Oval Office 2008

Good news to the majority of poll respondents who seem to favor "Stories from California" as a category of posts to my musings about politics. It appears that I will be posting the bulk of my observations on the upcoming election cycle -- at least at the Presidential level -- on another website devoted exclusively to coverage of the 2008 election. That website attempts to provide non-partisan, objective analysis, and while I do not conceal my preference for Giuliani, my focus will be to provide a realistic analysis of events in the campaign rather than to promote my candidate.

Coverage of political issues here will be analysis at the non-Presidential level and the more partisan of my ramblings. I will provide cross-references here so those readers who do enjoy my political thoughts with respect to the Presidential campaign can pursue them in the new forum. I am told to expect this "New World Order" will come in to effect over the weekend.

Critter Chomp

So I'm sitting down this morning, teaching my class online while I eat my breakfast of oatmeal and coffee. Karma the dog is curled up on the other end of the couch. Jordan the cat jumps up and sits down next to the dog. She starts licking and grooming the dog's face. This is cute, so I look up and watch. Just as soon as I do this, I see Jordan open up her mouth and clamp her teeth down on either side of the dog's eye.

"Hey!" I shout. "Don't bite the dog's eye!"

The cat looks back at me, as if to say, "What? I do this all the time when you aren't here. She likes it."

The dog obviously does not like it. But she's too gentle and well-socialized to do anything to the cat, and it a little bit apprehensive because the cat has her fangs encircling her eye.

"Go on, leave her alone!" I get up, and the cat lets go of the dog. Who turns around and turns her back on the cat. The dog is happy that I've rescued her, and starts wagging her tail. Which the cat starts grabbing at with her claws, the way she would a dangly-toy. Eventually, I have to shoo the cat away from the couch altogether so she'll leave the poor innocent dog alone.

Even tonight, Jordan has been pestering Karma -- following her around, nuzzling her, and continuing to lick her. I wonder if these are aggressive behaviors rather than gestures of affection and familiarity.

Welcome To The Club, Tommy

Well, you know what we needed. Another Republican entering the race for President. I'm not really sure what it is that Gov. Thompson brings that is new.

Plusses: He did some pretty interesting things as governor of Wisconsin, mainly with welfare, but also to some extent with school vouchers (although that was, as I recall, an experiment confined to Milwaukee rather than statewide).

Minuses: Thompson is not very photogenic and very, very vulnerable to criticism from the Democrats on healthcare after having taken credit for reforming the system -- about the worst scenario I can think of is having to have an election against Senator Clinton and having the election turn into a referendum of whether the country's health care system is working well. Very few people are going to remember when things worked well, too many people will remember when things frustrated them or didn't work out quite right, and it's too easy for the Democrats to trot out horror stories of bureaucracy run amok.

(Since when was bureaucracy run amok an issue that worked for Democrats? Things have changed since I was in college.)

A friend offers some wisdom. "Pretty much everyone who gets elected to anything wakes up in the morning, looks in the mirror, and thinks about the Oval Office. Doesn't matter if you're a Senator, a city councilman, or a water commissioner." Certainly if you're getting re-elected so often that people think "Governor" is your first name, you probably have a pretty strong sense that people like you. So perhaps we shouldn't be surprised, with a wide-open field, that there are so many entrants.

But there's a reason that there are only a few "big" candidates at this stage of the game. While the field of available candidates is expanding (so far only one candidate has dropped out) the process is one of winnowing out, and the extraordinary thing this cycle is how early the process has gotten started. But the process has its own dynamic, and one of those dynamics is that if you get into the game too late, there isn't enough money and there aren't enough people to go around. I have a hard time seeing Thompson attracting the talent and the dollars. Sorry, Tommy.

Jury Trial Tomorrow

I found out only this morning that what should have been a simple unlawful detainer is turning into a jury trial. We're set to go tomorrow. I spent all day trying to draft jury instructions and special verdict forms because nowhere are there reasonable jury instructions for unlawful detainers -- and fewer still that apply to mobile home parks. So when that sort of thing happens, we have to make it up ourselves.

I've been working at full speed ever since getting back to court -- and it seems like every attorney in the area wanted to talk to me about it. Strangely, it never occurred to many people that I needed to actually prepare for this trial if I'm not going to look like a complete ass tomorrow, and I wound up having to spend what felt like half my time on the phone and talking to people rather than assembling exhibits, drafting motions in limine, and my jury forms. Only after most of the staff left and we could put the phone on night ring could the partner and I actually dig in to the work a little bit.

I guess I was kind of a stress case today after court, but the thing of it is, a jury trial will do that to you. Between having no guidance, and no time, and lots of people interrupting me, and kind of a greater pressure than I'm quite used to, I'm reasonably sure I was kind of a prick today, which is not a good thing, but there's nothing I can do about that now.

Rule of Evidence 350

Judge Schwarzenegger makes his ruling. I'm not sure I agree, although I admit I'm not unhappy with it.

Donations to Afghanistan

To send gifts or donations to Afghanistan and get them to the kids in Kabul, the address is:

VCR

Chap. Brown

APO AE 09356

Do not put any rank, unit or 'Áfghanistan' on the box.

More From Afghanistan

Another heartbreaking letter from my friend, serving in Afghanistan:

Serving in a combat zone we sometimes forget the true casualties of war. Certainly the comrades that I have lost over here in Afghanistan come to mind. In fact, they never leave your thoughts. But the ones who suffer day in and day out are the refugees.

I was fortunate enough to visit (although briefly) a refugee camp in Kabul , Afghanistan just the other day. I hesitate to describe exactly where the camp is since the Taliban like to attack anyplace where the international community is providing support. In fact, just to drop off relief supplies we had to travel in a well guarded convoy.

This particular camp housed 200 families with a total population of about 500 people. These refugees are people who fled to Pakistan and Iran during the many years of war in Afghanistan . They left behind everything. All of which was eventually lost. They have no land, no jobs, and hardly any clothes. And more importantly, they have no families left to whom they can return.

These refugees subsist purely on donations. Many wear clothing donated by Americans. Their living conditions are terrible. No running water and only outside bathrooms. Their one building, where they all live, is nothing more than a bombed out shell. Some windows are missing and there are very few working doors.

The sanitation environment is horrible. There is a drainage ditch that runs right through the middle of the camp that is nothing more than an open cesspool. Disease runs rampant throughout the camp. Diseases such as tuberculosis are common here. The average lifespan in Afghanistan is 43 years old. In this camp it is less. The common cold can be fatal in an environment like this.

When we arrived I noticed one little girl who was very shy. She stood away from the others and would not participate in any group activities. It took a long while of being patient and letting her find her own timing and space, but finally we became friends.

She turned out to be very sweet. She has a smile that would melt anyone. She told me about her dream to someday leave this camp. But for now she must live in this nightmare.

Why any military would want to inflict pain and suffering on someone like this little girl is beyond comprehension.

But war does that.

/s/

I'm proud that we have people like my friend serving our country in this way. The great thing is, even in the face of such terrible conditions and some of the most deplorable behavior human beings are capable of, his optimism, compassion, humanity, and resolve show through -- and in those respects, he is just like pretty much all of the other men and women serving in the military alongside him. These people are representing the best our country has to offer and I'm confident that they all have the ability to win hearts and minds, just like my friend is doing.

I truly hope we can give that adorable little girl, and indeed all of the children her age in that eternal battleground of a nation, some measure of peace and hope one day. We need to clear out the bad guys for that to happen. As long as the Taliban is active and powerful enough to threaten innocent civilians like this little girl for having the temerity to accept charity from Westerners, we haven't yet completed that mission.

We can't make the Afghans rich or powerful, but we can give them the opportunity to build their own country and help them keep it peaceful and under the rule of law. The obstacle to doing that is a bunch of bad guys that many Americans assumed, incorrectly, were wiped off the planet five years ago. Unfortunately, it's not so, which is why that little girl has to live in the squalor my friend describes.

So let's go get 'em.

St. Patrick's Day Dinner

Dublin Lawyer:

12-14 oz. lobster tails
1/2 cup butter
1/2 cup whipping cream
1/2 cup Irish whiskey
Salt and pepper to taste

Heat whiskey to just over room temperature, about 90 degrees or so. Remove the lobster meat from tails and cube. Melt butter over low heat in a large saute pan, and when it begins to foam, increase heat and add the lobster meat as butter browns. When just cooked, add whiskey and stir vigorously for several seconds. Flambe. Immediately add cream, salt, and pepper, and reduce cream sauce until thick.

Irish Potato Cakes:

8 parts potato
2 part flour
1 part butter
Salt, pepper, small amounts of cayenne pepper and lemon zest
Chives to taste

Boil unpeeled potatoes; allow them to cool and then peel them. Mash potatoes thoroughly and add spices. In small increments, fold in butter and flour. Dough should be easily pliable. Form mixture into small, flat cakes (less than half an inch thick) and pan-fry on dry (or, if you prefer, lightly buttered) surface.

Colcannon:

Oh, come on. I'm not making colcannon tonight. I'm not really Irish. It'll be green beans, the thin French kind that high-end restaurants call haricots verts.

Dessert is a three-berry parfait with whipped cream flavored with Bailey's.

Happy St. Patrick's Day, everyone!

Writing Some More

I've noticed an uptick in my writing recently. The Wife complains that my posts are very long, and she loses patience. So she abandons reading them about halfway through. That's unfortunate, but the fact of the matter is, I don't have enough time to write short posts. The point is to get a thought out and expressed.

In the meantime, I encourage all the Loyal Readers to vote in this new poll. It could influence my choice of topics in the future. So far, though, there is a pretty wide distribution of subject matter preference amongst the Readership.

Writing Again

A new post, finally, from New York Hack -- and it's about jury duty. She's been away from her blog for some time working on her book, but she can really write, so it's good to see more from her again.

Writing On The Wall

It's astonishing to me that this would be what brings down Alberto Gonzales -- something that he had every right to do but could not restrain himself from lying about doing anyway. I guess it's just in these guys' natures. Pray that, if by some bizarre circumstance I should wind up in such a position, I remember this lesson.

Do These Dogs Look Tired?

They should. They were on the loose for nearly three hours today. See, I got home before The Wife, so I let them out of their kennels, fed them, and let them out into the back yard to relieve themselves. Then I went upstairs, fed the cats, changed into shorts and a T-shirt to go take them for a walk, and came downstairs to get the dogs.

That's when I noticed that the lawn had been mowed. Fearing the worst, I checked the side yard. Sure enough, the gardeners hired by the landlord had left the gate wide open. I'd been up in the bedroom for at least ten minutes, maybe more. So I went out looking for them. First, I shouted their names up and down the street. Nothing.

Then I got in the car and started driving around for the dogs. Nowhere. I drove up and down every street in the neighborhood, shouting their names until my throat hurt. Nothing. I expanded my search, and checked the them. They'd been gone for half an hour. I wanted to call The Wife, but I noticed my phone was missing. After a check back at the house -- I don't know why, the dogs have no idea where they live -- I decided to make another circuit of the neighborhood, checking the construction sites nearby.

Half an hour of driving around later, I still hadn't found the dogs, and The Wife still hadn't come home, and I still didn't have my cell phone. Apparently I'd left it at the office. If someone had found the dogs, hopefully they would call the number on the collars, which was my phone. So I had to get it.

On the way out to the office, I saw The Wife driving in to the Mansion. So I turned around and got her, and we looked for the dogs together. We searched in pretty much the same places I had looked on my own, and asked people out walking their obedient, well-behaved, leashed dogs.

I felt terrible. It was my mistake that let the dogs loose. People drive so fast, and the dogs are so dumb. It was easy to imagine the dogs getting hit, splitting up for some reason, getting taken by someone with less-than-kind motives, wandering out into the desert and getting lost, and us never getting to see them again. And it would all be my fault.

The Wife was much more calm about the whole situation than me. She made us get food, which did help. She reminded me that the dogs would get picked up by the pound and while we might have to pay a fine, we'd get them back. It made me feel a little bit better. She had her theories about where the dogs might have gone. One idea was they might have been attracted to the house that burned out down the street and now, four weeks later, is still sitting unrepaired.

Well, they weren't there, but the Rottweiler and German Shepherd across the street were barking like they always do when we walk the dogs past them. So I looked up the street, and sure enough, there were our naughty little doggies, wandering in and out of someone's garage like they owned the place.

It was all I could do to keep a friendly, attracting voice and call them into the car -- I was mad and relieved at the same time. But I got them in the car and got them home. Safe at last, I felt redeemed at finding the missing critters. They must have drunk a quart of water between them, and they were panting like I'd never seen them pant before.

Now, I have to make a sign for the back gate that says, "¡Para el amor del dios cerciórese de por favor que la puerta sea cerrada cuando usted se va!" And worry about whatever it was the dogs ate while they had their big adventure. Hopefully nothing makes them sick. But at least they're home where they belong.

Why Can't We Be Friends?

Fabio, a blogger from Europe that I read from time to time, decries European ignorance of how the United States works. Fairhandedly, many Americans are similarly ignorant of how things work in the Old World. What’s interesting is that Europeans seem to be acquiring the unfortunate tendency of some Americans to not care how things work elsewhere. Not caring is worse than not knowing – indifference breeds contempt.

Unlike the author of the underlying article Fabio cites, I do not accept as a matter of inevitability that Europeans as a rule hate the United States and its citizens, or at least that the growing contempt is a trend that cannot or should not be changed. Neither we nor our counterparts in the EU can afford to allow our relationship to descend into one of mutual contempt. Too much commerce, too many geopolitical security arrangements, and too many social ties are at stake. We’re stronger and better when we’re friends.

Quack Quack

A sweet, herb-laden concoction sipped through a straw out of and old pancake syrup bottle may help you gain weight and put nutrients in your body. It might even make you feel stronger for a little while. But I seriously doubt it’s going to cure the AIDS. Double-blind testing is probably unnecessary here; simple blood tests of allegedly “cured” patients will almost certainly show the presence of AIDS virus in these no doubt sadly desperate, but shockingly credulous, citizens of The Gambia. Just goes to show you that quack medicine comes from all sorts of different places.

Ending The Myth

Professional courtesy is obviously dead.

My parents lived very near where this happened, once upon a time.

300 Against 70,000,000

Hollywood as apparently succeeded in inadvertently doing what even a hawkish Bush Administration has failed to do: turn Iranian public opinion against the West. I suppose that the visuals in the movie were all put in just to make things look cool. But in retrospect, portraying Persia’s grandest emperor in history as a blood-crazed, bald, bizarrely-ornamented, barely-clothed barbarian probably was not a move calculated to engender mutual respect. But then, it’s likely no one was thinking of that.

I’m reminded of a story I just read about the start of the 1857 Indian “Mutiny.” The British military recruited its infantry from the local peoples, and only imported its officers. The cultural tensions were high but manageable with the help of the local militias. But, in 1857, new breech-loading Enfield rifles were introduced, which required the soldier to bite the cartridge open to load it into the weapon. The cartridges were initially lubricated with a grease made from rendered pork and beef fat, thereby requiring both Muslim and Hindu soldiers, which was basically all of them, to eat foods both socially and religiously taboo to them. By the time the British realized their oversight, it was too late and tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands, of people would die in an unsuccessful two-year revolt against British occupation.

I don’t think I thought of how Iranians might have reacted to the film 300 myself, but then again I’m not one of the producers of the film and I’ve not even seen it yet. I had been very interested in the story, but I’m turned off by the cartoonish look of the previews. I would have thought that the actual story of the Battle of Thermopylae would have been dramatic enough to make a really good movie, with plenty of action and mayhem, without adding magic and monsters and other sorts of superfluous things. World War II movies don’t hold back showing the Germans as an effective and powerful fighting force; that makes the American/British/Russian forces that fight them all the more heroic, and you don’t need to give the Nazi supernatural powers to make them by a scary adversary and a triumph over them a feat worthy of respect. So too with the Persians at Thermopylae.

Super Tuesday

Coming to a California primary near you soon! No disrespect to Iowans, New Hampshirites, and South Carolinans, but it’s nice to finally feel some degree of enfranchisement out here in the Salad Bar of the World.

Best Lines Of The Day

When The Wife and I went to Rome on our honeymoon, one of the places we went was the Temple of the Divine Julius, which was to the pagan Romans the site of Caesar's apotheosis. Julius Caesar was assassinated very close to there, two thousand and fifty years ago.

Every day, someone goes to the Temple of the Divine Julius, and puts fresh flowers daily on what looks like a mound of dirt over a concrete block. Legend has it that this mound of dirt was where Caesar's body was laid to rest before it was cremated and that his ashes remain in the concrete block, which was the core of what once was a glorious temple.

In some ways, seeing the fresh flowers there is even more jarring to see that than the big "N" emblem on bridges in Paris or a monument to German war dead from the second world war. Here was evidence that someone, alive today and living in Rome, still wants to see an autocratic government restored to power, and they are using the historical memory of Julius Caesar to embody that wish.

Our view of the assassination is forever tinted by the supremely well-crafted words of William Shakespeare. I say, his best lines from the play about the assassination of Caesar and his aftermath are:

Cassius:
Men at some time are masters of their fates: The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Caesar:
Cowards die many times before their deaths; The valiant never taste of death but once.

Antony:
The evil that men do lives after them; The good is oft interred with their bones.

Caesar:
The Ides of March have come.
Soothsayer:
Yes, but they have not yet gone.

Okay, the last is not so much profound as a powerful, chilling, and witty quip. But one that sticks out in the mind as you watch the doomed man walk to his death despite all the warnings available to him. The play also gave us phrases like "It's all Greek to me" and "the most unkindest cut of all."

An interesting and more recent analogy to this event would be the assassination of Abraham Lincoln. Lincoln, like Caesar, became a godlike heroic figure after his assassination. But remember that John Wilkes Booth cried "Sic Semper Tyrannis" when he shot Lincoln; to Booth and many others, Lincoln was a dictator and an enemy of freedom. I beg to disagree, despite the fact that Lincoln did many things highly suspect under the Constitution. Both were tremendously polarizing figures, who presided over civil wars in their great and powerful countries, and whose attempts to reconcile and move their nations on to the next challenges pretty much doomed them both.

It's hard to say what a still-alive Caesar would have done back on the campaign trail against the Parthians in the late 40's BCE. Perhaps Caesar would have conquered all of the lands around the Black Sea or he could have gone as far as Alexander and conquered all the way to the Indus, and exchanged emissaries with China, as his successors did. Or perhaps he would have run into the same problems as Crassus did before him and Trajan did after him with over-extended supply lines in Mesopotamia, and found his efforts stalled somewhere around Babylon (a little bit south and east of modern-day Baghdad).

It would be easy to say that Caesar's death was a pivot point in history, especially if you think that further military glory was in Caesar's future (he was assassinated when he was in order to prevent him from leaving Rome at the head of a new army to attack the Parthian Empire). In fact, the real pivot point was when he crossed the Rubicon and marched on Rome.

The assassination of Julius Caesar is one of the greatest exercises in futility in political history. No one profited -- not Caesar's allies, not his enemies, not the people as a whole, not the cause of liberty. Caesar's assassins were politically clumsy in failing to seize power for themselves to create the government they preferred to Caesar's rule. The result was many more years of civil war, killing, and strife which merely prolonged the inevitable at a bloody price. Someone was going to pick up the pieces of Caesar's dictatorship and wear the laurels themselves. The assassins tried to effect massive political change and found themselves pitifully poorly-prepared for what happened when they let the genie out of the bottle.

It's been said that history doesn't repeat itself, but it sure rhymes a lot. But I will leave thoughts about modern political analogies to you, Loyal Readers. For now, I'm content to commemorate a significant date in history.

Bad Poll

I guess I either picked a bad question for the first poll, or it was too obvious. Everyone's voting for Rudy as the most electable of the potential GOP candidates. So I'm discontinuing the poll early and moving on to the next one.

I Get It Now

After being confused yesterday about why it should be such a big political deal about the U.S. Attorneys being fired, I found as good a write-up about the U.S. Attorney flap as I could have asked for can be found at Right Wing Nut House. It comes does to this. Yes, the President, and by extension his advisors Karl Rove, Harriet Meiers, and Alberto Gonzales, did indeed have the power to summarily fire any or all of the U.S. Attorneys.

But later, Congressional leaders asked them about why they did it and rather than just come out and say why they did it, the Bushmen said instead, “These people were fired for performance-related reasons and politics had nothing to do with it.” That’s why things like glowing performance reviews and a swirl of e-mails are relevant, because it demonstrates that the response to the inquiry was dishonest.

To which I say – what a bunch of idiots.

The Bushmen fell for one of the oldest kinds of political power plays there are – inquire about something delicate, and when the mark reacts defensively, investigate the hell out of it. Somewhere along the way, the mark will do something stupid under the pressure, and then you publicize the hell out of that, leaving the original delicate matter to the side as no longer relevant. Suddenly, an innocuous act turns in to Watergate and you’re talking about the #4 or #5 guy in the entire Administration having to step down, and wiping yet more egg off of the President’s face.

It worked with Alexander Hamilton and looks like it’s still working today. Martha Stewart never made an illegal stock trade. Scooter Libby didn’t leak Valerie Plame’s identity. And, come to think of it, as a technical matter it wasn’t getting a blowjob in the Oval Office that got Bill Clinton impeached. All of these people didn’t get hung because of their allegedly bad acts – they got hung because they lied.

What would have been wrong with saying “We fired these political appointees because they weren’t prioritizing their political corruption cases the way we wanted them to”? Nothing. Nothing at all. And we’d still be talking about the war.