marchand chronicles

A Star Is Born

2006-07-26T01:53:00.000-04:00

The Hunter Has Arrived

My new godson, Orion Michel M., was born at 10:13 pm on Monday, July 24, 2006. He has ten fingers, ten toes, and is nine pounds, three ounces, and twenty-one inches of adorableness. See? (Click to enlarge.)

Yes, "Michel" is his middle name; and yes, it is intentionally spelled that way; and yes, he is named after someone; and yes, that someone is me. I'm moved beyond words. Tomorrow I could receive a job at the White House, be awarded the Congressional Medal of Honor, and be knighted by Queen Elizabeth, and those would only be the second- through fourth-highest honors bestowed upon me this week.

And you, you'll be blessed
You'll have the best
I promise you that
I'll pick a star from the sky
Pull your name from a hat
I promise you that
Promise you that
Promise you that
You'll be blessed . . .

—Elton John, "Blessed"

It's My Birthday

2006-07-13T14:59:00.000-04:00

26th, To Be Precise

I need cash.

That is all.

¡Viva Autonomia!

2006-07-06T14:50:00.000-04:00

Protest Supermodels™ Spotted In Bolivia

Over the last few months, Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez has begun to expand his sphere of influence in South America. In Bolivia, socialist stooge Evo Morales is starting to remake that country in the image of Chavez' Venezuela and Castro's Cuba. Last week, half a million Bolivians rallied in the eastern province of Santa Cruz for the cause of Autonomia — autonomy. And, following in the steps of other democratic revolutions worldwide, it just so happens that Autonomia is pretty easy on the eyes, too:

Polls show an overwhelming support for Autonomia in Santa Cruz. However, rulers like Morales, Chavez and Castro, despite their claims, usually aren't too keen on what the people want.

Big Picture, Part II

2006-07-05T04:36:00.000-04:00

Independence Day Edition

Theoretically, this wasn't supposed to take more than a month to write. But because I'm so slow, several news events caused me to almost literally scrap the entire essay and rewrite it from scratch. Also, I needed to know a certain fact from someone, and only got confirmation of it yesterday afternoon.

When last we left the drunken private party between "Piranha" and I, we were both pretty solidly three sheets to the wind and catching up on old times. Sooner or later, a question came to mind that I didn't want to ask — but I had to: "So what's next for you?"

I didn't want to ask that question because I didn't want to remind him of combat when he was safe here at home. And every soldier, sailor, marine, and pilot faces this same dilemma when their tour of duty ends: part of them doesn't want to return to theater. They're home now. Safe. But the other part yearns to go back: there are still more enemy asses to kick, and his brothers are still out there in harm's way. I could see it in Piranha's face the moment I asked the question, and the answer was just what I expected: he doesn't want to go back, but he might have to.

If he wanted to, he could have stayed here permanently. He was back stateside because his division, the 1-13 Armor, was being dissolved as a combat division. Everyone in it had their choice of reassignment duties. Piranha could, if he so chose, join another unit that would redeploy, or, since he was close enough to the end of his enlistment period, ride it out until his tour of duty ended. So if he had to go back, it wouldn't be because he was ordered to: it would be because the same incorporeal force that draws men and women like him to serve their country in the first place — and what drove Piranha to join the U.S. Army despite nearly being killed when he was run over by a car — would compel him to do it again in order to finish the job.

And let there be no doubt about it: this war is winnable. Piranha, and his brothers, aren't stupid, or suicidal. For every veteran who comes back and joins anti-war groups or writes vitriolic essays about the mistakes made in the operation, there are easily hundreds, if not thousands, who still believe in the mission and are willing to see it through — even if it costs them their lives. From behind the wheel of his M1A1 Abrams tank, Piranha has seen things that the rest of us, whether we're media types writing from the safety of the Green Zone, or pajama-clad bloggers screeding ourselves into cyberspace, can never see. Piranha told me we're winning. I believe him.

But there was another reason that yearn to reenlist and continue the fight held such power over Piranha. He had a hard time telling me, so he used some of the people he recognized in the bar to demonstrate. That woman over there, wearing a wedding ring and dancing very very closely with a man who was not; another, very drunken girl living it up well after 2 AM even though she was the mother of a toddler, who was at home. I quickly saw where he was going. He pointed out these people because he had just sacrificed some of the best years of his life for something greater than those years, and he came home with new eyes to a society which, for the most part, thinks only of the now as opposed to the future. I understood, and sympathized: even though I haven't made the same sacrifice he has, people who practice such hedonism bother me. I don't rail about it constantly because it makes me look like an old fuddy-duddy or a pompous moralizing preacher, neither of which I am. But it still grates on me, just as it grates on Piranha.

This caused me to think, and think hard. Piranha, I, and all of the other people who have supported and continue to support this great conflict the United States is currently engaged in do so because we believe the sacrifices we make today will lead to a better future. We are opposed by people who, obviously, think the opposite: that the lives and treasure lost aren't worth it. A subset of this group of people have held that "it's not worth it" from the very beginning of the conflict, and while I think that a no-war-at-any-cost mentality is a flawed and dangerous ideology to maintain, my main disagreement is not with them. It's with the people who signed on in support of the war at its outset but have since changed their minds based almost solely on the fact that we have lost so much. It is true: this conflict has cost us dearly. But that doesn't mean it has ceased to become worth fighting.

On June 7, Coalition forces bombed the hideout of Iraqi al-Qaeda leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, killing him and his lieutenant and spiritual advisor, Sheik Abd-Al-Rahman. Less noticed but perhaps more important was that information gleaned from the safe house allowed Coalition forces to roll up dozens more of the terrorist network's heavy hitters. This, unequivocally, is a win for the forces of freedom. But almost immediately, the war's detractors sprung up and attempted to downplay this accomplishment. Of the complaints, the less insane ones were that Zarqawi's death won't make a difference in the long run, since he will have a successor, and so on. Somehow, these people seem to think that the al-Qaeda chain of command works similarly to the U.S. military, where competent people wait patiently for their turn to be promoted, and command flows relatively seamlessly. How silly. If someone smarter, better, and more ruthless than Zarqawi had existed before he was killed, he probably would have killed Zarqawi himself and assumed operational control of Iraq's al-Qaeda cells. This is not an organized regiment of soldiers we're up against: it's essentially a pack of wolves in humanoid form. Zarqawi's successor is someone who's virtually unknown, Abu Hamza al-Muhajir. "Al-Muhajir" literally means "the immigrant" or "the foreigner" in Arabic. It's very tough to believe that this dark horse will be able to have the same effects in Iraq as Zarqawi did.

When the anti-war critics failed to sour optimism due to the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, they seized on the one thing that has bothered them more than anything else: the rate of combat deaths. On June 15, that number reached 2,500. With that grim milestone came a slew of front-page stories by news media which, by and large, refuses to treat each combat death as the tragedy it is unless it is a nice round number like 2,500. The 2,500th soldier's death is no more or less a tragedy than the 2,136th or the 2,487th, but every time the combat toll rises to an easily-remembered number, that's somehow newsworthy. But I digress.

The 2,500th combat death renewed calls in the United States Congress for timetables for the Coalition exit from Iraq, as if victory could follow a schedule like a train station. On June 22, Senator John Kerry took to the Senate floor in support of an appropriations amendment that would force withdrawal from Iraq by July 1, 2007:

The fact is, sure you can muddle along with this course. None of us have come to the floor and said the cause is lost. None of us have suggested that you just have to walk away and leave chaos. That's not what this plan does. This plan honors the investment of our troops. And in fact, what it does is provide a better way of not only empowering the Iraqis, but of empowering the United States of America to fight a more effective war on terror. Let me say it plainly. Redeploying United States troops is necessary for success in Iraq.

Now, I'm not a military guy. When Piranha and I talk about the things he did in Iraq, every time he used some military jargon I had to make him explain what exactly he was talking about. But even I know that while in a technical sense "redeployment" can mean what Senator Kerry is using the term to mean, a near-full scale withdrawal isn't referred to by military personnel as "redeployment" — it's called "bugging out."

The purpose of the Kerry Amendment seems to be that Iraq should be left to the Iraqis — and they treat this like some sort of revolutionary new plan. But President Bush's plan all along has been the "Iraqification" of the conflict. How many times have we heard Bush say "As the Iraqis stand up, we will stand down"? If you Google that exact phrase, you get 14,300 hits. But Kerry, his amendment's cosponsors, and the rest of its supporters (including Hillary Clinton, who agrees with the basic idea behind the amendment but not rigid timetables per se) evidently think that the plan in place right now is some clumsy neverending commitment to a status quo of watching American servicemen come home in boxes and doing absolutely nothing about it.

In reality, there are two competing plans for Iraq. Here's an analogy: the Bush plan is that U.S. forces are like a professional swimming coach, patiently teaching the nascent Iraqi government and their military forces how not to drown. The Kerry "plan" tosses them overboard and hopes like hell they don't get eaten by sharks. Perhaps the Iraqis will survive, but even with al-Qaeda diminished following the death of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, it's doubtful. Far likelier is that despite Kerry's claim, his "redeployment" would, in the end, precisely "walk away and leave chaos."

But here we have the competing ideologies, not just on this conflict — large as it may loom at this moment, it is just one conflict — and what motivation drives them. One school of thought sacrifices the short term for the big picture, and their opponents care nothing except for what happens now. Now it's a mess, now there's been 2,500 combat deaths, now it's time for us to get out — excuse me, "redeploy" — and of course we can't simply settle for "redeploying" eventually, we have to do it now. Whatever consequences happen — Iraq really falling into civil war (and not the phony civil war claimed to be ongoing, but a real one); the terrorists interpreting our "redeployment" as surrender; other nations becoming increasingly hostile toward us because they know tnat even if we invade (and that's a big "if"), we'll walk away after three years — are irrelevant, and secondary to what we should do now.

I should interrupt right here, because another odd characteristic of those who support immediate "redeployment" is that they seem to interpret any and all criticism of them as "questioning their patriotism." I wish. It'd be a lot easier to dismiss them if they were being un-American. But they're not: they earnestly believe in withdrawal because they feel it is the best course of action for the United States. I don't think they're unpatriotic — I think they're myopic. Short-sighted. Ignorant, but not in a stupid way — in a childish way. "I want it now." And of course, there is no better poster boy for politics according to now than John Kerry, who famously voted for the war before he voted against it, before he attached a cut-and-run amendment to the defense appropriations bill before he called it "redeployment" before the amendment failed by a vote of 86-13 before he went ahead and voted for the appropriations bill anyway.

Of course, there are many other examples of people who practice the politics of now. Some are pretty harmless, like the adulation showered upon Stephen Colbert after his painfully unfunny performance at the White House Correspondent's Dinner. However, many are quite dangerous, like The New York Times' revelations of the SWIFT program. But I've gone too long on this already, and a third installment on Labor Day would seem somewhat cheesy.

So, on this one day when we celebrate the vision and imagination of a group of men who declared that we would be free for all time, I want you to think about America's future more than just its present. I try to whenever I can, and my friend Piranha does too. He didn't want to come home just yet, but he also took his friends' death in Iraq awfully hard, and he didn't want to be a tattoo on my arm, either. Last night I learned he split the difference, signing on the dotted line for a four-year extension to train new recruits on how to drive tanks.

I don't know who should be more frightened: his future students, or the insurgents in Iraq, who'll soon have dozens of Piranha's clones running them down in 63-ton tanks at 45 miles per hour.

Big Picture

2006-05-29T16:28:00.000-04:00

Memorial Day Essay, Part I

If this is your first time here, welcome. If you've been here for a while, I apologize. I update this blog only sparingly. Last year when I started this monstrosity, it was mostly to have a creative outlet. I never once wanted to be a pseudo-news source. For one, there's already an established field of people who do it way better, and secondly, I soon discovered that writing 500 words on today's late-breaking news was, well, a waste of time. I'd just have to write 500 more words tomorrow when the news changed. And, as far as that goes, the day-to-day changes didn't mean much in the grand scope of things.

Here's what I mean: take immigration. Bloggers have vented thousands, perhaps millions of words on the ins and outs of this hot-button topic. And where were we now compared to a couple months ago? Not much has changed. There's been several protest marches, a big kerfuffle about a Spanish "Star Spangled Banner," a bill proposed and batted around, but in the end not much has changed.

In other words, I like to think about the big picture. Too much arguing over small things bores and irritates me.

A few months ago, I had my world expanded by a couple orders of magnitude. I'd been sitting, with a first draft of a blog essay gathering cyberdust on my computer and an e-mail address stuck on a post-it note to my monitor, laboring under a case of writer's block weighing down on me like the world on Atlas' shoulders.

The e-mail address belonged to someone whom I'll call "Piranha," and besides being one of my best childhood friends, at the time he was serving in the 1-13 Armor Division in Operation Iraqi Freedom. I'm calling him "Piranha" here because, well, that's what he reminds me of: he's small in stature and doesn't, on first view, appear particularly threatening. But cross him and you'll have one hell of a fight on your hands. Also, Piranha drives tanks for the Army, and "Piranha" is the name of a Swiss-based model of tanks for which (among others) the U.S. Army Stryker is based on. (The 1-13 drives M1A1 Abrams, though.)

For some reason, one conversation he and I had on one sunny day sticks out in my mind more than any other. I don't know how or why we got to talking about what would happen if we were near death. We'd probably exhausted the usual roll of pre-teen boys' conversational topics. At any rate, Piranha concluded that if he were ever attacked by a mugger, say, or maybe a bear or some other wild animal, that he should be left to die if he were unable to move. If he couldn't move, he said, he might as well be dead. In fact, he was already dead. I don't quite remember what I thought about that. I'm still not sure what to make of it.

A few years later, it wasn't a mugger or a bear who left him unable to move — it was a car. He was hit by a car in the morning on the way to school. And I don't mean he was in a car that was struck by another car — I mean he was hit by a car. A driver ignored the warning lights of Piranha's school bus and hit him in the middle of the street with such force that it literally knocked him out of his shoes. But evidently his views on the equivalency between immobility and death had changed. Despite being laid up in a hospital room trapped in a full-body cast, then weeks of rehabilitative physical therapy, he continued to follow his dream, which was simple but magnificent: to serve in the United States Army.

So what could I write about such a person here? What could I tell him in an e-mail? What words could demonstrate the awesome character of such a person who endures such a life-threatening ordeal just to volunteer to put his life on the line again thousands of miles away, or the immense personal gratitude I feel toward him for that act of sacrifice and service? If such words exist at all, I could not discover them. "Thank You" just seemed so inadequate.

And so I sat, in my writerly impotence, for weeks, until I received an e-mail which said that Piranha's unit had been shipped home, and his family would be throwing a welcome-home party for him. I was thrilled, of course, but also nervous; if I couldn't express my gratitude in an e-mail — even knowing that for him out in combat, correspondence from home is a godsend — if I couldn't talk to him in that case, what the hell could I possibly say to his face? Luckily for me, interpersonal communication doesn't always require words. I didn't have to say "thank you" — it was written all over my face.

The stereotypical character traits of an American soldier are brash and cocky. To be fair, Piranha did display those characteristics some of the time. But the only person more uncomfortable at that party than me was him. For those few hours, he looked positively puzzled that anyone should want to throw a party for him because of his job. He was mostly silent and still, and when he walked, it was slow and deliberate. I'm not sure whether that is a remnant of the accident or because he simply didn't feel comfortable. Perhaps it's both: I know if I were ever hit by a car, I'd feel a lot more secure behind the wheel of a 63-ton tank than I would while walking.

When the party wound down, and the friends-of-friends had left and only the people who mattered most to him remained, he finally opened up a little. He mostly talked about his best friend, a sergeant, who wound up getting killed in action by a roadside IED. Most of the "happy soldier" pictures on the wall also had the sergeant in them. And in the middle was a "In Memory Of" poster of the sergeant. Piranha also has a tattoo on his right forearm with a cross and his sergeant friend's name. (Piranha is quite tatted up; he also has another ink memorial on his back, for one of his high school friends who was killed by a drunk driver.)

Piranha wondered why the friendliest, best guys were so often the ones who lost their lives. In addition to his sergeant friend, he lost another man in his unit, a tank gunner, when he was waving to an Iraqi child from on top of the tank and a sniper shot him, from the side, through his ribcage, when he lifted his arm to wave.

It was a question I couldn't answer until a few days later, when I treated him to the ultimate manly display of gratitude: getting him totally plastered. This was a fairly expensive night, since Piranha and the rest of his unit only enjoy one alcoholic beverage: Hennessy cognac and Red Bull. It's called "Crunk Juice." Those run about eight bucks apiece, but they do the job quick. (As per my diet, I had the Henny and Sugar-Free Red Bull.) After we wiped out all comers on the billiard table, somewhere around the fifth or sixth drink, I finally figured out the answer to his question: the reason why the best men die is because the enemy they fight prey on the good and the decent. They see it as weakness. The soldier who waves to the child, the scout sent to determine if the road is clear — they make themselves easy targets, and the cowards who can't take on the whole unit without getting destroyed just pick off individual marks. Hence, the good guys, the ones most willing to lay down their lives to protect the rest of their crew, usually wind up doing so. Piranha's eyes welled up and he nodded silently as I was explaining my theory. For once, I wasn't the only one of us who had problems with words.

We talked about a lot of other things that night. I can't remember a few of them, due to the several (Diet) Crunk Juices I'd consumed. He did tell me what became of the terrorist who was the suspected IED triggerman who killed his sergeant friend (it involves the Iraqi army soldiers the 1-13 was working with, and the word "dudecki," which is Arabic for "faggot" — needless to say, it did not end happily for the terrorist). But before we left, before I gave him my going-away present (a fifth of Henny and an entire case of Red Bull), we talked about something far closer to home.

What it was, and why it had me thinking, and what it all means? That's for Part II.

Until then, if you still have some Memorial Day barbecuing and celebrating to do, I have one small request. Men like Piranha fight and die so that the rest of us can have our barbecues and shopping, so it's all well and good that we do so. But just take one moment to offer thanks to veterans. If you know one, thank him (or her — Piranha's mother is a veteran of the United States Air Force) personally. If not, do it silently — offer a prayer both for those who died and those who are still serving. If there's one thing I learned that doesn't require an entire series of essays to explain, it's that "Thank You" is more than adequate.

Back For Another Shot

2006-05-24T13:12:00.000-04:00

I have registered to play in the PokerStars World Blogger Championship of Online Poker!

This Online Poker Tournament is a No Limit Texas Holdem event exclusive to Bloggers.

Registration code: 7330476

Word.

Let's Role

2006-04-29T16:02:00.000-04:00

REview: United 93

I had the date of April 28 circled on my calendar for weeks. And when my car broke down earlier this week and became unavailable, I didn't let that stop me. I walked, six miles round trip, to and from the multiplex where United 93 would be shown. I didn't do this because I wanted to see the movie. Nobody wants to see a movie like this; we already know it won't have a happy ending.

I was compelled to see it.

Two September 11ths ago, I visited the temporary Flight 93 memorial. It is every bit as moving as going to Gettysburg Battlefield or Arlington National Cemetery. But, tremendous as it is, what the memorial has in patriotic glory it lacks in gritty realism. I'm never one to shy away from waving the flag, but seeing the Stars And Stripes and the phrase "Let's Roll!" emblazoned everywhere you look at the memorial site doesn't exactly lend you to stop and consider the awesome, earth-shattering events that happened there, the way the far less decorated places like Gettysburg and Arlington do.

Last September 11th, I watched the amazing docu-drama The Flight That Fought Back on the Discovery Channel. It, too, was gripping and powerful, depicting the final voyage of Flight 93 in meticulous detail. But most of the purpose of the film was to create a fuller picture of the forty people onboard who sacrificed their lives, relying on extensive interviews with surviving family members. Despite the painstaking completeness of the documentary aspects, it still didn't quite feel real: between weaving back and forth from the story to the backstories, and the narration (though excellently done) by Kiefer Sutherland, it simply couldn't capture the primal, basic fear of the situation in its entirety. It was reality, but coated with a part-Steven Spielberg, part-60 Minutes sheen and bookended with reminders to contribute to the official Flight 93 memorial.

Both the real place and the realistic drama were stunning and remarkable, but left just a tiny twinge of the antiseptic, unreal nature of observing an event after the fact.

But how could United 93 have been any different? It, after all, has debuted nearly five years after its subject matter occurred, and it couldn't possibly be based on all completely true events since nobody really knows what exactly happened in those frantic final moments, and it explicitly said that in some cases creative license was substituted for historical accuracy.

September 11, 2001 was a day of fear and chaos, both for the people on board the planes and those who witnessed it from the ground. United 93 doesn't back away from this agony one bit: from the moment the first batch of terrorists hijack American Airlines Flight 11 to the final plunge of Flight 93, every frame of the movie has the same disjointed, surreal quality that perfectly encapsulates the raw havoc of that dark morning.

It doesn't tell a story so much as it simply lets it unravel itself. We are told preciously little about the heroes onboard the plane. Most are never even introduced to the audience by name. They were strangers to each other, therefore they are strangers to us. Meanwhile, the air traffic controllers and the military commanders frantically attempt to regain control of the situation amidst the jumble of thousands of planes in American airspace, not learning the full scope of what was happening until they saw it on CNN.

But the most brilliant element of the film was the performances, which felt utterly and undeniably real, because they were: the pilot and co-pilot were played by actual pilots, one of whom was a United Airlines employee; two of the five flight attendants were played by actual United flight attendants. And nearly all of the ATC and military personnel were played by themselves (including a brilliant turn by FAA Operations Manager Ben Sliney, whose first day on the job was 9/11).

Nothing, however, could have topped the accomplishments of the actors playing passengers onboard Flight 93. None of them are big-name stars, which goes against the trend in virtually every other blockbuster movie, but a story like this can't have one superstar sucking up all the screen time. They worked without a script, improvising their roles in the tragedy based on biographies of their characters and, in many cases, one-on-one communications with the families and friends of the people they portrayed.

How, then, could that be real? Because everything that happened on Flight 93 was itself improvised, when a group of individual Americans decided on their own to command their own destiny armed only with their wits and whatever makeshift weapons they had available. What really took place onboard Flight 93 can never be known; the closest approximation we can get is to have forty seperate people ad-lib their roles as the ad hoc citizens' brigade. A "Hollywood" treatment would probably have mentioned that, say, Mark Bingham was gay, in order to demonstrate the diversity of the random assortment of passengers who boarded that flight from Newark. But it's not the details that matter, it's the core of the story, and this movie strips everything else away. It is visceral, it is completely unrefined, and it is the absolutely perfect depiction of the sheer and abject horror of that fateful day, and also the absolutely perfect memorial to Flight 93's innovative, spontaneous counterstrike against the nihilistic forces of darkness.

Paul Greengrass, who directed and wrote what few parts of the film that were actually scripted, also deserves commendation for his production. Most of the cinematography is bare-bones minimalism at its finest. Far from being the pornographic jingoism many outraged people feared, the film turned out to be quite stripped down, focusing more on what happened than what it means. A couple of times he lapses into Hollywood cliché: for instance, shortly after taking off, Flight 93 passes close enough to the World Trade Center for the pilots to prompt passengers to look at the Lower Manhattan skyline out the windows to their left. Two problems: Flight 93 was supposed to be headed west, from Newark to San Francisco, but the World Trade Center is several miles east of Newark International Airport; furthermore, delays at Newark forced a 47-minute postponement of Flight 93's takeoff, scheduled for 8:00 AM; by then American Airlines Flight 11 had already crashed into WTC Tower One.

But he can be forgiven for this, as well as those well-known details about Flight 93 and its passengers that were not in the movie. The passengers famously took a vote on whether or not to storm the cockpit; in the movie, the decision to rush the hijackers was much more spontaneous and frantic. Todd Beamer's impromptu battle cry of "Let's roll!" was downgraded to just a hurried murmur: Let's roll, c'mon guys, let's go already. And the final scenes show a frenzied struggle for the aircraft's controls; but according to the 9/11 Commission, the hijackers brought the plane down before the passengers could breach the cockpit.

Despite the factual inaccuracies, what United 93 leaves you with is still reality, cold and violent and awful. There are no rallying cries, no uplifting speeches, no authoritative characters whose sole purpose is to explain to the audience that everything will be all right. When the passengers finally jump the terrorists, it is brutal and gruesome. Jeremy Glick, a collegiate champion in judo, is shown breaking a hijacker's neck; the terrorist who had strapped a fake bomb on his chest was beaten to death with a fire extinguisher. Greengrass uses mostly handheld cameras, placing the viewer in the center of the carnage. And when the plane finally does descend into a remote, empty field in Pennsylvania, the camera POV spirals rapidly into the ground. And then there is silence. It doesn't fade to black. Nothing fades in this movie. It jumps to black.

I wept when I went to the Flight 93 memorial, and I flat-out bawled when I watched The Flight That Fought Back. But I couldn't cry during United 93: there was simply no time. When it's over, you feel like you've been kicked in the gut: Numb. Shocked. Dumbfounded. Very much like I felt on a certain late summer morning five years ago. And the credits roll, in simple black and white, with subdued low music behind them.

I didn't want to see this movie. It was horrifying and disturbing, but also phenomenal and brilliant.

I walked six miles to see it. It was worth every step.

UPDATE 5/1 3:55 PM: Ace and Charles apparently haven't seen it yet, but I posted comments with a link here, so I oughta bounce it back to them. Allah, in his new gig at Hot Air, posted a round-up of reviews, of which the best by far is Rick Moran's.

UPDATE II 5/1 5:49 PM: Oodles of kudos to Mrs. Peel, Skylark of Valeron. She's hot, nerdy, has an awesome blog name, likes my review, and linked to me? I'm in love. Wait . . . "Mrs. Peel"? Damn. She's taken.

Dead Blog Walkin'

2006-04-01T13:38:00.000-05:00

No April Fool's Joke

I'm working on something huge to put here. I'm not lying. I've been wrestling with an awful lot of ideas in my head, and when I can finally get them all down, the result will be — dare I say it — Whittlish, if not in quality, at least in scope and magnitude.

While I struggle with the words, the pictures come easier. Hugh Hewitt has written a new book, Painting The Map Red: The Fight To Create A Permanent Republican Majority, and I submitted six entries to the Photoshop contest hosted by his producer, Duane "Radio Blogger" Patterson.

Of those, one made the cut to the semifinals:

(click any for full-size)

So this is where I beg for your support. Come on, Domers, help me out and vote for the "Notre Dame Champions" choice on the front page of radioblogger.com. First place wins a nifty radio and an entire case of Painting The Map Red.

My other submissions:

Barry Bonds as Paula Abdul

Touchdown Jesus

PTMR on the Daily Kos home page

Hugh at the World Series Of Poker

Hugh on "South Park"

The contest ends at 3pm ET Monday afternoon. Get crackin', people: I'm too broke to afford a copy of PTMR if I have to buy it myself.

marchron sports presents: December Dementia

2006-01-08T13:02:00.000-05:00

The College Football Division I-A Tournament

Why the NCAA steadfastly refuses to embrace this idea is beyond me. Next year they'll take one step towards it with the "plus-one" system. Hopefully, demand following that will be so great that the NCAA will go to a tournament system for football that proves so popular (and marketable) as the one for basketball.

Until then, we can always play in the realm of the theoretical:

First Round: New Orleans/Lafayette
16 Arkansas State vs.
1 USC

The perennial laughingstock Arkansas State Indians came off arguably the greatest season in the history of their program, and as a reward for winning the Sun Belt conference, they draw for their first-round game arguably the greatest team in the history of college football. An act of God moved this game from New Orleans to Lafayette; it would likely take several for the Indians to upset the Trojans.

Final Score: USC 42, Arkansas State 10

First Round: Mobile
15 Nevada vs.
2 Texas

The upstart Wolf Pack split the WAC championship with Boise State, and they have the offensive chops to rack up points in big numbers; however, so does Texas, following their 70-3 demolition of Colorado to win the Big XII. Nevada would give it their all, but in the end wouldn't have enough to win the shootout in Dixie.

Final Score: Texas 51, Nevada 35

First Round: Las Vegas
14 Toledo vs.
3 Penn State

Penn State looks to cap off their comeback season with a deep showing in the tournament, so they'd come out strong. The Toledo Rockets are no fluke, but they probably used up all their luck in their comeback win over Bowling Green to take the MAC.

Final Score: Penn State 38, Toledo 21

First Round: San Diego
13 Tulsa vs.
4 Ohio State

Don't knock the Golden Hurricane for being from Conference USA: they have an explosive offense and a shutdown defense. Unfortunately for them, so does Ohio State, the highest-ranking at-large team. Buckeyes in a rout.

Final Score: Ohio State 45, Tulsa 17

First Round: Fort Worth
12 Florida State vs.
5 Oregon

The Ducks look to be the much stronger team on paper, matching their 10-1 record and BCS-worthy credentials against the Seminoles, who wobbled through the season but still managed to defeat Virginia Tech to win the ACC. But that hardly matters: as any good Bracketologist knows, if there's an upset to be had, odds are it's coming in the 5/12 game. The same holds true for football.

Final Score: Florida State 20, Oregon 19

First Round: Honolulu
11 TCU vs.
6 Notre Dame

The Horned Frogs never seem to get much respect when they play outside the Mountain West Conference. They would get respect, though, from Charlie Weis and the Fighting Irish. Postseason games in Hawaii are usually track meets; this would be no exception, but the Irish would prevail in Paradise.

Final Score: Notre Dame 48, TCU 41

First Round: Detroit
10 West Virginia vs.
7 Georgia

You couldn't have asked for a better game than the one these teams actually played in the 2006 Sugar Bowl. So I won't.

Final Score: West Virginia 38, Georgia 35

First Round: Orlando
9 Auburn vs.
8 Miami

Not much to draw on here, since both teams looked terrible in their real bowl games.

Final Score: One Team 1, Other Team 0

Second Round: LIBERTY BOWL, Memphis
10 West Virginia vs.
2 Texas

The Mountaineers raced out to the lead against Georgia and then staved off the tenacious Bulldogs. They'll do neither against the mighty Longhorns.

Final Score: Texas 34, West Virginia 21

Second Round: COTTON BOWL, Dallas
6 Notre Dame vs.
3 Penn State

I'm as big a ND-lover as anybody, but they didn't look good at all in their real bowl against Ohio State, so they probably wouldn't fare well against one of the two teams that beat the Buckeyes. I just hope for better next year when the Nittany Lions come to ND Country.

Final Score: Penn State 37, Notre Dame 24

Second Round: GATOR BOWL, Jacksonville
12 Florida State vs.
4 Ohio State

The 'Noles, on the other hand, did look good against one of the two teams that beat Ohio State, until their kicker got the yips and yakked up several important field goals. But every tournament needs a Cinderella.

Final Score: Florida State 34, Ohio State 31

Second Round: ORANGE BOWL, Miami
8 Miami / 9 Auburn vs.
1 USC

Put both teams together. Call them the Hurrigers. It wouldn't matter.

Final Score: USC 50, Miaburn -7

SEMIFINALS: SUGAR BOWL, New Orleans/Atlanta
12 Florida State vs.
1 USC

Florida State may have handled the twin Buckeye threats of Troy Smith and Ted Ginn, Jr., but Matt Leinart and Reggie Bush have more talent and more hardware. Time to turn back into a pumpkin.

Final Score: USC 34, Florida State 19

SEMIFINALS: FIESTA BOWL, Tempe
3 Penn State vs.
2 Texas

The Nittany Lions have an outstanding defense, so this would be the only real low-scoring game of the entire tournament. But Longhorn quarterback Vince Young would be the difference-maker, finding the tiniest cracks in the PSU defensive wall and exploiting them for just enough to edge out JoePa's upstart kids.

Final Score: Texas 17, Penn State 14

NATIONAL CHAMPIONSHIP
ROSE BOWL, Pasadena
2 Texas vs.
1 USC

I couldn't create a better game than what the Longhorns and Trojans actually played. Nobody could. So I won't even try.

Final Score: Texas 41, USC 38

Hostile Takeover

2006-01-02T02:51:00.000-05:00

Trump Lake Michigan Revisited

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

Played some $3/$6 limit hold'em today at Trump Lake Michigan.

Well, technically, it's not TLM anymore; they were recently bought out by the neighboring Majestic Star Casino. Trump still appears in some places, but they're wiping out all evidence of The Don pretty quickly.

Someone's been reading what I wrote. Evidently the first thing the new administration did was address the sticky-chip issue. The chips are new, and they're spectacular. (And after I even bought — and brought — diaper wipes, as I threatened.) I paid so much attention to the wonderful chips that I dropped $100.

Okay, it wasn't really from the chips; I had K/K and Q/Q cracked. But I did score one huge win to keep me from having a horrible day:

I'm in middle position with A§/A¨. The big blind is called by someone in early position, a tough and slightly unpredictable player, prone to fits of both genius and stupidity. It's then raised by the lady on my left, who was loose preflop but aggressive enough afterwards to win several pots by forcing folds (and at live 3/6, that's saying something). I make it $9 to go, and it's called by the player on my left, a complete fish who never folded, rarely raised, and was insanely lucky. In one later stretch he took down five straight pots. He was also the one responsible for cracking my kings when he turned an ace to go with his A/6 offsuit, which he then played so passively that I bet into him turn and river, only to lose. He called, the bipolar player called, the lady capped it for $12 and we all call that.

The flop comes 3/3/3. I don't remember the suits, but obviously, it hardly matters. Bipolar bets, the lady raises, and I make it $9 again. Everyone calls. I start wondering about which method of painful and brutal murder I will exact upon anyone, especially the fish, who called a capped preflop pot holding any hand which contained the case trey. (It was that kinda day for me.)

The turn was Aª, which was a fantastic card for me, since it gave me Aces full, and the nut full house can only lose to quads, which I feared might have been out. But at least with the ace I don't have to worry about anyone else catching a better boat than treys full of aces. Bipolar checks, the lady checks, and I bet, which is then called by both remaining players.

The river was irrelevant. Checked to me, I bet, it's called around, and I turn over my aces full instantly, saying, "I hope nobody has a 3." Nobody did, but they all showed their losing hands: Bipolar had pocket nines. The lady had pocket kings. The fish had pocket sevens, and I scoop a $136 pot.

Even though the management has changed, the room is still the nicest one within 250 miles. I hope the Majestic Star II, as Trump will soon be called, continues to offer a great poker experience.

And clean chips.

Though I don't know what the hell I'm going to do with these diaper wipes.

It's My Blogiversary

2006-01-01T11:06:00.000-05:00

Somebody Buy Me A Blender

Well, it's been a year since I've started this blog. And in those 365 days, I've been lazy, self-indulgent, and petulant, and accomplished very little constructive work.

Who says blogs aren't revealing of one's personality?

I would resolve to fix all that starting today, but 1) it would break a previous New Years' resolution of never making New Years' resolutions, and 2) I'm off to go play poker.

It may be a new year, but some things never change.

My Christmas Wish

2005-12-25T23:41:00.000-05:00

Here's What I Want

May your best gift be the celebration of the One who came to redeem us all.

Joy to the world, in excelsis deo.

Ladies & Gentlemen, I Present To You . . .

2005-12-12T12:58:00.000-05:00

Ta-Da!

The Blogroads Of America.

Yes, this is what I've been spending the bulk of my time on lately. The sad thing is, it's not even done. My computer had issues with letting me log on to websites, so I lost more than a week's worth of potential work taking a wrecking ball to my firewall and rebuilding it.

I've got enough of it now to start, but in the future it will be much easier to navigate.

Why, Oh Why, Didn't I Buy A Powerball Ticket Last Night?

2005-11-27T12:43:00.000-05:00

This Is Seriously Scary

I haven't gone into complete hibernation; as I said a little while ago, I've been working my rapidly-shrinking ass off.

One of the few ways I'm staying plugged in to the Internet is by the NDToday Message Boards, but even then, my conversations are mostly confined to the weekly football game prediction threads. Here's what I said about Stanford:

Giving them too much credit? Perhaps. But they have a bowl game to play for, and for no other reason than they'd just like to [mess] up our season.

So I say we get out, but pretty close.

This was the justification for my prediction, which was . . .

ND 38
Stanford 31

Made a little earlier than 4 PM yesterday.

Not a bad call, all around.

The Most Heartfelt Message I Can Deliver To Veterans

2005-11-12T03:08:00.000-05:00

I Know It's Late, But It's Worth It

Thank you.

When In Rome, Part Three

2005-11-11T03:30:00.000-05:00

The 2005 World Series Of Poker Circuit Feature Event

(And Other Stuff)

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

Judging by the excitement on the faces of the ten lucky players who qualified for the $10,000 WSOPC Feature Event through the supersatellite, and the buzz permeating through the poker room all night long, the feature event was going to be a major event.

It wound up being pretty disappointing.

The first problem was the event location. If you look at the entire 2005-06 WSOP Circuit Event Schedule, you can clearly see one location doesn't belong:

Tunica
Las Vegas
Biloxi
Elizabeth, Indiana
Las Vegas
Atlantic City
Tunica
Atlantic City
San Diego
Atlantic City
Las Vegas
New Orleans
Lake Tahoe

A derivative problem here was timing. The opening events of the WPT event at Foxwoods ran concurrently with the final table at the WSOPC, plus the 2005 WSOP Tournament Of Champions started just a few days afterwards. This meant that many of poker's brightest stars probably just as soon skipped coming to Indiana. (Some big names did come; more on them later.) When the cards were in the air, only 127 players had showed up. This created a respectable purse of $1.2 million, with a top prize of more than $437,000; but that was still less than even the smallest event from the 2005 WSOPC, the New Orleans event where Jeffery Lisandro pocketed $542,360.

But the biggest problem was just with the way the tournament ran. While the newly-remodeled poker room at Caesars Indiana was gorgeous, and the actual machinations of the tournaments went off without a hitch, the tourney as a whole seemed to be disrespected. For the early part of the tournament, even though there appeared to be plenty of tables in the poker room, all but two of the tables in action were outside the poker room, in the adjacent wing of the boat.

Here's the travesty: while I was playing $4/$8 limit Hold'em in the brand-new poker room, with the WSOP logo imprinted everywhere, the actual WSOP event was being held in the "Burning Of Rome" room, which did look spiffy. But they hollowed out the middle to fit in the tables. Imagine twelve tables in two rows of six, bunched together as tightly as sardines, with a bank-lobby divider separating them from not just railbirds, but from dozens and dozens of blinking, whooping slot machines.

According to one knowledgable person, this was due to an Indiana gaming law which made it so that all casino cash games had to be held in the poker room and nowhere else. I believe this; Indiana has some goofy laws, and can sometimes be downright puritannical.

But there was no reason they couldn't have put more of the tournament in the poker room. Almost all of the tables in the supersatellite were in the poker room (the Ladies' Event was going on in the Burning Of Rome room). Or, if Caesars Indiana felt they simply had to hold the tournament in a different area of the casino, then move all the slot machines, or just TURN THE DAMN THINGS OFF. It couldn't have been that difficult.

I can't understate what a distraction this must have been both to the pros who were looking to win hundreds of thousands of dollars, and also to the schmos who just wanted to make the most out of their tournament. I play once a week in a bar, with a pounding stereo, and the scene in Caesars Indiana was worse than that. One pro I talked to said it was "driving him crazy" (he busted out very early); another admitted befuddlement that I was playing nickel-and-dime games while they felt like they might as well have been playing from inside a phone booth.

I would be very, very surprised if the WSOPC came back to Indiana next year. Or, if they do, whether any pros will bother to show up.

Who did come to Indiana? Glad you asked.

Mark "Big Daddy From Cincinnati" Hanna found no luck in the supersatellite, so he had to drop ten large and buy in. Men "The Master" Nguyen was there, and did very well. Scott Fischman busted out early, as did Gavin Smith. Caesars Indiana poker ambassador and former University of Louisville men's basketball coach Denny Crum finished in 59th.

But here are six names you might recognize:

Carlos Mortensen, David "The Dragon" Pham, Kathy Liebert, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, and Chris "Jesus" Ferguson.

Like the shirt? You want it? 'Cause I'm giving it away to whoever can bust me in a $24 + $2 tournament. I'll have details when I put it together, but for right now I promise you a way to get in — free. Just register at Full Tilt Poker using the links here or the bonus code MARCHRON, deposit $50 in real money, and earn 100 FTP Points, and I'll buy you in myself. Swear to God.

Liebert, Seidel, and Fischman were all seated at the same table when play started. Jesus showed up late. I only stayed until after the dinner break, when Caesars Indiana finally wised up and moved the biggest tournament they may ever have into the actual poker room. Liebert, Seidel, and Jesus were all at the featured table.

The last thing I did before leaving was get Men The Master's attention. One of the TVs was showing a broadcast of the 2003 WSOP, where Men was playing out a hand. He stopped what he was doing in the hand in front of him to admire his play on TV. Egotistical? Yes. But that's why he's Men The Master.

Unfortunately, I was unable to get pictures. No cameras were allowed on the boat, and I was such a goody-two-shoes about the rule that I forgot when I encountered Jesus, John and Carlos outside the boat in the pavilion, by the buffet, that I could get a picture with them. So you'll have to settle for this:

Larry Kang had a media pass and got to take nicer pictures. (You may have to cycle through to find them.) Those pics do reveal who won, so if you're waiting for the ESPN broadcast, tread lightly. Jason Kirk liveblogged the entire tourney, and was lucky enough to hit the town and party like a poker star several hours after I left.

If I had known Chris Ferguson was going to a Halloween party dressed as a pimp . . .

(Photo: Larry Kang)

. . . I would have stuck around.

(Edited 11/12 1:34 AM to add the STB link.)

When In Rome, Part Two

2005-11-10T03:15:00.000-05:00

The 2005 World Series Of Poker Circuit SuperSatellite

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

I've kicked around the idea of writing my own little treatise of no-limit Hold'em tournament play, and in the WSOPC satellite at Caesars Indiana I managed to violate the first two rules of my forthcoming bestseller. Rule #1 is to always know what the buy-in is. This I knew: $200 + $25 (meaning $200 went to the money pool, $25 as the house fee). But I didn't discover until later that the tournament had re-buys and add-ons. I'd never played in a tournament that had re-buys and add-ons, and had never even heard of a satellite with them — I thought it defeated the whole purpose of a satellite (allowing players with smaller bankrolls to make bigger tournaments) to make it so that players who had higher ambitions needed to spend more money.

For those of you who've never heard these terms, they're basically exactly what they say. A re-buy is to poker what a mulligan is to golf; if you bust out, you can buy back in by matching the original buy-in amount and receiving the same amount of chips. An add-on allows you to tack on more chips at a certain point in the tournament. The $225 supersatellite allowed unlimited rebuys for the first three levels (90 minutes) for any player at or below $200 in tournament chips (meaning it was perfectly legal to re-buy before the tournament even started — three people did just that at my table alone). At the 90-minute mark, all players were allowed either a single or double add-on: dropping $200 would purchase $200 more in tournament chips; $400 would get you $400 in chips.

Rule #2 is to factor in the blind structure — both length of the level and steepness of the blind increases — when making decisions. The levels were thirty minutes and started reasonably at 5/10, then 10/20 and 15/30. But after the add-on period, they got stiff: 25/50, then 50/100 and 100/200. This isn't too terrible — if you brought enough money to re-buy and then purchase a double add-on — but I only brought about another $200 for side games, plus blackjack and craps. This meant that I couldn't play as conservatively as I normally would in the early stages of a regular ("freeze-out") tournament. Well, I shouldn't have played as conservatively, anyway. I did, and it cost me.

Here's two examples. After taking down the first pot I entered with pocket kings, I found myself in the small blind with Kª/5ª. Two players limped in, I chucked in another fiver to call, and the big blind checked to see a flop of 10©/5©/5¨.

I bet out 25, and after two folds, the button raised to 50. A min-raise. In a regular tournament, I wouldn't want to let someone outdraw me, so I'd raise enough to telegraph that I was holding trips. And I did, raising to 150. He folded.

After the fact, though, I thought about it. My opponent didn't seem like the kind of player who was savvy enough to raise with just a flush draw. I was crushing almost any other hands he might have been holding; given his preflop limp and his small raise, he probably had a 10 with a weak kicker. I probably should have just called, in the hopes to extract another bet, if not all his chips. A dangerous play if I allowed him to outdraw me, but with a hand that strong I should have been thinking about how to win more than a grand total of 80 chips with it.

Later on, in the second round, I held Aª/10ª in middle position, and raised to 75 after action was folded to me. The big blind, who re-bought before the tournament started, called.

The flop came A©/9§/6§, and he immediately fired out a bet of 125. This represented less than half his chips but more than half of mine. I could have been ahead at that point, but a lot of hands crushed me (ace with a better kicker, two pair) and some had good draws (ace plus a flush draw). Faced with such a large bet, I gave it up. I probably should have been a little more aggressive in that situation; doubling up would have been very important, and if he did have me beat, I could always re-buy.

Most of the rest of the hands I played were straightforward. Here's a fun one: when the blinds were 15/30, action folded all the way around to the small blind, who went all-in for his final 55 chips. I'm in the big blind for 30, and am facing a bet of 25 into a pot of 85. I can call with virtually any hand, and I look down and see 5ª/3©. I called.

With cards that awful, it was almost certain that I was "drawing live" — that is to say, my cards weren't in common with his, making it so that I was an underdog, but only a 2-1 underdog as opposed to being a 3-1 or 4-1 dog if I were being dominated. My pot odds were better than 3-1, so it was an easy call. He turned over Aª/9©, and though I wasn't proud of it, I busted him with my trashy cards when fourth street paired my 5. (I still should have busted him with my trip-5's earlier; at least that way I would have spared him the ignominy of breaking him with 5/3 offsuit.)

My unluckiest moment came a few hands later. On the button with A§/J©, I raised to 100, and the big blind and the under-the-gun limper, a nice-looking but fierce-playing Asian lady, called. The flop came Aª/10©/Q§, and she put me all-in. It was a trivially easy call at that point, and the big blind called as well. I thought that if I wasn't already beat by A/K or A/Q, then hands like A/10, K/J or Q/10 might have just overtaken me. But the turn K§ gave me Broadway, and thoughts of tripling up danced through my head.

After the BB and the Asian lady checked around, my dreams of tripling up were dashed when the river came J¨. Now we all had the nut straight and a 3-way chop. My profit for the hand was one-third of the small blind: 5 chips. Even worse was that I did have them both beat: the Asian lady had a smaller ace, and the big blind, who played rather donkishly, had K/10.

After the third round came a 10-minute break, wherein any player who wanted an add-on (or two) could stick the requisite amount of money under their stack so the staff could chip them up. In went my fun money, and I went to catch a break. When I returned, the blinds slowly gobbled me up. I tried doubling up with pocket nines, but the early position raiser chickened out. At the 100/200 level, I was down to 375 chips, and went all-in under the gun with Q¨/8¨, figuring Q/7 is the statistical median hand, so Q/8 suited is technically better than average. I got two callers, and dreaded being knocked out by the unspoken "check it down" conspiracy. But the flop came Q§/4©/7©, and the remaining players fought it out, with another winding up all-in. They had A/J and J/10, so I was way ahead. Another Q came on fourth street, leaving them both drawing dead and me tripled up, for real this time.

It was short-lived. Before the blinds could get to me next round, I went all-in from early position with 6¨/6ª. I had a bad feeling about going all-in from such early position, but with the blinds so high and me so short-stacked, it was undoubtably the correct play. The nice Asian lady immediately called. I grimaced. I saw that it was for all but 75 of her chips and winced. I asked her if she had a pair, and when she said "Yeah!" I cringed.

A§/Aª. Try the veal, I'm here all week.

IGHN, placing . . . well, I don't even know where exactly I placed, it was that badly. About 250 players registered, but with all the re-buys and add-ons there was enough money in the pool to send ten players to the $10,000 Final Event.

But that's for the next post.

Given that I put myself in a corner by coming to the tournament short-rolled, I think I acquitted myself fairly well. Next time I won't forget the first two rules.

And don't feel too bad for me; after a quick trip to the nearest ATM I came back, played $4/$8 limit at the regular tables, and made back most of my "fun money."

(Edited 11/12 1:33 AM to add the STB link.)

When In Rome

2005-11-10T02:30:00.000-05:00

Part One: Casino Review — Caesars Indiana

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

In my review about Trump Lake Michigan, I said that the poker room was "the nicest I've ever been to," and that when you're there, "you almost forget that you're actually on a boat."

Caesars Indiana supercedes both of those comments.

Harrah's Entertainment, Inc. decided to remodel the poker room at Caesars Indiana to accomodate the World Series Of Poker Circuit Event they hosted, and it's magnificent. The poker room now takes up nearly half of the bottom deck. The tables, chairs, and (most importantly after the nuisance at Trump) chips are all new, with the WSOP logo everywhere. Caesars Indiana set out to create the biggest poker room in between Las Vegas and Atlantic City, and while I can't prove it, I certainly believe it. The room is huge, with more than 30 separate tables. They spread limit Hold'em as low as $4/$8 and as high as $200/$400, with a sprinkling of no-limit, plus Omaha and Stud games.

The decor is also fantastic. The section of the boat used to be called the "Movie Room," and they kept the motif. The room looks a lot like a movie or TV set, with track lighting and black ceiling lattices. The walls have large photographs of some of poker's brightest stars: Jen Harman, Johnny Chan, Scotty Nguyen, Chris Moneymaker, and the man who won the 2005 WSOP Main Event (I won't say his name, for the six of you poker fans out there who haven't yet had the results spoiled). TVs show sports action and tournament timers, and a large plasma TV at the front now keeps track of wait lists after they got the system online over the weekend. The adjacent All-In Deli serves sandwiches, dinners, and drinks.

And since it's Caesars, there's plenty else. If you've ever been to Caesars Palace in Vegas, the Hoosier version looks much like it, only on a slightly smaller scale. Outside the boat is a miniature empire, featuring the hotel, four restaurants (an upscale bistro, a bar/nightclub, a buffet, and a café), two retail stores, a convention center, and a conference room. Unfortunately, they're going to be spending an awful lot on remodeling: Harrah's, Inc. has decided to scale back the Caesars brand to just the "Palaces" in Vegas and AC. Caesars Indiana will become a Horseshoe next year, which means all the marble and architecture will be replaced. So if you want to see Rome in the Midwest, better book your reservation soon.

One more thing: Caesars Indiana also has no-limit Hold'em tournaments on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays. If the Saturday $200 + $20 tournament has the maximum 250 players, the top three finishers all receive a buy-in to the 2006 WSOP Main Event.

(Edited 11/12 1:32 AM to add the STB link.)

Hunting Season

2005-11-09T15:00:00.000-05:00

It's A Full-Time Job Trying To Find A Full-Time Job

Sorry I haven't been around much; I've been working like an animal. Fifty-plus hours in my day job, plus I have the best chance to actually land a career since I graduated. So I'm putting a lot of work in.

This would be the point where I do a news roundup. Honestly, though, I haven't paid attention to nearly anything in the news. So no dice there, but I'm sure you can find opinions elsewhere. They won't be as weird as mine, but no big loss.

I've had just enough free time for one thing: a couple weekends ago I played in the World Series Of Poker Circuit Event at Caesars Indiana. I lost in the satellite to the featured event, but I've got a present for you. Stay tuned.

LIVE: Inaugural PokerStars Online Poker Blogger Championship

2005-10-23T15:59:00.000-04:00

May The Most Deserving Nerdy Loser Win!

The field is set: 1,472 bloggers are playing for over $25,000 in the first (of hopefully many) Online Poker Blogger Championship. Jaxia from Steal The Blinds is in the field, but sadly, Beck, the third of the STB triumvirate is not. He told me he would be out of the country; I think he just doesn't want anyone to know he played quarterback for BYU, the team that Notre Dame smoked yesterday.

All set now. Let's do this.

3:02 PM — This is my first time at PokerStars, and I have to say I like the interface a lot less than Full Tilt. The one bonus: personalized avatars. See if you can find me! (Jax is at table 151.)

3:06 — First playable hand: A¨/2¨. Missed my flush and I'm down to 1,560. Everyone starts with 2,000 and the blinds are 10/20 to start, going up every 15 minutes. That's slower than FTP, but they go up in a hurry.

3:13 — Took down my first pot with A©/8© when I bet a ragged flop in position and nobody called. I don't know where I am on the leaderboard, because Stars is only tracking the top 136 players (don't know why exactly 136 — where the pay line is, maybe? — but that's how many they're tracking). Jax, who's sitting out (where are you?) has more chips than me, though.

P.S. updates will probably be sparse because my connection is tenuous; my computer's been acting very strangely lately. It always picks the worst times to get buggy.

3:21 — stole a pot with 7©/3© out of the big blind through aggression. Hope the player I bluffed isn't reading. (Sorry!)

3:49 — stole a couple blinds and am at 1,340. Still pretty sorry, but I'm not the low man at the table at least.

3:51 — big blind with red jacks. The button, an aggressive player, open-raises to 450 (blinds 50/100) and I immediately move all-in. He thinks, and ditches. At 1,940, I'm almost back to break-even. (I even have more than Jax now!)

3:58 — one of the fun things about playing with bloggers is they often deploy THE HAMMER. THE HAMMER is 7/2, but they play them like they're aces. The guy I beat 450 out of above dropped THE HAMMER and ran right into pocket kings. There's a new table boss.

4:00 — And the new table boss just slapped me down by putting me all-in on my continuation bet. I have nothing. I'm gone. Down to 1,515.

4:02 — Break time. 1,059 left out of 1,472. I'm in 606th. But I'm kicking Wesley Crusher's ass. He has 990. Big Slick Nuts! is on the leaderboard with 5400 chips, in 122nd place. Al Can't Hang has a lowly 765.

4:16 — Moved to a new table. There's only three live players out of nine. The other two both have me whaled. I don't like this.

4:18 — I like it more now. Essentially under the gun with K§/10©, I raise and get called by the big blind. Flop is 5ª/10ª/10¨ and he puts me all-in. Thanks!

4:22 — Now we have some real players. Can't go psycho anymore.

4:24 — Middle position with 7§/7©. I raise to 800 (blinds 100/200) and get called by the same player who doubled me up. Flop comes 2¨/8¨/9ª and he puts me all-in again. Thinking he had as much this time as he did last, I call. He has Q§/J§.

The turn is the safe A¨, but the river 10ª fills his inside straight and I'm toast. IGHN, in 836th place. Slick's still doing well. Wil Wheaton's doubled up, and he's at 1,755. Al got wiped out in 1030th. Jax is still alive, but still not playing.

I can't believe she beat me without playing a hand. I'm going to go sulk now. Friggin' all-in with an inside straight draw . . .

Trumped

2005-10-16T19:34:00.000-04:00

You're Fired, You're Rehired, You're Refired, You're Rerehired

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

INCITE's Beck has posted to Steal The Blinds some reviews of casinos in his stomping grounds, Atlantic City (Caeasars, Showboat, Borgata), so I thought I could do the same for casinos in my backyard.

One problem: while the Trump casino's poker room is the nicest I've ever been to, I've only been to . . . three. So it doesn't really mean much. But here goes, anyway:

When you're in Trump's poker room, you almost forget that you're actually on a boat. The room is airy with high ceilings. It has plasma TVs so players can follow sports action, an adjacent deli and coffee bar and — I've rarely seen these in any casinos, much less poker rooms — windows. The view is not that spectacular when the boat is docked, but when the boat was offshore it was probably nice. Unfortunately for the aesthetics, but fortunately for gameplay, a change in Indiana state law made it so the boats don't have to hoist anchor to make gaming legal.

Trump spreads limit hold'em at levels as low as $3/$6. They also boast no-limit hold'em plus pot-limit Omaha and Omaha Hi-Lo games. Sit-N-Gos also occur regularly, but the buy-in is a pretty steep $50 + $15. Trump also hosts multi-table tournaments on Monday and Wednesday for $100.

The gameplay at $3/$6 is loose and quite fishy, so decent players should be able to clean up — if variance doesn't bite you. That happened to me — twice — but I bit back.

I arrived at Trump at about 4 pm and sat down at the table with $250 in chips after a brief wait. I then proceeded to play Texas Fold'em for about four hours, and lost almost $200 just bleeding the blinds away. I didn't want to leave broke, but I didn't want to leave without at least picking up one decent hand. I did — aces — and won a big pot with aces full. I won another with K§/Kª when the flop came with the K¨, another diamond and a blank card. I'd raised preflop and on the flop with my set of kings, and was called by just one other person. The turn was another blank, but the river was 6¨ and he suddenly raised my river value bet. I agonized, but threw in $6 to call, expecting a really trashy flush. Thankfully, he had K©/6©, thinking his two pair had suddenly overtaken top pair with a better kicker.

At 9:30 I was ahead, and wondered how much I was going to make now that I'd figured out just exactly how fishy the table was. (I usually find tables online that are weak-tight, where players fold hands instead of chasing longshots.) So, of course, it all fell apart. I had a set get wrecked by 7/4, which made a straight. I flopped the nut straight with J/10 and capped all postflop rounds with two other players, thinking they had worse straights and I'd have them crushed. No: one other player had J/10 and one called down to river a flush.

So again I was under $50, but vowed to get it all back again or blow it all trying. My luck changed after a couple of tables condensed after midnight. I was in the cutoff position and the hand was a "kill pot." Don't be embarrassed if you don't know what that is; I didn't either, when I sat down. Kill pots occur when any one player wins two consecutive hands (outright; no chopping). For as long as that player continues to win, the limit is doubled. The blinds stay the same (in this case, $1 and $3) but the player on the kill pot posts the higher small bet ($6) blind no matter what position he or she is in.

So I was in the cutoff, and the button posted $6 blind. Just about the whole table limped in, and I decided to make a somewhat loose limp myself with 10¨/7¨. Many times in kill pots, the player will raise to $12 to pressure the table and force everyone to fold, keeping his streak going. But with about 73 limpers in already, I didn't have to worry so much about that.

The flop came with the 6¨, another 6, and another small diamond (I think it was the 5), giving me a lousy flush draw. But the flop was checked around and the turn brought 10©, giving me a pretty good hand. Fourth street doubled the already-doubled blinds. It was checked to the player two seats to my right, who bet $12. After the next player called, I immediately and enthusiastically jacked it up to $24, prompting the rest of the table to murmur that I slowplayed trip sixes. My raise forced out the rest of the table, including the last person to check, who showed 10§ before folding.

The river was another complete blank, and the two other players checked it to me. I could have — and probably should have — bet, but still feared a checkraise from trips (people played good hands very strangely sometimes) and checked to show down my two pair with a rotten kicker. The player who folded the other ten cursed his misread, the rest of the table gasped at my bold play, and I scooped a nearly $100 pot that put me up for good.

More than fifteen hours after walking in with $250, I walked out at 7:30 AM with exactly $273.

Next time I go, I think I'll bring a bigger bankroll — and some diaper wipes to clean off the filthy chips. I know I'm fighting a losing battle, but seriously, those things were nasty. I might just stay at online play just so I don't have to go through announcing a $3 call, try to throw three white chips in, and watch as a bundle of five chips practically superglued to each other go bouncing across the table.

Speaking of which, I know it's not my normal site, but . . .

I have registered to play in the
Online Poker Blogger Championship!

This event is powered by PokerStars.

Registration code: 5851806

(Edited 10/17 1:37 PM to add the STB link.)

Heartbreak

2005-10-16T14:35:00.000-04:00

USC 34, Notre Dame 31

This is why I can't be a sports journalist: I'd never be able to file an actual story on this game. It hurts too much.

When you lose a game like this by, say, 31 points, as Notre Dame has to USC each of the last three years, it hurts, but not that much. If they're that much better than you, you just tip your hat and move on to the next team. There was nothing you could do.

I'd rather lose 50-0 than lose like this, where you spend unbearable hours or days second-guessing and playing what-if. I'm sure a couple people will spend the rest of their lives thinking about this game.

In every aspect but the final score, Notre Dame beat USC yesterday. The team that some had claimed faded into obscurity still couldn't get respect with a new coach and a new attitude. The Irish would go 1-5 in their first six games, they crowed, maybe even 0-6. Not even three wins over ranked teams garnered much admiration, since those teams have since wallowed in mediocrity. Their #9 ranking was a fluke, they said, and the unstoppable juggernaut from Troy would surely expose them for the pretenders they were. This Leviathan of a team coasted into South Bend on a 27-game win streak and three straight blowouts of ND, only to find the green-clad Irish waiting to smack them in the mouth.

From top to bottom, the Irish were just better than USC, with one exception: the extraordinary performance of Trojan playmaker Reggie Bush, who finished the day with 265 all-purpose yards and three touchdowns. They humbled defending Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart, forcing him into two interceptions and preventing him from throwing a touchdown pass entirely. They bottled up LenDale White, the front half of the vaunted "Thunder & Lightning" combo with Bush, allowing him just 26 yards on ten carries.

And the only way the undisputed "best team in the nation" escaped with a win was by an entire series of flukes. Leinart converted a 4th-and-9 by floating a pass to Dwayne Jarrett on the left sideline. Bush rushed for a first down inside the Notre Dame 5, stopping the clock. On the next play, Leinart couldn't find an open throw and scrambled desperately off the left end. He couldn't score, and the clock ticked to zero, convincing fans that Notre Dame had scored the stunning upset. But when Leinart was hit, he fumbled the ball, and it fluttered harmlessly out of bounds, again stopping the clock. After the ball was placed at the ND 1 and seven seconds restored to the clock, Leinart scored on a QB sneak when Reggie Bush helped push him in the end zone.

Matt Leinart scores the winning touchdown after being pushed into the end zone by Reggie Bush. (AP/Joe Raymond)

The wild finish was a cruel trick to Irish fans. After we had thought the game was over — won — our hearts were ripped out. The greatness of the game and the heroism in defeat are cold comfort, and overwhelmed by the numb torture of what-if.

What if ND tight end Anthony Fasano had protected the ball while running unimpeded deep in USC territory, with the score tied 21-21 late in the third quarter? He was carrying the ball so loosely that Trojan defensive back Darnell Bing literally popped it several yards out of his hand. USC's Keith Rivers recovered the fumble at the Trojan 6.

What if, on their next drive, ND had only gone for the first down instead of the touchdown from 3rd and 3 at the USC 14 at the start of the fourth quarter? Convert that and the possibility remains open for the TD instead of settling for a field goal.

What if ND kicker D.J. Fitzpatrick (a fellow alum of Marian High School) made his second attempt, from 34 yards away with 7½ minutes to go? If ND takes the lead by 6, when they scored their next touchdown following USC's score, they could have gone for 2 and made it a seven-point lead.

What if ND had dropped into coverage instead of blitzing on the 4th and 9 play? Blitzing opens up the possibility for a big play, which the Irish could not afford. Even if USC converts, they still have to go about 65 yards for a touchdown (or 40 for a decent field goal attempt to tie) with less than 90 seconds and no timeouts.

What if the referees don't look the other way on the Bush push? That's a five-yard penalty.

What ifs, maybes, second guesses . . . all for naught.

The only possible consolation was that all the recruits head coach Charlie Weis brought to the game saw the glory of South Bend Saturdays in full display and the magic of Notre Dame football in near-full display. And the Irish announced loud and clear to all but the most vicious ND-haters (like ESPN's Mark May, who insisted on "College GameDay Final" that ND had accomplished nothing, even with former Irish coach Lou Holtz sitting within slapping distance on his right) that we are back.

But it's no silver lining. As Weis said, "If you're waiting for me to say it's a good loss, you won't hear that here."

This one hurts. And it will hurt for a long time.

Management Material

2005-10-12T03:56:00.000-04:00

I'm Not A Complete Slacker . . .

. . . I mean, it hasn't even been a month yet since I last updated! Give a guy a break!

There's lots of reasons why I've been delinquent in posting. Well, check that, there's lots of reasons, but only one good one: I've been promoted! I can now officially call myself "Assistant Manager."

Don't pop the cork on the champagne, though: it's only one day a week, sometimes two. And it's not like I'm getting a massive raise, either; in fact, on a busy day I easily make more doing my regular, more commission-based job. But until I can demonstrate the responsibility, I don't get to run the joint on the busy days, so it's a net win for me paycheck-wise. Plus I can put "Assistant Manager" on my résumé instead of the menial monkey job I do the other four or five days of the week.

It's nice to know a fellow can work for a company for two years and get the recognition he deserves by moving one-third of a rung up the corporate ladder.

What else? Well, I had to get my car fixed. One blown tire snowballed into this fix, and that fix, until I wound up with what feels like a completely different car and a much lighter wallet. I would check with the Better Business Bureau to see if I got ripped off, but when it comes to cars, I barely know my radiator from my radio. And I only know that the hard way after pouring antifreeze into the tape deck of my first car. (Just kidding. My first car didn't have a radio.)

I also took a day and went to Trump Casino in Gary, Indiana to play some real-live poker. I'll detail that in a future post (give me three weeks or so to get around to that), but suffice it to say that the only real winner was The Don and his screw-you hair.

Time for my semi-regular blogburst to catch up on what I missed, starting with:

HARRIET MIERS NOMINATED TO SUPREME COURT
Eh. I'm not thrilled with the pick, but I don't hate it, either. As I've explained before, I think the risks of playing nuclear chess with the Democrats were — and still are — potentially very grave. President Bush has decided for someone who can be confirmed more easily than someone who might perhaps be a better candidate.

Look at it this way: either the Democrats will decide to go to war or they won't. If they won't, she's confirmed, and despite some conservatives' fears, it's doubtful Miers will put on the robe and suddenly have a political paradigm shift. If they do, it will be far, far easier for the GOP to play back when their nominee looks more like a librarian rather than a fire-breathing right-wing movement conservative. Having Harry Reid endorse the nominee will prove fatal for any attempt at a Democratic filibuster, and that's something that no other nominee palatable to Bush had.

It's interesting, though, that Bush decided to select the person he entrusted with vetting his nominees, just as he did with Vice President Cheney. That being the case, I'd like for the President to choose me to select who should win tomorrow's $240 million Powerball jackpot.

DELAY INDICTED
My best friend, who's a Democrat through-and-through, hates Tom DeLay with a bitter passion, and was elated at the indictments because he was sure they'd be his political undoing.

Er, not so fast. I understand legalese about as much as I understand Japanese, but the way I'm reading it, Ronnie Earle needed to convene more than half a dozen grand juries to indict DeLay on two counts. The first is so vague that one could indict the Pope tomorrow. The second is for an offense that evidently took place a full year before the law was written making it illegal, and there's quite a bit of doubt as to whether or not what he did even falls under said statute.

So say sayonara to swinging The Hammer out of the House.

THE ATTEMPTED LYNCHING OF BILL BENNETT
Perhaps I should remove "lynching" before I get it, too. Explaining that the term "lynch" is denotatively race-neutral probably wouldn't help my cause.

The smear campaign against Bennett sickens me, but I really don't know why I expect more from the professional muckrakers and race-baiters. Note to conservatives: if you're going to talk about race, just watch what you say. I hate to admit defeat on this point, but it's become abundantly clear that those people who beg and plead for "an honest discussion about race" want anything but. Speaking of which . . .

HURRICANE KATRINA
I didn't intend on saying anything else about Hurricane Katrina. I simply wanted my effort in the Blog For Relief Weekend to stand by itself. But I can't let this event pass into the history books without chucking in these two cents to go with the money I've already donated:

STFU, Kanye West.

Seriously. You and all the other ridiculous morons who think like you, including the woman who wrote in to the Voice Of The People section of my local paper, The South Bend Tribune, who made a point that was simply soooo stupid that I was compelled to rebut it. She asserted that President Bush should be blamed because so many Katrina victims had to be assisted outside of the rest of Louisiana, evidently ignorant of the facts that 1. Hurricane Katrina devastated the rest of the state and 2. so did Hurricane Rita, so keeping thousands upon thousands of evacuees there was Not A Good Idea. Unfortunately, I doubt very much that my rebuttal will ever run, as the SBTrib has elected to print a parade of angry letters in response to their front-page picture of a dog being euthanized.

But back to Kanye, who can take his inappropriate remarks and cram them up his Kanyon. I think I'm going to take the cynical route and propose that his, er, outburst was designed to fuel the success of his new single, called "Gold Digger." Hmmmmmm. While it is a really catchy tune, I don't think I'll be buying the album, Late Registration, any time soon. Sorry, Kanye, it's not that I don't care about black people; I just don't care about you. I don't give a shizzle whether or not you get pizzaid for your albumizzle, you rich punk-ass bitch. There, I rhymed; give me a beat for it and I'll be a zillionaire like you.

ALAN MATHENEY EXECUTED
You might have heard of Alan Matheney. In 1989 he beat his ex-wife to death with the stock end of a shotgun on the street in front of her home. The truly sickening thing is that he was on an eight-hour furlough from state prison, put there for spousal and child abuse. The shocking murder drew national attention and forced Indiana to review its furlough program, though why they didn't revisit the idea after Willie Horton became a household name during the '88 presidential election is beyond me (but that was just a subtle anti-black platform! Isn't that right, race-baiters?).

I've changed my mind on a lot of political issues growing up, but one thing I've never wavered on, despite my being Catholic, is that murderers who commit grisly killings should die for their crimes. In fact, I consider it monumentally unjust that a psychopathic scumbag like Matheney was allowed to draw sixteen more years' worth of breaths before his due punishment was meted to him.

INDIANA: NOT AS DUMB AS WE USED TO BE
The Hoosier State was also laughed at a little bit recently when a bill was proposed in the state Senate which would have, according to some misleading headlines, "require[d] marriage as a legal condition of motherhood." (Atkins-friendly knowledge courtesy of protein wisdom.)

Uh, not quite. The provisions were only for couples who wished to artificially create life through in-vitro fertilization or similar means; it wouldn't have turned all the state's baby-mammas into criminals. Even then, it was still attacked as a backdoor prohibition against homosexual couples using such means to have children; that's probably closer to the truth. While it might be valuable to have such a law on the books before a case gets bogged down and dragged out in court, the brouhaha forced the bill's sponsor, Indianapolis Republican Patricia Miller, to withdraw the proposal.

This doesn't let us off the hook for trying to pass a law in 1897 which would have changed the value of p. It passed the House unanimously but stalled in the Senate, thank God.

ONE BUMP IN THE ROAD FOR THE WEIS GUYS
The Irish have continued to impress this season, climbing to (as of this writing) #9 in the AP poll. Their lone hiccup was Michigan State, against whom they made a 21-point second-half comeback before falling in overtime, 44-41.

This week twice-defending-champion USC comes to town. They've looked mortal at times against ranked opponents like Oregon and Arizona State, but managed to pull it together in the second half and emerge victorious.

Not this week, baby.

The high-powered NFL offense, led by Brady Quinn, puts points on the board early, and Charlie Weis' tenacious, "nasty" attitude keeps the cleats on the Trojans' necks.

38-14, Irish. You heard it here first.

For more:
South Bend Tribune
Blue & Gold Illustrated
Irish Sports Report
The Observer
UHND
Blue-Gray Sky
Kelly Green

I Didn't Even Want To Be In This Tournament . . .

2005-09-13T16:59:00.000-04:00

And I Should Have Busted Out Twice

(This entry crossposted to Steal The Blinds.)

Among the many tournaments hosted by Full Tilt Poker are "Guaranteed" tourneys. No matter how few people enter, they give away a guaranteed amount.

So when I logged on this morning, I discovered there were only about 45 people signed up for an 11 AM $3,500 guaranteed tourney with a $24 + $2 buy-in. The pay line started at 18th place. So, I registered for the tourney, thinking I was getting good value for such a great payout.

I should have known better. In the last 10 minutes before the tourney started, everybody and their uncle entered. By the time it started, 155 people were in, and I wished I could be out.

I wished I could unregister even more when I held Q/Q and found myself all-in against K/K. But a beautiful turn Q tripped me up and all of a sudden I was among the chip leaders.

When the moneyline approached, I was getting cold-decked. From 18 players all the way down to the final 9, I didn't see a decent hand. But at the final table I busted the two shortstacks holding A¨/J¨ and vaulted into the chip lead.

Now it was time to start thinking about the big money. With seven players left, we were all walking away with at least $139.50, but first place paid over seven times that, $1,004.40.

I almost knocked out another shortstack with pocket deuces against his J¨/6¨, but the turn 2¨ filled his flush and I couldn't find a boat on the river.

While the others got knocked out, a couple of advantageous hands put me over 100,000 chips, and I lorded my big stack over the rest of the table, stealing antes and blinds virtually at will. But eventually, the second-biggest stack caught on and reraised many of my steal attempts. Not wanting to get into a brawl with someone who could really hurt me holding mediocre cards, I usually gave it up. He did this enough to take the chip leadership from me.

With three players left (third place won $474.30, second won $632.40) and the blinds at 1200/2400 with 300 antes, I held 9§/9¨ in the big blind. The now-chip leader, in the small blind, just called me, and I raised to 8100. He called.

The flop came 5§/A§/7¨ and he fired a bet of 17,100 at me. Thinking he was merely representing the ace, I raised to 35K and he called.

The turn was 6ª and he went all-in. I figured he might now have the ace, but he'd been so aggressive I couldn't guarantee it. If he held anything besides an ace (or a pocket pair bigger than my nines), I was a massive favorite. I called.

He showed A¨/2§.

Crap.

I was already saying my goodbyes and cursing my misread when the river came 8¨ and a huge pile of chips were shoved toward me.

What the??!?

I made a straight! Probably the luckiest suckout I've ever had.

I polished him off five hands later with Q/10 when I won the coin-flip against his pocket fives. This left me heads-up with the small stack and a 9-1 chip advantage, at 209,327 versus 23,173.

With that much of an advantage, I could go all-in with any two cards, and I did a couple times and lost. But sixteen hands in, still with a better than 3-1 advantage, I pushed her all in with Aª/4ª. She called with Qª/J©.

What happened? See for yourself:

(click for full-size)

FLUSH, BABY!

And that's how you make a thousand dollars when you don't even want to be there.

Edited 9/14 2:30 AM to add the STB link.

PHOTO ALBUM: September 11, 2004, New York, New York

2005-09-12T00:13:00.000-04:00

One Year Ago Today, Part II

I was really hoping to make it to New York before nightfall, since I wasn't sure how well my crappy disposable cameras would work. Unfortunately, I didn't. I didn't know about parking in lower Manhattan, so I searched endlessly through Hoboken and Jersey City for a ferry that would take me there. But most of them shut down by dusk.

After sundown I gave up and took the Holland Tunnel, and found ample parking. I stopped at the corner of Greenwich and Harrison and walked the twelve blocks or so to Ground Zero.

New York had brought back the "Tribute In Light". If you haven't seen this, it is really spectacular. Squares of spotlights rise from near the former World Trade Center site to create twin beams that extend into the night sky.

It is a wondrous sight. Too bad my camera couldn't capture it.

I'm serious. Here's a picture right next to the spotlights, and you can just barely make out the light:

(click any for full-size)

Hundreds of people were there (including a couple I later met who were also from Mishawaka, Indiana) forming small tributes. These people lit candles at the corner of Vesey Street and West Side Highway:

The viewing area started with a covered walking bridge that went over West Side Highway and ran along the northern edge of what used to be the World Trade Center:

(That's the Tribute In Light in the background.)

The steel bars made it difficult to take pictures through, and the darkness still meant they wouldn't come out very good, but I dutifully tried:

Here you can see that the bottom of "the pit" is four stories below street level. The pit extends all the way to Liberty Street; that's the intersection with the red light you can see at West Side Highway. It's 1000 feet away.

This is the ramp that extends from Liberty Street down into Ground Zero. Just for perspective, in the middle of the ramp you can see a car.

This is from below street level, at the PATH (Port Authority Trans-Hudson) train station entrance. The Port Authority rebuilt the train station very quickly; had I known, I could have taken a train from either Newark or Hoboken.

I left two trinkets at Ground Zero.

The first were twin carnations that I bought from a young girl who was selling them along the walkway, along with many other street vendors.

The second was another small American flag, which I tied with a ribbon (also bought from the girl) to the fence in between panels which featured pictures of the aftermath of the attack.

Those panels, bolted to the east side of the fence, displayed the story of 9/11 — not just in New York but in Washington and Pennsylvania as well.

These six panels contain the names of the more than 2,200 people who perished in the World Trade Center.

This panel described what happened on Flight 93.

With the availability for pictures devastated by the darkness, I decided to leave and find someplace where I could still take pictures after 10 or 11 pm. I could think of only one place:

Times Square.

For some reason, most likely paranoid small-town thinking, I figured I would stick out so much that I might as well have had "I'M NOT FROM AROUND HERE" stamped on my shirt. I didn't realize how much I'd blend in. When I was on the subway, someone wanted to know where the line ended going the other way during late-night hours; since I had just checked that myself, I responded: "Coney Island."

"You take this line often?" she responded.

"No, I'm from Indiana," I replied, grinning.

I encountered the people from Mishawaka at Times Square because one of them was wearing a shirt with the logo for LanLizards, a local cybercafé. I freaked them out when I asked, "That's on Main Street, north of Jefferson, right?" They were shocked that some New Yorker would know about their little joint.

Some street artists were making spraypaint posterboard lithographs and selling them for $20. It's a process I'm fascinated by but, as I learned over a two-week span as a teenager, I'm personally terrible at. These guys were good. I didn't want to blow a Jackson on them, though, until I saw one of them make this:

I had to find an ATM, as I only brought about $25 with me (remember, paranoid, I was sure I'd be mugged) and I'd already spent money on memorabilia and a hot dog from a vendor at the corner of Vesey and Church (it was seriously the best damn hot dog I've ever had). When I got back, I asked him to make me one just like that. And I bought one.

I got one picture of me at Times Square, but as I'd now spent nearly 24 unshowered hours in a car, I looked even worse than I did that morning in Pennsylvania.

With my new picture in tow and my cameras almost out of film, I boarded the subway back to Lower Manhattan . . .

. . . and to my car, and to New Jersey, and home.

I still wish the camera would have caught the Tribute In Light.

LIVE: Full Tilt Poker Hurricane Relief Tournament IV

2005-09-11T16:28:00.000-04:00

I Get Another Chance

The need for aid money to the ravaged Gulf Coast continues, and once again Full Tilt Poker has anted up.

Like the previous tournament, this is a $30 buy-in, with the $10 rake being doubled by FTP and sent to the American Red Cross.

After my impressive but ultimately disappointing finish last week, I think I can do better. Again, if I cash, one-third will go to the Red Cross.

Updates to come.

3:34 PM: Have you ever looked at the bottom of a tourney leaderboard and wondered who the idiot was that finished last? The last tourney I played in, a satellite to the WPT Borgata Open, that idiot was me: I had K/K and ran into A/A. I felt so stupid.

This time, it's pro John D'Agostino who finished dead last. I don't feel so bad now.

3:52 PM: Arrgh! A computer crash wiped me out for a few hands. What did I miss? I'll never know. 385 players out of 482 left, I'm tied for 270th with 1315 (starting value 1500). Blinds at 25/50.

3:58 PM: J§/A¨ from the small blind. The table short-stack goes all-in for 515 and I call. She has K©/Q¨ and my hand holds up.

4:03 PM: Limped in from MP with black sevens. Flop comes 10/10/A and is checked around. Turn is another 10 and it's checked to me. I figure I might just have the best hand so I toss a half-pot bet of 150 in. It's called, called, and raised, so I figure I'm beat and bail. All of a sudden, everyone else is all-in. The first raiser had pocket fives. Another guy had an ace and was slowplaying a full house. But the table chip leader got in with 10/8 from the small blind and wiped them both out.

That could have been a disaster if my radar wasn't properly calibrated.

4:07 PM: Ick. A/5 from the small blind, I raise to steal and get called. Flop comes 10/A/7, I bet and get raised. I have to fold: my kicker sucks. Down to 1100.

4:09 PM: Jennifer Harman out in 426th, Howard Lederer out in 405th. Another gruesome day for the pros.

4:12 PM: The guy on my left is driving me nuts. Again he foiled my blind-steal. Shortstacked again. Could use a big hand.

4:15 PM: How about aces?? A§/A¨, middle position. I raise. Everyone folds. Crap.

Considering how shortstacked I was, I might have wanted to play those a little slower and give myself a better chance of doubling up. Of course, I also give myself a better chance of busting out. Oh well.

Could use another big hand . . . (hey, it worked last time!)

4:29 PM: Q¨/J¨ from the cutoff and I'm all-in. One of the few people with less chips than me calls with K¨/K©. I'm done for.

4:31 PM: A/6 offsuit and I have no choice; I get called in a couple spots but a K/10 sucks out on me. IGHN, in 222nd place.

Well . . . that sucked.

Big Time

2005-09-11T16:26:00.000-04:00

§§§ Notre Dame 17, Michigan 10 §§§

Offensive lineman Bob Morton salutes the ND fans who made the trip to Ann Arbor following the win. (South Bend Tribune/Jim Rider)

Notre Dame's offensive showcase last week against Pittsburgh and Michigan's relative defensive ineptitude last week against Northern Illinois set up what was figured to be a high-octane shootout in Ann Arbor.

It didn't quite turn out that way.

Strict defense and somewhat sloppy offense — from both sides — were the norm, but the Irish played just a little bit better and hung on for the 17-10 upset of #3 Michigan.

ND won the coin toss and came out swinging, not missing a beat from their blowout of Pittsburgh. In a no-huddle offense frequently featuring empty-backfield shotgun formations, the Irish methodically marched down the field, striking for six on a 5-yard pass play to Rhema McKnight. The 12-play drive was so effective that ND never even faced a third down.

But the Michigan defense adapted well, eventually bringing pressure on Irish quarterback Brady Quinn. After not allowing a sack to Pittsburgh, the Wolverines reached Quinn three times and harassed him even more. After rolling up more than 500 yards against Pitt, ND couldn't even muster half of that in the Big House.

The Irish were especially sloppy in the second half, managing just 56 yards and suffering their only turnover.

Quinn finished the game 19-30 for just 140 yards. Darius Walker still rushed for 104 yards, on 26 carries. Jeff Samardzija was the go-to receiver after McKnight left the game with an apparently serious knee injury; he finished with four catches for 52 yards.

However, the story of the day was the Notre Dame defense. After Michigan running back Mike Hart left the game with a hamstring injury in the first half, ND shut down the Wolverine ground attack for most of the game. And while Michigan did make some big passing plays, including a 25-yard effort for their only touchdown, the Irish secondary mostly contained the Michigan pass offense.

But it's easy to defend someone who keeps shooting themselves in the foot.

Michigan entered the redzone on offense three times — all in the second half — and came away with zero points. Just after halftime, a Michigan drive was halted by a goal-line interception by Irish safety Tom Zbikowski. The drive following the disastrous ND fumble went for naught when the Wolverines failed a 4th-and-goal conversion instead of settling for the field goal. And finally, a quarterback sneak from within the ND 1-yard line ended in a crucial fumble in the game's most important play.

That play was originally ruled a Michigan recovery, but a booth-mandated instant replay discovered that Wolverine quarterback Chad Henne lost the ball before going down and that ND safety Chinedum Ndukwe had recovered it in the endzone for a touchback.

The Irish caught another break later in the game when a field ruling that Quinn had fumbled was also overturned by replay. Michigan fans showed their appreciation by showering the field with debris. And the Samardzija touchdown reception in the second quarter was initially tipped by Michigan linebacker Chris Graham.

According to the cliché, it's better to be lucky than good. On Saturday, the Irish were a bit of both.

The suddenly-rising Irish will look to avoid a letdown next week in their home opener against Michigan State.

PHOTO ALBUM: September 11, 2004, Shanksville, Pennsylvania

2005-09-11T13:37:00.000-04:00

One Year Ago Today, Part I

A few years back, some friends and I went on a ROAD TRIP! WOOO! up the East Coast. My sole purpose for even going on this trip was to see Ground Zero. I felt I needed to make a pilgrimmage to see for myself instead of merely on TV the effects of the most important event in my lifetime. Unfortunately, it was not to be; car trouble caused us to scrap completely the New York leg of the trip.

So last year, almost completely impulsively and spontaneously, I decided I was going to go myself. I discovered that stopping at the Flight 93 Memorial would make an excellent pause point in the trip, as it was only a slight detour. So I told my boss I was taking Saturday off and drove straight through Friday night.

I arrived at the Flight 93 Memorial just as they were concluding the official service. Late, yes, but not alone:

(click any for full-size)

Hundreds of people were still arriving, overflowing the tent set up for the service. News crews were there from all over the country, and most of them, at some point during the morning, interviewed these two:

They were NYPD officers who felt they needed to pay their respects to the ad hoc citizens' brigade who performed as bravely as any police officer ever could.

As I worked my way closer to the memorial, I met a pastor and some congregants from Maryland who were also on a pilgrimmage . . . on bicycles. One of the many spontaneous outpourings of support was the signing of a metal guardrail that separated the grassy area underneath the tent from the gravel outside it. The pastor produced a Sharpie marker and, not surprisingly, prefaced his signature with John 15:13. I could never say something quite so succinctly appropriate, so I went with my default slogan for 9/11:

You can see the shadow of his bike tire in the bottom right.

Former Pennsylvania Governor and then-Homeland Security Secretary Tom Ridge spoke at the ceremony. That's not me with him; although I did get my picture taken with Secretary Ridge, I had not slept all night and had just spent the last 8 hours in a car. So I looked even more hideous than usual.

After the public ceremony, friends and family of Flight 93 victims boarded chartered buses and drove several hundred yards away for a private service. No press allowed, so certainly I wasn't getting on.

I wouldn't have wanted to.

Finally I turned my attention to the makeshift memorial, which was really nothing more than a simple chain-link fence where people attached trinkets and tributes. The permanent memorial planned for Flight 93 upsets me, and not just because of its shape and directional orientation.

One of the more comforting things that stayed with me after 9/11 was the immediate outpouring of support from all over the nation. It was a spontaneous, unorganized group hug for those involved. The new permanent memorial will spend millions of taxpayer dollars and have professionally designed symbolic elements, but it will lose all the charisma of the heartfelt but amateur wiki-memorial.

You wanna make this memorial permanent? Take this fence, and everything attached to it, and dip it in bronze.

Along with personal messages, the most popular items attached seemed to be hats. I walked all the way back to my car and retrieved my well-worn ND Class of 2001 hat. (I didn't notice this until just now, but in the above picture, there's another ND hat: a gray one, a little to the right of the center frame.) I braided the loop through the fence and added a small American flag:

A wider view:

Other contributions to the memorial:

The final component of the Flight 93 Memorial is the actual crash site, and thank God the permanent memorial commission isn't dumb enough to build anything on it. They call it "Sacred Ground," which is a little overdramatic, but appropriately reverent.

From the makeshift chain-link memorial, the crash site was so far away that it was barely a speck; the only way you could ever be able to see it was because an American flag was planted there, in the distance:

It's very tough to see, from my store-bought disposable camera, so here's the pic again with the flag magnified by a factor of 4.

It was a very sunny and hot morning September 11, 2004. Not at all unlike the day three years before, before everything became dark and cold.

LIVE: Full Tilt Poker Hurricane Relief Tournament II

2005-09-04T21:10:00.000-04:00

This Game Means A Lot

(This entry crossposted at Steal The Blinds.)

On Friday, Full Tilt Poker ran a special no-limit Texas Hold'em tournament to benefit victims of Hurricane Katrina. The response was so overwhelming that they're having a second tournament tonight, and I'm in.

The buy-in is $20 + $10, which means that $20 goes to the tournament pool and $10 is the house rake, which FTP will donate to the American Red Cross. Further, FTP will match everyone's donation.

Friday's tournament had 718 players, meaning $14,360 was raised. Tonight's tourney has 1210 players, raising $24,200 more.

Among the players tonight are pros Howard Lederer, Erik Seidel, John Juanda, David Grey, Aaron Bartley, and Kristy Gazes.

I vow that if I cash, one-third of my win will go to the Red Cross. First place wins $5,324.

Updates as I march toward victory.

8:25 PM: Uh-oh. I have 10ª/10©, went all-in after a flop of 9©/4¨/6©, and got called by K©/K§. I have him covered, but it will hurt if I lose.

Turn 5ª. River 5©. Ouch.

8:30 PM: Holding Qª/J§ in the big blind and called UTG's min-raise along with three other players. Flop is 8¨/7¨/J¨ and I'm all-in. The button calls me with Aª/7§. The turn Q¨ gives me two pair, but I still need to dodge a non-diamond A or any 7. River 10ª doubles me up.

Thank God. Didn't want this to be a really short post.

8:40 PM: Howard Lederer is out in 979th place. Just got bounced to a new table.

8:43 PM: Middle position, holding A§/K¨. UTG limps, next guy reraises to 200 (blinds 25/50). I go all-in (1020) and pray he doesn't have aces or kings. He has 10§/10ª.

Flop is no help, 9¨/J§/4©. Turn 7¨, nothing, but the river A¨ saves my ass. Up over 2,000.

8:48 PM: David Grey out in 878th place. Pros normally don't do well in FTP tourneys because they have bullseyes on their backs, literally: bust one and you win your buy-in back. I'm not sure if they're doing that here. In Friday night's tourney, Phil Gordon and Howard Lederer both cashed, finishing 31st and 68th respectively.

8:57 PM: Holding K§/10§ in big blind. Button min-raises and I smell a steal. SB and I call. Flop comes 5¨/10¨/7©. SB checks and I bet the pot (360). Button min-raises again, to 720; SB folds. He might have actually had a good hand, or he's keeping up the steal. I just call to see what the turn brings.

It's 10©. I plan to check-raise him, but he foils it by checking through. Big mistake if he has a draw.

River is K¨ and I no longer give a damn, especially if he was drawing to diamonds. I make a quarter-pot "feeler bet" (450 into 1800) and he goes all-in. He has me covered. I call. He had J©/10ª. Had him all the way.

9:00 PM: Wiped out the guy I just beat with Q©/Qª versus his 10¨/A©. Over 4,000 now and just barely in the top 100.

9:16 PM: A§/K© under the gun. I make a pot-size raise (350, blinds 50/100), and the table short-stack moves all-in for his last 605. I call. He has A©/7¨, and my hand holds up.

Very next hand: Aª/J© in the big blind. One limper, then the small blind moves all-in for 942. I call and the limper folds. SB was bluffing with K§/5©. My hand holds up and I'm over six large.

9:19 PM: First break now. I'm at 6,177, and I'm in 50th place. Erik Seidel busted out in 581st. The only pro ahead of me is Allen Cunningham (26th place, 7,924). I'm ahead of Aaron Bartley (70th, 5,475), Kristy Gazes (164th, 3,806), John Juanda (231st, 2,110), and Andy Bloch (559th, 295). 561 left. Antes coming in half an hour.

9:25 PM: Four hands since the break, and two of them were 7§/2§. That sucks. Everyone knows 7/2 offsuit is the best damn hand in poker and its suited cousin is the anti-hand. :D

9:34 PM: Folded A§/2¨ in the big blind to a raise. Flop comes 3§/A©/Aª. SB won without a showdown, but I don't think he had an ace. All poker players hate when that happens, but folding was the right move there. Gotta put it behind me. Cold-decked for two rounds and I'm at 5,757. No time to be desperate. Tight, Mike, remember tight.

9:40 PM: 8¨/8ª in middle position. I raise to 560 (blinds 80/160) and the player on my left goes all-in for 1435. Folded around to me. The pot has 2145 and I have to call 875. Almost 2½-to-1 pot odds. I have to call, but I don't like it. She has A§/7ª. My hand sticks and I'm at 7K.

9:50 PM: Andy Bloch out in 435th, Kristy Gazes out in 405th. Holding
K¨/K§ with a raise of 600 (blinds 100/200) in front of me, I go over the top to 2500. Everyone folds.

9:53 PM: The antes have arrived. Blinds 120/240 with 25 antes. Now it gets serious.

10:02 PM: Time once again for YOU MAKE THE CALL! Q§/Q¨ on the button, folded to me, I raise to 550, and the small blind calls. Flop comes 6ª/5ª/5©. I bet 770, and he raises to 2500. Yuck. Maybe he's on a draw. Maybe he's slowplaying A/A or K/K. Maybe he thought I was stealing and got in with a 5. Maybe he has nothing but figures I was stealing and also have nothing and can push me off.

I figured it's all-in or fold. He has me covered. What do you do?

I folded. If I hadn't got whacked with my tens versus kings at the start of the tourney, I might have played. But I got the heebie-jeebies and chickened out.

He showed his hand. Scroll to the right to see it: Black sevens. God damn it.

10:13 PM: Just got whacked with A/Q. Tried pushing the chip leader off the hand and he kept calling me down with 9/9. Less than 3,000 now and I'm in deep doo-doo. FOCUS, MIKE!

10:19 PM: Stealing blinds and antes to tread water. Aaron Bartley out in 247th, John Juanda out in 220th. Only pro left is Allen Cunningham. I judge how well I do in big tournaments by whether or not I outlast all the pros, since they don't usually hang around long. Problem is, Allen has 13K and is in the top 40.

10:21 PM: Caught a break, as I got retabled right before my blinds to a seat behind the blinds.

10:23 PM: Break time again. I have 3,677 and am in 161st place out of 192 left. Yuck. But I've made bigger comebacks than this. Problem is, I just got three excellent hands, A/A, A/K suited, and A/Q, and all I did was win the blinds and antes with them. Let's hope I get a good hand and someone else does, too.

And that mine is better, of course.

10:33 PM: Down to 2,500 as the antes are eating me alive. With 250/500 blinds and antes of 50, it's comparable to having 400/800 blinds with no ante, since it costs 1200 each round. All-in or fold time.

10:35 PM: All-in from the cutoff with red fives. Nobody calls. Next hand: A§/7§. I'm all set to go all-in again, but the UTG player raises and I figure he has me dominated.

10:39 PM: Still hanging around, but it's up to 300/600 with 75 antes. That's like having blinds of 500/1000. I have 2,802.

10:41 PM: All-in from the cutoff with 3ª/3©. Nobody calls. 4,300. Next hand is 10©/Kª, but again the UTG raises and I'm probably crushed.

10:45 PM: Qª/10© on the button, with two limpers. I'm all-in for 2,952. The blinds fold, the first limper calls, and the second folds. He shows 3§/3©. Lot of dead money here, so it'd be nice to win this coin flip and get me off of life support.

Flop is 9§/3ª/6© and I'm all but toast. The turn brings Q§, and even though that card appears to help me, it was the deathblow: there's now no way I can beat his set. Even another Q to give me trips would fill him into a full house. The river was meaningless, but for posterity's sake, it was 8¨. IGHN, in 140th place. Cash line was at 117.

The thing that makes poker so intense is that I played 185 hands in this tourney, and played maybe two of them wrong (I probably played a couple more poorly, but they were incidental). And yet I go home with nothing.

But the more important story is that the American Red Cross now has $38,560 more for the victims of Hurricane Katrina. I wish I won something so I could have chucked in a little more.

Alas, not to be.

FINAL UPDATE 9/5 1:41 AM: I stuck around to watch how the tourney ended. The last hand was so awesome I had to comment on it.

The button was on the shorter stack, holding about 625,000 chips. The bigger stack had about 1.2 million. The blinds were at 12,000 and 24,000 with a 3000-chip ante.

Big Stack called the big blind, and the smaller stack checked to see the flop, which was 10ª/8ª/Qª. Check, check. Turn Jª. Check, check. River blank. Big Stack makes a smallish bet, and Small Stack goes all-in over the top. Big Stack calls.

The small stack had Aª/10¨ for the nut flush. But Big Stack had K¨/9ª for the straight flush and the $5000+ win. The small stack did take home more than $3300, though.

I still won nothing.

Pittsburgh Gets The Nasty

2005-09-04T19:55:00.000-04:00

§§§ Notre Dame 42, Pittsburgh 21 §§§

Darius Walker points as he scores the first Notre Dame touchdown. (South Bend Tribune/Santiago Flores)

Memo to college football: The Irish are for real.

Head Coach Charlie Weis' vaunted NFL offensive attack produced as advertised, and the defense was more than adequate to lead Notre Dame to a 42-21 thrashing of 23rd-ranked Pittsburgh that wasn't even that close.

In fact, the Panthers' fate was sealed by the coin toss.

Pitt won the toss and elected to receive the ball first, planning on lighting up the Irish defense like they did last year at Notre Dame Stadium. And for that first drive, they did, striking for six on a 39-yard pass play from Tyler Palko to wide receiver Greg Lee. But the Irish responded with a touchdown of their own, courtesy of a 51-yard reception and scamper by running back Darius Walker.

After the Irish defense forced a three-and-out, Brady Quinn allowed an interception near midfield by Pitt corner Darrelle Revis, which the Panthers cashed in for a field goal.

It would be the only possession ND didn't score a touchdown with for virtually the entire first half.

After one incomplete pass on the ensuing drive, Irish quarterback Brady Quinn went on a streak of 11 straight completions. By the time Notre Dame took a knee to let the first half expire, they had scored four touchdowns, interrupted only by a Pitt field goal, to lead 35-13.

With the ball to start the second half, they went on a methodical, bruising 20-play drive that took up nearly half the third quarter, capped by fullback Rashon Powers-Neal's third rushing touchdown.

That broke the back of the Pitt offensive machine which torched the Irish defense for 41 points last year. Coming into this season, nine of those defensive starters had graduated, leaving many to wonder about how good the defense would be.

The answer? Good enough.

While Tyler Palko completed 20 of his 35 passes for 220 total yards through the air, the defense stiffened when it really counted, limiting Pitt to just four of 14 third-down conversions. In addition, the ND front seven sacked Palko five times.

The special teams, which head coach Charlie Weis promised major improvements for, was also a factor. Return coverage, routinely burned last year, was up to the task this year. In fact, the kickoff squad forced a Pitt fumble deep in their own territory, leading to the the fourth Irish touchdown on a 19-yard strike to Jeff Samardzija.

Brady Quinn finished the game 18-27 with 227 yards. In addition to 52 receiving yards, Darius Walker had 20 rushes for an even 100 yards. Rashon Powers-Neal contributed eight rushes for 41 yards and three touchdowns. Tight end Anthony Fasano led the Irish receiving corps with four catches for 42 yards, while Rhema McKnight added three receptions for 51 yards.

One historical footnote: Notre Dame and Pittsburgh have opened the season against each other three previous times, in 1943, 1976 and 1977. Each time, the winner of that game went on to win the national championship.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves. While the victory was sweet, next week comes a daunting task: fourth-ranked Michigan, at the Big House in Ann Arbor.

Hurricane Katrina Blog For Relief Day

2005-09-01T11:15:00.000-04:00

September 1, 2005

Scroll down to "Hurricane Katrina Relief"

I Give Up

2005-08-31T16:44:00.000-04:00

Writer's Block And Indifference

I've been trying for over two weeks to write an essay about Cindy Sheehan that was both innovative yet compassionate.

And . . . I can't. The task is too much.

The innovative bit, I was all over that. I had a really great setup, comparing Cindy's speeches and blog posts with the famed Kübler-Ross Model of the five stages of grief. The second step is anger, and she really hasn't got past that.

No, the trouble was remaining compassionate. The reason why Cindy's presence in Crawford has been effective (to whatever extent it has been) is because, in the words of New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd, she has "absolute moral authority." Stating truths about Cindy Sheehan is tantamount to launching personal attacks on her.

And I wanted to take the high road.

But when I see her say things like this:

I am starting to lose a little compassion for [Gold Star Moms who still support the war] (h/t RCP)

. . . and this:

George is finished playing golf and telling his fables in San Diego, so he will be heading to Louisiana to see the devastation that his environmental policies and his killing policies have caused. (h/t Hugh)

. . . the possibility of discussing Cindy Sheehan and still maintaining a modicum of compassion approaches nil. I'm simply not that good a writer.

I wouldn't trade places with Cindy Sheehan for a blank check from an oil company CEO. But it's impossible to come to any other conclusion than she's filled with such narcissism and loathing that she deserves pitied contempt. Who's responsible for her son's death? Not the murderous lunatics who'd rather kill 1,800 American soldiers than surrender their twisted ideology of terror and death, but George W. Bush. And hurricanes, especially powerful ones, have evidently never existed until George W. Bush placed his hand on the Bible on January 20, 2001.

With the entire English language at my command, I can't think of a way to describe such intellectual depravity and yet not sound mean. So be it.

I wallowed in the self-pity of my ineptitude for a couple days, but witnessing the catastrophic events on the Gulf Coast has given me a powerful wake-up call. There are worse things than writer's block. It's surreal to hear the news that the entire city of New Orleans has been evacuated. Due to the blow Hurricane Katrina delivered to the domestic oil production capabilities on the Gulf Coast, gas prices have spiked again. I don't care.

And Cindy Sheehan still blames the President and will follow him to Washington. How completely irrelevant she has become.

I won't be around to post tomorrow, but I'm still participating in the Hurricane Katrina Blog For Relief Day. Click here to go to the American Red Cross Relief Fund set up for the hundreds of thousands of victims of Katrina.

Let's offer more than Cindy Sheehan's vendetta of hatred.

Crappy PhotoShop UPDATE: Guess Who Loves My Graphic?

2005-08-16T15:43:00.000-04:00

Michelle, How Could You?

Welcome Riehl World View Readers!

I had almost forgotten about this, but reading about Dan's little brouhaha with Michelle Malkin reminded me that it wasn't the first time Michelle had, for lack of a better term, ripped someone off. By the way, I also just noticed . . . I never offered proof of how Michelle borrowed my graphic without credit: click here.

I already mentioned how Brian Maloney of The Radio Equalizer has accented his post on August 6 with my horrible little PhotoShop parody of Al Franken's book.

He's used it three more times since then. In that first link, he paired the image side-by-side with a snippet from a Mark Steyn column in the Chicago Sun-Times:

Whether it was just a coincidence, or whether he wanted to create the monstrous pun "Franken/Steyn," I can't say. Either way, it's about as close as I'm ever going to get to Mark Steyn without violating the restraining order.

It's also showed up at the RonaldReagan.com Message Boards.

But the real coup de grâce came when Michelle Malkin, who's helped Maloney push the story along, decided to preface her post on August 10 at 1:49 PM with my silly little graphic. She didn't ask for permission; that's cool — not like it's copyrighted or anything. However, she also didn't credit or link back to me. This is not cool. Maloney does it every time he posts the image, and I thank him for the modest traffic I've recieved from Radio Equalizer readers in return. Even though my website address appears at the bottom of the image, a link by Michelle would have made it so much easier for her readers to find my website. Without a link, they just pass right on by. My Sitemeter official traffic referrals from michellemalkin.com: 0.

That hurts.

I sent Michelle an e-mail about it yesterday. If it weren't for the eagle-eyed and smokin'-hot BlondeChampagne sending me an e-mail about it, I'd never have noticed it at all, since by the time my Internet was fixed, the post had scrolled off Michelle's front page.

I'm a huge fan of Michelle's, have been for years. This is honestly the first time I can say she's disappointed me.

Edited 9/14 12:15 AM to add the RWV welcome and explanation.

Marchand Chronicles UPDATE: Getting "S-crude" Some More

2005-08-16T14:56:00.000-04:00

Plus, I Do Math Badly

It's now up to $2.65⁹ in some places around here. It fell off this morning, but expect another spike on Thursday. That's usually the pattern.

I also dunced my way through this paragraph from my essay:

Nearly half of the pump price is comprised of the cost of crude oil. Crude recently spiked at over $60 per barrel. There are 42 gallons in a barrel, so of the $2.559/gallon cost in my neighborhood, about a buck-fifty of it was needed just to purchase the crude oil.

Do the math: $60/barrel divided by 42 gallons/barrel = $1.42, which is still more than half of $2.559.

The source for my "nearly half" statement is from the Energy Information Administration, which included this handy little chart for the makeup of the price of gas:

(Click to view full-size)

These numbers are, as you can see, old. But take a look at a chart from June 2005:

(EIA)

Let's break these percentages down to what they actually mean:

	2002	2003	June 2005	Today*
Dist./Mark.	17.5¢	22¢	15¢	15¢**
Refining	17.5¢	23¢	39¢	41¢**
Taxes	42¢	42¢	44¢	44¢
Crude	58¢	69¢	$1.18	$1.57
TOTAL	$1.35	$1.56	$2.16	$2.57

*Today gas prices averaged $2.57/gal (from IndianaGasPrices.com) and crude oil averaged $66/barrel (Bloomberg).
**Assuming the Distribution/Marketing percentage of 7% nationwide during June 2005 applies here and now.

As you can see, the distributors and marketers of gas are trying very hard to sell as cheap as possible. Refining costs more following new environmental regulations and existing ones that mandate cleaner gas in the summer. Plus, the price of crude has skyrocketed.

And that's why we're being charged so much.

No Internet Or Satellite? Whatever Shall I Do?

2005-08-15T15:00:00.000-04:00

Oh, The Humanity!

Sometime last week my computer caught the fritz and somehow passed it on to my satellite dish. I was stuck in the 1970s for several days.

It was terrible. I was running out of things to do to occupy my time. I had a wedding to attend on Saturday and a poker tournament on Sunday (I played terribly). But besides that . . . nothing. I actually cleaned my apartment — that's how bored I was.

Perhaps I could have used that time to reevaluate my dependency on technology and decide to reorient my life towards simpler things.

Nahhh. What am I, Amish?

Some remarkable things happened while I was away. I shall remark upon them later.

Five Things You Didn't Know About Me And Probably Didn't Care To Know

2005-08-10T02:06:00.000-04:00

But I'm Telling You Anyway

Jaxia from Steal The Blinds has redesigned her personal blog and has come up with a name for it that fits her: You Know You Wanna.

As part of her housewarming, she answered five questions sent to her by a reader, and I volunteered to be the next link in the meme. And she has good questions, too:

1. At the movies: Popcorn, candy, pickle, hotdog, Coke or none?
Popcorn, definitely. The way I see it, you're getting hosed on all of them, but at least at my local theater, ponying up $6.50 for a large popcorn entitles you to free refills. The trick is identifying the slow point in the movie that enables you to go fetch it.

2. What do you plan/hope to study in grad school?
That will depend on the particulars of the school and whether or not I need the Bachelor's to take Master's classes. Ideally, the answer would be Political Science, but if that's not feasible without getting another B.A., I'd probably get a writing concentration to hone the P.O.S. columns I churn out.

3. What happened to "Douchebag of the Week?"
DotW, along with the rest of the ambitious itinerary I laid out for myself when I started the blog (found here and here), was sacrificed on the altar of my day job. I work upwards of 50 hours a week and don't have access to a computer while there. I was convinced I could crank out a variety of essays on a daily basis, in addition to regular blogging, and still have time for my job. I was, well, wrong. Very wrong. If you scan the early days of the archives, you'll find that a lot of posts contain me apologizing for the delay and/or cancellation of scheduled pieces.

I don't think I ever actually officially surrendered this battle; I just quietly pulled the schedule and scaled back to just the "Marchand Chronicles" essays. I do hope to find a job which would allow me to write more, but it's impossible unless I can live on an hour of sleep a night. I can't. Since my current job involves travel, that's very dangerous.

Besides, my original premise of DotW was that nobody else in the blogosphere had it. I soon found out I was wrong there, too. Among a wide variety of other blogs with similar awards, Decision '08 has had a "Weekly Jackass" since late last year. (He even picked Eason Jordan the same week I did.)

4. What is your best childhood memory?
This is tough, as there aren't that many. I don't want to say that I had an unhappy childhood, as that's the sort of maudlin, pity-party B.S. I can't stand, and also because I was never physically, psychologically, or sexually abused as so many kids are. But all the same, my parents bitterly divorced early in my life and I lived with an overprotective mother who wouldn't let me leave the confine of my backyard. So the happiest I can remember being is playing baseball, by myself, with my trusty whiffle bat and small cheap glove. I didn't understand "friendship" then. It was a foreign concept to me. I still have a hard time making friends. I was so damn happy then because I had no idea what I was missing.

If I ever saw a video of my young friendless, lonely self now, I'd probably cry.

5. Peanut Butter: Crunchy, creamy or allergic to peanuts?
Creamy. Are you kidding me? I grew up on the stuff. You know you have a serious problem when a PB&J sandwich on Wonder Bread doesn't make you feel at least a little bit better.

The chunky stuff got caught in my teeth.

Volunteer to let me interview you next, or I'll just send you questions at random.

Touchdown!

2005-08-10T01:02:00.000-04:00

"Return To Flight" Returns Home Safe

Discovery lands at Edwards AFB at 7:11 AM this morning. (NASA)

Welcome home, Discovery.

Marchand Chronicles: High Gas Prices

2005-08-09T16:54:00.000-04:00

Getting "S-crude"
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
August 8, 2005

$2.55⁹.

The gas pump couldn't have shocked me any more unless it actually hit me in the face with the nozzle.

My day job depends on a lot of (unreimbursed) travel, so I dread when the gasoline price spikes, as it did to the tune of a quarter per gallon this morning.

But what I dislike even more are the ridiculous ideas people come up with whenever the laws of supply and demand don't work in their favor.

People: the rise in gas prices is not a conspiracy. It's not a hoax by Big Oil to shake you down for cash. There are reasonable explanations for every penny that goes into the price.

Nearly half of the pump price is comprised of the cost of crude oil. Crude recently spiked at over $60 per barrel. There are 42 gallons in a barrel, so of the $2.55⁹/gallon cost in my neighborhood, about a buck-fifty of it was needed just to purchase the crude oil.

Crude oil prices are market-based. While it's possible to game the market, for the most part, market prices reflect the economic reality of supply and demand. When demand outpaces supply, as it is right now, the price goes up, as it has.

This has caused many people to blame the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), especially the Middle East nations that make up the majority of their members, for the high market value of crude. This is only partially true; only one-fifth of American gas comes from Middle Eastern crude oil shipments, but OPEC dominates the world market and therefore has the largest say in the day-to-day rise and fall of the price.

The next process in the chain is refinery, followed by transport and finally sales. In each case, just as in the price of crude, the people responsible are limited by markets. In fact, what you pay at the pump is often sold at less than true cost because of "fuel duels" between competing stations. No, the secondary culprit for gas prices, after the price of crude, is taxes.

That's right: Uncle Sam and his fifty-one nephews (one of them's adopted) slap a massive surcharge on gasoline. The national average is 44¢/gallon.*** As the price of crude continues to rise, that tax represents less of the price of gas as a percentage, but even at $2.55⁹/gallon, the tax rate on gas is over 17%.

There's a federal gas tax of 18.4¢/gal. There's state sales taxes. There's state excise taxes. There's state taxes addressed for environmental hazards. There's local and municipal taxes in many areas. Oil companies and gas stations are limited by the markets for how much they can charge; drilling, extracting, transporting, refining, more transporting, storage and sales all cost money. But the government takes its money — our money — without effort. They don't even pay anyone to collect the tax. So if you're upset about the high price of gas, consider petitioning your local or state government.

Here in Indiana, though, taxes aren't the problem. Combined federal and state taxes total 44.1¢/gal, just barely over the national average. But the average nationwide price for a gallon of unleaded is $2.36⁹. Since the price of crude, transportation, and sales are more or less equivalent nationwide, the problem is in the refining. Here, once again, the "invisible foot" of government has punted this up.

As noted before, the economic law of supply and demand is incontrovertible. But thanks to government regulations, U.S. gasoline is not uniform nationwide. Depending on where and when you pump, you are putting one of over 40 different formulations of gasoline in your vehicle, mostly based on environmental guidelines. This splinters the total supply and raises the prices. Worse, areas with rare blends that suffer problems in the refinery or transport process will see the cost skyrocket dramatically. For example, in August 2003, the price of gas in Phoenix jumped to as high as $3.79/gallon after a pipeline rupture choked off the supply.

The gas that's $2.55⁹ here is the same environmentally-friendlier, ethanol-based formula used in the Chicago metro area. Its rarity is the reason why it's nearly twenty cents higher per gallon.

Customers fed up with the high price of gas have clamored for the government to "do something." This stems from the belief that they're being gouged by the private sector. Nothing could be further from the truth: the market price can't be changed, but taxes and regulations can. While price fixing has happened (several arrests were made of owners who jacked up prices following the September 11 attacks), for the most part, the government is powerless. Crude oil prices are set by the market; more refineries can't be built because of Not-In-My-Backyard disagreements; rare gas blends can't be eliminated because of environmental concerns; and exploratory avenues for domestic production, like offshore derricks or opening the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR) for drilling, are hot-button political controversies. In fact, the recent energy bill had the ANWR provisions stripped to ensure Congressional passage.

In order to get lower prices, a tradeoff will have to be made in lower tax rates or environmental protections. Until then, we're stuck. Get used to it.

*** Forty-four cents per gallon is an average by state. But since the most populous states (California, New York) tend to have higher state tax rates and the least populous states (Wyoming, Alaska) have some of the lowest rates, the average per pump is actually higher. Back

Yawn

2005-08-07T01:33:00.000-04:00

(Crossposted at Steal The Blinds.)

I've Discovered The Secret To Winning At Poker . . .

. . . getting good cards.

Seriously.

It's tough to win otherwise.

This afternoon, I was in yet another satellite to the WPT Borgata Poker Open. At least, I thought I was. In reality, I spent two hours playing "Texas Fold'em." Aside from the occasional blind steal, I won just two hands all tourney: once when I tried to steal with K¨/3¨, flopped two pair with 5/5/3, went all-in and wound up winning with a backdoor flush; and another when I won a coin flip holding pocket fours.

I busted out after I misread another player who went all-in preflop. I held A¨/J¨ and figured I had a coin flip; he had A/K instead. If that weren't bad enough, another player holding A/J joined the party, so I was dead to two outs. After I lost that pot, I had less than the big blind and was pretty much toast. (I was officially busted out by another A/K. Man, what is it with that hand??)

I still finished in 58th place out of 246 players.

I wonder how well I could have done if I had a decent hand or two.

(Edited 8/7 12:22 PM to add the Steal The Blinds link.)

Al Franken's Next Book

2005-08-06T01:33:00.000-04:00

If He Were Consistent, That Is

(click to enlarge)

If you haven't heard about this, The Radio Equalizer is all over it. (He liked the pic so much he used it in his most recent post. Thanks, Brian!)

And don't get all pedantic on me; I know to be gramatically consistent, the title should be Thefts and not Thieves. Too bad. Thieves sounds better.

(Edited 8/6 1:00 AM to fix the pic/link. Re-edited 8/7 12:20 AM to add the new TRE link.)

Atkins, Inc. Sinks

2005-08-03T15:45:00.000-04:00

Figures, Since Fat Floats

On Sunday, Atkins Nutritionals, Inc. filed for Chapter 11 Bankruptcy Protection.

This is seen as a great victory by those industries whose products Atkins warned dieters to be wary of, but they're wrong: ANI's demise is NOT a repudiation of the Atkins diet or the low-carb lifestyle in general.

It's purely business. ANI product popularity soared when low-carb dieting became a fashionable trend, and their bubble burst when mega-conglomerate competitors like Kraft flooded the market with low-carb offerings (and also when morons gave up on low-carb because they thought eating an Atkins bar along with their regular horrible diet would still work). They grew quickly and couldn't adapt to the shrinkage. It's a classic business story.

So, one more time, for misinformed or ignorant dolts like the ones quoted in print saying idiotic things like "It just proves that what Atkins was trying to do was just too extreme" and "I hope people will remember that restrictive dieting is temporary, and a healthy eating style you can take with you forever": low-carb is here to stay, and when ANI retools, me and a couple million other Americans will still be buying. And for God's sake, educate yourself before you make dumb statements.

As for my personal progress, I've been on Atkins for a little more than six weeks and probably have lost somewhere in the neighborhood of 25-30 pounds. I don't know for sure because I didn't weigh myself before beginning, nor have I since. While this might seem silly, I have two very good reasons: 1. Knowing what my weight is would probably demoralize me and I'd throw myself in traffic, and 2. it's tough to find scales intended for livestock, even here in Indiana.

Filling The Gaps

2005-08-03T14:51:00.000-04:00

Houston, We're Fixing The Damn Problem

When the space shuttle Columbia lifted off in mid-January 2003, nobody suspected that the crew was already doomed. Insulation foam from the external tank detached during launch and struck tiles on the left wing of the shuttle. This irreperably compromised Columbia's ability to reenter Earth's atmosphere.

External tank insulation also fell off during the launch of Discovery. But because this mission has a thousand eyes on it all the time, NASA was quickly able to determine that the foam did not hit the shuttle. However, the insulation problem was what NASA spent the last 2½ years trying to fix, so they indefinitely grounded the rest of the fleet.

Discovery lifts off on July 26. (AP)

However, Mission Control soon discovered a new problem for Discovery: small "gap-fillers" in between the ceramic tiles on the underside of the ship near the nose cone were protruding from the shuttle. NASA frequently noted after a landing that sometimes these gap-fillers would stick out an inch or so from the belly of the craft. However, they'd never discovered this phenomenon while the ship was still in orbit.

These gap-fillers are only necessary for liftoff, to keep the tiles from colliding with each other during the incredible amount of vibration as the shuttle thrusts upwards. However, the small protrusions could affect Discovery's reentry.

So, being a clever and imaginative bunch, NASA ordered the astronauts to boldly go where no one has gone before: on a spacewalk under the shuttle. Early this morning, Mission Specialist Steve Robinson dangled from a robotic arm underneath Discovery's belly to pull out the gap fillers or, failing that, cut them off with a modified hacksaw.

It never came to that.

Steve Robinson maneuvers under Discovery to remove gap fillers early this morning. (AP/NASA)

Believe it or not, there's now yet another problem: part of Discovery's thermal insulation blanket is sticking out from below the pilot's window.

The thermal insulation blanket is protruding out more than 1½ feet. (Reuters/NASA)

Mission Control is postponing a decision about that until tomorrow. Discovery is set to land early Monday morning.

While the shuttle missions are not 100% safe, NASA is taking a proactive approach to fixing problems.

SciGuy liveblogged this morning's spacewalk and is the go-to site for updates on Discovery.

Marchand Chronicles: Judge Roberts' Hearings

2005-08-02T16:57:00.000-04:00

Schumer's Inquisition
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
August 1, 2005

[I]t is vital that Judge Roberts answer a wide range of questions openly, honestly and fully in the coming months. His views will affect a generation of Americans, and it his obligation during the nomination process to let the American people know those views . . . I voted against Judge Roberts for the D.C. Court of Appeals because he didn't answer questions fully and openly when he appeared before the committee . . . But now it's a whole new ball game for those of us who voted against him, for those of us who voted for him and for Judge Roberts. I hope Judge Roberts, understanding how important this nomination is — particularly when replacing a swing vote on the court — will decide to answer questions about his views. Now that he is nominated for a position where he can overturn precedent and make law, it is even more important that he fully answers a broad range of questions.

. . .

And so, therefore, not only should he be fully answering questions about his own views, but we will — we hope we don't have to go through what happened with Miguel Estrada, when we asked for some of the papers and arguments when they worked in the Justice Department, that we didn't get them. It's going to be very important, particularly for a Supreme Court nominee replacing a swing vote on a divided court, that we get all the information and people don't throw up barriers to that information . . . [T]hat's what caused the entire Senate not to — or many in the Senate not to support Miguel Estrada. That's what caused me not to vote for him then, not to vote for Judge Roberts then. But as I said, it's a new ball game. And as long as he answers the questions fully and openly and gives us the documents that we request, we can be able to explore his views.

—Senator Charles Schumer (D-NY), July 19, 2005, at a press conference following the nomination of Judge John Roberts to the Supreme Court (h/t: AYCU)

It was only moments after President Bush announced John G. Roberts as his nominee to the Supreme Court that Chuck Schumer tipped his hand on how the Democrats would oppose him. This tactic is not new: merely hours after Robert Bork was nominated in 1987, Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) delivered a vitriolic screed on the Senate floor that, although it was completely over-the-cliff rhetorically, devastated Bork's chances of confirmation.

Within minutes of Roberts' nomination, the Democrats had these templates for judicial opposition stamped and ready to roll off the assembly line. Their obstruction comes in two flavors: Bork and Estrada.

The trouble is, neither one of them will work, since neither of them will rise to the level of "extraordinary circumstances" that would justify a filibuster following the "Gang Of 14" compromise in May.

Conservatives are already promoting what they call the "Ginsburg Rule" for John Roberts when he attends his hearing. When Ruth Bader Ginsburg was examined in 1993, her steadfast answer when questioned on how she'd decide hypothetical cases was "no hints, no forecasts, no previews." Ginsburg didn't invent this defense; four of the last five justices confirmed to the Supreme Court (Kennedy, Souter, Ginsburg, Breyer) explicitly stated during hearings that they could not and would not answer questions that would compromise their judicial integrity. They were all confirmed with less than ten dissenting votes in the entire Senate.

This is more than an evasive maneuver; it's of the utmost importance that judges hear all cases before them with an open mind (in fact, Senator Patrick Leahy [D-VT] praised outgoing Justice Sandra Day O'Connor for that characteristic just before Schumer announced his litmus tests). However, the Democrats want to have it both ways: an impartial jurist who sacrifices his ability to examine cases without prejudgment while under the klieg lights. This is an impossibility, but the Democrats think they've found a win-win scenario: if Roberts answers the questions, he'll be lumped in with Robert Bork; if not, he'll be accused of being secretive about his true views and therefore an extremist . . . like Robert Bork.

As for the "documents" Senator Schumer wishes to see about John Roberts, those date back to his time in the Solicitor General's office. Ordinarily, these sensitive memos would be protected by attorney-client privilege. It's unclear just how they'd matter, as Solicitors General work at the behest of the Administrations they serve and not by their own views; furthermore, Roberts was merely a deputy in the SG's office.

But that scarcely matters to Democrats: the reluctance to release confidential documents served as the basis for the filibusters of the nominations of Miguel Estrada and, later, John Bolton to the ambassadorship at the UN. Last week, when the Bush Administration unloaded 75,000 pages of documents from Roberts' time at the White House Counsel's Office, it still wasn't enough. "What are they trying to hide?" asked lefty group People For The American Way in a press release. The answer: it doesn't matter. Every living Solicitor General, employees of Republicans and Democrats alike, urged that these privileged documents stay sealed during Estrada's hearing in 2002. To this day, they have not changed their position.

Because of the "Gang Of 14" compromise, Democrats have a rhetorically vague but conceptually definable line of "extraordinary circumstances" that they must prove to justify a filibuster. But they can't establish "extraordinary circumstances" with the only two tricks in their book. In fact, forcing nominees to make pledges on their views or release confidential documents are the only extraordinary actions taking place.

In the end, John Roberts will be neither Borked nor Estradified. There's only one other model they've tried, and it’s for emergency use only. While some drunk-on-Kool-Aid lefties have already tested it, let's just hope Roberts won't be Thomassed, either.

Cowboy Up

2005-07-31T19:49:00.000-04:00

Are There Cowboys In New Jersey?

(This entry crossposted at Steal The Blinds.)

Because I'm a masochist, I'm again trying to get into the WPT Borgata Poker Open. I skipped one of my usual steps, though, and actually ponied up the $26 for the minisatellite instead of winning a $4.40 miniminisatellite to get there.

I had outrageously good cards and was the tournament chip leader for a while. In the 2½ hours I was playing, I caught A/A twice and K/K several times. This post concerns my adventures with them cowboys in the stretch of 30 minutes.

K/K is a powerful hand, the second strongest hand in Hold'em. Unfortunately, it is often a vulnerable hand.

With the blinds at 60/120, I found Kª/K¨ under the gun. At the time I'd just been knocked off the chip lead because I couldn't make my flush in a previous hand. But I still had over 3500 chips. I raised with my cowboys, to an even 300. Everyone folded to the big blind (who I'll call "Roy Rogers"), who called.

The flop came 9¨/Q¨/Q©. A good flop for my hand: I'm behind only a queen or A/A, and even if Roy had me beat I can still catch a king or two running cards to fill a straight or flush. He checked and I made a pot-size bet of 660. Although I figured I was ahead in the hand, if Roy had a one-card draw, I didn't want him to see it for cheap.

He raised all-in, for 2329 more. I called instantly, because anyone with a Q would slowplay it, definitely, for sure, absolutely . . . right?

He had Q§/8©. Ouch. Guess not. The turn and river were 2© and 5© respectively and suddenly I was short-stacked. If I had raised more before the flop, I might have pushed him off his marginal hand, but I couldn't worry about that now.

Six hands later, I had 8§/8¨ in middle position. In between, I got lucky enough to save my ass by splitting a pot I was dominated in (K/J vs. K/Q, the board showed two pair), then suck out and double up. In this hand, the player two seats to my right raised to 420, then Roy Rogers, who was on my immediate right, reraised to 720, and I pushed all of my 1500+ chips in. I was hoping they both had big cards so I would have a solid chance of tripling up (near 50% if one had A/K and the other A/Q), or that one of them would have pocket 9s or 10s and would give it up.

Not so lucky. The first raiser folded, but Roy called and turned over K§/Kª. Uh-oh.

The flop came Qª/2ª/8ª. I caught the card I needed, but I was still in danger, because he now had a flush draw; I was slightly less than a 2-1 favorite. The turn was 4§. The river was 5¨ and I doubled up.

The rollercoaster continued three hands later, when I found 9¨/9ª under the gun. I decided to just call the big blind in the hopes of flopping a set. The table short-stack, in middle position (whom I'll call . . . uh . . . I'm not big on famous cowboys, I can't think of another one . . . I got it: "Troy Aikman"), raised all-in for 1200. I called. He had K¨/K§. I couldn't beat the odds again and I was back down to the low-2000s.

Following that hand, this is what I typed in the chat window:

marchron: well, let's see, i've lost with kings
marchron: i've beaten someone holding kings
marchron: then i lost to someone holding kings
marchron: all i have to do is win with kings now and the cycle is complete

It was prescient. Ten hands later, after the blinds went up to 80/160, I found K©/K¨ in the big blind. Troy Aikman limped in. Roy Rogers limped in from the small blind. I raised to 700. They both folded.

It wasn't a big pot, but I did win. The cycle was complete.

As for the rest of the tourney, I got shafted by the table balance process, being placed at a table with the four biggest stacks while the table with six of the seven smallest stacks got some respite with each other and no whales around. The tournament leader made a very dumb call when I had a pair, and sucked out for a bigger pair to bust me. The top 9 made the main satellite, the next three cashed for a slight profit, and I finished in 14th, winning nothing but a good pokerblog post. Bastard.

I'll write a new essay tomorrow. I swear. Okay, I know I've let you down before, but I'm serious this time. With the help of a pamphlet I read about blog depression, I'm ready to conquer my malaise.

After all, admitting you have a problem is the first step towards recovery.

(Edit 8/1 11:16 PM to add the Steal The Blinds link.)

I'm Baaaaacckkk!

2005-07-26T02:21:00.000-04:00

What Did I Miss?

For the last, oh, couple of months, I've been too damn lazy to blog about events. Here's my half-assed attempt to catch up with them, just so in twenty years nobody will say to me, "How could you not blog about ________?"

THE GANG OF FOURTEEN "DEAL"
This was the first event that I deliberately skipped writing about, just because I wasn't sure how the fallout would shake down and didn't want to rush to one extreme and then have to take it all back.

Part of this was because I was very hedgy about the idea of whether or not to employ the "nuclear option" in the first place. At first, I didn't think it was a good idea, then clarified my position to "give the Democrats enough rope first," and that seemed to be happening. Senate Democrats were starting to lose their minds because the secret loophole that allowed them to take their obstruction to eleven was about to be countered by a rule which allowed the GOP to take obstruction-blocking to twelve.

The best example of this dramatic loss of all rationality and dignity was Robert Byrd (D-WV). On May 12, Byrd brought his King James Bible to the Senate floor and proceeded to tell the story of Haman, who was hanged in the gallows he built for someone else (Esther 7:10). I don't often go for the tired old cheap-shot insult, but the irony of a former KKK Kleagle threatening his opponents with being hanged, even if only metaphorically, was delicious.

But then seven Republicans conspired with seven Democrats to undercut the GOP's momentum on the issue. At first, I was upset: the Democrats simply had no right to pervert the filibuster and use it against judicial nominees. But the deal handed them that ability, checking it only by allowing it under "extraordinary circumstances," a vague and malleable phrase that could potentially be extended even to the size of John Bolton's mustache. However, I soon realized the many upsides: 1. Judges like Janice Rogers Brown were confirmed; 2. if the Democrats dare attempt a filibuster and justify it by "extraordinary circumstances" which defy common sense, the GOP will eat their lunch; 3. one less issue for the hard left to run against in 2006 and '08; 4. no blowback from Joe and Jane Q. Apolitical.

So count me in with Decision '08 and the rest of the Coalition Of The Chillin'. At worst, the deal kicked the can down the road until a Supreme Court nominee fight. Which brings me to . . .

SANDRA DAY O'CONNOR'S RETIREMENT
Eh. I neither hold her in revered esteem nor despise her to the core; I pray for the health of her husband, commend her for being much, much more than a novelty selection to the Supreme Court, and thank her for her service to this nation.

Plus, she did get the decision right in . . .

KELO v. NEW LONDON
I mean, come on. Even people who think the Constitution is a living, breathing document can't possibly claim that contained therein is a right for Starbucks to knock down a nursing home.

The one upside to the ruling is that eventually it will be extended to cyberspace, and I'll be able to yoink Oliver Willis' bandwidth and use it for a casino website.

JOHN ROBERTS' NOMINATION
I'm not packed to the gills with information on John Roberts and what kind of justice he'll make. I'm too lazy, and plus, reading legalese makes me want to guzzle a bottle of Drano. Hugh Hewitt likes him, and I'll take his word for it.

All I really care about is that he's a Constitutional originalist. The morning after Roberts' nomination, newspapers blared headlines like "Bush nominates conservative to Court". I couldn't care less.

Supreme Court nominations have always been quasi-political events, more so when FDR tried to pack the Court in the '30s. But since Robert Bork, they've been very very political. I hate it. All I want is a judge who won't take the Constitution, rip it up into individual words, and throw it against the wall to see what they can find. It's not the Bible Code, though the practice has all the legitimacy of it, which is to say none.

Other things I like about him:

1. He's an unabashedly white male. I'm glad the President didn't bend to the idea that a minority needed to replace a minority just because s/he's a minority.

2. Damn, his kid can dance.

3. He's a local boy. He spent his formative years in tiny Long Beach, Indiana, and went to high school at LaLumiere, a prep school in LaPorte. That's happy news for a region that deserves it, considering they're still worried about . . .

JEFF AKE
Still no news on his condition, though rumors were spreading that he had been released. Those have proven thus far to be unfounded. LaPorte's concern for Jeff Ake was visible in their Fourth of July parade.

THE WHOLE ROVE/PLAME THING
I refuse to call it "Plamegate" and I agree with Hog On Ice that anybody who uses the phrase "The Plame Game" should have a grenade dropped in their pants.

As soon as this news broke, I decided I was going to refuse to blog substantively about it until it actually rose to the level of a scandal.

Yep.

MICHAEL JACKSON ACQUITTED
For some reason, people couldn't believe he walked. I could; his accusers were lawsuit grifters. The issue wasn't whether or not Jacko is a depraved creep, because he is, but whether he committed this assault beyond a reasonable doubt. The jury rightly came to the conclusion that he did not.

I actually don't think Jacko is guilty. For whatever weird reason, his brain ceased to mature after about age 12. Hence his almost prepubescent preoccupation with living in an amusement park and hosting no-girls-allowed sleepovers. Whatever happened there is, sad to say, not the work of a sexual deviant but, in Jacko's twisted mind, harmless experimentation. I mean, come on, he's a freak, not a sexual predator.

Why his lawyer didn't claim an insanity defense is beyond me.

DANISH PROTEST SUPERMODELS™ DISCOVERED

Hat tip: Power Line.

I GOT THE THIRD SEASON OF 24 ON DVD FOR MY BIRTHDAY
And if you'll excuse me, I think I'll watch it now. It's good stuff. I wish I'd been able to see it when it aired.

Broken Promises

2005-07-24T16:05:00.000-04:00

But At Least I'm Making Cake

A few posts ago, I said, and I quote, "I promise I'll get off this poker kick soon."

I, uh, lied.

But the good news is that I am making a ton of money. After I busted out of the WSOP satellite, I had $15 left in my account at Full Tilt. I've since added $200. That may not seem like a lot of money, but it's a healthy clip for three weeks at 25¢/50¢ and 50¢/$1 tables.

In addition, I also qualified for a satellite to the World Poker Tour's Borgata Poker Open, to be held in September. The Borgata is the stomping grounds of INCITE's Beck, and he's told me a lot about the casino. (Well, actually, the only thing I really remember is that, in his expert opinion, they have the best-looking cocktail waitresses in Atlantic City, which is more than good enough for me.) True to form, I earned my $216 satellite seat on the cheap, winning a $4.40 miniminisatellite and finishing fifth in the $26 minisatellite to qualify.

I met Mr. Minbet at the $26 minisatellite. He's a very sneaky player. I call him "Mr. Minbet" because he almost always bet or raised the minimum amount. At a no-limit table, the minimum bet is equal to the big blind. The minimum you can raise to is double the big blind. So, if the blinds were 50/100, he'd almost always raise to 200 before the flop and only fire out bets of 100. This is not always tactically smart but is very deceptive. If someone is betting the minimum at you, they may have a mediocre hand; they could, however, be holding a monster and are just begging you to raise them.

He did that to me in the $26 mini. He was on my left, and I found K/9 in the small blind. I figured it was a good enough hand to steal his big blind, so I raised. He called. The flop came king-high, and top pair is usually an excellent hand if only the blinds are playing. I checked. He min-bet. I put him all-in. He called. He had aces. That blow crippled me, but I was able to scratch and claw (and luck) my way back into qualifying for the satellite.

Fate brought Mr. Minbet and I together there, but this time, I was on his left, two seats to be precise. Early in the tourney, I found A¨/Qª in the big blind (the blinds were 20/40). A middle position player limped in, Mr. Minbet limped from the button, the small blind completed, and I decided to check, hoping to clobber someone with an ace and a smaller kicker.

The flop came Aª/8¨/J¨. Good flop, but the flush draw was worrisome. So I decided to ditch the fancy stuff and take the pot down immediately. After the small blind checked, I bet 160, equal to the size of the pot. The first limper folded, Mr. Minbet called, the small blind folded and I scratched my head. What's he holding? A draw? He wouldn't have the odds to call unless he had a straight-and-a-flush draw, or maybe a pair plus a draw. Or . . . he has A/J and is waiting for me to press. That seems likely.

The turn was Q©. Bingo! Prepare to be owned, Mr. Minbet. I checked, and he bet 120. Not the minimum (40), but still a dinky bet into a pot that was already 480. I raised all of my 2000-some chips, and he called with the 1110 he had left.

He had Q¨/4¨. A flush draw that paired up on the turn, but I had two pair. Wonderful! All I need is to dodge a diamond and I can rid myself of this festering little pain in my as—

5¨. He made his flush. My first thought was That little sonofa . . . but then I remembered that I invited this disaster by not raising before the flop to get him to fold his junk hand. The flop call was loose, but from the big blind I could have had anything, so his flush draw was probably good and his Q might even have been a live out.

I spent the next hour trying not to get eaten alive with my depleted stack. The blinds escalated to 60/120, and I found 10§/9§ in the big blind. Suited connectors aren't my favorite hands, but if I can see a cheap flop I'll play with them. As it turned out, the cutoff position limped in, Mr. Minbet limped again from the button, the small blind completed, and I got to see the flop for free.

It came 8§/K§/6¨. I had a short stack (10% of it was already in the pot as the blind) and a one-card draw. I was going to go to war on this hand, but I made a pot-size bet of 480 in the hope that everyone folded, and everyone did — except Mr. Minbet, who put me all-in.

I called immediately. He had 8©/6©. Two pair. I had to call no matter what because, like I said, it was double-up-or-bust for me at that point. But, analyzing it after the fact, it was a perfectly good call. I had a flush draw and an inside straight draw, giving me 13 outs. A player with thirteen outs has a 48.1% chance of hitting his hand. Practically even money (I still had to worry about him filling up a full house), and certainly just about as good as I could hope for.

The turn was 7©. There's my straight. Cross your fingers, here comes the river . . .

5¨ again. Whew. Doubled up.

That was the last time I tangled with Mr. Minbet. I won a couple more hands and got into the low teens on the leaderboard (top 4 went to Atlantic City, next 5 cashed), but foolishly gave away a large chunk of my chips when I didn't follow my read on a hyperagressive player (even more aggressive than me, which is rare) and folded a pot that, since he showed his cards, I would have split with him: we both had A/J. In fact, I had the better hand since I still had a backdoor flush possibility (the flop was all undercards with two diamonds, and my ace was a diamond). But I gave it up because I was afraid of A/K or A/Q.

After that, I was in trouble, and busted out when I went all-in with K/Q and ran into A/Q. IGHN, in 86th place out of 282. No hot cocktail waitresses for me. *sniff*

There are two more satellites, though. :D

I swear on the only Instalanche I've ever received that I will start writing more about things unrelated to cards. Just not today. It's 100º outside (okay, 94º, but with the heat index it's 112º) and my air conditioner is only good for my bedroom. So I'm not sitting out here in the office to bake while I rack my brain to think of something clever to say about Karl Rove. I'll rack my brain in my 68º bedroom, thank you.

Also, brandonw1 from FTP: shoot me an e-mail at marchandchronicles -at- yahoo.com so I can arrange to send you something for signing up with me.

NASA's Present To Me Postponed

2005-07-13T15:56:00.001-04:00

Blah Blah, "Safety Reasons," Whatever

At 2:51 PM Marchron World HQ Time, the Space Shuttle Discovery was set to blast off, the first shuttle mission since the breakup of Columbia in February 2003.

It was postponed, at least until Monday, because of a faulty fuel sensor.

Sigh.

Safety is and has always been the utmost concern, but damn, that would have been a cool birthday present.

I'll consider it a belated birthday present now.

SciGuy was liveblogging the launch sequence today, and I imagine he will do so whenever Discovery actually lifts off. Here's the lowdown on why today's launch was postponed.

And BlondeChampagne has a deep love for all things NASA.

Happy Birthday To Me

2005-07-13T01:09:00.000-04:00

What Did YOU Get Me?

At 3:15 PM, I will have existed on this planet, successfully exchanging oxygen for carbon dioxide, for a quarter-century.

Donations are welcome.

But no cake, please: I'm on Atkins.

London

2005-07-08T04:15:00.000-04:00

"We Shall Prevail . . . And They Shall Not." — Tony Blair

(Profanity warning.)

I think I might just be angrier today than I was on September 11. Or perhaps I'm simply missing the sadness and shock I felt on 9/11.

I've always been the kind of person who cared more for my friends than myself. You wanna spit in my face, call me every vulgar name in the book and curse the day I was born? Fine. But you come after my friends, and my first thought is I will fuckin' kick your ass.

Fortunately (well, unfortunately, for these murdering bastards), if there's one nation willing to stand up and crack skulls in its own defense, it's Great Britain. They have gone through far worse, and now al-Qaeda has once again written a check its ass can't cash. They already had their hands full with the CIA and the Navy SEALs, now the SAS and MI5 will be all over them.

When London's mayor, the way-lefty "Red" Ken Livingstone, says something like Whatever you do, however many you kill, you will fail. . . . it's obvious that the Brits will fight back, and fight back hard.

An even more succinct response came from Britblogger Tim Worstall:

But you threaten us, try to kill us? Kill and injure some of us?

Fuck you, sunshine.

We'll not be having that.

No grand demonstrations, few warlike chants, a desire for revenge, of course, but the reaction of the average man and woman in the street? Yes, you've tried it now bugger off. We're not scared, no, you won't change us. Even if we are scared, you can still bugger off.

But the ultimate quote came from Donald Rumsfeld:

But if these terrorists thought they could intimidate the people of a great nation, they picked the wrong people and the wrong nation. For generations, tyrants, fascists, and terrorists have sought to carry out their violent designs upon the British people only to founder upon its unrelenting shores. Before long, I suspect that those responsible for these acts will encounter British steel. Their kind of steel has an uncommon strength. It does not bend or break.

And they will regret it.

Publius has the story of the first-ever raising of a foreign flag at the U.S. State Department:

Many bloggers are echoing this respect by displaying the Union Jack on their blogs. I've harnessed my limited Photoshop skills to fashion a ribbon similar to the Stars-and-Stripes ribbons that were displayed after 9/11. Feel free to download and use them:

Also, Tigerhawk has a transcribed interview with Rudy Giuliani, who was in London yesterday.

And, just to illustrate the kind of response that will be demanded but unheeded, Ace crafted a Bizarro-World James Bond script.

It's now been a little more than 24 hours since the attack. God Save The Queen, and everyone else in Britain.

No WSOP For Me

2005-07-04T05:44:00.000-04:00

At Least Not THIS Year

It was time for the last roundup. The train to Vegas' departure was imminent, and 265 brave souls ponied up $200 to try to get a ticket. The top four finishers would be in the WSOP Main Event, and the next three would get a fat stack of cash for their efforts ($2500, $1500, and $1000 respectively).

I was as high as sixth at one point, but I lost a significant amount of chips on one hand. Holding 10/7 with a board of 10/9/8/4, I had top pair and a open-end straight draw. I made a healthy bet on the turn, and watched my opponents — both of whom had more chips than me — BOTH go all-in. I figured top pair was no good and mucked. I was wrong: they held A/Q and A/K. However, the river was a king, so I did save myself from getting busted.

When I made my fateful move I had 5035 chips, which put me in the middle of the pack on the tournament leaderboard, but that didn't mean much. With the blinds at 200/400 plus a 50-chip ante, and the big stacks racing over 30,000 chips, I needed to double up and do it fast.

So when I found A©/K§ at the cutoff position, I knew I had to draw the line. I don't subscribe to the superstitious belief in "unlucky hands," but if I did, that A/K would have made me cringe. Not only did I lose with Big Slick in the $75 minisatellite I detailed in my last poker post, I also bought it holding A/K in a $26 mini on Saturday night (lost to A/Q of all hands), then got whacked on three consecutive hands by A/K in yet another mini to qualify for this "Last Roundup" tourney (twice I had pocket pairs and was a favorite). To top it all off, that A/K holding stole a bunch of my chips earlier, but I was lucky enough to avoid the mojo that time.

But I couldn't let superstition spook me out of this pot. I raised to 1800, hoping for action, since I was no longer content with stealing the antes and blinds to tread water. The player on my left was, at the time, ranked #3 on the tourney chip count, and reraised enough to put me all-in.

Groovy. I called.

He had Q¨/Qª.

Not good. I was a 57-43 underdog. I was really hoping he also had two big cards and was reading me for a small pair.

The flop was unhelpful: 5ª/7©/5§. My odds shrunk to 1-in-4.

The turn was J¨. Only 13% odds to survive.

Just to twist the dagger, the river was Q©. IGHN, in 58th place.

Not that this tourney wasn't completely devoid of moments that boosted my poker ego. Here's a screenshot of me having more than twice the chips of poker pro Paul Wolfe:

(click for full-size)

Of course, as you can see, plenty of players had more than twice the chips of poker pro Paul Wolfe. It's tough being a pro at FTP, since all pros have bounties on their heads. Bust one and you make your buy-in back. I never got the chance, though he did steal my big blind once. None of the three pros finished higher than 151st.

So no vacation in Vegas for me. At least not this year; but next Sunday FTP is giving away a seat to the 2006 Main Event!

P.S. I promise I'll get off this poker kick soon. I might even write and post a special 4th-of-July essay; that is, if I can get to sleep. Living two blocks from a 24-hour fireworks shop means Roman Candles 'round-the-clock.

Marchand Chronicles: Senator Durbin's Comments

2005-06-22T16:51:00.000-04:00

Tortured Logic
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
June 20, 2005

Godwin's Law: As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches one.

If I read this to you and did not tell you that it was an FBI agent describing what Americans had done to prisoners in their control, you would most certainly believe this must have been done by Nazis, Soviets in their gulags, or some mad regime —Pol Pot or others — that had no concern for human beings. Sadly, that is not the case. This was the action of Americans in the treatment of their prisoners.
— Senator Richard Durbin (D-IL), June 14, 2005

Not only did Senator Durbin breach the real-world version of Godwin's Law, he hit a trifecta.

Since Durbin made his remarks last week, much of the controversy has surrounded what should be done to him: should he be censured? Should he be stripped of his leadership position as Democratic Party Whip? Should he resign from the Senate? Should he be forced to host some of the Gitmo detainees at his home?

To be perfectly honest, I couldn't care less. Dick Durbin was an irrelevant nobody beforehand, and as his words echoed throughout the world, he continued to shrink in irrelevance. What's important now is that this meme of Americans-as-Nazis has now gained some legitimacy. It needs to be countered.

Durbin's statement is wrong even on its own merits. The Nazis, Soviets, or Khmer Rouge were not known for their propensities to bombard prisoners with rap music until they soiled themselves; they earned their places in the dark annals of history for actions far, far worse. Even on their kindest days, their actions are no analogy to what's going on in Camp X-Ray. If Pol Pot popped seventeen Zoloft, guzzled a chai latte, lit some aromatherapy candles and listened to an Enya CD, he still was far more brutal than Gitmo interrogators, on a scale so far beyond in orders of magnitude that the comparison is ridiculous. It's not comparing apples to oranges; it's comparing apples to asteroids.

Most of the time someone attempts to force a crude moral equivalency between the United States and some barbaric regime, they base it on some other equivalency. For example, there was a school of thought during the early days of the War On Terror that if it ever reached a point where more innocent civilians were killed through "collateral damage" than there were victims on 9/11, then the war had lost its moral legitimacy. This was a ludicrous suggestion, but even that outranks this current fallacious argument: sensory deprivation and poor climate control equal three despotic tyrannies that have extinguished more than twenty million human lives between them.

Repulsive as this line of reasoning is, even if we grant that premise, the U.S. still comes out ahead because of context. The palace of human skulls Pol Pot stacked up weren't all of terrorists. The Nazis didn't march six million Jews to the gas chambers at Auschwitz and elsewhere because they threatened to destroy the Third Reich. And while dissident freethinkers like Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn represented a threat to the gulags in the Soviet Union, it certainly was not a violent one. But that matters not to the moral titans who seem to earnestly believe that how Americans treat hardcore terrorists is in any way comparable to how repressive dictators murder innocents. Making jihadis poop themselves is now analogous to making lampshades from the skin of slaughtered victims. Gotcha.

Worse yet is the undeniable propaganda victory people like Senator Durbin has handed to our enemies. As much as the culture of the jihadi is stunted and backward, they themselves are savvy and clever. Al-Jazeera picked up on the Durbin flap on June 16, with a full account of Durbin's criticism. Thanks to that, any shrewd terrorist, no matter what he does that lands him at Guantanamo Bay, now knows that even a sitting U.S. Senator will rush to his defense if his treatment is in any way insensitive, and liken his captors to the most vile oppressors in all of human history.

Durbin's defenders have risen to state that while his comments might have been over-the-top (and I emphasize "might" — many have lent Durbin their full backing on his entire jeremiad), it is unbecoming of the U.S. military to engage in systematic torture. That is a debate worth having — but it's marred whenever some unhinged loon attempts to spraypaint the swastika on the American flag. The purpose of Godwin's Law (or, more specifically, its corollaries which state that anyone who invokes the Nazis automatically loses the argument) is precisely to discourage foolish and illegitimate comparisons to Hitler so that when the argument is legitimately made, it carries all the weight and gravity that it should.

The U.S. military is NOT behaving like the Nazis, Soviets, or Khmer Rouge. To assert so undermines our cause and slanders our troops — no matter how the asserter might justify his remarks.

Big Slick In Action

2005-06-18T03:25:00.000-04:00

Another Damn Poker Post

Jaxia of Steal The Blinds was kind enough to usher readers here during a small hiatus. Unfortunately, she neglected to inform her readers that I was in the midst of an even larger hiatus. If you've arrived here from her site, I apologize for, well, everything.

I promise that I'll make up for my extended vacations and my lack of posts about relevant topics very very soon. Until then, here's another headscratcher for you online tourney afficionadoes:

Unlike my last minisatellite experience, where I was merely grinding and surviving just to try to qualify, on this night I was doing exceptionally well. The top 5 players would receive the $535 superbig satellite buy-in, with the next three finishers cashing for a slight profit. Through solid play and some luck, I'd been dancing in the Top 5 for most of the tourney; however, the cards had been running pretty thin, and I lost about a third of my chips on a blind steal gone awry.

I was unconcerned, though, knowing I was overdue for a big hand, and I got it in the form of Aª/Kª, at the cutoff position. There were 16 players left. The player two seats to my right, the shortest stack at the table, went all-in immediately. I figured him for a small pocket pair and just hoping to double up; I intended to oblige him, except that the player on my immediate right went all in himself. He had exactly 55 chips more than me. This is trouble.

BUT: if either one of them had A/A or K/K, chances are they would have played it slower. At this point in the tourney, nearly every hand was an attempted blind steal, so if either one of them got their hands on bullets or cowboys, odds are they would have slowplayed pre-flop just to get action. Therefore, the player on my immediate right had, at best, queens. Far more likely was that he had two big cards, just as I did, and was staking his claim to busting Short-Stack by pushing all his chips in and forcing everyone else to fold.

No matter what, I'm around a 37% favorite to double up plus half again. I didn't know this exactly at the time; I'm running the scenarios through a hand simulator. But I did know that I almost certainly had better than a one-in-three chance of winning; this gave me what poker nerds call a pot equity advantage, meaning that mathematically, getting all my chips in was the correct play.

Unfortunately, poker isn't played on paper; this meant my entire tournament, my best chance thus far of qualifying for a WSOP satellite on the supercheap, was riding on the line if I called all-in.

What's your move? Decide quickly! You only have 15 seconds. My play and the results of the hand are in invisible type below. Click and scroll to read:

When in doubt, put it out: I called.

Short-Stack had pocket sixes, as I expected. Claim-Staker had pocket queens, again not really a surprise. One of them was a spade, though, decreasing my odds slightly because one of my flush cards was out of play.

His queens held up: the board had two 8's, a queen, and two blanks. IGHN, in 15th place, with diddly squat for a prize.

If there's one thing that I am relieved about, it's that the river queen gave Claim-Staker the second nuts with queens full. Even if I had aces or kings, I would have lost the hand; the only hand that would have beat queens full was pocket 8's, and I certainly wouldn't have called holding that hand, with two all-ins in front of me.

How will I do next time? Stay tuned: same loser-time, same loser-channel!

More Poker

2005-06-06T17:54:00.000-04:00

Poker? I Don't Even Know Her!

I've abandoned my attempt to get into Full Tilt Poker's WSOP Freeroll. I need to rack up 10,000 points by Saturday, and I have just over 600. Don't think I'm going to make that one.

So I'm focused on winning their satellite tournaments, and since I'm obsessed with doing things on the cheap, I've discovered that the satellites actually have minisatellites, which in turn have miniminisatellites. Conceivably, I could get into the Series for as little as $4.40. There's a big satellite that runs every week with a $216 buy-in, and a super-big one on June 19 that will send at least 30 people to Vegas for a $535 buy-in.

I made it a step and a half last night, winning the minimini (despite intermittent server issues in a raging thunderstorm that caused me to miss several hands at a time) and getting oh-so-close to qualifying in the mini before being dealt a crippling blow when my A/10 lost to a suited A/8 because he made his flush.

After that, I settled at the 25¢/50¢ ring tables. I got humiliated at the $1/$2 level and figured pounding on some really terrible players at the quarter-half level would be just what the doctor ordered. I sat down with $10 and logged off two hours later with almost $25. Six of those dollars came from this hand:

I was in middle position with 9¨/8¨ and limped in to see the flop with three other players.

I don't trust suited connectors; all things being equal I'd rather play big cards. But when the flop came 10¨/7©/Q©, I had an open-ended straight draw. I bet with it and got two callers, one player immediately on my left and the player in the small blind.

The turn was 7¨. This paired the board but gave me an open-ended straight-flush draw. I've never had a straight flush. The thought gave me chills. I bet, the player on my right called, and the small blind raised. I immediately figured him for a 7, and, giddy over the prospect of a straight flush, reraised.

This was profoundly stupid. If I was right and he did have a 7, I'd need to hit the straight or the flush to win. If I still underestimated him and he already had a full house, I'd need the straight flush. All things considered, my odds were less than 30% to win, and there I went idiotically dumping more money on this hand — a good draw, yes, but as of that moment it was only nine high.

The poker gods, however, often reward the moronic, and after the player on my right folded and the small blind called, the river was 6¨. The heavenly chorus rumbled up, lions laid down with lambs, and unicorns and fairies reigned over all the universe, for I had a straight flush. He checked. I bet. He called.

He had 3©/7ª.

I told you they were really terrible.

Cubs Not Dead Yet

2005-06-01T16:48:00.000-04:00

Now Slightly Better Than Average

Even though Mark "The Franchise" Prior landed on the DL, the Cubs have finally figured things out. They've won five straight and eight of their last ten. Derrek Lee continues to sizzle; his .363-16-46 season leads the Triple Crown race.

Three reasons explain their current rise, in increasing order of importance:

1. Better hitting.

Last 5 games: .309 BA, 11.2 hits/game, 6.6 runs/game
Before: .261, 8.9, 4.2

The Cubs have unlocked the secret loophole to baseball: whichever team scores more runs at the end of nine innings automatically wins. They never had a huge problem with the pitching side, but the hitting has been frustrating. Granted, these robust numbers have been against the woeful Rockies and the sinking Dodgers, but you have to start somewhere.

2. Good karma.

You can give me billy goats, black cats, and Steve Bartman, but if the Cubs had a curse, its name was LaTroy Hawkins. Even when he pitched somewhat well, he lost. The Cubs invented ways to blow the game with two outs in the 9th with Hawkins on the hill. Last week the Cubs shipped him to San Francisco for two starters. Although I have no personal animosity towards Hawkins, the Cubs got a steal; I would have traded him for Barry Bonds' rookie card and a large pepperoni pizza.

3. Heavy threats.

Ignore both of the above. The real reason for the Cubs' recent success? Management said that if they lose again, they'll bring back Jeff Gordon to sing "Take Me Out To The Ballgame." Man, that was awful. (cheesehead salute: The Catholic Packer Fan)

UPDATE: Make that six straight victories, after the 9-5 win tonight polished off the three-game sweep of the Dodgers. Triple Crown leader Derrek Lee went 5-5 with a key late-inning three-run homer to keep the Cubs up for good.

Oh, and LaTroy Hawkins loaded the bases in the 8th inning while pitching for San Francisco against the Phillies; he then gave up a pinch-hit grand slam to Chase Utley. The Phillies won, 10-6.

Jeff Gordon is said to be in-studio working on an album with William Hung. -- MJM 6/2 3:05 AM

UPDATE II: The winning streak ended on Friday night, but the Cubs won the two weekenders to finish their West Coast road swing a robust 6-1. In their last ten games, they had more than 10 hits nine times, and won all of those games. Interleague matchups return this week, with a who-cares series with Toronto preceding the Red Sox-Cubs Curse-A-Palooza over the weekend. All billy goats get in for half-price. -- MJM 6/6 4:05 PM

The Real Reason It Took So Long To Post These Pictures

2005-06-01T05:59:00.000-04:00

I Had To Finish Off The Roll With Her

This is my goddaughter, Phoenix. She's 10 months old, and already she's thrilled to have her picture taken.

If you've ever wondered why I don't post pictures of myself here . . . that's me in the blue jeans.

PHOTO ALBUM: April 18, 2005, LaPorte, Indiana

2005-06-01T05:48:00.000-04:00

I Would Have Posted Them Sooner If I Had A Digital Camera

I'm not sure if all the messages are still there, but when I was in LaPorte, you didn't have to go far to find well-wishes for Jeff Ake:

(click any for full-size)

This was the first hotel on U.S. 35, well north of downtown.

Other businesses displayed the sign created by the Greater LaPorte Chamber Of Commerce:

I don't like this sign because it addresses Jeff, as if he had any power to "come home safe." I think my version was more to the point.

Other homemade banners seemed to be more on-target:

But the best tributes didn't have words:

The latter was at a house just a few blocks away from the Ake family home, which has since been sold.

PHOTO ALBUM: April 17, 2005, Lebanon, Indiana

2005-06-01T05:21:00.000-04:00

Hey, They Took A Long Time To Get Developed

(click any for full-size)

In my essay from Lebanon, Indiana, I said that the city "looked like it just fell out of a John Cougar Mellencamp music video." Here's the proof. This building is City Hall, the Police Department, and the smallish doohickey there says "Night Depository" on it, so it's either the library or the utility department, too.

You know you're in the heart of a red state when there's a tank on the street corner. This is the Indiana National Guard Armory for the 2nd Batallion, 150th Field Artillery, Charlie Battery. If Syria tried to invade and occupy Lebanon, Indiana, they'd never make it to the city limits.

Memorial Park takes up an entire square block. This is at the entrance, and I presume it's left at half-staff all year.

This is the magnificent Boone County Courthouse, erected in 1909. You know it's built sturdily when a "FALLOUT SHELTER" sign remains on one of the pillars:

Memorial Day

2005-05-31T14:59:00.000-04:00

I Love A Parade

It's cheesy to the max, but I'm always a sucker for our fair city's annual Memorial Day Parade. This year's was special because we also opened a new park right on the river named for our former mayor.

A local charity group also installed a field of 500 American flags, and then sold them off to raise funds.

More photos later tonight.

Marchand Chronicles: Newsweek & Pepsi

2005-05-25T16:19:00.000-04:00

Toilets And Middle Fingers
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
May 23, 2005

It's like the old (and dirty) joke: "You end two tyrannies, and you're not hailed as heroes. You free millions of people, and you're not considered liberators.

"But you flush one Koran . . ."

. . . and riots ensue that kill at least 17 people. Even worse was that the Koran-in-the-toilet factoid wasn't true: according to the correction on the Newsweek website, no evidence exists of any "Qur'an abuse" at Guantanamo Bay.

But even the rumor that a copy of the "Qur'an" had been flushed down the Qum'mode was enough to inflame the Islamic world to issue fatwas and vow jihad. Even if the story were accurate, it's still a telling observation about the "Arab Street" that when a brief blurb in a magazine on the other side of the world alleges the U.S. military engaged in "Qur'an abuse" — even though Gitmo detainees have themselves stuck Korans in toilets as a protest — they form riotous mobs that leave more than a dozen dead. While there is much to respect about a culture that treats their sacred texts as, well, sacred, their reaction to any insult by foreign "infidels" — whether real or not — says a lot more about them than it does about us.

In such an environment, would it not be an unreasonable suggestion to, say, American business school graduates, that in foreign environments they should be on their best behavior, lest their trespasses become international incidents?

Not if you're Indra Nooyi, president and CFO of PepsiCo. In her commencement address to the graduates of Columbia Business School (link: PDF) last week, she used a metaphor for the United States that represented both its vital status and its propensity to anger other nations: the middle finger.

While perhaps not the most delicate analogy (and probably somewhat anatomically inaccurate as well), it's a valid comparison if only because many of the world's citizens believe it. While she didn't explicitly mention nor even imply the riots spurred by the Newsweek report, it's a perfect backdrop to the reality of her speech: that slights, even perceived slights, have the potential to reflect badly on not just themselves, but the U.S. as a whole.

However, Ms. Nooyi's attempted symbolization of America as the middle finger angered many who considered the gesture outrageous and unpatriotic. After an apology in which she aptly noted that she had "proven her own point" about the dangers of being offensive, her critics still weren't impressed. Radio host and blogger Hugh Hewitt asked:

What's missing from this? How about any positive statement about what America does for the world, from liberating Afghanistan and Iraq to billions in tsunami relief? How about pouring AIDs relief into Africa and sending products, services, technology and trade around the globe. How about a full-throated defense of the country that analogizes it not to the middle finger but to the shoulders and spine of the planet, the last best hope of mankind.

Well, because it's not a foreign policy oration, it's a commencement address about international business.

But even if she had began the sentence immediately after the middle finger analogy with something like "The United States has done many things in its history which should dispel this perception . . ." she would still have to conclude, as she did, that "Unfortunately, I think this is how the rest of the world looks at the U.S. right now." And her warning would still be applicable.

Furthermore, even though I agree with Hugh's point, the drive to make someone genuflect before all the good that America has done in the world strikes me as creepy. While Ms. Nooyi is an American citizen, she's originally from India.

The American reaction to Ms. Nooyi's address is, of course, several orders of magnitude from the Islamic reaction to the Newsweek vignette, and the last thing I want to do is suggest that they are in any way similar. In America, desecration of hallowed symbols is constitutionally protected, as it should be. And even the angriest response to Ms. Nooyi's statement would be a full-scale boycott of Pepsi and all of its subsidiaries, not riots that result in multiple deaths.

But let's not lose focus and overreact because a corporate executive was insufficiently sensitive about metaphors in one speech. Regardless of her rhetorical faux pas, what Ms. Nooyi said at Columbia was true; what Newsweek printed was not. Moreover, the criticism of mainstream media is that their reports on the war lack context and deliver a stunted, myopic view of events; while Indra Nooyi didn't deliver any context, her speech was at least cognizant of the reality elsewhere in the world.

Would that Newsweek could say the same.

I Will Post My Essay Soon . . .

2005-05-23T17:55:00.000-04:00

Seriously

. . . but I postponed it so I could read Bill Whittle's new essay, SANCTUARY. Somehow it existed for five days without my knowing about it.

I'm actually relieved that I still have the urge to write after reading Bill Whittle. Most of the time I'm despondent because I know, in my heart, I can't come up with anything one-tenth as brilliant and wonderful even if I were paid a million dollars to do it.

Read SANCTUARY. Then reread it. Then reread it again.

My Long Disappearance Explained

2005-05-20T17:00:00.000-04:00

Or: I Am A Huge Sellout

It's a hard way to make an easy living.

I've spent the last couple weeks attempting to rack up enough points through Full Tilt Poker's bonus program to get a seat into the World Series Of Poker main event. It'd also be nice to make some money on the side.

Unfortunately, it's slower going than I thought.

I started out very well; in fact, my first-ever hand at a real-money table was Aª/A©. Several hands later I woke up with K¨/Kª. Both times I made a nice haul.

Sadly, you can't get those kinds of hands all the time, and I'm currently down about 25% of my investment.

I've learned, the hard way, that no-limit hold'em tournaments and limit hold'em ring games are two different beasts, even though they're ostensibly the same game. In no-limit, you try to beat people to death with sledgehammers (metaphorically speaking), but in limit, you have to inflict a thousand paper cuts. In a tournament, you can lose significant chunks of stack without really affecting your overall cashflow (unless you bust out), but in a ring game, each loss (or win) represents real money.

I could play my usual hyperagressive, sledgehammer-swinging style with pocket aces or kings because, well, they're pocket aces or kings, and you're supposed to jam the pot with them. But what if I have middle pair with a gutshot straight draw and a backdoor flush draw? In no-limit, I fold almost all the time if I face a sizable bet: the odds just aren't there. But in limit, in certain circumstances, you can ride some hands out to see if the draws hit.

Since bets are rigidly defined in limit (I've been playing at $1/$2 tables, where bets are $1 pre-flop and on third street, $2 on the turn and river), I've been taking beats by longshot draws that I never see in no-limit. Only idiots play 9§/3§ and attempt to hit a flush in no-limit. But in limit, while it's still not the brightest play in the world, it can work, because the bets are smaller. In fact, I lost to that very hand while holding A¨/Kª. I was very, very angry: Why did you stay in with that awful hand? Why can't you play smart and fold crappy hands, like me?

But then again: he won and I lost. Perhaps I'm the one who needs to adapt. Thanks to some tips from Beck, I realize that I'm going to have to do just that: adjusting my style to fit the game will work a lot better than bitching because the game doesn't fit my style. In the meantime, I'm going to have to take those beats in stride, because the parameters of the game just make them more possible.

If not, I can still crush my weekly no-limit tournament. Wednesday night I cashed out for $70.

Oh: I'm not sure if it's really noticeable (hmm), but I've joined the Full Tilt Poker Affiliate Program. FTP has, without a doubt, the most generous deposit bonus program and, in addition to all the ways you can get into the WSOP, tournaments to let you play along with their pros, and it is an impressive roster: Howard Lederer, Phil Ivey, Chris "Jesus" Ferguson, and Phil Gordon, among others. Just use the Bonus Code MARCHRON when you sign up.

If you sign up with me, then hell freezes over and I make the WSOP, I promise I'll send you an exclusive souvenir, free. No shipping. Otherwise . . . well, I'll think of something.

And I promise I'll start blogging again soon, probably because I'm going to go broke in the near future and will have to come back to blogging to occupy my time.

I Suck

2005-05-09T14:05:00.000-04:00

Really, I Do

No essay this week, and barring major events, I'm probably going to be posting lightly. Can't tell you why.

I know, I know, I'm a douchebag.

But, in the meantime, Michael Totten has returned from Lebanon. Although he was part of one of the most wondrous experiences in recent history, all people asked about were the Lebanese Protest Supermodels™. So he posted a gallery.

God bless you, Mr. Totten.

Though there are all manner of scorching hotties in the gallery, the most beautiful by far (and I am an expert) is Joumanna Nasr:

In addition to being positively sizzling, she's one-third of the editorial board of the Pulse Of Freedom blog, being written live from the Martyr's Square Tent City in Beirut.

What she writes is vastly more important than the crap I shovel at you, anyway.

Brad Richards Gloats

2005-05-08T14:26:00.000-04:00

Decides To Drop An F-Bomb

Brad Richards, my weaselly first e-mail flamer, decided to write back. Again, he makes a mockery of Shakespeare's wisdom about brevity and wit:

Date: Fri, 06 May 2005 20:23:37 +0000
From: bradley-richards@law.northwestern.edu
To: marchandchronicles-at-yahoo.com
Subject: Re: You are an idiot

I'm glad I was able to destract you from writing your political vomit
for so long with a simple
"you're an idiot.

Write me back, please!

P.S. - You're a fucking idiot!

Yes, I often find myself destracted. But at least I'm not so destracted that I forget to use the close-quote.

What are you, 12 years old? I thought you couldn't get any weaker.

Get bent.

Cubs Lose Seven Straight

2005-05-08T14:11:00.000-04:00

Resilient Diehard Fans Pack It In

So the Cubs have lost seven straight games. The good news is they're still in third place! The bad news is that they enter action today already six back of St. Louis.

I don't feel like giving a detailed analysis of why the Cubs are performing so disastrously. Their most important players have proven to be as durable as a papier-maché sledgehammer. Their pitching is, for the most part, awful; they can score runs but not manufacture them; and while I haven't really studied the defense I'll just assume it stinks, too. As for coaching and management . . . well, I haven't yet bought a Mothers' Day gift for my mom, and if I get started on Dusty Baker I can easily run past Fathers' Day.

While I'm not quite ready to completely give up on the season, others have. The Uncouth Sloth has already eulogized them.

The Cubs look to avoid getting swept today by the also-hurt, also-disappointing Phillies. A reminder for the hitters: the idea is to hit the white thing with the wooden stick. And to the pitchers: try to aim for over that funny-shaped object, somewhere between knee- and chest-high.

Thanks.

Too Brilliant Too Early, Again

2005-05-06T17:03:00.000-04:00

Or Am I Just Really Late?

Earlier this week, Glenn Reynolds and Mickey Kaus were bantering about the filibuster, prompted by an Instapundit link of this post by Tigerhawk, in which he said, in part:

If you are going to filibuster, then you should have to filibuster. Filibusters should come at some personal and political cost. We should abolish the candy-ass filibusters of modern times, and require that if debate is not closed it must therefore happen.

The prospect of John Kerry, Hillary Clinton or Ted Kennedy bloviating for hours on C-SPAN would deter filibusters except when the stakes are dire, if for no other reason than the risk that long debate would create a huge amount of fodder for negative advertising. If Frist were to enact the "reform" of the filibuster instead of its repeal, he would sieze the high ground.

This is not quite my position on the "nuclear option": I think it's the right thing to do, just politically problematic.

All the same, though: I was two weeks sooner to the punch on advocating genuine filibusters, and even made virtually the same point about the benefits of nonstop Democratic jabbering with two of the same examples (Kerry and Kennedy; I had Boxer and Schumer instead of Hillary, though). Former Secretary Of Labor nominee Linda Chavez agrees.

Kaus thinks forcing the Dems to launch an honest-to-God filibuster is really "a non-solution to the problem confronting the Senate today--which is whether a minority should be able to block a Supreme Court nominee supported by a majority (but less than 60%)." I agree: the GOP's tack should be to let the Democrats exhaust themselves filibustering, and then when it's clear they've lost the debate, then institute the rule change (what are they going to do, filibuster that?). That being the case, I'd like to welcome Dick Morris to Camp Marchand:

When vote after vote for closure fails, usually by the same deadening margin, the voters will increasingly see the case for squelching the filibuster and then the nuclear option would be welcome by the nation.

. . .

Frist and the GOP need to let the Democrats demonstrate how noxious the filibuster really is before they try to explain to America why they are curtailing it. And the best way to do that is to let the Democrats deploy their weapon. Call their bluff. And let ’er rip!

Of course, Patterico was had an even better idea six months ago. He even called it "Conventional Warfare," and I unwittingly stole his thunder by naming my essay the same thing.

Whoops.

Sorry about that.

Beth Thinks I'm A Proctologist

2005-05-06T16:07:00.000-04:00

That's Just Nassty

In her comment and link to my latest essay, Beth from My VRWC suggests that I've performed a "colonic irrigation" on Al Gore.

Come on, now, that's not true; robots don't have colons.

I've also been linked to by an Italian blog. I can't read Italian, so I can't say for sure if he picked up on the "colonic irrigation" theme, but he did accent his post with this picture, which looks like Gore is in the middle of some sort of exam:

It's a dirty job, but someone's gotta do it.

Pissed Epistle: My First Hate Mail

2005-05-06T01:23:00.000-04:00

Awwww, Isn't It Cute??

I received my first-ever hate mail for Marchron earlier this week. Judging by its utter suckitude, I think it's the first hate mail he's ever sent, too.

I hope he read that "I reserve the right to post any and all criticisms and flames." If he didn't . . . well, that's just too damn bad:

Date: Wed, 04 May 2005 4:09:32 +0000
From: bradley-richards@law.northwestern.edu
To: marchandchronicles-at-yahoo.com
Subject: You are an idiot

>Hello,
>
>I'm Gina Cora's boyfriend. We both think you are an idiot.
>
>Brad Richards

Devastating. I should raise the white flag of surrender now.

Or I could say this:

Hello,

Who the hell are you? Oh, you're "Gina Cora's boyfriend." Well, that's very helpful. Who the hell is she?

Waaaaiiitt, I remember now; Gina Cora was one of my detractors when I was writing for The Observer. As I recall, she was one of my more unpersuasive and hysterical respondents. I suppose the knowledge that I've started a blog made her catch the vapors, so much so that she was unable to comment and/or reply on her own.

In that case, I should commend you. Chivalry is not dead! You have valiantly taken up the sword to defend your lady's honor! "I shall run the bastard through with my rapier wit! When I tell the foul right-wing beast that we both think him to be an 'idiot,' he will withdraw to his smelly dark cave, and victory shall be ours!"

Truly, thou art a knight of impressive skill and impeccable honor. To further antagonize you would surely lead to my own awful demise.

But, then again, I'm an idiot.

Most people, when they decide to send someone a note of disagreement, at least summon up the courage to illustrate where the recipient was wrong. I suppose you, given your utter dismissal, disagree with everything I've ever said; in which case you could have bothered to point out what really set you off.

However, you chose a different avenue, and an oh-so-gutsy one it was: you simply name-dropped your girlfriend, as if she were Keyser Soze and the mere mention of your connection to her would make me soil myself with fear. Putting aside the question of why either of you consider yourselves capable of informed commentary on my intelligence, that's just . . . weak. Even for a drive-by flaming. For God's sake, I hope you're getting a better education on how to be persuasive by Northwestern's Law School. I can just see it now:

JUDGE: Your closing argument, Counselor Richards?

YOU: [rises] Ladies and gentlemen of the jury . . . this is my girlfriend, Gina Cora. We both think opposing counsel is an idiot. [sits]

GINA: [whispering] Good job, honey.

I mean, really. It's not as if my comments are so impervious to counterargument. They are, however, impervious to the cyberspace equivalent of leaving a flaming bag of dog poop on my doorstep and then running, and what you wrote doesn't even come close to THAT. You lit a fake novelty turd in front of my door, and compounded that by sticking around and introducing yourself by way of your girlfriend. Admittedly, that's slightly less cowardly than just adding an anonymous comment at the end of one of my posts, but I'm not sure if it's any smarter.

So, yeah, whatever you meant to accomplish here, you failed — unless of course you meant to accomplish having me responding to you and quoting both your e-mail (in its entirety of monumental irrelevant, dull nothingness) and my reply in a post; in that case, you've succeeded.

I could go on, but I think I've made my point; which is one more point than what you made.

mike marchand

Linked at My VRWC's Trackback Party!

(Edited 5/6 2:32 AM to add the link.)

Marchand Chronicles: Al Gore's MoveOn Speech

2005-05-05T11:20:00.000-04:00

Counterstrike
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
May 2, 2005

It's understandable that Al Gore is unsatisfied with his probable place in history, in the roll call of just-missed presidential candidates alongside Samuel Tilden and Thomas Dewey. Even though he's no longer the flag-bearer of the Democratic Party, he remains a central figure therein, as the disputed result in the 2000 presidential election jumpstarted donations and activism for the despondent left wing.

Last week, he delivered a speech at a MoveOn.org rally concerning the Senate standoff over judicial nominations (transcript from RCP). Not surprisingly, Gore opposes the "nuclear option" to break the Democrat-led filibusters, and his address was chock-full of just the kind of boilerplate sloganeering that Democrats will use as their talking points for the issue.

Gore opened his address with a personal anecdote, about how he reacted after losing the Supreme Court decision in 2000 that prevented him from becoming president:

Even though many of my supporters said they were unwilling to accept a ruling which they suspected was brazenly partisan in its motivation and simply not entitled to their respect, less than 24 hours later, I went before the American people to reaffirm the bedrock principle that we are a nation of laws, not men. "There is a higher duty than the one we owe to a political party," I said. "This is America and we put country before party."

The demonstrators and counter-demonstrators left the streets and the nation moved on — as it should have — to accept the inauguration of George W. Bush as our 43rd president.

This is curious for a couple of reasons: first because the Gore team attempted to subvert Florida election law with the willing cooperation of the State Supreme Court; second because groups like MoveOn never really "moved on." To this day, many people have yet to accept Bush's legitimacy. But never mind that now. Gore immediately followed that up with his thesis:

Having gone through that experience, I can tell you — without any doubt whatsoever — that if the justices who formed the majority in Bush v. Gore had not only all been nominated to the court by a Republican president, but had also been confirmed by only Republican senators in party-line votes, America would not have accepted that court's decision.

Moreover, if the confirmation of those justices in the majority had been forced through by running roughshod over 200 years of Senate precedents and engineered by a crass partisan decision on a narrow party-line vote to break the Senate's rules of procedure — then no speech imaginable could have calmed the passions aroused in our country.

The reason why the Supreme Court justices weren't confirmed by party-line votes (with the then-exceptional case of Clarence Thomas) and weren't forced through by altering filibuster rules is because both actions, until recently, just weren't done.

Moreover, as the old saying goes, it takes two to tango. If any decision comes down to a party-line vote, then by definition both sides are being politically stubborn. But the odd logic emanating from the Democrats on this issue is that their own voluntary decision to be intractably partisan is the Republicans' fault. Gore will offer the justification for this later, but all that needs to be said is that the Democrats are the ones infringing upon tradition by making confirmation votes a party-line matter and by invoking filibusters, backed by the entire party, on multiple nominees.

Later, Gore conjures up our Founding Fathers, and proceeds to haul out the Ouija board and read their minds:

Our founders gave no role to the House of Representatives in confirming federal judges. If they had believed that a simple majority was all that was needed to safeguard the nation against unwise choices by a partisan president, they might well have given the House as well as the Senate the power to vote on judges.

But they gave the power instead to the Senate, a body of equals, each of whom was given a term of office three times longer than that of a representative, in order to encourage a reflective frame of mind, a distance from the passions of the voters and a capacity for deliberation. They knew that the judges would serve for life and that, therefore, their confirmation should follow a period of advice and consent in which the Senate was an equal partner with the executive.

Gore has to divine the Founders' intentions in this manner because if he had actually read the Constitution, he would have found no evidence for his theory. The Constitution wasn't written to protect political minorities from undue partisanship. As far as that goes, at the time the Constitution was written, senators didn't face "the passions of the voters," since senators weren't popularly elected until the 17th Amendment was ratified in 1913. As for the Senate existing as an "equal partner" . . . wait, Gore's continuing, I'll get to it in a second:

Alexander Hamilton, in Federalist #78, wrote that the "independence of the judges is equally requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill-humors which the arts of designing men . . . have a tendency, in the meantime, to occasion dangerous innovations in the government, and serious oppressions of the minor party in the community."

"Help! Help! We're being 'seriously oppressed'! Come see the violence inherent in the system!"

Had Gore, instead of memorizing one pull-quote, read the entirety of Hamilton's words in Federalist #76, specifically concerning the role of presidential appointments and senatorial confirmations, he would never have baldly asserted that the Senate is supposed to be co-equal with the President in order to prevent excess partisanship. Here's what the Founding Fathers truly believed:

To what purpose then require the co-operation of the Senate? I answer, that the necessity of their concurrence would have a powerful, though, in general, a silent operation. It would be an excellent check upon a spirit of favoritism in the President, and would tend greatly to prevent the appointment of unfit characters from State prejudice, from family connection, from personal attachment, or from a view to popularity. (emphasis added)

In other words, Bush can't nominate Larry Joe Doherty just because he's from Texas, or his brother Jeb, or Karl Rove, or Simon Cowell.

And even if the Senate were considered a co-equal partner by the Constitution and its creators, given the near-nonexistent use of the filibuster against judicial nominees for two centuries, it certainly doesn't follow that the filibuster is the Founders' preferred method for senatorial "advice and consent." Al Gore might mention that now, if he didn't have some bogeymen to unleash:

I am genuinely dismayed and deeply concerned by the recent actions of some Republican leaders to undermine the rule of law by demanding the Senate be stripped of its right to unlimited debate where the confirmation of judges is concerned, and even to engage in outright threats and intimidation against federal judges with whom they philosophically disagree.

And there followed nearly 400 words of scary quotes from unnamed Republicans (except Tom DeLay, who was very specifically named). Some were relevant; others, like Ann Coulter's remark that "liberals should be physically intimidated," were not (that remark concerned the possible execution of John Walker Lindh, captured while fighting for the Taliban in late 2001. What does that have to do with judicial confirmations in 2005? Nothing, but dropping a Coulter quote at a MoveOn rally is like tossing a dead animal carcass in the hyena pen at the zoo). After Gore torched every Republican straw man he could find, he then turned on what he saw as the real problem: "extremist organizations," presumably with extreme names, like . . . the Family Research Council, and Focus On The Family.

Whatever.

Anyway, a few more menacing pull-quotes, some comparisons to the religious persecutions that drove immigrants to the New World in the first place, then came this howler:

I remember a time not too long ago when Senate leaders in both parties saw it as part of their responsibility to protect the Senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas.

You don't say, Mr. Vice-President? I do, too!

More beware-the-zealots gobbledygook ensued, complete with a reference to Sir Thomas More and the play A Man For All Seasons, then finally Gore makes his point . . . kinda:

The Senate leaders remind me of More's son-in-law. They are now proposing to cut down a rule that has stood for more than two centuries as a protection for unlimited debate. It has been used for devilish purposes on occasion in American history, but far more frequently, it has been used to protect the right of a minority to make its case.

After this duplicitous blurring of the issue, confusing senatorial legislative filibusters, which is their sole dominion granted by Article I of the Constitution, with judicial filibusters, an extra-constitutional commandeering of the president's rights under Article II, there came yet more allusions: to the nascent Iraqi government, to the book of Isaiah, to the labeling of "crises" of the Iraq war and Social Security (remember: it's a MoveOn rally; more dead animal carcasses in the hyena pen). At last our 12th-level Vice President arrived at something resembling the actual argument:

I served in the Senate for eight of my 16 years in Congress — and then another eight years as president of the Senate in my capacity as vice president. Moreover, my impressions of the Senate date back to earlier decades — because my father was a senator when I was growing up.

From that perspective, I have listened with curiosity to some of the statements made during the current debate. For example, I have heard the Senate Majority Leader, who is from my home state and should know better, say that no court nominee has ever been filibustered before the current president's term. But I vividly remember not only the dozens of nominees sent to the Senate by President Clinton who were denied a vote and filibustered by various means, I also remember in 1968 when my father was the principal sponsor of another Tennessean — Abe Fortas — who was nominated to be chief justice by President Lyndon Johnson. Fortas was filibustered and denied an up or down vote. The cloture vote was taken on October 1, 1968.

When it failed by a vote of 45-43, President Johnson was forced by the filibuster to withdraw the nomination.

Gore spent so much time puffing up his grand rhetorical allusions that he only has time to give the briefest possible précis of actual history. He left a lot out. For example, while Republicans did employ various and sundry methods to block many judicial nominees during Bill Clinton's term, they were the majority party in the Senate. Senate majorities of one party often play hardball with judicial nominees offered by a president of the other party. After Jim Jeffords bolted from the GOP in 2001, the Democrats enjoyed a majority and bottled up plenty of President Bush's nominees. It's a shady practice, but completely allowable. But even then, during the first two years of Clinton's term — when the Republicans were the minority, like the Democrats are a minority now — every last one of his appellate court nominees were voted on and confirmed.

Not "dozens," but exactly half a dozen times in the late 1990s did Republicans attempt to filibuster Clinton's nominees. In every case they failed, because GOP leadership refused to put true muscle behind them. All six got up-or-down votes; furthermore, all six were confirmed. Hence why Gore didn't bother naming any of the Republicans' victims: they all sit on court seats right now.

Only once before 2003 has any cloture vote (vote to end debate) fail for any judicial nominee, and Gore was correct: it was for Abe Fortas. Since Gore didn't spell it out, only keen spotters would note that October 1, 1968 was about a month before the presidential election that year; a contest in which President Johnson was not running. Therefore, he was already somewhat of a lame duck. Abe Fortas was surrounded by several clouds of scandal, so his nomination was almost certainly doomed; he was filibustered most likely because at the time he was a sitting Supreme Court justice, so the Senate was probably attempting to be gentle in its rejection. The filibuster was a bipartisan effort, and Fortas took the hint: he withdrew himself from nomination shortly thereafter and resigned from the Supreme Court eight months later because of yet another scandal (yummy Fortas entrees from Hugh's Place).

Of course, that's not how Gore tells it: evidently his "impressions" of his dad's tenure in the Senate are as reliable as his knowledge of the Constitution. According to Gore, the filibuster "forced" LBJ to withdraw Fortas from consideration, as if it were perfectly natural for the Senate to hold veto power over judicial nominees, or for the filibuster to be a binding refusal, as a floor-vote rejection would be.

A natural reaction would be to assume that Bush's slate of judicial nominees are, in Alexander Hamilton's words, "unfit characters," just as Fortas was, and Al Gore tries as hard as he can to convey that. Unfortunately, from these "seven judicial fanatics," he can only hunt up one frightening pull-quote. One. That's all. When it comes to Republican maliciousness or Christian zealotry, all manner of scary statements are deployed, but these seven nominees are so awful that one sentence is all that can be found to demonize them. Absent any further genuine evidence of unfitness for judicial tenure, Gore must buttress his argument with demagoguery:

[I]f these nominees should ever be confirmed, they would, as a group, intervene in your family's medical decisions and put a narrow version of religious doctrine above, not within, the Constitution. They have shown by their prior records and statements that they would weaken the right to privacy and consistently favor special interests at the expense of middle class America by threatening the minimum wage, worker & consumer protections, the 40-hour workweek, your right to sue your HMO, and your right to clean air and water.

Mmm, dead animal carcasses.

It's no accident that this is straight out of the "How To Bork Nominees" playbook. Gore now owes royalties to Ted Kennedy, who quite famously spewed this tirade against Robert Bork in 1987:

Robert Bork's America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens' doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists could be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is — and is often the only — protector of the individual rights that are at the heart of our democracy.

P.S.: Bork . . . wasn't filibustered.

But Gore's biggest jaw-dropper was yet to come:

Our founders understood that there is in all human beings a natural instinct for power. The Revolution they led was precisely to defeat the all-encompassing power of a tyrant thousands of miles away.

They knew then what Lord Acton summarized so eloquently a hundred years later: "Power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely."

They knew that when the role of deliberative democracy is diminished, passions are less contained, less channeled within the carefully balanced and separated powers of our Constitution, less checked by the safeguards inherent in our founders' design — and the vacuum left is immediately filled by new forms of power more arbitrary in their exercise and derived less from the consent of the governed than from the unbridled passions of ideology, ultra-nationalist sentiments, racist, tribal and sectarian fervor — and most of all, by those who claim a unique authority granted directly to them by the Almighty.

That is precisely why they established a system of checks and balances to prevent the accretion of power in any one set of hands — either in one individual or a group because they were wary of what Madison famously called "factions."

The next time I hear this argument, I swear on Antonin Scalia's funny-looking hair that I'm going to go on a rampage. This will be the interview from the news report you'll see on CNN:

REPORTER: What happened?

MOVEON MEMBER: Well, I was just minding my own business, holding up a sign that says "Preserve Our Checks & Balances," when some lunatic carrying a large bag and shrieking about dead animal carcasses and hyena pens came from out of nowhere —

REPORTER: What did he do?

MOVEON MEMBER: Well, he pulled something from out of the bag and struck me over the head with it several times before dropping it in my lap and running away.

REPORTER: What was it?

MOVEON MEMBER: It was . . . it was . . . [starting to cry] . . . a civics textbook!

I don't know why, but for some reason I expected a former vice president to be able to get correct the same sort of introductory-level civics concepts immigrants have to learn in order to pass citizenship tests. But no, Al Gore has just proven he'd flunk fifth-grade social studies.

"Checks and balances" doesn't refer to the relationship between Republicans and Democrats. It doesn't even refer, in the broader sense, to the relationship between political majorities and minorities. It refers to the relationship between the different branches of government.

As noted earlier, the filibuster — as it's been used almost exclusively, as a legislative maneuver — is an intra-senate rule. Article I of the Constitution gives the Senate the right to pass whatever rules it sees fit for how it conducts business. The several modifications in the filibuster rule stand as testament to this decision. If the Senate wants to alter the rules of the filibuster, or mandate that all senators must be holding a conch shell to speak, or order that Flemish is the only language permissible to be spoken on the floor — that's their prerogative.

However, filibustering the President's judicial nominees is an unconstitutional usurpation of the executive's role as outlined by Article II, and, hence, is the only violation of "checks and balances" that's actually occurring. Again, Gore is outlining the planned Democrat response to the "nuclear option": blame the Republicans for precisely what they're doing: whether it's excessive partisanship, derailing Senate tradition, or abusing checks and balances. It's as logical as a con artist calling the police complaining that he'd been suckered.

Gore finally brings it all home in his conclusion:

The rules and traditions of the Senate all derive from this desire to ensure that the voice of the minority could be heard. The filibuster has been at the heart of this tradition for nearly the entire 230 years of the Senate's existence. Yet never before has anyone has felt compelled to try to eliminate it.

Even absent a filibuster, the minority's voice gets to be heard; the filibuster guarantees that the minority's will be followed. In a majority-rule country, that's not a tradition. The filibuster being used seven times to attempt to block judicial nominees in 228 of those 230 years is not a tradition. Just another of Gore's twisted little ironies:

The proposal from the Senate majority leader to abolish the right of unlimited debate is a poison pill for America's democracy. It is the stalking horse for a dangerous American heresy that would substitute persuasion on the merits with bullying and an effort at partisan domination.

Sure; who needs "persuasion on the merits" when various rhetorical dead animal carcasses will do? Duly elected Republican majorities are "extremists," Christian leaders are "zealots" — but Gore's not being a bully. Democrats didn't even use their so-called hallowed tradition of filibusters to attempt to block hated nominees like Robert Bork or Clarence Thomas — but they're not engaging in "partisan domination."

It's a shame. I remember when, not all that long ago, an ex-Vice President's responsibility was "to protect the Senate against the destructive designs of demagogues who would subordinate the workings of our democracy to their narrow factional agendas." Too bad Al doesn't.

Not Dead; Just Working

2005-05-04T15:36:00.000-04:00

Like Death, Only With FICA

Contrary to reports . . . okay, well, there are no reports, but I'm not dead, nor have I suddenly and mysteriously fallen off the face of the earth. I've just been working. Three straight twelve-plus hour days, in fact. I get up, I work; I come home, I sleep. That's been my schedule recently. It wouldn't be quite so bad, except 1) a slight shift in my company overtime rules means I don't get paid quite as much as I ~~should~~ used to under the old system, and 2) I didn't have time to wrap up my essay for Monday (it's coming, quite soon).

It's not like I'm just ignoring you readers, though. All the things I had scheduled for Monday I was forced to put off. My student loan and phone bills went unpaid. I wasn't able to pick up the film of some of the pictures I took. I forgot to feed my pets. (Okay, that last one's not true, I don't have any pets. At least, not anymore.) (I seriously don't have pets, don't call the police.)

My work has spread me so thin that I actually experienced de-evolution in the TTLB Ecosystem. Sunday I was a fish; today I'm a mollusk.

Hopefully I can get back on track. I'd like to once again be a species that someone other than the French enjoy eating.

What The Hell Was That?

2005-04-28T05:17:00.000-04:00

I've Never Seen THAT Before

I was just a few minutes late to my weekly poker game tonight, but they still dealt me in.

I wish they hadn't.

Let's start with the good part: of the ten players who were in the game, I made it to the last four (we usually pay top two only). I had just come off a successful huge bluff, so I was grooving pretty good. In first position (blinds 200/400 at this time, average chip stack ~ 6000 or so), I looked down and found A§/Aª. Hell, yeah. I raised to 1000, which I figured was just enough to get someone to call, and the player in the big blind, on my immediate right (hereinafter I'll refer to him simply as "Right") called.

The flop was A©/Kª/5ª. Yippee, I've made a set, but I have to cash it in now to drive out the flush draw. Right bet 700, and I immediately made it 2500. He thought about it for a while and somewhat reluctantly called. To me, it seemed like a dead giveaway that he was on the flush draw.

Which meant it was a big problem when the turn came Jª. And an even bigger problem when he went all-in. He had about 5000-some chips left, and I had 3400 or thereabouts, meaning he was putting me all-in. My temples started throbbing as I calculated the pot odds. My brain was too foggy to do such math (and I hadn't been drinking, like last week), so I showed a spectator and said, "I have to call, right?" He agreed. I called.

What I forgot to think about — and what he reminded me after the hand — was that at the time I had a set. This meant that not only did I have 7 outs for the nut flush (13 spades minus 3 on the board minus 1 in my hand minus the 2 that were almost certainly in Right's hand = 7), I had 10 outs to make a full house or better (3 kings + 3 fives + 3 jacks + 1 ace = 10). As I confessed to Beck from INCITE, I have somewhat of a problem with grasping the idea of how to make a full house. Since I was focusing only on the flush draw, what I thought was a loose call just because I didn't want to let go of my aces was actually a very sound mathematical decision (17 outs in 44 cards is slightly less than 3-2 odds and I was getting better than 3-1 on my money).

He did have a flush — a lousy one, in fact. He had 10ª/4ª. The river was 6ª and I won the hand.

Don't congratulate me, though.

A couple hands later, Right was under the gun and pretty much had to go all-in with anything before the blinds ate up a major chunk of his stack. I, holding K©/10© and the player on my left ("Left" from this point on) called.

The flop was Kª/10ª/4¨. Yippee, top two pair, but again I had to cash it in to keep the draws out. I moved Left all-in. I'm not sure what possessed him to call with A©/Q¨. Perhaps he put me on nearly nothing, but just attempting to overbet so I could isolate myself with Right to take all his chips. Right had Jª/4ª. So, I was thinking, Great, all I have to do is dodge a spade or a 4 and I knock out two players and guarantee myself the lion's share of the money (the top two players usually settle on a fair split of the cash depending on their chip stacks).

The turn was Q©. Uh-oh.

The river was A¨. What I thought is unsuitable for reprinting here unless I put in a profanity warning. So, here it is. Now click to discover my emotional state at that time.

I've been trying not to complain about bad beats. I really have. Most of the time I contribute to them with poor decision-making and the rest of it is just bad luck. It's not that the poker gods are out to smite me.

But two players BOTH sucked out on me, BOTH with runner-runner draws: Left hit A/Q to make a higher two pair than mine, and Right hit A/Q to make a backdoor inside straight.

That cost me over half my chips. I was back down to the 3000-range. I hung around a while longer, enough to finish in third, but still got no money despite having nearly half the chips on the table at one point.

Next week I think I'll go back to drinking.

No News On Jeff Ake

2005-04-28T00:58:00.000-04:00

At Least No Good News

I've been going through my SiteMeter referrals list and I've been noticing that I'm getting a lot of hits from search engines with "Jeff Ake" as the query term.

I wish I could say I had some sort of inside pipeline to news from the Ake family. I don't.

The only real relevant news about Jeff Ake is stateside: his family's home is up for sale. I won't link to the newspaper story I found that news in because it lists his address.

On my return trip from Lebanon I swung through LaPorte. I managed to find the Ake family home through some sleuthing. The plan was to take pictures of the media throng that had assembled on their front lawn, only there wasn't one. There were a few extra cars parked outside the home, but I assumed they were either family or close friends. I didn't intrude. In fact, I didn't even stop; I turned left at the stop sign and went home, hoping that nobody noticed that I looked and interpreted my gaze as leery rubbernecking. I shudder to think that the Ake family might be moving because someone was less respectful of their privacy.

I did, though, take a few shots of some of the signs elsewhere in LaPorte. I promise I'll post them soon.

Return Of The Lebanese Protest Supermodels™

2005-04-27T23:43:00.000-04:00

Thoughtful Essays < Butt Cleavage

Because I'm just enough of a sellout to attempt to drive traffic to my essay by posting a picture like this:

Via Stavro Jabra.

Marchand Chronicles: Lebanon

2005-04-27T16:45:00.000-04:00

The Righteous Shall Flourish
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
April 25, 2005

Last week I finally visited Lebanon. To tell the truth, I found it kind of . . . dull. It was oddly quiet and strangely peaceful. There were no horrific remnants of violence and no signs that anybody else in the world really cared about them.

I speak, of course, of Lebanon, Indiana.

Lebanon, Indiana is a half-hour's drive from Indianapolis northwest on Interstate 65. This puts it at about a 140-mile trip from Marchron World Headquarters, which can be done on less than half a tank of gas. As opposed to the country of Lebanon, which is more than 6000 miles and no less than three connecting flights away. Obviously, considering my budget, staying in-state was the way to go.

I was hoping Lebanon, Indiana would, given the linguistic tie, have established a relationship with the Middle Eastern country, or perhaps some sort of cultural liaison, so that I could, in effect, visit the budding Cedar democracy by proxy.

Instead, the whole place looked like it just fell out of a John Cougar Mellencamp music video.

This is not to say that I didn't enjoy my brief stay; Lebanon's motto is "The Friendly City" and I did have a splendid time. But I went to find some similarities, something to compare to the country of Lebanon and found no obvious connections.

People have lived in the nation of Lebanon since the beginning of civilization. It was founded by the Phoenicians, who used its central location and Mediterranean coastline as the foundation for its trading culture. Lebanon, Indiana was founded in 1830 by two enterprising Indianapolis land speculators, one of whom, George L. Kinnard, was the surveyor for Marion County (Indianapolis). He guaranteed his fledgling city's viability by ensuring that the exploratory road between Indianapolis and Lafayette jogged slightly to the east, right through his land. Kinnard and his partner, James Perry Drake, also, essentially, assured that Lebanon would be the influential seat of Boone County by trading more than one-third of their land to the county for its use. So — central location and trade: check. No coastline in Lebanon, Indiana, though.

Because of its diverse demographics and rich history, Lebanon, specifically Beirut, is a vibrant cultural center. In contrast, the population of Lebanon, Indiana is nearly 98% white, and the most happening place appeared to be the Wal-Mart, though an ice cream stand did attract some attention on a warm late afternoon.

And of course, the reality of daily life in the Lebanons are much different. The Cedar Revolution, although not attracting as much attention as the first heady moments, is still ongoing. Through international pressure, but mostly due to the determination of the Lebanese people, Syria recently completed its military withdrawal from Lebanon. The last step, although not particularly fascinating, is a political withdrawal. With that in mind, the Lebanese protestors, who still occupy Martyr's Square in Beirut, and have ever since the February assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri, have now focused their attention on demanding open elections on May 29. To that end, they are calling for the government to follow election law and announce the elections one month in advance, on April 29. The Tent City demonstrators have erected a large electronic sign counting down the number of days until the deadline. As of this writing, it's 4.

To the Lebanese, the threat of violence, whether from pro-Syrian factions of their own people, agents from Syria, or terrorist groups like Hezbollah, is a daily reality. Rafiq Hariri was killed by a car bomb, and several more have gone off since his assassination on February 14.

However, in Lebanon, Indiana, the most danger anyone lives with is the technically-illegal Texas Hold'em game on Sunday nights at Johnny's Spirits & Munchies on South Street (I lost $20). The most pressing political issue is the attempted bill that would finally bring Daylight Savings Time to the state of Indiana.

Despite all the differences between Lebanon and Lebanon, Indiana, there's not a person in Lebanon that wouldn't trade their lives, mostly filled with war and strife, for a quiet life like the one led in the Hoosier State. But they don't want to — and shouldn't have to — move to America to experience it.

Or, as the Pulse Of Freedom blog, set up live at Martyr's Square, puts it: "This is our country: the country that we live in, grew up in, studied in, dreamed in, fell in and out of love in . . . This is the country we are proud to represent and whose essence we carry with us, in our blood."

There is actually one real connection I could find between the Lebanons: the small Indiana town was given its name when one of the city's first commissioners called to mind Lebanon's cedar trees, which are an often-mentioned Biblical image and, of course, is Lebanon's national symbol to this day, and said, "The name of this town shall be Lebanon."

It's perhaps symbolic of the differences between them that that commissioner was looking at hickory trees, not cedars.

The righteous shall flourish like the palm tree: he shall grow like a cedar in Lebanon. — Psalm 92:12

Whoops!

2005-04-27T16:43:00.000-04:00

Deadlines, Shmeadlines

I suppose I ought to upload this week's essay soon.

I thought I had already, but I guess Blogger interpreted me pushing the "Publish Post" button as the "Save as Draft" button.

Man . . . if Internet programs won't even let me publish my stuff, perhaps I should be looking into a new line of work.

The Return Of Irreverence

2005-04-25T02:44:00.000-04:00

He's-A Da Freakin' Pope

In my essay on the late Pope John Paul II, I reflected for a moment on how, to young Catholics, he represented a genial, benevolent, grandfatherly figure. Because of that, we were capable of making fun of him — not as insults, not as sacrilege, but truly being fun.

Consider this classic image of The Deuce:

This lends itself to all sorts of captions; in fact, the reason this image is so small is because I didn't want to use the one that's probably circled around the Internet the most (it's a little too blunt).

Then there's this AP photo, which I found in a picture-retrospective of his life:

The caption began "Pope John Paul II listens to a speech by Cuban president Fidel Castro . . ." Doesn't look like he's listening very much, does he? It's super-easy and super-fun to play Read JP2's Mind:

Man, this guy's boring.
He's got a small rodent in his beard. I'll pretend not to notice.
If he goes on much longer, I'm kicking his dupa with my fisherman's shoes.

We're not being mean at all. Anyone who holds an audience for breakdancers —

— is easily cool enough to realize that it's all in fun.

However, with the elevation of Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger, whom the press has dubbed "God's Rottweiler," to the papacy, I was wondering how long it would take before relaxed Catholics felt at ease with breaking out the papal jokes about Benedict XVI.

I got an answer earlier this week, when one of my mom's coworkers remarked that she thought the new pope looked a lot like Simon Bar-Sinister, the heinous villain from the "Underdog" cartoon:

I have to admit, there's a bit of a resemblance.

But until we can come up with a nickname as cool as "The Deuce" for Benedict XVI ("Sweet Sixteen"? "Benny One-Six"?), I think this is as far as I'm going to take the pope jokes.

Because I think Benedict probably could kick my dupa.

Snow? In April?

2005-04-24T13:53:00.000-04:00

I Told You People

It was 80º earlier this week. Yesterday, according to the National Weather Service, we officially received seven-tenths of an inch of snow. This, apparently, boggles people's minds.

I knew it was coming, though. Winter always has the last laugh here. Of course, I was wrong about when exactly its cold cackle would come, but I'm not a frickin' meteorologist. I don't know anything about meteors at all.

Besides, if the snow had come earlier, it wouldn't have made a mess of The Blue-Gold Game, Notre Dame's annual intra-squad spring scrimmage.

But no matter when it happens, surprise snow attracts lousy drivers like a magnet. The St. Joseph County Police reported that they had double the usual number of accidents. This, despite seven-tenths of an inch of snow.

Sometimes I hate being right.

My Stock Is Rising

2005-04-24T11:23:00.000-04:00

Not A Sexual Reference

I didn't find this out until just recently, but evidently Marchron is a publicly traded commodity.

This is huge.

Furthermore, I'm evidently a blue-chipper. (I don't know squat about market terminology, so I may be using "blue-chip" and any other terms wrong; apologies up front. I don't even know who Dow Jones is.) Check out this awesome graph thingy:

I don't even know what it means, but up is good, right?

My website is currently valued at 1,545.68. Sounds good, but Instapundit is worth 2,138,951.93. Which means the stock analyses of my blog, and I quote: "This is a growing blog (BUY)" and "This stock is underpriced (BUY)" are probably accurate. Instapundit is good, but I don't think he's 1,384 times as good as I am.

Having a publicly traded vehicle is a lot of pressure. Now I have shareholders I don't want to disappoint.

And Now For Something Completely Different

2005-04-23T13:19:00.000-04:00

Pokerblogging!

I've been too busy being vain over the mild attention I've attracted recently to submit myself to the Carnival Of The Vanities. Whoops. But INCITE made the COTV for his first pokerblogging post, and it reminded me that I've been slacking in my poker writeups.

So here's this week's lesson, entitled "Why You Shouldn't Drink Alcohol While Playing Poker, Even If You're Playing At A Bar."

I had started the game with no virtually no decent hands in nearly two rounds. I played a total of two hands, one when I was the big blind and nobody raised pre-flop and one when I was the small blind and I limped in for the other half. Both times the flop was awful and I folded in disgust.

So when the small blind came around to me again I looked down to find A¨/3¨. When a strong player in early position raised from 100 to 300 (everyone starts with 2500) I was determined to give it up; I've been attempting to tighten up my game and playing stubborn with ace-rag is one of the major holes I've yet to patch. But when three other people called the raise, I suddenly found myself with decent odds to attempt the flush draw. I called and expected a rotten flop.

It came K¨/3§/8¨. Hmm. Now I have bottom pair and the nut flush draw. The smart thing to do, tactically, is lead into this flop and hope either that everyone will fold or that the pot will be bigger in the event I do hit the flush.

Unfortunately, I'd had a drink. Okay, a few drinks. Okay, I'd been drinking for a few hours and for some reason the knowledge that the small blind (me) acts first in all rounds after the flop decided to completely evacuate my alcohol-soaked brain. I pointed at the early-position player in the drunken assumption that he was first to act. He soberly assumed that I checked it to him. He checked, as did everyone else behind him, and when the dealer burned before dealing fourth street I complained that I hadn't yet acted. Everyone told me to shut up. I realized my stupidity and kicked myself for not extracting another bet out of them.

The turn was 3©. Damn. Damn damn damn. Now I have trips and the flush draw. I checked again and made sure everyone knew it (I probably SHOULDN'T have, but I did anyway; damn you, Captain Morgan!). Everyone checked to the dealer, who weakly attempted a bluff by betting 300 into a pot of 1600. I hemmed and hawed and eventually called the bet instead of raising, since I didn't want to drive out anyone now. Everyone else called.

The river was Aª. Bingo! A backdoor full house! The only hands I had to fear now were pocket kings, eights or aces, and anyone holding those hands would almost certainly have bet and bet hard on the flop to drive out the obvious flush draw. I bet 600 (the pot was 3100 at the time). The early-position pre-flop raiser called, the next two players folded, and the button player thought for a long time before eventually mucking his hand. Bummer; I was hoping for a raise.

My final opponent said "I think you got me," so I showed him my shiny new boat and he kicked in his hand.

On the strength of that win and not much else (remember, I'd mostly been getting worthless hands) I coasted to second place and a $55 cashout.

While accidentally and drunkenly checking on the flop gained me the knowledge that I had the best hand on the river, I really should have bet on the flop, but especially the turn. I don't know what I was thinking.

Oh, wait, I do know: it was mmmm, Captain and Coke gooooood.

Next week I'm drinking Shirley Temples.

Nuclear Option Approaching Fail-Safe Point

2005-04-22T05:03:00.000-04:00

Owen, Brown Confirmed; Democrats Threaten Filibuster; Santorum Hits The Brakes?

Today, the Republicans used their majority advantage to press Texas Supreme Court Judge Priscilla Owen and California judge Janice Rogers Brown out of committee and to the Senate floor, where Democrats are expected to filibuster them.

The big shock, though, was a report by The Hill which suggested that Rick Santorum, an advocate of the "nuclear option," was backing off because of poor polling results. Santorum has denied this report.

The fact that the Republicans renominated Owen and Brown is unsurprising, and they're taking advantage of the fact that they're women. From the FOX News link, Orrin Hatch said, "It's pathetic what they are doing to these two women and I think it's time for women all over America to start standing up and say, 'Hey, enough is enough.'" Bill Frist also commented on their gender, saying, "In the last Congress, these highly qualified women were blocked by a partisan filibuster when Democrats refused to give them an up or down vote."

Also in The Hill, former Clinton pollster Dick Morris warns that the "nuclear option" will lead to catastrophe:

The filibuster, once seen as the last refuge of racists seeking to thwart the progress of civil-rights legislation, has increasingly become part of our checks-and-balances system. Changing the rules in the Senate will be seen as the modern equivalent of the court-packing scheme of FDR . . .

The Schiavo case amplifies the concern of moderate voters over a possible rules change to block filibusters. The attitude of GOP conservatives, led by House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas), that moderate judges needed to be punished for their independence sends a chill up the spines of most independent voters.

With the filibuster decision bookended by the Terry [sic] Schiavo case before and a Supreme Court confirmation battle likely following it, the issue has the potential to spell disaster for the Republican Party . . .

[A]n attempt to switch the rules in the middle of the game on judicial filibusters will really make his alliance with the Christian right the main issue in his second-term presidency, with disastrous results.

I despise pollmeisters like Dick Morris because their very existence is a microcosm of everything I hate about politics: that to some people, that which is right and good is only and always that which is politically expedient. Still, this is his niche, and he's got a Newsweek poll to back him up.

There's still enough time before the "nuclear option" crosses the point of no return, though. Power Line's Paul "Deacon" Mirengoff highlighted a possible way out in an addendum to a post by John "Hindrocket" Hinderaker:

[I]f the Republicans could make the Democrats actually filibuster Owen or Brown for an extended period, the public would conclude (a) that the Dems have had their opportunity for full debate and/or (b) that such debate, when undertaken by the Democrats, isn't all it's cracked up to be.

If the Republicans are going to choose the "nuclear option" (and given the angry warnings by the base if they don't, they probably will), they should at least initially pause to give the Democrats enough rope to hang themselves. The GOP will gain valuable political capital if the Democrats, while filibustering "the women," say moronic things like this:

Jumping through hoops to ingratiate themselves to their party's base while step-by-step and day-by-day real problems that keep Americans up at night fall by the wayside here in Washington. We each have to ask ourselves, "Who's going to stop it?" Who's going to stand up and say, "Are we really going to allow this to continue?" Are Republicans in the House going to continue spending the people's time defending Tom DeLay or they going to defend America and defend our democracy?

That'd be John Kerry, on the Senate floor, demonstrating once again his propensity to get things exactly backwards. For one, during the 2004 election, Kerry jumped through more flamin' hoops than Evel Knievel to placate his frothing-rabid base. Also, with all these crises stacking up on the Senate floor, Kerry and his party have decided that their most important priority is the nearly-unprecedented invoking of an indefinite stalling tactic because they don't like some judicial nominees. Exactly why they find Owen and Brown so unappealing has yet to be really spelled out, but an impending Bill Frist-led theocracy spooks Kerry enough:

Will Republican senators let their silence endorse Senator Frist's appeal to religious division, or will they put principle ahead of partisanship and refuse to follow him across that line? Are we really willing to allow the Senate to fall in line with the Majority Leader when he invokes faith, faith, all of our faiths over here? Joe Lieberman's a person of faith. Harry reid's a person of faith. And they don't believe we should rewrite the rules of the United States Senate, and we certainly shouldn't allow this issue of people who believe in the Constitution somehow challenging the faith of others in our nation . . .

Whatever. Kerry can't stand anybody who allows faith to influence their political decisions. Even though he appeared on "The Tonight Show" wearing a leather jacket and blue jeans, he's singing the opposite of the song most associated with that outfit:

Oh, but I need some time off from that emotion
Time to pick my heart up off the floor
And when that love comes down without devotion
Well, it takes a strong man, baby
But I'm showing you the door

'Cause you CAN'T a-have faith-a-faith-a-faith
You CAN'T a-have faith-a-faith-a-faith!

Returning from Moonbat Island, there's an interesting dichotomy going on at the RedState.org group spinoff blog, ConfirmThem. A contributor named quin predicts a conservative revolt if the GOP doesn't follow through on the "nuclear option"; however, three posts later Paul Zummo expresses skepticism that the Democrats can regain the Senate majority if the Republicans do go ahead. Well, which is it? If the races are close enough that an angered Republican base can scuttle them, then they're close enough for the Democrats to rouse enough moderates to unseat them.

The lines are being drawn. The armies are amassing at the border and the rhetorical missiles are being aimed and armed. Somebody's going to get trapped on this. I'd rather the Republicans bait the Democrats into overcommitting than the other way around.

Standing Firm Is NOT Inaction

2005-04-20T16:50:00.000-04:00

Carpe Diem: Who'll Seize The Day?

One of the criticisms of my essay on the "nuclear option" is that it suggests "inaction" (Captain's Quarters, Threshold Negative 55). Far from it. I don't want inaction, I just want reasoned, measured action.

I named my essay "Conventional Warfare" for a reason. The Democrats have dug in their heels and lined trenches. If the Republicans go over the top, they WILL be gunned down. RCP's Tom Bevan has written a post that agrees with me on that end. Need proof? Again via RCP, the most recent Quinnipiac poll has "nuclear option" supporter Rick Santorum fourteen points behind his challenger, based largely on a negative view of Santorum stemming from his positions on Social Security and — wait for it — Terri Schiavo.

Yes, the 2006 midterms are a year and a half away, but you tell me — if the GOP goes through with the "nuclear option," do you really think Santorum will gain all 14 of those points back? Or will he lose even more? A poll analyst suggests that Santorum's opponent, State Treasurer Robert Casey, Jr., really has done nothing to get headlines but has allowed Santorum's candidacy to self-destruct.

The same thing will happen, writ large, if the Republicans follow Santorum "over the top." Tom Bevan nailed it: the Republicans have already lost the PR battle over this issue. We can debate until doomsday how that happened, but the Democrats have the territorial advantage.

The solution, then, is to blockade them, and starve them out. It minimizes our disadvantages and puts the onus on them. As I wanted to address but Bevan beat me to it:

This is doubly frustrating because the math also works in the Republicans' favor. There are more red-state Democrats at risk over this issue than blue-state Republicans. Yet instead of having Senators like Ben Nelson, Ken Salazar, and the rest on the defensive, it's moderate Republicans like John Warner, Susan Collins and Olympia Snowe who are getting pounded - from both sides.

Read this article in today's New York Times and you'll see that many of the Republican moderates still on the fence fully agree that Democrats are way out of line. It's not hard to see that they would be more than willing to pull the trigger on this vote if the Republican party leadership had done a better job laying the ground work and driving public opinion on the issue. The bottom line is that not enough effort was made to give these Senators the cover they need to make this vote.

Forcing the Democrats to go through with the filibuster will put them on the defensive. Instead of hoping the Republicans don't "go wobbly," the pressure would be on Democratic senators from red states up for reelection in 2006 — Jeff Bingaman (New Mexico), Kent Conrad (North Dakota), Bill Nelson (Florida) — and some other vulnerable Democrats. Republicans can show them the horror of suffering the same fate as Tom Daschle and wait for them to fold.

This is not inaction. It's a calculated, strategic action. And, from where I sit, it's a far better alternative.

Standing Firm Is NOT Moving Backwards

2005-04-20T16:35:00.000-04:00

Habemus Papum: We Have A Pope, They Have a Problem

Although I didn't say it here, I have opined elsewhere that I thought Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger would become the new pope, and yesterday he became Benedict XVI (that surprised me — I figured he'd take the name John Paul III).

I'm not really sure what to make of the selection. He's earned the reputation of being "Catholicism's Rottweiler" for his strict stance on things like homosexuality ("intrinsically disordered," according to one of his books I read while in college). And perhaps I'm just being cynical, but as dean of the College Of Cardinals, he had a unique influence on the outcome of the papal election. In his homily he railed against the "dictatorship of relativism", and the conclave obviously thought that his unapologetic defense of the faith meant he was the best man for the job — they only needed four votes to elect him.

When I watched video of John Paul II on the balcony for the first time, I saw a man humbled and overwhelmed by the sanctity of the moment. There was no way he could have expected to become pope. However, Benedict XVI seemed more like a winning politician on Election Night, soaking in the moment he was confident would occur.

Again: I'm probably just being cynical. I agree with Lileks, among others, that Ratzinger was a good choice precisely because it cheesed off all the right people. Benedict's firm stance and utter disinclination to "go with the flow" has convinced dummies like Andrew Sullivan and Derrick Z. Jackson that the Church is regressing (double bow to RCP).

Nothing could be further from the truth. There's a difference between standing firm and moving backwards. Churches are not democracies, they're not social clubs, and they're not intended to move with the times.

Thank You, Thank You, Thank You

2005-04-20T04:55:00.000-04:00

Rehearsing For My Future Pulitzer Speech

I'm honored by the reception I've received for my essay. I owe a big gooey blob of thanks to Beth from MY VRWC for jumpstarting this. In return, I'd like to coin a term for traffic derived from her site: "Crimson Tide."

After her, I was linked to by Steal The Bandwagon, who agreed with me, and Threshold Negative 55 and Blogotional, who didn't, but posed thoughtful and civil arguments. This is not a major disagreement we're having; as I told Hugh and Captain Ed when I e-mailed them, anyone who claims a parenthetical R after their names is (or at least should be considered) all on the same side. That's why I love being part of the blogosphere.

The pièce de résistance, though, came when RealClearPolitics included me in their April 18 Evening Update, smooshed right in there between Hugh and Matt Margolis from GOPbloggers, whose post was brilliant squared. That's totally awesome. I've been an RCP fan since before being an RCP fan was cool, and I'm honored that they considered my essay to be essential reading for the supplemental evening roundup.

Again: thank you thank you thank you.

Getting Some Action

2005-04-17T04:43:00.000-04:00

Wow, You People Are FAST!

Captain Ed and Beth from MY Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy have already commented, e-mailed me, AND written posts that linked to me (CQ, MY VRWC).

I absolutely MUST get some sleep before I embark on the journey in my MAJOR MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT tomorrow. So I'll get to Ed and Beth and anyone else who responds to me when I return.

Marchand Chronicles: The Nuclear Option

2005-04-16T23:20:00.000-04:00

Conventional Warfare
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
April 18, 2005

In the opening of Bill Whittle's essay named STRENGTH, he compares the U.S. assault on Fallujah with Sam Houston's actions in the battle for Texas and asks, "Did you want to feel good or did you want to win?"

I want to win. I strongly suspect Hugh Hewitt and Ed Morrissey want to feel good.

Hewitt has spent nearly all this week on his radio show, his website, and his Weekly Standard column requesting — demanding — that Senate Republicans move forward with the "nuclear option" to overturn any Democratic filibuster of judicial nominees. Likewise, Captain Ed has been banging the drum on his blog, insisting voters should cut off all funding to the GOP in a scathing post called "Not. One. Dime."

Haven't we been down this road before?

In 1995, Congressional Republicans shut down the government in a noble attempt to force a balanced budget, an eminently reasonable idea. The result was the virtual end of Newt Gingrich's career and a boost to President Clinton's flagging reelection hopes.

More recently, last month Congressional Republicans led a special session, passing a bill with the noble attempt of forcing the courts to reexamine the Terri Schiavo case, an eminently reasonable idea. The result was a loss of face for the Republicans, who were considered to be overreaching and violating one of the central tenets of federalism.

And Hugh and Ed think this will somehow turn out better? How?

They are right, of course, in that the Republican base cranked out the vote for Senators on the basis of stopping judicial activism and Democratic obstructionism. But what they don't consider is that there are plenty of moderates and non-Republicans who despised the ham-fisted power-play politics displayed in the above examples, and will be turned off by something as drastic as altering traditional filibuster rules. Additionally, GOP voters unaffiliated with the religious right will again be spooked by the idea of theocons controlling the government and restricting debate (witness this recent Instapundit post).

The counterargument is that the filibuster's "rules" have been malleable, and that the unprecedented action is really the Democrats' filibustering nearly all of President Bush's nominees; and that the "theocons" aren't really controlling and restrictive, they're just attempting to get majority-supported judicial nominees a fair up-or-down vote. There's just one problem:

People won't care.

If the Republicans had PR skills anything close to the Democrats'; if we had a balanced media culture that played everything straight; or if the American voters by and large had a thorough knowledge of the Senate's role in the Constitution or its procedural history — if any one were the case, it would be worth the fight to block the potential filibuster.

But all people remember about the 1995 government shutdown is that Newt Gingrich became The Gingrinch That Stole Christmas. Similarly, all people remember about the Congressional action to save Terri Schiavo's life is that the Republicans overreached based on some memo touting the Schiavo case as a "great political issue." The truth about the Republicans' motives was forgotten. It will be again.

Does this matter to Hugh or Ed? It doesn't look like it. Hugh Hewitt dodged the idea that the Republicans might lose politically by saying this: "The GOP seems to think it is loosing [sic] the pr war because people don't understand the issue. Wrong. The base understands the issue completely, and it is disgusted with dithering." The problem is that the base, even if it comprises the majority of Republicans, certainly doesn't comprise a majority of the voters. The GOP will lose the PR war because people — not just the Republican base, in fact everyone but the Republican base — don't understand the issue. History has shown that, and if Hugh thinks the Republicans are too feckless to move forward with the "nuclear option," what makes him think they'll be able to defend it afterwards?

Fine by Hugh. If the GOP moves and loses, he'll send checks to the Democratic opponents of any Republicans who don't toe the party line. Well, that'll be pointless. Once the GOP moves forward, win or lose, the careers of Lincoln Chafee, possibly Olympia Snowe, and almost certainly Rick Santorum will be finished. All of them are Republican senators from blue states who face reelection in 2006. Chafee and Santorum have already been targeted by the Democratic money machine. The Democrats won't need Hugh's checks; they'll have an issue which Howard Dean and the DNC will raise millions against. And Bill Frist will become Newt Gingrich Redux. If he doesn't retire in 2006, he'll be marked for defeat. If he leaves the Senate to run for president in '08, he won't win.

Captain Ed wants to scorch the earth even more by cutting off all donations to the RNC and the NRSC if the Republicans don't move. Well, what will that accomplish? The exact same thing. Without truckloads of funding, the Democrats will have the scalps of Chafee, Snowe, and Santorum, possibly also someone like Jim Talent. As Beth from MY Vast Right-Wing Conspiracy sagely noted, it'd be foolish for the GOP to purge itself and hand Democrats the victory.

So . . . what's the plan, then? Let them filibuster.

When staunch southern Democrats attempted to filibuster the Civil Rights Act in 1964, they lost. Why? Because they went on for two and a half months. They couldn't sustain their momentum any longer. People saw through it for what it really was: a desperate attempt to hold on to their tiny little sliver of power and control.

The filibuster was starved out because of solid leadership from Hubert Humphrey and President Johnson, admittedly both Democrats, but they were on the right side of history. LBJ, when faced with the definite knowledge that the Dixiecrats were going to filibuster, refused to send any further business to the Senate, forcing Strom Thurmond, Robert Byrd et al to talk indefinitely. Filibusters are traditionally beaten by, basically, filibustering the filibuster: instead of the determined senators talking the bill to death, make them talk themselves into exhaustion and embarrassment.

Yes, I know, filibusters of judicial appointments are unprecedented. I'd love to see the Democrats get rolled over on this idea, too, but it's a trap. Most Americans think "filibuster" is a Dairy Queen dessert ("the new Filibuster Parfait!"), but they'll know that the Republicans are trying to bully the opposition (thanks to timely reminders by the Democrats and the media).

America won't stand for the Republicans attempting to break the filibuster with brute force. Let it die like every other unsuccessful filibuster has. Plus, it'd make for great soundbites: Barbara Boxer giving recipes for great sushi. Chuck Schumer reading out of the NYNEX phone book. John Kerry complaining again that he might have won the election if only Democratic voters weren't completely stupid. Ted Kennedy telling us a little more about his good friend Osama. Just think: by forcing them to sit around and talk indefinitely, we'd get Democratic idiocy served to us on a platter, 24/7, for as long as they continue to blabber and yap.

If you look very closely at the posts I've already linked to, you can see the dimmest outlines of this occurring. Senator Frist has moved large chunks of the agenda before the judicial nominations, so as to clear the way for an indefinite filibuster (from "Not. One. Dime."). Senator Santorum said the vote to end the filibuster should be "within a couple of months" (from Hugh's post about the "PR war"). Predictably though somewhat sadly, both of these provoked outrage. Captain Ed opined that the schedule change represented the fact "that the judges are actually the lowest priority for Frist and his band of merry cowards." Hugh Hewitt reported that Santorum's comment lit up his phone lines and triggered an "e-mail avalanche."

The Democratic filibuster of President Bush's judicial nominees is unprecedented and needs to be stopped. But there's a right way and a wrong way to do it, and when Republicans pick the wrong way, they are punished by the voters because they're seen as going too far. It happened in 1995 over the government shutdown. It happened last month over Terri Schiavo.

Let's not run full-steam into the brick wall again this time. Kill the filibuster by killing the filibuster, not by preventing it.

(Edited 3/20 3:46 PM to fix a really stupid error.)

MAJOR MAJOR ANNOUNCEMENT

2005-04-16T22:55:00.000-04:00

This Is HUGE

I'm uploading my Marchand Chronicles essay now because I have a major announcement for the next few days. Scroll over the text below to find out what it is:

I'm going to LEBANON! . . . Lebanon, Indiana, that is.

HUGE.

My Jeff Ake Banner

2005-04-16T14:07:00.000-04:00

No Further Explanation Needed

Use it at your leisure.

Jeff Ake Candlelight Vigil Canceled

2005-04-16T04:42:00.000-04:00

No Official Explanation Given

The candlelight vigil in honor of terrorist hostage Jeff Ake, planned for Friday night at 7 pm, was abruptly canceled. No explanation was provided.

Many people came to the proposed vigil sites to light candles and pray on their own. Others are content to post this banner, courtesy of the Greater LaPorte Chamber Of Commerce, on their websites:

As if Jeff's fate rests in his own hands, like that of a runaway child.

News: Indiana Man Kidnapped By Terrorists

2005-04-15T17:00:00.000-04:00

Jeff Ake Held Hostage

AP/South Bend Tribune

A LaPorte small-business owner providing machines to purify and bottle water was taken hostage by a terrorist group calling itself the Iraqi National Resistance.

Held by three men at gunpoint, Ake, according to Al-Jazeera, allegedly asked for the U.S. to "open a dialogue with the Iraqi resistance." Al-Jazeera aired the video, but not the audio.

Ake currently resides in LaPorte, about 25 miles west of South Bend. He is the founder and president of Equipment Express, based in nearby Rolling Prairie. Equipment Express builds, sells, installs and services liquid-packaging machines for national companies, like Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola; but also for several international markets. Ake often gives seminar speeches about doing business overseas, and wrote a book in 1996 called Aggressive Exporting: How To Make Your Small Company Into An International Tiger. Equipment Express has been awarded one of Indiana's 100 Fastest-Growing Companies by the IU Business School twice.

Jeff Ake is married to Liliana, who was born in Russia. They have four children.

EE Website
Liliana and Jeff Ake accept the Growth 100 Award in November, 2003.

More:
South Bend Tribune: Rolling Prairie businessman taken hostage in Iraq
South Bend Tribune: Abduction hits home
LaPorte Herald-Argus: LaPorte man held hostage in Iraq
WNDU-TV: LaPorte man held hostage in Iraq

Hat tips: The Jawa Report, The Irish Trojan

AP/Yahoo!

Marchand Chronicles: Pope John Paul II

2005-04-11T07:01:00.000-04:00

(UPDATE: A revised version of this column appeared in the April 12 edition of the University Of Notre Dame Observer.)

Forgive Me, Father, For I Have Sinned: Confessions Of A "Cafeteria Catholic"
Mike Marchand
The Marchand Chronicles
April 11, 2005

"I'm no longer a practicing Catholic . . . I'm so good I don't need the practice anymore."

Cute humorous witticisms such as that served as a nice deflection, so I didn't really have to answer the question of why I didn't go to Mass.

Originally, I skipped Mass for the same reason most kids do: I considered it ridiculous that anyone would waste a perfectly good late morning and early afternoon to dress in fancy clothes, sit (and stand, and sit, and kneel, and sit, and stand, etc.) in a stuffy dusty building and listen to some old geezer drone on for 90 minutes. It seemed pointless. And since my Catholic mother eventually divorced my non-Catholic father, when she avoided Mass, I got to avoid it, too. When she felt guilty about missing Mass, I lost an opportunity to sleep in.

I think the real turning point for me, though, came during a retreat offered by my (Catholic) high school. During their junior and senior years, students were offered a two-day retreat at a campground with teachers and clergy, ostensibly to grow in their faith. I went because I could miss two days of class to hang out with my friends. In the morning, we walked to a secluded spot in the woods and held Mass. It was there when I realized why I disliked going to church: church was a place of worship for God that was created and controlled by man. The outdoor Mass allowed us to worship God in the glory of His creation, and I felt the presence of the divine unimpeded by the construction and the rhetoric of man.

I quit going to Mass after that. I didn't feel ashamed in the least.

The child-molestation scandal that rocked the Church while I was in the midst of my collegiate years at my (Catholic) university only served to bolster the argument: here these men, allowed to perform the duties of the apostles in the service of Christ, still could not escape the crude evil of their own human tendencies to sin. If we couldn't trust these men with the most innocent among us, our children, who could we trust?

But I always felt I could trust the Holy Father, Pope John Paul II.

It's difficult for someone of my age to convey the magnitude of John Paul's service as pope to people who have lived much longer and have seen pontiffs come and go; it's far harder to explain to some who have memories of when the Mass was said entirely in Latin. John Paul has literally been the Holy Father for my entire life. Unlike other important posts, the President for one, pontiffs have a certain air of eternalness to them. Presidents are designed to come and go every four to eight years based on the will of voters and of rules designed to limit their service. Popes are selected by the power of the Holy Spirit and serve for the rest of their lives. However, John Paul left a lasting impression on the Church he served that was not seen and may not be seen again for centuries. He was a man of God, so much so that even followers and leaders of other faiths have recognized it after his death.

By lapsing into grave sin and betrayal of their congregations, many clergymen proved that they are no better than the worst of the sinners they are called to reconcile to God's loving grace. But John Paul, armed only with a staff and a funny-looking bulletproof car, was willing to stare evil in the face and defeat it. "How many divisions does the Pope have?", Josef Stalin was said to have asked. When communism fell, led by reform spurred by John Paul in his native Poland, the answer finally came: it didn't matter. By the way, the bulletproof "Popemobile" came about because of the attempted assassination against him in 1981; but he didn't even need it when he met, and forgave, his would-be assassin, Mehmet Ali Agca. Furthermore, he won him over so much that he called John Paul his "brother" and grieved over his death. The faith and charisma demonstrated by that one act alone borders on mind-boggling.

It doesn't surprise younger admirers of John Paul, though. The clergy I grew up with seemed indifferent to the concerns of the young; I never established a rapport with them (then of course, too many priests took advantage of the very young). John Paul focused especially on youth during his service. Another youthful Catholic, BlondeChampagne, coined a nickname for John Paul II which I adapted: The Deuce. Calling the Vicar Of Christ by a pet name might seem sacrilegious. But Pope John Paul II once wore a rock star's sunglasses (note: it's unknown whether or not that picture is genuine; however, official photos exist that prove he at least received the shades). In that light, it's not an insult but an expression of our genuine love for him.

Yet while nobody doubts John Paul's charisma, arguments have sprung up from all over about the wisdom of his so-called "closed-minded" faith. But John Paul's never-before-seen appeal was anchored on the eternal truths of Church teaching. No matter: the conservatism of the Church under John Paul is being blamed for everything from the explosion of AIDS in sub-Saharan Africa to the departure of millions from the flock. Let's settle these arguments quickly: first, blaming John Paul and the Church's stand against contraception for the AIDS pandemic is one of the most strained leaps of logic I've ever witnessed in my young life. According to the theory, sexually active Africans, by following the Church laws, are transmitting AIDS to their partners with horrifying frequency; however, the Church's view on contraception is only part of its stance on sexual morality, which forbids sexual activity of any kind outside of marriage. Therefore, if Church doctrine were truly being followed, the rate of AIDS transmission would be much, much lower.

Second: millions aren't leaving the Church in a mass exodus because it's too restrictive. Even more "open-minded" organizations are having trouble reaching out to materially wealthy and spiritually complacent societies (but the Church is thriving in Africa and Latin America). People are leaving the Church because they're too lazy to follow it.

Like . . . me.

And now that John Paul is gone, I am ashamed of myself. Ashamed because I let my pet peeves about the ugliness and sensory discomfort of the buildings, the dullness of the homilies, and the evils of some priests distract me from following his more wonderful examples and growing into the fullness of a faith which never really left.

Please forgive me, Holy Father, for I have sinned.

When John Paul left this earth last week, millions of people made a pilgrimage to Rome to view his body. Cardinals convened to determine who should succeed him. The President ordered American flags lowered to half-staff.

And the streets around my local church were lined with parked cars for three blocks in all directions.

(Edited 4/13 3:04 AM to add the Observer link.)

Big Trunk: One Smart Pachyderm

2005-04-10T03:09:00.000-04:00

Give That Man A Cigar!

(Note: I wrote and attempted to post this last night, but Blogger's server is still buggy.)

Power Line's John Hinderaker (neé Hindrocket) wonders what exactly Time is trying to say with their ad campaign: "If you want to know why American soldiers are defeated and demoralized, read Time."

Shockingly, I came to the rag's defense in an e-mail reply, opining that the ad wasn't so much an indictment of the war but as a teaser for that particular soldier's story, which I admitted wanting to know about just on the basis of the ad. If that weren't enough, I chided Hindrocket's culture shock a little, then gently mocked their shiny new layout as looking too much like Instapundit's.

And believe it or not . . . they wrote me back! Well, at least Scott Johnson (neé Big Trunk) did:

Date: Sat, 9 Apr 2005 06:16:23 -0500
From: Scott Johnson
To: marchandchronicles-at-yahoo.com
Subject: Re: "Know Why" . . . benign explanation?

>Mr. Marchand, thanks for your thoughtful message. I absolutely love the
>name of your site.

Well . . . thanks. I came up with it all by myself.

I presume he gets the reference. I feel like I should send him a cigar or something.

What about the rest of you? I promise it's not really that obscure. You don't have to be Ken Jennings to put it together. E-mail me at marchandchronicles-at-yahoo.com and maybe I'll send you a cigar, too.

Adopt-A-LPS™ III: The Dumbest Comment I've Ever Received

2005-04-08T16:47:00.000-04:00

I Only Have About Nine Total, But Still . . .

Someone calling themselves "Remember" added this to my initial "Adopt-A-LPS™" post:

I wish them well but, I'm not forgetting that these same freedom loving people of Lebanon cheered the fall of the World Trade Center Towers and the deaths of over 3,000 people.

Really?

I was pretty sure those were Palestinians celebrating in the streets of East Jerusalem, but never mind that now. Let's go ahead and grant the premise.

Mr. Remember, here's one of the many pictures of the demonstrations in Beirut. I wonder if you could tell me which of these people were the ones celebrating 9/11. Just go ahead and circle them:

Perhaps that's too wide a shot. Here's a panorama view. Once again, single out those who celebrated 9/11.

Oh. You can't.

Please tell me you're not refusing to assist these hundreds of thousands of freedom-loving Lebanese because eight toothless ululating yahoos made spastic bodily movements in front of a CNN camera on 9/11.

Besides, do you think it might possibly be that those who celebrated 9/11 are on the anti-democracy side, whose main ally is . . . Hezbollah? Just wondering.

I suppose the next time there's an earthquake in Japan and the Red Cross organizes a relief effort, we won't be able to count on your support because "these same freedom loving people of Japan orchestrated the attack on Pearl Harbor and the deaths of over 2,000 people."

In fact, by this logic, we shouldn't be spending one red cent on Iraq at all, for either military or humanitarian reasons.

Cough up some dough for the SOA Lebanon Fund and shut the hell up.

Adopt-A-LPS™ Update: The Universe Conspires To Help

2005-04-08T03:47:00.000-04:00

HOLY CRAP, IT'S AN INSTALANCHE!

Blogger's absolutely freaking out on me, no doubt still reeling from the effects of Instapundit readers flocking to my post. Welcome! In any other situation, I'd invite you further into my demented little corner of cyberspace; but considering what's at stake here, I'd rather you all hit the SOA Lebanon Fund for a dollar apiece. That would be a lot of dollars for a good cause; perhaps even the best cause.

Also, allow me to direct your attention to the blog SOA set up to report on the ground in Beirut. Michael Totten's living my vision over there; they need the cash more than I need the traffic.

I only wish I had known I'd been Insta-linked sooner — today I worked a double shift and last night was Poker Night — so I only just now discovered that Emperor Reynolds linked me 30 hours ago.

But the Poker Night is an interesting story.

I donated $50 to the SOA Lebanon Fund Wednesday afternoon. Fifty dollars is a lot of money to me, especially since I depend on a lot of unreimbursed travel for my job. Every time the price of gas goes up, it dings my pocketbook. Besides the obvious motive of going for a good cause, I justified the cost of the donation in part because of the money I've raked in playing Texas Hold'em recently.

Wednesday nights are when I play my weekly poker pickup tournament with a cast of buddies and bar-goers. I won't bore you with the hand-by-hand details this time, because the result was just so mindblowingly cool: I won the tournament and pocketed $65. Minus my $15 buy-in, my total profit for the night was . . . fifty bucks.

Sometimes the universe conspires to make sure you're fine. (That line shamelessly stolen from a poem by poker pro Phil Hellmuth.)

I'm not a huge believer in the circular mechanisms of karma, but in this case it worked. Even if it hadn't, the monetary sacrifice was worth it.

Adopt-A-Lebanese-Protest-Supermodel™

2005-04-06T16:36:00.000-04:00

>>> Welcome Instapundit Readers! <<<
(Major update to this post here.)

Michael Totten is making me very jealous. He's currently on the ground in Lebanon.

Short of winning the lottery tomorrow, I'll never be able to go. So I've ceased the donations for the Send-Me-To-Lebanon Fund. Besides, the motives were selfish: I just wanted pictures of Lebanese Protest Supermodels™ I could call my own.

Instead, I'm funneling them toward a more noble cause: the Spirit Of America Lebanon Fund. Click the link to find out how you can help.

Keep the Cedar Tree Revolution going!

(Edited 4/8 2:57 AM to add the Insta-welcome and update link.)

Cubs Win! Cubs Win!

2005-04-05T00:14:00.000-04:00

HOLY COW!

And what a win. Final score: 16-6.

Check out these lines:

Patterson: 3-5, 2 RBI, 2 R
Walker: 3-4, RBI, 2 R
Nomar: 2-5, 2 RBI, 2 R
Ramirez: 3-4, HR, 4 RBI, 4 R (can we resign him every day?)
Burnitz: 3-6, R
Lee: 4-6, HR, 2 2B, 5 RBI, 2 R

The only blemish was Zambrano's wildness. He'd thrown 106 pitches in 4 2/3 innings, and got himself in enough trouble that Dusty hooked him before he could qualify for the win. And when Dusty pulls you, he absolutely had to. Worse was that he mouthed off to the ump and got tossed. If he finishes the season 19-9, he'll remember this.

Other than that, allow me to wallow in unfettered optimism. We're on pace for a 162-win season.

I'm surprised virtually nobody else liveblogged the game except me and Grace & Wayne. Like me, he had issues with Blogger's server, AND he had to leave before the end of the game. Freaky.

LIVE: Opening Day

2005-04-04T17:06:00.000-04:00

Cubs vs. Diamondbacks

4:06 PM — This is my first chance to watch the Len Kaspar/Bob Brenly duo in the broadcast booth, and while they're efficient and professional, they just don't have the rapport of Chip and Steve, or even Pat and Ron. I suppose I'm just biased. Plus, Brenly used to coach the D-Backs, for cryin' out loud.

4:10 — Zambrano will start for the Cubs against ex-Yankee Javier Vasquez. This is a tremendous honor to be bestowed upon young Carlos, given that Greg Maddux could just as easily have started.

4:13 — First pitch: strike to Patterson.

4:14 — Base hit for Corey and an early hit-and-run attempt with Walker. I like the aggressiveness. No more waiting for the three-run poke, fellas.

4:18 — Wild pitch, sac fly by Walker, groundout by Nomar: Cubs lead 1-0 on a fine job of manufacturing the run.

4:20 — Base hit by Ramirez, who today inked a 4-year re-up for his contract. First AB by Burnitz, now. Amazing stat by Kaspar: the last Cubs Opening Day RF who wasn't Sammy Sosa? Andre Dawson.

4:21 — Base hit! Nickel-and-dime 'em, Cubbies!

4:23 — Base hit by Lee, and the carousel continues. Let's see if Zambrano hits before he pitches.

4:27 — Vasquez gets Holly on the high cheese and the inning ends.

4:29 — They talked about what a great year Zambrano had last year, and how impressive his spring was, and his first pitch: well wide of Michael Barrett's glove. But after running 3-0 on Craig Counsell, he popped out.

4:34 — Luis Gonzalez strikes out looking and the D-Backs go in order in the first.

4:38 — Zambrano gets the first XBH of the year. Way to go, hoss!

4:40 — Patterson rips a single to right center and Zambrano wheels all the way home, 3-0. Let's get a big inning and get the kid some rest, eh?

4:43 — Nomar bloops one into center and Patterson comes home. 4-0, four straight hits by the Cubs. This is starting to remind me of the 15-2 shellacking the Cubs put on the Mets a couple years ago. The bullpen's already seeing activity.

4:45 — Ramirez goes off the wall and Walker and Nomar score. 6-0.

4:47 — Double for Derrek Lee and the Cubs are up a touchdown. Here comes the hook for Vasquez. His line: 1 2/3 IP, 10 H, at least 7 ER.

4:52 — Some geezer took a dive after a foul ball. I think he's related to Steve Bartman. Gonzo gave him the ball and he got an ovation.

4:53 — The inning ends unspectacularly, but 5 in the second for the Cubs. Let's have some of that all year.

5:01 — Zambrano cruises through Glaus and Green but Jose Cruz, Jr. goes yard. Fine. See if you can get six more.

5:04 — Carlos K's the side but the Cruz homer makes it 7-1.

5:18 — Have I mentioned my favorite play in baseball is a 4-6-3 double play? That was a nice rally-killer.

5:19 — Gonzo wrecks the shift by dragging a squeeze bunt. I don't know why players who have that shift put on them don't do that every time.

5:20 — Oops! Glaus' excuse-me swing ends the inning. Cubs up 7-2.

5:26 — Ramirez' run-scoring double play reestablishes a six-run cushion.

5:35 — I HATE MY JOB. I've just been called in to cover for somebody. But with the Cubs up six, I was starting to feel silly tracking the game minute-by-minute, anyway. But still.

HIS HOLINESS JOHN PAUL II

2005-04-03T04:00:00.000-04:00

1920-2005

The LORD is my shepherd; there is nothing I lack. In green pastures you let me graze; to safe waters you lead me; you restore my strength. You guide me along the right path for the sake of your name. Even when I walk through a dark valley, I fear no harm for you are at my side; your rod and staff give me courage. You set a table before me as my enemies watch; You anoint my head with oil; my cup overflows. Only goodness and love will pursue me all the days of my life; I will dwell in the house of the LORD for years to come.
—Psalm 23:2-6 (NAB)

Barry, Barry, Quite Contrary

2005-04-02T15:44:00.000-05:00

How Do Your Muscles Grow?

America Online now has a blogwatcher (BLOGZone), and in it I discovered a link to a brutal but well-deserved screed against Barry Bonds by Tom McAllister:

Even after you graciously took time out of your schedule to let all of us know exactly what's wrong with us and what's right with you, I still harped on you. Now, your most recent press conference has forced me to look in a mirror and do some serious self-evaluation. I have been too hard on you. The media has been unreasonable to expect you to approach one of America's most beloved institutions with something resembling human decency and honesty. It's us, Barry, not you. We're the ones tearing your family apart. Last week you said, "I'm tired of my kids crying," pointedly jabbing at our own poor family values. I'm sorry that we didn’t look to you sooner as our bastion of family values; you, the man who plays a game loved by his father and godfather, and has blatantly cheated to surpass both of their statistical achievements. If only we had the kind of family values and respect you have.

"You wanted me to jump off a bridge, I finally did," you added. "You finally brought me and my family down. ... So now go pick a different person." I'm so sorry. I really am. I'm sorry that cynics will read the transcript of your carefully orchestrated press conference and wonder if maybe you're so tired and worn out because your drug-addled body has finally had enough. Or if you're walking away from the game because you're afraid that your body will finally betray you, now that you may not be able to get away with blatant cheating. During your second interview, you also, in an apparent effort to remind us that you have no tact or social skills, blurted out, "my balls are the same size they've ever been." Well, Barry, I wonder how true that is, since it escaped from the mouth of a massive man who was whimpering and running away from a challenging atmosphere that he's created for himself. Most cowards don't yell such things as they're running out the door. But you do things differently, we've always known that.

Wow.

After this, I almost do feel sorry for Barry Bonds.

Wait . . . no, I really don't.