Today I bought some Spanish language tapes. I plan to listen to them in my car instead of NPR. Let’s face it, NPR is pretty darn repetitive and depressing these days. Crooked CEOs here, crazy murderers there. Maybe if I drop out of the media cycle for a while, things will pick up. Maybe when I come back, there will be peace and prosperity for all. Either that, or I’ll be reading Gabriel Garcia Marquez in the original Spanish. One must make the best of things.

And speaking of making the best of things, maybe I’ll at least learn not to buy Robert Mondavi Woodbridge Cabernet Sauvignon. It was on sale at Safeway, and it’s pretty grody-to-the-max, as we used to say in the 80s. (Actually I didn’t used to say, but I’m sure somebody in the San Fernando Valley did.) I kind of like the Woodbridge white wines, though. Maybe that’s because whenever I think of Woodbridge, I get a mental image of Sam extending a glass to me with a smarmy grin on his face, saying, “Would you like some?” just like the guy in the commercial. At least it’s OK for drinking while journal-writing and refurbishing Mom’s website. And I also now know not to inflict this wine on Significant Others. It’s not like I’m picky in that regard… I’ve served $1.99 Trader Joe’s wine to Significant Others without a whit of shame. Well, maybe one or two whits. But that’s all.

Of course, if I had given up on NPR today, I would have missed out on this radio essay by Mikel Jolet (RealAudio clip). Jolet is a writer who’s exactly my age. It’s a fun little piece, and the end is the real kicker. (For the record, I own a few polo shirts… but I have never owned a pair of Dockers, and the khakis I do own are rarely well-creased.)

Finally, a funny thing happened at work today. A German colleague sent me a work-related email, but at the bottom he appended the question, “So what’s the deal with the Americans and the ICC?” The question kind of took me by surprise — Stefan and I usually don’t talk politics, and so I got the feeling he was planning on posing this question to any random Real Live American he could get ahold of. And since the tourists don’t exactly flock to Langen, Germany (read: Milpitas with crappy weather), he figured I was his best bet.

I deduce from this that the Europeans are pretty mad about us and our lame behavior concerning the ICC — more so about this than our lame steel tariffs or our even lamer farm bill or even our supremely, penultimately lame missile defense system. But as a patriotic American, it is my duty to support and defend the United States against all enemies, foreign and domestic… right? So I told Stefan that hey, look, we got talked down from permanent immunity to one year’s immunity. And furthermore, the Brits are asking for seven years’ immunity and the French are asking for thirteen. In other words, don’t be mad at us — go yell at the French.

If that’s not a quintessentially American response, I don’t know what is.

When I was a wee lad, I suddenly became interested in World War II. I dropped dinosaurs like a hot potato and spent much of my time reading gigantic World War II books from the library. Back then, I could tell you everything you ever wanted to know about the Battle of Midway. I could tell you the names of all the Japanese carriers that were sunk, how they were sunk, and in what order. I was floating in the water right there with Ensign George Gay (the sole surviving airman from a failed American torpedo bomber attack, who ended up floating in the middle of the Japanese fleet and watching the battle unfold over the next few hours).

A couple of days ago, NPR’s All Things Considered did a piece on the investigation of Pearl Harbor and the associated political fallout. Before Pearl Harbor, the U.S. military had cracked the Japanese diplomatic code, “Purple”. There were tantalizing hints that the Japanese were planning to attack on Dec. 7th… but no smoking gun.

Then as now, the codebreakers failed to “connect the dots”.
Then as now, the opposition party tried to make a political issue of this immediately.
Then as now, the president’s party squelched Congressional dissent, citing “National Security”. (In 1944, the Republicans threatened to launch a major investigation and make the Pearl Harbor intelligence failure an issue in the upcoming presidential campaign. But the government sent Republican presidential candidate Thomas Dewey a letter asking him not to do this, as it would reveal to the Japanese that “Purple” had been broken. Dewey agreed, lost the election, and the Republicans were furious when they found out after the war ended.)

When I heard this report on the radio, I was mortified. How could I have completely forgotten about all this? Oh, I hadn’t known all the details (I was more into dive bombers and tanks and carriers back then), but I had known that Pearl Harbor was a major political scandal. But somehow, I had forgotten about that and assumed that politics during World War II stopped cold — that back in the Good Old Days, when people Knew Their Duty to God and Country, the nation moved in harmonious lockstep to victory over the Axis powers. Well, not even remotely. Congress has always been Congress. And the opposition has always wrangled over domestic issues regardless of the wartime situation.

Anyway, this has clarified a lot of things for me.

In Other News: M’ris asks, “In all of this Pledge of Allegiance uproar, nobody seems to have come up with a good reason why God should be in there in the first place. Anybody? I’d like to know.” Well, naturally. the National Review has something to say on the matter. According to NR, the Republicans (but not those scurrilous unpatriotic Democrats) have whipped out their divining rods and determined that the act of adding “under God” to the pledge in 1954 was “clearly consistent with the text and intent of the Constitution.” Oh, you wanted a good reason? Well never mind then.

So Mom pointed out a typo in the previous entry (thanks Ma!) Anyway, while I was looking over that entry, I realized that I had mischaracterized the power crisis. The entry mentioned hooking up Enron employees to little turbines “in order to repay Californians for the mess they caused last year,” but now I realize that the “they” was a bit glib. Clearly, we Californians played our own part in causing the mess. As SJ Merc columnist Dan Gilmor points out (sorry, Nancy, I still read Gilmor every once in a while):

If you go on vacation, leave your back door unlocked and put up a sign that says “No one’s home,” you should not be surprised when other folks take advantage of your stupidity and rob you blind. Unhappy, yes, but not surprised.

Yet everyone is shocked, shocked that the energy wheeler-dealers at Enron took advantage of California’s lame attempt at electricity deregulation. Imagine that: The sharpies manipulated prices after the state all but issued an engraved invitation.

Frankly, I blame myself. After all, I was a voter back in the mid-90s, when Gov. Wilson and his cabal of state legislators were concocting this deal. Imagine if, in 1994, I had attended one of those “townhall meetings” that were all the rage back then:

Me: Excuse me, Ms. Candidate?

Ms. Candidate: Yes, young man?

Me: Do you promise not to wait patiently until the electorate is distracted with sexy political issues like Prop. 187… and then meet in a backroom with a select group of energy industry lobbyists in order to craft some extraordinarily stupid legislation that will screw your constituents for years to come?

Ms. Candidate: I promise not to do that.

Me: Well, alrighty then.

Hey Dan — where were all these pithy comments about “leaving the door unlocked” back when it counted, in 1995? Sure, there was heat and noise on both sides (“Deregulation sux!!” “No, deregulation rulez!!!”). But I don’t recall anybody taking the time to analyze the bill and say, “You know, we could deregulate our power market… but this bill happens to be a really stupid way to do it, and here’s why.” Is anyone aware of any pre-2000 newspaper article or editorial that carefully analyzed the bill and spotted its flaws? Send them to me. (Please note: articles that are simply hysterical anti-deregulation screeds do not count.)

Via Thudfactor, I discovered the following editorial by Paul Farhi: When the Blue Chips Are Down, in Gov We Trust. (The article also appeared in the Washington Post, but the Post doesn’t freely archive their content, so they get no linky love from me):

Let us now praise slothful, inefficient, bloated government. Let us now rejoice in the glory of your trillions of tax dollars at work. Drop what you’re doing and hug a GS-14.

The point of the article is pretty simple: government screws up, but so does private industry. About as obvious a point as one could make… and yet somehow it always seems to get missed in all those breathless articles in the biz/tech mags.

For some reason I’ve been thinking about this the last couple of days, ever since the “Smoking Gun” memos in the Enron case came to light. Here we have Enron’s own lawyers admitting that they resold power among their own subsidiaries to provoke a crisis and drive up prices, and that they routed power out of congested areas in order to off-load less power than their contract required. Remember that vast criminal conspiracy that we suspected last year? In the immortal words of Lily Von Shtupp, “It’s twue! It’s twue!”

Not that I expect any apologies from the insufferable Cato Institute for calling us Californians a bunch of “dim bulbs” and “whiners”. Nor do I expect recompense for the hours I wasted last year listening to pundits smugly informing us that gee, if only we would get out of our hot tubs and learn how to deregulate our markets the right way, we would be out of this mess in a jiffy. (Never mind that despite the power crisis and the tech recession, California has overtaken France to become the the fifth largest economy in the world… but what do we patchouli-wearing dim bulbs know about business anyway?) And I’m pretty sure nobody, least of all any of those “poor ex-Enron employees” is going to refund a penny of the extra dough I had to shell out last year on my utility bill. But honestly, who cares about a few hundred bucks? What price vindication, I ask you?

I’m starting to think that Andrew Sullivan is not all he’s cracked up to be.

In his blog, the “Daily Dish”, he’s been railing against the
Democrats
taking on the war. “Now, it’s official. I don’t think it’s an accident that the
Democrats have launched an attack on the war’s direction the day it becomes clear that
the recession, even if it existed in the first place, is now history… The anti-war left is back
with a vengeance. And the battle to protect this country has only just begun.”
Oh, those nasty unpatriotic liberals, undermining the war effort!

But the thing is, I read
those articles that Sullivan linked to and they were nothing of the sort.
What they did do was criticize Bush and the Republicans (mostly in domestic policy).
The authors were simply exhorting Democrats to not let Bush walk all over them.
But Sullivan is arguing that in a time of war the opposition should simply
sit down and STFU. Sorry… that’s not how it works.

I dunno. Maybe Sullivan and the rest of the “Warbloggers” are
running out of steam.

Back in the good old days of September and October,
they had plenty of juicy, fat, extremely stupid targets. Noam Chomsky!
Susan Sontag! Robert Fisk! Ted Rall! Boy, was it fun seeing those pompous
jerks get ripped apart. Sure, I admit it… I enjoy bloodsports as much
as the next person.

Then November and December rolled around, and hahaha, look! The warbloggers
were right, and the uber-lefties were wrong. We pasted the Taliban, destroyed
the Al-Qaeda training camps, and food and medicine flowed to the Afgan people
in far larger quantities than they ever would have had we listened to the idiots
at Antiwar.com. So there were more insults, more feces hurled, and everyone
had a pretty good time all around.

But now… what are the warbloggers reduced to? Attacking the Democrats… for
what, exactly? Doing their job? Is it so inconceivable that someone could
support the war effort and disagree with Republican domestic policy? Or God forbid,
support the war effort then and disagree with its direction now?
(Is it really so smart to piss off the Europeans now that we sorta kinda
need them to help us with the dirty work of breaking up Al-Qaeda cells?)

Sorry, Andrew. It was great, lots of laughs, but you know… I just don’t
think we were meant for each other. Please don’t blame yourself — it’s me.
Really.

Listen up, people.

We know Ken Lay isn’t such a bad guy. We know that

according to Linda Lay, he’s a decent, upright individual.
And despite that undeniable fact, the arrogant
international press sees
fit to insult this fine American entrepreneur in his time of need.

Well, I’m not going to stand for it.

I urge you all to click on the box above right now and
give what you can to the Kenneth and Linda Lay Emergency Relief Fund. I know
that in these days of terrorism, war, and crony capitalism, it’s sometimes
hard to see that we are all just human beings, doing our best
to live, love, and make ends meet. Doesn’t poor Ken deserve that chance, just
like the rest of us? Prick him, does he not bleed?

Together, we can make a difference.

Well, it looks like
Ken Lay
has chickened out of his Senate hearing appointment, and now they’re going to
have to subpoena him. The article ends with a nice quote from the
Chairman of the SEC, Harvey Pitt:

Pitt lamented the impact of Enron’s dissipation on regular people who trusted the company.
“It is these Americans whose faith fuels our markets, who have no lobby and no trade
associations, whose interests are, and must be, paramount,” he said. “I am appalled at
what happened to them as a result of Enron’s collapse.”

Chairman Pitt’s concern for the average American investor would be truly
heartwarming… if only he hadn’t played such a large part in
creating the legal
environment that let Enron rip off those investors in the first place.
Oops!

Well, the Superbowl is over, and the Patriots, 14-point underdogs, beat the
St. Louis Rams 20-17 in an exciting last-minute field goal. But even more exciting,
apparently, were the Partnership for a
Drug-Free America‘s Superbowl TV commercials, which pointed out that the drug trade
supports criminals and terrorists.
Well, the PDFA was sloppy; they conflated the tens of millions of dollars of
Taliban
heroin funding with the six hundred million dollars of
cocaine
money that went to the FARC with the rest of the illegal drug industry.

This of course
prompted
numerous
self-righteous
screeds
from the other side that managed to muddy the issue further, claiming that
the government is trying to tie marijuana to Al-Qaeda. I admit, the screedists did a good job.
The straw-man argument that “smoking a joint supports terrorism!” can now be considered
Officially Knocked Down.

On the other hand… according to NORML,
Americans consume at least 1200
to 1800 metric tons of 6% THC cannabis per year. Here’s the bad news: those
hundreds of metric tons were not grown by your
goofy slacker college roommate in his dorm room closet. No, I’m afraid the bulk of the revenue
went to some very anti-social men in Northern California or Mexico. Men with guns and bear traps
and dogs trained to kill. And what products and services did these men purchase
with their profits? As much as I wish otherwise, methinks they did not
invest in Enron.

We Americans have spent the last few months bitching and moaning about “the root causes”
of terrorism. Where do these grievances come from? “Why do they hate us?”
Well, we can debate whether the Arab world is justified in hating us from now ’till
Doomsday. In the meantime, I’ll tell you who does have real grievances
against the USA. The Colombians, that’s who.

Of course, if we legalized all drugs, this problem would go away.
And I’ve got no objections to that. That’s the best way to cut the legs out
from under the organized criminals who profit from the business.
However, just because you support drug legalization, don’t
for a second think that means you’re pure as the driven snow when you consume
them. Your choices have consquences;
unfortunately, you don’t usually end up paying them.

Sometimes, we nerds win.

I’m referring of course to the tale of
Steuard Jensen, Prom King.
As it turns out, Steuard was a physics major at HMC,
just one year behind me. I stumbled across his page by accident.
Of course, his story is still not quite as good as the one about
the
straight-A clarinet player who took Miss December 1989 to his Winter Formal,
but all in all, not bad.

In other news, Linda Lay is
bemoaning
her husband’s fate. The spin is that the family is facing bankruptcy, and that Ken Lay
is an “honest, decent, moral human being who would do absolutely nothing wrong.”

It’s funny how bankruptcy just kinda creeps up on you like that. I mean, I
haven’t cashed out $101 million dollars in stock, and I don’t
own several multimillion dollar
homes in Aspen, and yet somehow I manage to pay most of my creditors on time.
Maybe his teenagers have, like, huge phone bills or something.

Heck, forget about Lay. I’m still having trouble feeling sorry for
those poor Enron employees. I mean, if you’re a white-collar worker
at a big company, you know what’s going on. Sure, you probably
don’t know enough to be prosecuted for anything. But… you hear rumors.
You pick up on things at meetings, on email aliases, in casual conversations.
You just kind of know things you’re not supposed to know, unless you’re
socially blind, deaf, and dumb.

Here’s who I do feel sorry for: the janitors. And the landscapers, and the cafeteria
people, and the workers who built and maintained Enron’s plants and pipelines.
And possibly the admins. But as for the energy traders and the IT department?
Let’s see… you earned your living screwing over helpless people for money, but
it didn’t occur to you that perhaps your bosses viewed you in the same light.
Well, tough luck and good riddance.

So it looks like Iran
is working actively to undermine Karzai, while his new government is still
weak and uncertain. Just when there was hope that maybe, just maybe, Musharraf
was reining in the ISI and the extremist madrasas… a new threat
appears in the west. Terrific.

Closer to home, the
Republicans
had themselves a gubernatorial debate. I read this article in the physical SF Chronicle…
unfortunately the web version lacks the cute little table comparing Bill, Bill, and Richard on
the issues. That’s too bad, because in the cute little table’s “Energy Policy” column there
was a short, simple sentence for all three, “Favors full deregulation and a free market solution”
or something along those lines. Well, no shockers there. Although it makes me wonder…

Jones and Riordan clashed most strongly over energy, with the Jones accusing Riordan of
overcharging the state when Los Angeles sold electricity at the height of last winter’s
energy crisis.

“You were busy trying to make sure that Los Angeles made as much money as it could off
California,” Jones argued, adding that Riordan’s expert on energy, S. David Freeman, later
joined the governor’s staff and contributed to the administration’s problems wrestling
the energy issue.”

Riordan vigorously defended his actions, saying it was his job to protect the interests
of residents in Los Angeles, whose electricity rates stayed constant during his tenure.

Strange that Jones, the stalwart free marketeer, would castigate Riordan for
simply charging California what the market would bear. (Or possibly less —
according to the SJ
Mercury’s article, Riordan claimed that the Los Angeles
DWP sold the state electricity at cost.) Guess those free market principles are harder
to stick to when it’s the other guy that holds all the cards.

Well, since I am not one to let Jones, Riordan, and Simon be pigeonholed by
our mean nasty rotten inaccurate liberal Bay Area media, I went to each candidate’s
website to see what their solutions were for the energy crisis. No filtering,
no soundbites, no cute little SF Chronicle tables. The straight stuff. Here’s what
I found as of Jan. 23, 2002:

Bill Jones simply
provides a list of op-ed articles by the Mercury, the LA Times, and the Sacramento Bee
that criticize Davis. (Pssst, Bill: every link you provided is broken.
Neither the Mercury, the Sac Bee, or the LA Times perma-links their articles. Just FYI.)
All righty then, moving on to…

Bill Simon. Who, under
his “Issues” section, provides… nothing on energy policy whatsoever! Looks like
our last hope is…

Richard Riordan.
It turns out that Riordan’s energy policy consists of a short press release calling for
the dissolution of the newly-formed Power Authority. Well, I suppose that’s
something, anyway. Better than recycling other people’s editorials.
And definitely better than providing nothing at all.

Now, certainly it’s fair to criticize Davis. He was
slow to react to the mess he inherited from Wilson. And he might have gotten snookered
in those long term power contracts. On the other hand, he was under tremendous pressure
to simply keep the lights on… and despite all that the Bush administration and
Enron threw at him, he managed to do it.

Davis’s challengers have had a year to plan since the height of the crisis.
They have the full benefit of 20-20 hindsight — and then some. So do they have
any new ideas? Anything besides attacking the governor
and spouting clichés? No. Nothing at all.

Pathetic.

Just read about today’s
Bat
Mitzvah Massacre. The killer murdered the security guard and
then charged into the main hall armed with guns and grenades. He ended up killing
five more civilians, including the little girl’s grandfather. This heroic act of
resistance was apparently in retaliation for the assassination of Raed al-Karmi.
Karmi was the leader of a terrorist cell associated with
Arafat’s Fatah faction — he was wanted by Israel for, among other things,
kidnapping and murdering two Jewish restaurant owners.

I don’t see what Fatah hopes to accomplish with this — other than
making it increasingly obvious that, as Yossi
Klein Halevi states in this week’s
TNR, “to demand that Arafat dismantle
Palestine’s terrorist infrastructure is absurd… the biggest terrorist
infrastructure in the PA is the PA itself.”

For many years, I believed that if only things would quiet down long enough to
establish a Palestinian state, peace would take hold. But after these last
few months… what evidence is there that a full-fledged
Palestinian nation would do anything other than simply kill more Israelis, faster?
How is Israel supposed to keep Katushya rockets out of terrorist hands once
it loses control of the borders? No, I’ve realized that I was wrong, and that
Hamas is right:
there will never be peace in Israel. Not this century.