Friday, October 21, 2005

I am reminded ...

on occasion, that many days go by when I forget to post things here, although I certainly could. The latest example is an article I just put up at ReasontoFreedom.com:

A Different Look At "Service?"

"He probably didn't intend doing so, but Arizona educrat Tom Horne may have given gradualist libertarians a whole new way to propose tax reform, based on the premise that 'If you're part of the solution, you're not part of the problem ...' -- adding the tagline that, therefore, they shouldn't be able to steal as much of your money to fix the problems ... f we grant that: (1.) It is a desirable thing for people to ... help the communities around them; and (2.) SOME social consciousness is necessary for one to exist in a society ... Can we not then encourage people to contribute to their communities with a tax-incentive?

www.ReasonToFreedom.com/Different_Look_At_Service.html

It's a little outside the box in some ways, but still addresses the subjects of liberty, autonomy and self-actualization ...

Also, I should let you know about an exciting new series of Channels, over at ISIL.org, one of which is my latest project:

THE MEDICAL FREEDOM CHANNEL
Steve Trinward, Editor

Whether it's a new development in stem cell technology or the latest attempt by the state to suppress alternative practices -- if it's about your health, you'll find out about it here.

http://medicalfreedom.isil.org


And the others are:

THE CHOICE CHANNEL
R. Lee Wrights, Editor

The latest news, commentary and events listings on education and school choice issues, from vouchers to homeschooling to separation of school and state.

http://thechoicechannel.isil.org


QUESTION EARTHORITY!
Thomas L. Knapp, Editor

Is it really a matter of Growth versus Gaia? Or is a libertarian environmentalism both possible and necessary? No sacred cows here. Everything environmental is fair game here as we put the competing worldviews on the field in search of synthesis.

http://questionearthority.isil.org

Monday, October 17, 2005

an even odder fact

... and then I'll sign off for the night ...

I now know pretty much first hand what it felt like to be in the press box ... at Shea in 1986, and at the Stadium in 2003 ... Having already written your lead, in which the Red Sox finally climb over the hump and beat a New York team for a) the Series win, or b) the ALCS and going to face Florida with a full head of steam ... just as:

a) Stanley throws the sweeping curve that lets ion the tying run, then delivers to Mookie, who then hits the dribbler-that-can-never-be-forgotten; OR

b) Either:

1) Pedro does NOT come out in the 8th inning as he should have, and Matsui, then Posada take him even; OR

2) Wakefield delivers that floater to Aaron [ ] Boone ... as they are getting ready to give him the trophy aas MVP of the ALCS ...

So I guess it's a good thing I'm not having to file another story tonight after all ...

But now it's Oswalt vs. Mulder ... and Clemens vs. Morris if need be (or Clemens starting Game One of the series if 'Stros do it Weds.? Which would be one of their best rotations to face Chisox, or ...). And if it's to be Cards/Chisox, they could basically take a bus back and forth, and each field will be about half-and-half fanwise ... and the pitching matchups are still pretty cool, and ... the Cards get a chance to "pull a Boston" and run the table ... if they can :)

Odd facts about baseball

This was completed, to the final keystroke, as Lidge went into his windup against Pojols in the 9th ... posted for your amusement! Now I may need to rewrite it for later inclusion, since the Cards could now just as easily run three in a row and go back themselves ...

Anyway ...

First off, it is actually almost MORE fun to watch playoff games when you are not emotionally (co-)dependent on the outcome. I had forgotten that, from all those years in the 50s, 60s, 70s, 80s and even early 90s ... when my beloved Red Sox (Flip Flops or Flop Sox, as we often called them) managed only once a decade or so to do more than show up on time for the first half of the season, and then go meekly by late August.

There was '67 of course which was aptly labeled "impossible" ... and then a near-miss in 72 (Aparicio of all people tripping over third?) ... and the 75 super Series (where someone had to end up winning it just wasn't quite Boston) ... and 77 and then 70-bleepin'-8 ... and then not much until 86 (and the dadgum Gerbil's failure to put Stapleton in as "caddy" like he usually did) ... and then several years of nothing, and then the mid-90s through present, when they kept finishing second, more often than not either the wild card or close to it ... and these last three years when they finally caught the Spankees, only to fade to WC on a technicality ...

Anyway, a lot of those years, there was no chance, and even if there was, you ended up seeing some other teams in the final rounds, playing better and more deserving. This is one of those years: All four teams belong there -- you might wonder about LAA and its Halos, but they just ran into the hottest team out there this year, running away from everyone for the first four months of the season, taking a deep breath in August and part of September -- and then rising to the occasion when the Indians closed to scary proximity, and just STUFFING them ...

But I was going to talk about "odd facts" ... Sorry for the digression ...

Odd fact #1: If it's White Sox/Astros, it will be a showdown between a team that has never been to the World Series, against one that has not been there since before their opponent even existed (Astros began, along with the Mets of Casey Stengel, in 1961; Chicago played LA Dodgers in 1959, last time they got there.);

Odd fact #2: If the White Sox win the Series, it would be their first win since 1917, the year before the Red Sox last won in before last year ... and as they noted on the game coverage tonight, the odds against that double back-to-back pairing of wins, 86 and 88 years apart, respectively, are ... 18.1 million to one -- meaning that if I had been whimsical enough a year ago, found a willing bookie, and had even 50 cents to spare ... I could have become a very rich man sometime about a week or so from now.

Odd fact #3: The Houston Astros are led by two pitchers who each won Series rings with the Yankees, and came close several other times, before moving their lockers to Texas, both for family reasons. (Much as I was never a Clemens fan, even when he WAS wearing white with red piping, at this stage in his career it is impossible not to acknowledge how good the egotistical bastard still is ...) Now they have a chance to have it all, leading a team that nobody thought would be here now ...

Odd fact #4: With Ozzie Guillen and Phil Garner, there will be two managers who were only mostly marginally good, scrappy-shortstop utility players, but obviously knew a lot more about the game than was noticed at the time. I love seeing that!

Odd fact #5: The chance to Pettitte/Clemens/Oswalt/Backe face off against Contreras/Buehrle/Garland/Garcia ... with good middle relief on both sides ... and then Lidge vs. Jenks (or even Hermanson?) at the end, when needed.

Odd facts 6 and 7: Contreras ... and El Duque Hernandez .. both castoffs from the Yankees ... both instrumental in getting Chicago here in their own ways.

And the fact that both teams can play percentage and play-for-one baseball, and yet also can bang the gong when they need to. And all these cool longtime players like Bagwell and Biggio and so on, there for the first time ever ...

I am really enjoying this, and either one winning will be great for baseball!

Friday, October 14, 2005

On further review ...

I got into discussing this with some friends, and figured I might as well post it here as well.

Comments on the "dropped third strike" from Wednesday's Angels/White Sox ALCS game:

1) The only thing Umpire Doug Eddings did wrong was not make it clearer what he was signaling.
2) Notice that last night, when there was a swinging dropped third strike, the ump threw his arms wide signalling "safe!" so there was no ambiguity there

3) I tend to agree that there was at least a question, even on the slowest close-up, whether the ball bounced from dirt to glove, or just deflected from web to pocket ...

Meanwhile three more things:

1) The Angels catcher is the real bozo for not tagging the guy anyway and ending the debate, and his refusal STILL to accept that fact, instead of whining about "not being told" ... merely shows he is of the "victimized" mindfet, and is not learning anything from this; and

2) All that play did was put a guy on first with two outs; it took a slick steal, and Crede's double to end the game; and

3) David Wells did not blame Graffanino for giving up a home run, NOR did Sciosia bitch publicly about the call, but instead admitted they "did not play at a high enough level to overcome" whatever quirks the game presented.

I think it is interesting but those are the basics ... on further review.

Looking forward to two 7-game series ... and maybe even three!

baseball be berry berry good even without the two "gut-wrenching teams" in it :)

Thursday, October 13, 2005

Rebuttal to two "progressives"

In my travels I run across a wide range of perspectives. Sometimes I find a "conservative with a heart"; sometimes a "progressive" with some clue about economics, or who sees how deeply wrong is the idea that just because someone has a "D" beside her/his name that that person is somehow holier than the next person ...

The other day I saw a couple of examples, both from the so-called "left" perspective. In both cases, the writers were slamming some aspect of modern political thought, allegedly "right-wing" issues in each case. Read the columns attached to the links, then come back and see what I had to add ...

(1) David Moberg of In These Times, who with "Imminent Domination" manages to defame both the word "libertarian" and the meaning of the Constitution in the American heritage. And the folks discussing the article below it were not much help, either. So I took a shot in responding, reprinted here:

I don’t which is more “disinformational” — calling the Republicans “libertarians” (the very meaning of which has been “anti-authoritarian” for at least a century and a half or so) ... or claiming that the government grants rights under the Constitution (when the exact opposite is true: the Constitution BEGINS with the premise (outlined in the Declaration) that our rights pre-exist, and that government is constrained by the list of things it CAN do, rather than permitted anything not listed (read the danged Ninth and Tenth Amendments for clarity!)).

Meanwhile, the consistent reference to the “libertarian right”—as being virtually synonymous with slightly more consistent conservative GOPers—is patently offensive, especially to those who remember the term’s origins (and its use by the LEFT throughout the early and middle 20th Century - ever hear of the Wobblies?) and who (even through a long run within and around the party that took the name) have always considered ourselves more “left” than anything else, except in our belief that choice and voluntarism are the primary values of a free society, while confiscation of wealth and property is the province of tyrants!

All in all, it makes me continue to wonder if anyone actually understands what “progressive” actually means ... and knows it is not a synonym for “Democrat” or even “non-Republican” ...

(2) David Corn in Tom Paine, heralding "The End of the Trust-Me Presidency?" Although he correctly details at least some of the ways in which Dubya has played a shell game with the American people, even with his own alleged constituents, he misses some larger questions, as follows:

A TomPaine.Com column by David Corn, "The End of the Trust-Me Presidency?" notes how often Bush has betrayed the small-government conservative movement of which he purported to be part, and concludes that Bush’s “trust-me” routine has “run out of gas.” The column does indeed, cite areas in which Bush recently performed badly, and how he has finally alienated his base with - Iraq, Katrina and beyond.

However, he does not take it far enough. A different perspective would be to note that the American electorate has now been subjected to the same shell game, regardless of party-label, continuously over the last fifty years or so. It hasn't mattered whether the figurehead has been named Johnson, Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Clinton or Bush – the result has been the same: skyrocketing budgets, initiation of force at home and abroad, decreasing scope of the Bill of Rights, and an increasing percentage of the citizenry who either draw a salary or receive a subsidy from the federal government. The fact that Mr. Corn focuses on the present GOP neocon bunch does little to gainsay any of this.

But he overlooks an even larger question. The idea of ending the era of the "trust-me presidency" should be welcomed with open arms by true libertarians (definition since long before there was a "party": "anti-authoritarians"):

* Anything that serves to debunk the "imperial" concept of an all-knowing, all-powerful Chief Executive, whose whims are to treated as inspired wisdom and leadership, would serve well those who seek a truly free society;

* Anything that might help invert that pyramid, placing the emphasis on local communities and voluntary action, instead of top-down hierarchical edicts, must be seen as a good thing for the cause of liberty;

* Anything that exposes the whole scenario – not just as "politics as usual," but as being inextricably woven into the fabric of imperial power – offers a pathway for showing those around us, who may be too busy eking out a living after taxes to stop and ponder the deeper questions involved, just what the task is that lies before us.

Meanwhile, if David Corn has done nothing else with his column, he has nicely chronicled the hypocrisies and lies of the current administration, and held them up to ridicule, so that even the most lockstepped conservative might see. It is up to us libertarians to point out that all Bush has done is played his own constituents for suckers – just like every President in modern times, for so many administrations and generations.

Steve out ...

Saturday, October 08, 2005

licking the wounds ...

well, not really ... as long as I've been following the Boys of Beantown, it wasn't all that hard to see this was not going to run the table again. And truth be told, the CHISox are really the class act up and down the lineup this year. If they take longer than 5 with either NYY or LAA (and my money if I had any to spare would be on Halos cleaning up tomorrow night and moving along, but either way, a team comes in having had to play out the string and then go to Chicago ... either with no rest or one day off at most), I'll be stunned. And then the Cardinals will have handled the Astros again, and the two juggernaut Middle American teams of 2005 (and for a while beyond?) will square off, and right now that's a tossup to me! Probably Cards, simply because they have been there before, and will be ready for the challenge ... but don't count the White Sox out ...

Meanwhile, I've still got my tapes from last year ... and Netflix can do without "Fever Pitch" for at least one more viewing :)

Monday, October 03, 2005

and since I'm here anyway ...

Gotta say at least a few words about my Sawx ... before hunkering down for another ride on the roller-coaster no doubt! (Oddly enough, the copy of "Fever Pitch" arrived from Netflix just a couple days ago, so I watched that last night, and felt ... very strange, indeed. Not that I am anywhere near as obsessed as the protagonist, I got shivers from some of his neuroses ... And there are those who would claim it was my life-story -- except for the season tickets of course, and the fact that I haven't lived in Boston since 1993 ...)

But I digress ...

Tomorrow, Boston takes on Chicago, trying to get Matt Clement to forget he used to play in that city, or maybe to at least remember which side of town it was ... Anything to get him throwing again like he was before the All Star game. They need a great showing from him, some on base-ing from Damon and Edgah, a couple of bangs from the usual subjects (Papi, Manny, Tek ...) and at least a split of the two games at Comisk ... I mean White Sox Park or whatever they call it now. If they can come home 1-1, with Wake and Schilling back to back, they might not have to go back to Chitown at all. (Meanwhile, they would benefit from seeing the Yanks and Angels beat each other's bullpens to death, so that if/when they do advance, it is against another depleted team!) Prediction: Sox in 4, probably Spankees in 5.

National League: Cards over Pads in 3, maybe 4; Astros in 3 or 4 over Bravos. St. Louis is too good, and wants to get back there too much; and those Houston pitchers are just too strong for even Bobby Cox to get by.

And as long as I'm sticking my neck out, Sox/Yanks goes 7, a tossup at this point; Sox/Angels could be LAA in 6, or Sox in 7. Cards over Houston in 6, and then the Series, which at this point still looks like St. Louis (over Sox, Yanks OR Angels) in 5, maybe 6 ...

I know, as a Red Sox fan I never give up until the last out is over ... but I'm planning to enjoy this fall, win or lose!!

Book Review and Latest Column

Some people blog, and then post a link elsewhere to bring people to it. I tend to write when I have the time and the topic, post it at one or the other of several sites I work with ... and if I remember to, come back here and let those who don't already know it, know about it:

1. Book Review: "How to Kill the Job Culture Before It Kills You"
Rational Review

"I came to Claire Wolfe's work a little late, finally reading 'Don't Shoot The Bastards … Yet' and then going back to '101 Things To Do Before the Revolution.' ... With How to Kill the Job Culture Before It Kills You Claire may have crossed over into the mainstream -- not by selling out, in any sense of the word, but by creating something accessible even to the most hidebound sheeple-person … who's looking to carve out a little progress toward personal autonomy, even in the midst of the most soul-numbing of job situations. Yes, even for that person there is something to be learned. As the subtitle proclaims, this book is a welcome guide to 'Living a Life of Autonomy in a Wage-Slave Society.'" more

2. A Rebuttal to Mr. Chinni
Free Market News Network

"It's not often that the advocates of 'good government' show their hands completely. Usually there is tap dancing around the topic, with phrases like 'marginal utility,' 'public conscience' and such. But once in a while, someone from that camp comes out and honestly promotes the value of increasing government size and power, as a solution to perceived social problems. The latest example is Dante Chinni, in his twice-monthly column for the Christian Science Monitor. Tuesday's rendition boldly proclaimed that, 'Wall Street shouldn't trump the government in emergency response,' and then proceed to make an argument in favor of increased government responsibility for national disasters. For clarity's sake (as well as lack of time for something more polished), I shall just reprint excerpts from his column, with my own comments interspersed." (09/28/05) more

Others shall follow as I get to them. Right now, I'm balancing the urge to write a "Serenity" review, exploring at least a couple of the deeper issues the film raises, with the desire not to spoil it for those who are planning to go see it. Maybe by next weekend, we'll all be on our second or third viewing :)

meanwhile, if you have not seen it yet, DO SO!