Bull Moose Strikes Back

The undergrads are back on campus crowding up the joint. This is a good news and bad news thing. (Does a September 24 start date strike anyone else as late?)

The good news is that it never hurts anything to gaze upon a new crop of incoming coeds who are away from mommy and daddy the first time and are running around campus dressed like they wouldn’t be allowed to at home.

The bad news is that said girls are reminding me that I am quickly approaching double the age of incoming college freshman. In fact, my daughter is as close to being one of those college freshman as I am removed from being a college freshman.

How the hell did that happen?

4 Comments »

Short and sweet this week, since attention has temporarily been shifted to the once in a quarter century appearance of the Brewers in the playoffs:
Favre threw 6 TDs for the Jets. Packers lost and are now a mediocre 2-2.

Heads status: If I was one of their dogs, I’d seek cover. (Why take it out on their dog?)

2 Comments »

Congratulations to Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid. They and their allies in the media have managed to use the boogeyman of this financial shakeup to move a giant amount of power from Wall Street to Washington. It fits in perfectly with their neo-socialist agenda. Not that our free-spending President and Treasury Secretary weren’t on the sidelines cheering this on. It truly was beautiful – devise policies to create a crisis to make people fearful enough to give the go ahead to use our tax money to transfer even more power to D.C.

But, but, we’re going to make money on this! I have no doubt that the government will be able to recoup a lot of the money. That’s the good news. The bad news is that money will be in the government’s hands. I’m sure Congress will find that cash useful to put whatever boondoggle a President Obama comes up with in effect. Not that I’d trust a President McCain veto to do anything useful with that money (like retiring debt).

But, but markets could lose a third if we don’t do this! Fine. There is enough cash sitting on the sidelines waiting to find out what is going to happen it wouldn’t stay down that long. Let some sensible companies and people make some money by buying at a discount.

What has this country become? The Federal Government of the United States is not supposed to be stepping in to soften the pain of bad decisions during market corrections. At least not according to this document .

I have to go over the language of my mortgage. I don’t know that I ever consented to the U.S. government becoming the owner of my note. I’m sure I consented to the note being sold as a matter of course, but I wonder what the exact language was. Maybe I can sue somebody over something.

UPDATE: Not so fast…

6 Comments »

The Brewers salvage the weekend by sneaking into the playoffs! The last time they made it to the playoffs I was in second grade. Time to get the schedule and plan my week.

Man, is CC Sabathia ever a beast, pitching a full game on three days rest.

WOO!!!!

4 Comments »

Not only was Paul Newman a great actor, but he was a great human being. He knew how to give back: Putting up the money to give jobs to people who make a high-quality product and donate the profits to charity, while not making a big deal about it.

While there are no shortage of great Paul Newman to choose from – Cool Hand Luke, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The Hustler, Road to Perdition, and on and on… But my favorite has always been Slap Shot:

(R-rated clip.)

1 Comment »

I just finished week 3 of my half-marathon training with a five mile run. I can easily run five miles, but it wasn’t something I’d normally do regularly, instead keeping them around 3-4 miles.

The next few weeks are going to be the challenge as the milage on the runs start ticking up. I’m also hoping at that point I see the scale start ticking down a little bit.

4 Comments »

Flipping back and forth from the Badgers blowing a 19 point lead to the Brewers blowing a big chance – bases loaded, one out, down by one in the eighth, made for an infuriating afternoon. Seriously, an illegal man downfield on the the 2-point conversion?

None of this is improving the mood I’ve been in over the last few days where I’m looking for an excuse to punch someone in the throat.

Brewers are tied up for the Wild Card going into the last day of the season. I guess that the fact that they’ll be in it on the last day of the season is an improvement.

Tomorrow should be interesting.

4 Comments »

• If the Mets and Brewers end up tied for the wild card, the Mets better hope they win the coin flip for home field advantage, since apparently the Brewers are hanging this whole race on walk-off home runs or walk-off grand slams. Now if we can just get Lou to lay the Cubs down for us in the next two games like they laid down against the Mets…
• Welcome back Yovani Gallardo.
• Way to go Beavers! I must be getting acclimated to the West Coast. There are a couple of Pac-10 teams that don’t bug me anymore and the Beavers are one of them. I guess Nick Barnett probably has a lot to do with that. I don’t see California getting a Aaron Rodgers exemption, though.
• Penn State thrashed the Beavers earlier in the season, so they become a huge specter (more so) on the Badgers’ schedule after last night. That game is in Madison this year. Of course, the Badgers have to get through Michigan Stadium and by Ohio State at home before they start worrying too much about that game. Wow, the Badgers have all the tough games at home this year (that includes Minnesota). Let’s do this thing. This is going to be an exciting Big Ten season.
• What the hell happened to the Mariners? When I got here they tied the record for most victories in a season. This year they’ve won 58 games. Coincidently the Brewers’ fortunes started turning as soon as I moved out here. I guess the problem must be the shitty baseball aura that is attached to me.
• I suppose wanting to hurt the best player on the team might not be a good plan for the Mariners.
• Speaking of Ichiro, for some reason I was thinking about what it would take for Ichiro to make the Hall of Fame. If he replicates even his worst season next year, he should get to 2000 hits by the end of his ninth American season. He also has more than 800 runs and 300 stolen bases in eight seasons. He holds the record for the most hits in a season. He has seven gold gloves and is an eight time All Star. He’s 35. If he can play to 40, he still probably won’t get 3000 hits. I think if he gets to 2400 hits and 1000 runs he gets in, even if he only plays ten seasons in MLB. What do other baseball fans think?

2 Comments »

This is video does a fairly good job of introducing the problems related to the financial crisis. It was made by McCain supporters, but I wish they would have left the McCain/Obama stuff out of it, because it kind of speaks for itself without it.

More background here, but since it is from the evil Fox News Channel, it’s probably all lies:

h/t: Moonbattery

3 Comments »

If Sarah Palin isn’t enough of a reason for you to get over whatever your problem is with Barack Obama, then you damn well had better pay attention. Anybody toting guns and stripping moose don’t care too much about what they do with Jews and blacks. So, you just think this through.

…says Congressman Alcee Hastings (D-eranged).

Step 1: Go moose hunting.

Step 2: ?

Step 3: You’re a racist!

I’m getting a feeling that PDS is going to be to BDS what the ebola virus is to the common cold.

Since Obama’s camp believes there is so much to criticize about Palin, why do they need to play the race card? Especially when it involves such stunning leaps of logic.

And is it too much to ask that a United States Congressman know when to use “don’t” and when to use “doesn’t”? I mean, I’m not asking that he get who/whom right; it’s not that hard. Though as a former federal judge, albeit one that was removed from office for corruption, I’m pretty sure that Hastings knows when to use which word and was just talking down to his audience. Racist.

9 Comments »

I’m pretty sure the answer to this latest financial hiccup isn’t a $700 billion bailout. On the other hand, I’m also pretty sure it isn’t doing absolutely nothing.

What I am sure of is that whatever Congress and the President comes up with will be the wrong thing.

JP Morgan Chase just snapped up a bargain. Bank of America has been cleaning up grabbing Countrywide and Merrill Lynch. Maybe we let these big, dumb banks fail and not charge taxes on the capital gains anyone buying their loans make on the risk outlay.

I know trying some free market capitalism in this country is a shocking idea these days, but I think we should give it a whril.

6 Comments »

Stewart Barr, of Exeter University, who led the research, said: “Green living is largely something of a myth. There is this middle class environmentalism where being green is part of the desired image. But another part of the desired image is to fly off skiing twice a year. And the carbon savings they make by not driving their kids to school will be obliterated by the pollution from their flights.”

They found the longest and the most frequent flights were taken by those who were most aware of environmental issues, including the threat posed by climate change.

No kidding. Did they do that study in Seattle? I can’t tell you how many lectures I’ve heard about global warming by someone who jets to Europe or Hawaii multiple times a year.

I’ve also heard a Prius owner brag about how good for the environment is in comparison to the lecturees small SUV. Except that Prius owner lived 30 miles out of town and the SUV driver lived five miles from work, and therefore the Prius was burning more gas on a daily basis.

Of course my favorite was the time I got lectured about global warming by a co-worker. I pointed out that she drove her Toyota Tacoma 270 miles round trip a couple of times a month to go rock climbing while I (at the time) took two busses and a ferry to work.

I’ve found that most of the “Greens” around here are more interested in changing my lifestyle than theirs.

In fact, I have a lot of respect for the one of my old co-workers in Seattle because she walked the walk. I vehemently disagreed with her on almost everything that had to do with public policy, but I respect that she rode her bike everywhere, used hemp bags, didn’t use shampoo, soap, or shaving cream because she thought that was what needed to be done. That’s the only one I know.

2 Comments »

Kim “Pussification of the Western Male” DuToit is going to quit blogging in November… er… again. It’s too bad, because I love when he gets cranky and writes stuff like the speech George Bush should’ve given to the UN, a portion of which follows.

“Mr. Secretary General, and the rest of you Commies, thugs, kleptocrats and tyrants:

“I wish I had good things to say about you and this organization in general, but I can’t find the words—not because I am inarticulate, as many of you may think, but because I want to retain some small trace of gentility and diplomacy, and not tell you what I, and a huge proportion of the American people, really think of you.

“So let me just say this: when we ‘went it alone’ (which is our right as a sovereign nation), we were loudly condemned for being ‘independent cowboys’; yet, when we tried to engage the rest of you in our diplomatic initiatives, we got the cold shoulder. So I ask you, members of the United Nations: what is left for the United States to do?

“Let me tell you what’s next. To those of you who think you’ve had a good time by tweaking our tails—that would be Venezuela, North Korea and Iran, in particular—I have only one thing to say: the missiles are in the air. Don’t bother calling home to check—by the time you get to a phone, it will be too late, and all you’ll hear is silence. Which will make a welcome change for the people of the United States, because all we’ve heard from you in the past few years have been threats, bluster and insult.

The whole thing is here.

No Comments »

I was puzzled when Matt Millen got the job as the Lions’ GM. From listening to his color commentary I figured that even though he’d played football, he seemed to know less about it than the average Purdue student who wears khakis to Ross Ade stadium. (Where they keep the World’s Biggest Drum. Or is that Indiana?)

I was even more puzzled when he kept his job year after year. I started to figure he must have had pictures of someone high up in the Lions organization. Not that I minded. The two wins a year for the Packers worked out fine for me.

Someone must have finally gotten those pictures back because Millen has finally been fired. The good news for the rest of the NFC North is that it will take more years for the Lions to recover from Millen than it did for the U.S. to recover from Jimmy Carter.

The bad news for everyone is that he might try to get his job as a color man back. That Dick Stockton/Matt Millen team was terrible. And I really don’t know how much of it was Stockton’s fault because Brian Baldinger is also such a horrible color man I’ve never gotten a clean read on Stockton.

Maybe they should give Aikman a few weeks off and let Millen share the booth with Joe Buck. The hope being there that one of them would murder the other one, or at least that Millen would cause Joe Buck to lose it and say something career-ending on the air.

4 Comments »

Late this week because Favre played on Monday night. This is kind of a puzzling week:

Packers lose a huge game at home against the hated Cowboys, the Cowboys first ever win at Lambeau.
Rodgers threw for 290 yards, 0 TD, 0 INT; Favre 272 yards, 3 TD, 2 INT. (It sure is funny watching his costly pics be someone else’s problem.)

Favre sucked against the Cowboys, but always manage to beat them at home.  Rodgers was OK, but missed a few chances on 3rd down that would have kept the Packers in the game – generally the kind of plays that Favre would take high risk/high reward chances on. Hey, we lost anyway.

The bigger problem for the Packers that Nintendo Bigby (he’s better than an Atari) was out for the game and Al Harris was out for most of the game. The Packers defense got burned on a couple big plays and several 3rd and longs. I have to think at least a few of those plays were because half of their starting secondary was out. I don’t know if it was the difference between winning and losing, but it couldn’t have hurt.

Worst of all, Al Harris may miss the rest of the season, so even in a potential playoff rematch we might not find out if it would make a difference.

Because they presided over the Cowboys first win at Lambeau and fielded a team that  just looked kind of flat for what could’ve been the biggest game of the year, I have to call the status of Thompson and McCarthy’s collective head only slightly less endangered than Al Harris’ spleen.

3 Comments »

Angry atheist drunk Christopher Hitchens blinds me with the light of his brilliant observation in his recent Slate article, subtly entitled “Why is Obama so vapid, hesitant, and gutless?”

By the end of that grueling campaign season, a lot of us had got the idea that Dukakis actually wanted to lose—or was at the very least scared of winning. Why do I sometimes get the same idea about Obama? To put it a touch more precisely, what I suspect in his case is that he had no idea of winning this time around. He was running in Iowa and New Hampshire to seed the ground for 2012, not 2008, and then the enthusiasm of his supporters (and the weird coincidence of a strong John Edwards showing in Iowa) put him at the front of the pack. Yet, having suddenly got the leadership position, he hadn’t the faintest idea what to do with it or what to do about it.

I think he’s on to something. Around here (or was it another blog?) in the comments section, I wondered why Obama would have jumped in this time around. Why would someone who is brilliant at getting to the next level jump in so prematurly without shoring up his record in the Senate. It’s not like he was going to be less articulate and clean in the next 4 or 8 years. Plus he wouldn’t have to worry about Hilary and Bill Clinton submarining him.

The rest of that article has some good, or at least intriguing, points too. You have to hand it to Hitchens, his opinions are all over the spectrum and he takes them all with full force.

3 Comments »

I’m sitting in class but keeping an eye on the MLB.com GameDay updates of the Cubs-Mets game.

I feel so dirty cheering for the Cubs.

4 Comments »

First, there must be no blank check when American taxpayers are on the hook for this much money.

Second, taxpayers shouldn’t be spending a dime to reward CEOs on Wall Street.

Third, taxpayers should be protected and should be able to recoup this investment.

Fourth, this plan has to help homeowners stay in their homes.

Fifth, this is a global crisis, and the United States must insist that other nations join us in helping secure the financial markets.

Sixth, we need to start putting in place the rules of the road I’ve been calling for for years to prevent this from ever happening again.

And finally, this plan can’t just be a plan for Wall Street, it has to be a plan for Main Street.

Now I understand everyone’s shit’s emotional right now. But I’ve got a 3 point plan that’s going to fix everything. Number 1: We’ve got this guy Not Sure. Number 2: He’s got a higher IQ than any man alive! And number 3: He’s going to fix EVERYTHING!

7 Comments »

The Professional Responsibility casebooks and back pages of The Bar News is full of variations of the same story that always make me shake my head: Someone works for years to go to law school, pass the bar, and build a practice, and then pisses it away by exchanging a bill credit for sex. Strangely, random women who use sex to pay for things can’t always be trusted to keep quiet.

Even if the attorney had no moral qualms regarding the exchange of sex for money, one would think it would be much safer to take the money from the client and blow it on a discreet prostitute (your friend from law school who does criminal defense will be able to recommend one) rather than risking a suspension for screwing a client. Besides, getting caught with a prostitute won’t get you disbarred, getting caught with a client will.

So what confounds me even more is that a lawyer would blow his practice over in office lap dances. Dude, at least make it worthwhile. Go down in flames. Trading billing hours to get teased? What’s the point of that?

Though, if I was representing him, I’d maintain that these were two profesionals bartering their services, which is usually allowed depending on the state.  The problem is that whole “appearance of impropriety” thing that lawyers are supposed to avoid.

3 Comments »

Happy Talk Like a Pirate Day.

I kind of feel sorry for my son, since his birthday is so close to Talk Like a Pirate Day, he gets screwed out of presents. But here he is participating anyway:

In honor of the day, I’ll translate jsonline’s take of the Brewers latest terrible loss into pirate:

Under t’ circumstances, an awful, awful loss for t’ Brewers. They had a chance t’ win with t’ startin’ pitchin’ matchup distinctly in t’ Cubs’ favor and blew it. Just like they’re blowin’ their season.

6 Comments »