Duck Season

Dean and Rosemary Esmay has the perfect example of why Southerners wouldn't vote for liberals from the Northeast. Yesterday on his show, Bill Maher talked about this problem of the Democrats:

And that's a shame. Not just for Democrats but for democracy itself. And I feel bad for the millions of intelligent people who live in a region still dominated by so much prejudice that anyone who wants to be president better have a twang in his voice and pronounce all four E's in the word "shit."

Sorry, but responding only to people who look and sound like you is small-minded, so if Southerners don't want to have an inferiority complex, I say, "Stop doing things that make reasonable people think you're inferior!"

Like, getting rid of slavery was a good start. But don't quit there: Stop being the place that's always challenging the theory of evolution. What's next, gravity? Is that just a plot by the Jews up North to get people to drop spare change?

If you don't understand why Southerners get offended at something like this and reject people who think like this, then, well, you're probably a Democrat.

David Brooks :"Kerry's Special Friends". Michael Kinsley :"The Pragmatists' Primary". And Jonathan Last on the remaining Deaniacs.

The Gregg Easterbrook screed against the National Prayer Breakfast is just asinine. Easterbrook complains about the

...hundreds of dignitaries and big-shots get together to proclaim their deep prayerful concern for the downtrodden while being served by impoverished Salvadorans and Mexicans and, after leaving the National Prayer Breakfast, won't lift to finger to increase the minimum wage or extend health care benefits to the downtrodden they'd just been inches away from.

And here I thought liberals didn't want religion to dictate one's political positions. Easterbrook recycles the old liberal line that conservatives don't care about the poor because, otherwise, why would they oppose raising the minimum wage or free health care to the poor? Did he consider that maybe they oppose raising the minimum wage because it might cause increased unemployment, or that it hurts the buying power of those who makes just above minimum wage? And maybe extending health care benefits to the poor might cause the overall quality of health care to deteriorate? No, Easterbrook says, if you oppose those government programs it's because you don't want to help poor people. More offensive, Easterbrook implies that those who disagree with him aren't good Christians.

Easterbrook also writes that he was against the National Prayer Breakfast because Jesus forbade public prayer:

Christ repeatedly said that people should pray in private, and followed his own advice, leaving his disciples when he wished to address God. ("Then he withdrew from them about a stone's throw, knelt down, and prayed.")

This comes four paragraphs after he tells us he believes in natural selection, which I'm pretty sure contradicts a few things in the Bible. And while I'm not Christian, I'm pretty sure Jesus wouldn't approve of his obsession with NFL cheerleaders and other scantily clad women either. I'm not saying that one can't be a good Christian if one doesn't follow everything in the Bible, but this seems to be what Easterbrook is saying. If he doesn't like seeing people pray in public, he should just say so, and not hide behind the Bible. Of course, his words would carry more weight if he weren't a hypocrite who isn't exactly following everything in the Bible either.

Randy Barnett just discovered that John Kerry served in Vietnam. Maybe he learnt it from reading this Kerry interview by Rich Lowry. This Howie Carr op-ed on Kerry, on the other hand, doesn't bring up Vietnam at all, but is vicious nonetheless.

Viking Pundit reports that "people in Western Massachusetts HATE the Big Dig..."

FEH. That's what I say, FEH.

Eric should stop posting fiction to his blog. Asking "people" in "Western" Massachusetts what they think about government matters is a lot like asking a Jersey how well done he prefers to be when served.

Nobody at the Outback cares to think about what the cow's interests are, or how he got zip-locked and shipped around the country, but once he's finally on your plate with the seasoned steak fries and the extra large fixings they serve you, make sure you look your server square in the eye and congratulate them for a job well done.

Seriously, if you guys were to just start your own state the people on Beacon Hill probably wouldn't notice until you start charging landing fees for those free government helicopter rides to and from the Berkshires.

As for the Big Dig, sure it was a massive boondoggle, but it's cut five whole minutes off of my ride into East Boston. My Nonna thanks you for that.

How many peaceniks would take to the streets if President Bush dissolved the 9-11 or WMD investigations because he didn't agree with their conclusions?

Check out Patrick Belton from OxBlog for the UN version of "good work, you're fired."

Find out why "bullshit" is worth 103% while "hard work" is only worth 98%.

A federal judge declares Maurice Clarett eligible for the NFL draft. Clarett played one season for Ohio State in 2002 and was suspended form the team last year. Previously, the NFL required draft entrants to be three years removed from their high school graduation to be eligible. The judge ruled that the NFL rule violated antitrust laws. The NFL will appeal. They'll likely lose.

Assuming the decision is upheld, I don't think the NFL will turn into the NBA where the draft is full of high schoolers and college freshmen. Some reasons:

--Hitting: There's much more hitting in football than basketball. 18 year-olds simply aren't ready to get hit by 300-pound linemen and 250-pound linebackers.

--Predictibility: With few exceptions, the best basketball players in high school and college turn into the best players in the pro level. The same is not true for football. Half the stars in the league weren't even first round picks. It's much easier to see that Kobe Bryant or Kevin Garnett will turn out to be great players than comparable high school football players.

--Complexity: Basketball is a simple game. Football is very complicated. There's more for a receiver or a running back than just catching and running. There's also blitz pickups, playing angles, what to do when the quarterback scrambles. Or consider the responsibilities of a defensive back. The Patriots rookie DBs were confused in the Super Bowl. Just imagine a player with only one yar college experinece in that position.

--Choice: In basketball, there's only a few top level players in a draft. Teams have no choice but to draft that 18-year old phenom and hope he pans out, since the alternative is drafting a mediocre college player. In football, there's much more talent in the draft since there are more players. Also, since the talent level is close, football teams are more likely to focus on drafting guys who can play right away rather than hoping for getting that one great player. They'd rather have someone who can contribute in their first year than someone 10% better who can't play for two years.

Put all these factors together, team will avoid the players will less experience in the first round of the draft. And if that happens it won't be worth it for most players to come out early. Unless you really need the money, why be a second round pick and sign a 4 year, $6 million contract when you can wait a year and get $15 million? The only players the ruling will affect are the top 5 or 10 players each year.

The following is from page 30 of The George W. Bush Presidency: An Early Assessment, edited by Fred I. Greenstein:

In the 1978 (Congressional) election... young George's network of outside support turned into an insurmountable liability. His Democratic opponent hammered away on the theme that a blue-blooded Easterner was using family resources to become a pretend Texan. And, as in 1964 (when H.W. ran for a Senate seat from Texas and lost), the elitist-carpetbagger label stuck to a Bush... Bush learned a lesson when he realized he had been beaten by an opponent who had defined him and had stayed on that simple message.

Instapundit quotes Virginia Postrel, who believes this lesson has been lost on the current White House (as it was lost on his father's White House before him), potentially foretelling political doom again for the Bush's in 2004.

The Boston Red Sox have announced that single game tickets will be put on sale this Saturday, February 7. Eager Sox fans can begin purchasing tickets at 9 a.m. at the box office or at 10 a.m. over the phone a mere five days removed from their post Superbowl hangovers.

In an unrelated story, the building above North Station mysteriously collapsed late last evening. Local officials have been unable to determine the extent of the damage to the local economy due to a general lack of understanding for what business was conducted inside.

"We think the leprechaun may have gotten tired of the cold showers, and instead chose to bring the place down" a man who would only identify himself as "Danny A." told local authorities conducting an investigation on Causeway Street. "Recent vibes from this building made the House of Usher seem warm and fuzzy. Luckily this place fell twice as fast."

You just have to believe that Golf is directly responsible for the disproportionate amount of men dying in lightning strikes.

It's cool when Cindy Crawford is on Letterman, and she has to follow the coach of your pro football team.

Sucks to be us: "Men account for 84 percent of lightning deaths. Can we be that stupid? Yes." More lightning facts here.

Also known as today's Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ruling that anything short of gay marriage will be unconstitutional in the state.

I suspect that support for the Federal Marriage Amendment will increase by a wide margin. I was against it before, but now I'm ambivalent. Andrew Sullivan and others can tell us that the Defense of Marriage Act is enough to prevent one state from being forced into recognizing gay marriages from another, and that the courts won't misapply the Full Faith and Credit clause, but after this how can we be so sure? The reason I was against the FMA before was that the language of it was ambiguous and no one was really sure about the scope of the act. Did it also prevent states completely from having gay marriages and civil unions? The possibility that it did turned me against it. But gay marriage isn't that important a political issue is for me, and I'd rather not have it at all if it's going to be forced on the country by the courts.

The Washington Post will now require full registration. Previously they asked for only age, sex, and zip code. I always enjoyed telling them that I was a three-year old girl from Beverly Hills ...

I've read a lot of commentary on the Super Bowl halftime show the last two days, but I think everybody's been missing the big picture:

JANET JACKSON IS UGLY!

I think that's something on which everybody can agree on.

My parents never gave me valuable advice like this. (Via Weekender John)

The following excerpt is from Chapter 7 of Catharine A. MacKinnon's Toward a Feminist Theory of the State:

To be clear: what is sexual is what gives a man an erection. Whatever else does this, fear does, hostility does, hatred does, the helplessness of a child or a student or an infantilized or restrained or vulnerable woman does, revulsion does, death does. Hierarchy, a constant creation of person/thing, top/bottom, dominance/subordination relations, does. What is understood as violation, conventionally penetration and intercourse, defines the paradigmatic sexual encounter. ... All this suggests that what is called sexuality is the dynamic of control by which male dominance -- in forms that range from intimate to institutional, from a look to a rape -- eroticizes and thus defines man and woman, gender identity and sexual pleasure. ... Male sexual desire is thereby simultaneously created and serviced, never satisfied once and for all, while male force is romanticized, even sacralized, potentiated and naturalized, by being submerged into sex itself.

I spent three hours in the library trying to wrap my head around just 28 pages of feminist text. It was quite frustrating. What's especially challenging is resolving the seemingly legitimate criticisms:

Men force women to become sexual objects, "that thing which causes erection, then hold themselves helpless and powerless when aroused by her." ... This elaborate projective system of demand characteristics -- taken to pinnacles like fantasizing a clitoris in a woman's throat so that men can ejjoy forced fellatio in real life, assured that women do too -- is surely a delusional structure deserving of serious psychological study.

With the truely insane:

Once an act is labeled rape there is an epistemological problem with seeing it as sex. Indeed, this is a major social function served by labeling acts rape. Rape becomes something a rapist does, as if he were a sperate species. But no personality disorder distinguishes most rapists from normal men.

Her observations on pornography are particularly persuasive when one considers some of the creepier fads in pornography (Warning: That is a direct link to a porno site), but I can't help but be truely offended when she suggests I'm a whim away from raping someone.

Let's not forget some of the hallmarks of feminism from around the blogosphere these last few months.

The winner of Tuesday Morning Quaterback's haiku contest:

Mayor Menino
should know that none of us will
be in school Tuesday.
-- Katie McColgan, Boston

Gregg Easterbrook bloggs, again, about "Clear Skies" and wonders why the New York Times buried a study supporting the President's legislation.

You can find President Bush's ground breaking speech before the National Endowment for Democracy from last November here.

Some techie names his son Jon Blake Cusack 2.0. (Via Volokh)

Will voters in South Carolina angry that their regional team lost to the Massachusetts-based New England Patriots take out their frustrations on Massachusetts Senator John Kerry in tomorrow's primary?

The South Carolina Democratic Party is forcing voters to declare that they are Democrats by signing a loyalty oath before allowing them to vote in the primary tomorrow. Michael Graham says it's probably illegal and also stupid for a state party that desperately needs moderates to vote for them in the general elections. (Via Instapundit)

The conventional wisdom is that this will hurt Edwards and help Kerry because the independents who might be discouraged from voting overwhelmingly support Edwards, while Democrats support Kerry. I think, however, that this will help Edwards by lowering expectations. Edwards no longer needs to finish first because he already has a built-in excuse for losing to Kerry. If Kerry bests Edwards in South Carolina, the pundits won't give credit to Kerry for beating an opponent on their home turf. Instead, the focus will be on the missing moderate vote. And if Edwards still pulls it out, the win will be worth much more to him than it would have otherwise.

Bush and Blair nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

Michael Isikoff catches Kerry in a lie about his meeting with one of his donors, Johnny Chung, who later plead guilty to funneling illegal contributions from Chinese government officials to Kerry. Kerry had claimed that he had never met Chung prior to a Kerry fundraiser Chung attended and was unaware of where the money came from, but Isikoff found documents showing that they did meet and that Kerry knew Chung would be interested in giving money to Kerry's campaign. In exchange, Kerry got Chung and Liu Chaoying, a lieutenant colonel in China and owner of a Chinese government-owned company, a meeting with the SEC during which Liu tries to get her company listed on the U.S. Stock Exchange.

I hope Kerry wouldn't be so shameless as to complain about Bush's special interests in the immediate future.

(Via Kaus, who's really doesn't like Kerry)

I really do need to spend this free period studying, but since one of the key traits of blogging is to record thoughts as they occur I thought I should check in with this observation.

Last semester we had a Lieberman mole on campus, this semester it looks like the President is moving in. Just spied by me tacked to the bulletin board in the Political Science Student Lounge: Four Bush "Help Keep American Strong - Be a Bush Team Leader" pamphlets. Inside the pamphlets ask you to become a Bush Team Leader by:

1) Recruiting Five other Team Leaders
2) Sign up 10 Friends to Receive Bush E-mail Updates
3) Help Identify, Register and Turn Out Voters for President Bush
4) Write Letters to the Editor, Call Talk-Radio Shows and Send E-mails to Friends
5) Host a Block Party at Your Home
6) Volunteer for the President at Local Events

Four flyers may not seem like a huge presence to the casual observer, but my campus is a place where cardboard kiosks that provide the Boston Herald daily for free are covered in graphitti stating "Free crappy lies!"

Arizona: Kerry wins comfortably, Clark and Dean get over 15%
Delaware: Kerry wins, Dean, Edwards, Lieberman get over 15%
Missouri: Kerry wins big, Edwards gets over 15%
Oklahoma: Kerry wins, Edwards and Clark get over 15%
South Carolina: Kerry wins by a smigeon over Edwards, Dean and Sharpton get over 15%
New Mexico: Kerry wins, Clark, Edwards and Dean get over 15%
North Dakota: Kerry wins big, Clark and Edwards get over 15%

Yes, I'm predicting a Kerry sweep tomorrow, which would be terribly depressing if it weren't for the Patriots Super Bowl win and the fact that my Iowa and New Hampshire predictions were not even close to right.

Of course, there were some goats as well:

--Ricky Manning Jr. He looked pathetic trying to cover the Patriots receivers. One particularly embarrassing moment was when Givens gave him a stiff arm and Manning just fell on his ass. Manning didn't look too great when the other quarterback isn't throwing the ball right to him, as Bulger and McNabb did, and when the receivers didn't give up on the play like the Eagles receivers.

--John Kasay One of the big mysteries of sports is how the best athletes can mess up on simple things when the game is on the line. How hard could it be not to kick the kickoff out of bounds?

--Eugene Wilson and Asante Samuel The two rookies in the Patriots secondary were exposed in this game. A big part of playing in the defensive backfield is knowing the responsibilities of whom to cover, and those two didn't seem to know what they were doing.

--Panthers' front four The only times any of the front four did something significant was when Brady got Kris Jenkins to jump offsides three times. Brady had all day to throw the ball despite missing lineman Damien Woody for the game.

And notably missing from the list, thankfully for all Patriots fans:
--Ken Walter Sure, my grandmother can kick the ball farther than Walter can, but he didn't have a really bad kick (which is about all we can ask of him) and he made good recoveries on a few bad snaps that helped preserve field position early.

Patriots 32, Panthers 29

We all know about Tom Brady, Mike Vrabel, and Adam Vinatieri, but there were other players from both teams that had big games as well:

--Deion Branch A second-round pick by the Patriots two years ago, which came as a surprise because they were expected to draft defense and Branch was a small receiver that the Patriots had plenty of. Branch was huge when Troy Brown seemingly had his nose dislocated early and was ineffective for much of the first half. Branch caught 10 balls for 143 yards, including a 52-yard catch late in the second quarter that set up the second touchdown, and the touchdown that started the scoring in the game.

--Daniel Graham Graham has become the Patriots fans' favorite punching bag because of the number of dropped passes and fumbles he's had over the season, but he had a big 33-yard catch down the middle, and most importantly, his blocking kept Brady almost untouched for the game. Graham is already one of the best blocking tight ends, and he could become an all-pro if he learns how to catch the ball, since he is very physically gifted and knows how to run pass routes.

--Jake Delhomme He won't get much of the credit he deserved, but Delhomme played as well as Brady did. Sure, Steve Smith and Muhsin Muhammad were wide open in the two long touchdowns, but he made accurate long throws that also allowed the two receivers to catch the ball in stride. A surprisingly high number of quarterbacks in this league can't do that. The only mistake he made was the fumble in the second quarter that he really couldn't have prevented.

--Coverage Teams Neither team average 20 yards in their kickoff returns, and as a red Sox fan who know about disastrous finishes, you can't imagine how relieved I am that the last kickoff return by the Panthers didn't turn into a 5-literal situation.

--Dan Morgan you can't argue with the numbers: 11 tackles, 7 assists. Tackling against the Patriots is especially important since they throw so many short passes.

Want to lift sanctions on arms sales to China which were put into place after Tiananmen Square.

Expect some fanatical triumphalism in our regularly scheduled blog programming for a few days.

David Brooks on Kerry's candidacy:

Suddenly Kerry, who had not changed his views particularly, nor his campaign style, began to see his poll numbers rise in Iowa because Dean seemed a little less electable. Then other Iowa voters began to notice the momentum behind Kerry, which made him look still more electable, so more voters decided that maybe Kerry was the man to support after all.

And, what do you know, Kerry won the Iowa caucuses, and from that moment on the election turned into a postmodernist literary critic's idea of heaven. It became an election about itself, with voters voting on the basis of who could win votes later on.

It's the tautology, stupid.

So New Hampshire voters who had dismissed Kerry as a pathetic, unelectable loser days before took a new look at him after Iowa and figured that if he could win an election, he must be electable (which is sort of definitional), and concluded he is a triumphantly electable winner. Now Kerry is riding this great wave of electability, and he has a huge seething army of fanatical Kerry supporters who will follow him to the death, unless, of course, he stumbles — in which case they will abandon him faster than you can say "electability."

In which case, John, don't let the door hit you on the way out.

After running a sub-par Kenny Mane piece on "He Hate Me" and before cutting to commercial, ESPN teased an upcoming tape piece on the evolution of the goal post.

T-minus six hours and counting.

Meet the Nimrods.

Jeff Fisher and Torry Holt on ESPN's Sunday NFL Countdown have been nothing short of superb.

ESPN just did a segment with about five or six of their talent simulating the Patriots offense on a football field, and through each segment of the play Jeff Fisher provided Jaworski caliber insight into the way the Pats offense works. In a previous segment with Suzy Kolber, Torry Holt provided all of the energy and entertainment of Michael Irvin/Deion Sanders but with an extra quality: actually having something knowledgeable about football to say.

From Scrappleface via Andrew Stuattaford: "The announcement comes on the same day as news that the President will request $15-$20 million in additional funding for the NEA, a government agency which distributes taxpayer dollars to artists whose work is so good they cannot make a living doing it."