement of poker just doesn't translate well to television. Another TV at the bar had the Miss Hawaiian Tropics pageants (US, then World) back to back. I surmised that the "judges" were probably all major figures in the adult entertainment "industry", since I hadn't heard of any of them (assuming that pageant judges are supposed to be "celebrities"). A blonde girl from LA won (for some reason, almost all the contestants were blondes, even those from Central America and Southeast Asia), giving the City of Angels its second major title this summer !!!

Two very interesting articles on the Harken scandal are out today. In this article, the evidence indicates that W. did know ahead of time (ie. before he sold his stock) that the company was about to tank. However, according to this story, it wouldn't have mattered from a legal standpoint, since the price of the shares didn't collapse until many months after the news about the company's losses was posted, making the insider information "non-material". In other words, the Prez may have acted in a sleazy manner back in 1989, but, in spite of his best efforts, probably didn't break the law. As is typical of the "liberal media", neither story mentioned the real villain, Bill Clinton, who at the time Bush dumped the stock was the Governor of Arkansas. Whew...if that story had lasted another week, we might have had to go to war with Iraq....

I haven't mentioned Alias in a few weeks, so now is as good a time as any to order you to set your VCR's tomorrow: the two parter featuring Quentin Tarentino rebroadcasts at 9 pm. Its also worth watching to see our heroine react at the beginning to the news of her mom's treachery. Vintage TV !!!

Hey Tricky Vicky: Happy Birthday !!!
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Let's see, Thursday the Blogger program wasn't publishing any of my posts, and yesterday I was unable to get anything through AOL. I tried a new format, which lasted exactly fourteen hours before I gave up in frustration. So its back with the old. I will try to get all the old links back up by the end of today, except for "Bencam", which linked to Saipan's only full service restaurant, store, and mortuary, and Sullivan, which I dumped not because of his conservatism and his increasing aversion to dark-skinned people the world over, but because I was finding that almost all of his posts were unintentionally hilarious; if that's what I wanted, I would just as soon link to David Horowitz or Dennis Prager. Oh well, he gets about a million hits a day, and I don't think he's going to miss the one or two visitors he gets from my site. The two new links, Matt Welch and The Weekly Standard, are just as conservative, but at least attempt to adhere to some level of intellectual integrity.

I'm reformatting the blog, so please bear with me; I hope to have it as good as new by the end of the weekend. If you prefer the old format, I can be talked out of the off-white background

Oh oh...the server's down. My posts are going up very sporadically.

As I remarked below, it is incumbent to avoid schadenfreude in not attacking every stumble made by the Prez: one must focus on 1) whether laws were broken by the then-private citizen George Bush back when he dumped his Harken stock, and if so, how much did he (and others) profit; 2) whether his past actions, legal or not, provide him with the credibility necessary to take part in the national debate as to what reforms are needed to police corporate practices; and 3) whether any diminishment in his credibility will lead to a weakening in confidence in the economy (as it has apparently already happened with Wall Street). This article, by America's greatest living columnist, touches every base on these emerging scandals.

Since its the right thing to do, I'm going to give W. a pass on the latest "scandal", the low-interest loan he got from Harken back in the late-80's. Regardless of how bad it looks from an ethical standpoint (his dad was President back then), it clearly was a routine ''bidness" gratuity, and was apparently not illegal, unlike, let's say, dumping stock based on insider information and then not filing a form disclosing same. That he now wants to outlaw such loans is not hypocritical, or not any more hypocritical than a politician voting to repeal a tax write-off that he had exercised in the past. It ill-behooves anyone who defended Clinton during the phony scandals of his administration to jump on any negative story about the current President, just because he's a conservative moron.

What some people won't do for more unique visitors....

Is there a bigger rip-off on cable than "ESPN Classic"? And to think that I once was excited about moving to the West SF Valley because I had been told (incorrectly, as it turned out) that it would be on basic cable. Half its programming is the treacly "Sports Century", and about 2/5 consists of rebroadcasts of second-rate car races and SEC college football games from the '80's. The rest of the time, it simply rebroadcasts the final two games of the 1991 World Series. Absolutely no replays of NFL football, ever, but if you stay up til 4:00 a.m., they will show those propaganda films football teams make to celebrate their season ("football experts everywhere predict that the 'never-say-die' attitude of the 2000 New Orleans Saints defense will lead to bigger things in 2001").

Even worse is when they have a replay of an old game that was entirely forgetable at the time it was played, but is only on because ESPN had the tape in its vaults. I must have seen the 1984 NCAA tournament game between Dayton and Washington about a half-dozen times on that channel; it wasn't particularly close, the only player of note on either team was Detlef Schrempf, and the team that won, Dayton, got knocked out in the next round. Oh well, as the historian and social critic Jill Schlessinger once said, "the world is ugly and the people are sad."
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Congratulations to Bud Selig, for his singularly moronic decision to call the All-Star Game after 11 innings. So much for having any optimism that a strike will be averted....

If anyone out there has access to Nexis, do me a favor and see how many times the phrase, "my lawyer ate my homework" has been used since July 4th, when your correspondent used it in a post about W's evolving series of excuses over his Harken stock swindle, errr, I mean, the "honest disagreement about accounting procedures."

It’s MAILBAG time:

MC Hammered rips into my final World Cup commentary:

Soccer always has and always will suck. I don't care if anyone likes it just like I don't care that some people watch snuff films. The only reason I stayed at Joxer's after hours was that it afforded me the opportunity to drink myself silly for over twenty four straight hours. I believe I only looked up at the T.V. twice and that was when Madonna scored and the Panamanian team fans screamed (they certainly were more boisterous than the Swiss fans).

Typical conservative viewpoint: snuff films are a matter of individual taste; lets get drunk.


Sir Mix-a-lot responds to my response last week:

I wasn't making excuses for Arafat. Arafat doesn't have any real power to stop the terror attacks. Sure, he can arrest all the nutcases, stop financing terrorism and tell Saddam and other instigators of terrorism to go to hell. But, I contend that this will do little to stop the violence because the violence occurring in Israel/Palestine is the expression of a human desire to be free, the current violence is the result of years of economic oppression and violence perpetrated against the Palestinians since Britain gave the land to the Israelis. For every nutcase Arafat arrests there is another in waiting because he or she is tired of living the life of the oppressed or wants revenge in the name of a relative who was killed by the Israeli army. As you said last week, diplomatically Arafat has nothing to bring to the table. Sharon is fighting a war against the will of an oppressed people…who obviously have nothing to live for. The real power to end the violence lies with Sharon and his ability to offer Palestinians a reason to live…Until Sharon realizes that the fate of the Israeli and Palestinian is interlaced he will continually put fate of innocent Israeli civilians in harms way. Mind you, this is not said in support of or to justify terrorism…it is simply my view on where the power lies to end the conflict.

Your comparison to Mandela and South African apartheid is misguided in that you failed to acknowledge the role that the global community played in shifting that country away from apartheid. In addition to the political insurgency of the ANC, global protests and economic boycotts forced change to occur in South Africa. That kind of global consciousness will never occur with regard to the Israeli/Palestinian conflict because the world is afraid of being labeled anti-Semitic. Perhaps this is a lesson learned from the complacent African-American who reminds others of historic injustices and hides behind race, religion and ethnicity when it is time to be held accountable. Dialogue about race in America is often limited because people do not want to be unjustly accused of being racist. Similarly, the world will never openly criticize Sharon and his supporters for fear of being labeled anti-Semitic.

First off, I agree with your criticism about Sharon, and the craven manner in which the President has appeased him and his faction. He has been opposed to any Palestinian state, and has no constructive part to play in any peaceful resolution of that situation. I also agree that many of the less scrupulous people in the Likud faction have used the brush of “anti-Semitism” to tar their opponents, and to silence those who would like to see a more humane society in the Middle East. However, you can hardly argue that tying explosives to one’s body and walking into a crowded mall is an effective way of galvanizing world opinion in your favor. I also do not accept the view that the suicide bombers have “nothing to live for”. These are not people who simply desire an end to Israeli oppression on the West Bank and Gaza, since their victims are usually not soldiers or settlers. These people want to see a Palestine rid of the Jews, and in that sense are no better than Klansmen.

As far as the other topic last week, I got some reaction on the Miss Overrated beauty pageant, with votes for Sarah Jessica Parker, Jennifer Aniston, Naomi Campbell and Julia Roberts. To date, the almost universal opinion as to Anna Kournikova is that I've lost my mind. No one has heard of either Linda Evangelista or Paris Hilton, so they don't see how they can be overrated. Julia is winning, but I'm still accepting ballots....

An excellent take on a "psychotic death cult" that threatens all Americans, as elucidated by Bin Laden's favorite jurist.

It was a bit of a dull weekend; the period from the end of the NBA Finals to the first game of the college football season is usually nine lost weeks for me, but it does give me an opportunity to things I wouldn't normally do, like see a movie.

On Saturday, I had the house to myself, so I decided to work out the "George Foreman Grill" (ie., the single man's best friend). The task for the Iron Chef: Dodger Dogs !!! People who go to Chavez Ravine now have to settle for boiled, mushy wieners, which, if you're lucky, will have grill marks on them. I didn't take the time to steam them, but I did get the grilling part right, and boy did it bring back memories...of when I was a wee lad, and I'd go to two or three games a year with my father. Before the game, he'd leave me alone to fill out my scorecard, and he'd go to the concession stand to buy me two Dodger Dogs, nothing on them. I would finish them by the end of the second inning, and it always seemed that he would have an extra dog on hand, that he would split in two and share with me. Then we would watch the remainder of the game together, son and father, honor-bound to sit there til the bitter end. I guess with memories like that, a person doesn't die in any real sense....

What's more frightening, Serena Williams' new "look", or that she honestly believes it works for her? To make it a complete debacle, she should see if she can buy that outfit Gwynnie wore to the Oscars this year.
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This article really disturbs me. I know its been eight hundred years, but the notion that the Smithsonian Institution is celebrating a tribute to Genghis Khan just strikes me as just being wrong. The description of the exhibit makes it seem like he was just another nationalist leader with a militaristic bent, an East Asian Napoleon, not the thirteenth century version of Hitler. He was a genocidal madman who viewed raping and pillaging as a clever military tactic, and basically followed the policy that it was better to exterminate your enemy than conquer it. I guess in a few hundred years, the taxpayers will get to fund a Smithsonian tribute to Pol Pot.

Maybe I owe the President an apology, now that Nader is pushing this issue...but at least he isn't whining about the Western Conference Finals anymore.

I think the right wing is making a big mistake in labeling every incident of violence by Arabs as "terrorism". The LAX incident on the 4th is probably the latest example in politicizing what should be correctly labeled as a "hate crime", no doubt in an effort to gain public support for the detention of all Arab-Americans. Let's give "terrorists" a little credit here; they usually have some political or religious motive for doing what they do, and as such, can be dealt with (and fought) in a rational manner. Wack jobs who go out and kill people simply because they hate Jews, or blacks, or gays, can't be dealt with; you don't go to war with Charles Manson (who as far as I can tell, was never labeled a "terrorist", even though the broadest definition of the word would apply), you arrest and convict him. At some point, when any act of violence is given that label, the public will quit caring.

Who the hell is David Nalbandian? Guess I'll sleep late tomorrow....

Well, I'm assuming that unless you died or were on your way to a flight out of LAX yesterday, you probably had a pretty good Fourth. I went to a BarbQ at my sisters, then went and saw the fireworks at a friend's house in Calabasas. As far as Fourths go, it went well, although not like the one where I got really hammered and ended up getting into a firecracker "war" with a bunch of friends from college. The things I used to pull in my mid-30's !!
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What we are now starting to see is the beginning of the end for the "president". Even his shills in the media aren't buying his "my lawyer ate my homework" excuse for why he didn't report his last-minute stock sale. To put it bluntly, the form that his attorney "forgot" to file is kind of like the "1040" form you fill out when you file your taxes; if you use an attorney or an accountant to assist you, such a form would be filled out almost as a matter of routine. If such a form was accidentally omitted, and an investigation of the client resulted, the attorney in question would be fired almost immediately, and the firm's malpractice carriers would be put on notice. This isn't Whitewater, my friends--this is ten times worse, a scandal that hits both Bush administrations.

For those of you who still care, the letters get published Monday. As a Fourth of July treat, here's more information than you probably ever wanted to know about this topic .

A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away...this is a must-read tale of the Harken Emporer. (registration required)

My view on the issue of testing baseball players for steroids just did a 180. Up until this incident, I thought that ballplayers should get with the program, give up the notion of privacy, and take the test. Now, thanks to Sammy Sosa's appropriate, non-violent but angry, reaction to Rick Reilly's stunt, I now believe that the greater danger lies in allowing self-appointed scolds and sphincters the power to embarass each of us into giving up our privacy. Put it another way, if I were to give Mr. Reilly the address of a local lab where they could test his DNA to see if it matches any of the children recently born in the West San Fernando Valley, would he do so, even if he knew that he was clean.

The trifecta mystery...solved !!!

Some of you may have noticed those thingeys on the left side of the blog. Those are called "links", and they enable visitors to my evil lair to go to other web sites, blogs, and internet arcana that I find useful or interesting. Not all the sites are created equal; most people already have ESPN and The Onion bookmarked, and if you are into blogs, you certainly don't need me to tell you how to get to Andrewsullivan.com, Instapundit or Kausfiles. But there are some less well-known sites that I recommend, in particular TalkingPoints (where I found this very touching tribute to an East Coast politician/felon), MaxSpeak, and Eschaton. Check out those sites, and thank me later.

In case you missed it, there was a power shift on Saturday. This is perhaps the best review of the briefest administration in American history.

Mr. Bolkcom and Mr. Lazar tie for the month of June in the Home Run Pool. I finished last, again. My interest in the subject wanes.

Why we fight the "war on terror"....

I'll visit the MAILBAG tomorrow. Sorry to those who have contributed to the Overrated Beauty Pageant, but just to let you know, Mrs. Broderick continues to lead.

I don't think I'm alone in saying what a great time we had Saturday night/Sunday morning at Joxers' for the Cup Final. Once again, the joint was packed by 3:00 a.m., and the crowd was roughly 9:1 favoring Brazil. In particular, what amazed me was the number of non-soccer fanatics who were there; at least three of my site's regular visitors showed up, none of whom had evidenced any interest in the sport at all up until two weeks ago, but who stayed through "closing hour" and watched the game until the final whistle. Speaking for myself, its going to take awhile to regain a normal sleep equilibrium.

Since this is my last post on the subject, at least until Copa America next year, I thought I would share some random observations on the last month:

1. Every four years, what constitutes the sports punditocracy in this country will weigh in about why soccer has failed to generate much interest in the U.S. Predictably, they will write that soccer is popular everywhere else in the world, but because of America's "cultural superiority", it will never catch on here. Or they will talk about how soccer fans are always trying to impose their sport on everyone else. Or they will ridicule the "soccer promoters", who are supposedly predicting that, inevitably, the sport will become bigger than baseball or football in the U.S.(of course, it goes without saying that no such promoter will ever be quoted by name, since no such person has ever made that prediction) To illustrate their argument, they will throw in attendance figures for WUSA games, or the MLS' poor TV ratings.

I have little doubt that those same morons will pop up in 2006, with the same twaddle. Up until this year, they could usually throw in a line in their columns about how in spite of its popularity at the youth and sandlot level, real American athletes abandon the sport once they reach high school; thus, the U.S. would never be competitive in international soccer. However, three things happened this time out that pretty much discredited those writers. First, the U.S. made the quarterfinals, and played with a style and energy that proved that the 0-3 debacle in 1998 was the exception, not the rule. Second, the ratings for the Cup were relatively high, almost a hundred times higher than what ESPN2 or Univision usually get for its early morning programming. ESPN, in fact, got more people to watch the U.S. games against Mexico and Germany than it got for all four of the games it televised during the Stanley Cup Finals, played during the same month. I have not yet seen the ratings for the Final, but it would not surprise me if it was the top-rated sporting event of the weekend. Add to that the ratings for Univision, which in cities like Los Angeles were higher than the ESPN broadcasts (I might add that many of us who speak barely a word of Spanish find those broadcasts to be superior), as well as the good ratings the Cup got in 1994 (and to a lesser extent, 1998), and it is laughable to ever again suggest that there is not significant interest in the World Cup among American sports fans.

Second, for the first time since Pele was playing for the Cosmos, a group of sportswriters, columnists, etc., are now writing positive things about the sport, even though they don't cover it for a living. Sports talk radio hosts actually fielded calls from listeners about the games. Even Jim Rome pretended for awhile that he wasn't rooting against Team U.S.A. Furthermore, stories about hooliganism, 0-0 draws, and all the other cliched tripe that usually works its way into every third-rate writers output on the sport were at a minimum. Those in the media who hate the sport became increasingly dispirited, especially once the U.S. made the quarterfinals.

What must give soccer fans in this country the most hope is the actuarial reality that the anti-soccer crowd is old, myopic, and out-of-touch; once the Lupicas, the Alboms, and the Lipsytes die out or retire, they will be replaced by writers who understand that the World Cup consistently gets better ratings than tennis or boxing in the U.S., and that Latino and Asian Americans, and Americans between the ages of 18 and 35, actually exist, and have sporting interests that are far different from the middle-aged white males for whom their columns are addressed, and that the popularity of soccer is a phenomenum of the present, not the future.

2. On the other hand, as long as the MLS is around, the popularity of American soccer will pretty much be limited to international competitions, such as the Olympics and the World Cup. I have yet to hear anyone give a compelling reason why people are going to start watching the soccer equivalent of the Pacific Coast League, after they have been given a month-long taste of the good stuff. In particular, European clubs are going to be much more aggressive in scouting American high schools and sandlots for the next Landon Donovan or Demarcus Beasley, while the MLS will remain little more than a glorified farm system, developing talent until its ready to start earning some real money overseas.