Budding Advice Columnist

One of my friends from Rwanda emailed me with advice regarding women:

okay by the way pay attention with the girls they are somehow temptatives so then try to cooperate with one and pray for her before ok

Deep.

Reform, Upside Down

This won't make the news in America, but it's the biggest headline on the Financial Times today. John Howard's center-right government in Australia is moving the economy toward a free labor market by removing restrictions on terminating employees. Working in Big Government, where firing someone is virtually impossible, I can attest how important it is to productivity and workplace sanity to remove these sloth-friendly restrictions. The worldwide free market revolution continues.

Carrots in the Middle East

Bush took the initiative in the war for Islam's hearts and minds by meeting with Prime Minister Abbas of Palestine today in Washington. Bush earmarked $50 million in foreign aid to build houses and other projects in the Gaza Strip, where the space opened up by the vacation of land-greedy Israeli settlements will probably spark an enormous building boom. This is part of a $350 million package, most of which will go to non-governmental organizations.

On the Persian front, the U.S. for the first time, declined to block membership negotiations for Iran's application to the WTO. Membership in the WTO has been dangled as a carrot in front of Iran, and, as the CS Monitor points out, the Bush administration is taking an important step by working synergistically with our European allies. Approaching this as a team with the Europeans prevents the Iranians from playing one of us off the other, and offers the U.S. the chance of better results whether Iran cooperates or not. If Iran does cooperate, we'll have a full share of the economic benefits of whatever deals are struck, and if no deal is struck, we'll have the public relations victory of looking sane and non-extreme, while the Iranian government will appear as the radical in the room.

Sources: Al-Jazeera, Bloomberg, and Business Week.

Most Likely to Succeed

In the spirit of high school graduations and inspired by Platooned's Red Sox humor (hat tip to Beth), here are your Class of 2005 superlatives:

Most likely to be mistakenly arrested for a felony...	David Wells
Most likely to appear in Napoleon Dynamite II...	Mark Bellhorn
Most likely to enlist in the Marines...	Mike Timlin
Most likely to run for president...	Curt Schilling
Most likely to manage in the bigs...	Jason Varitek
Most likely to have a second career as a bartender...	Doug Mirabelli
Most likely to oversleep and miss his own Cooperstown induction...	Manny Ramirez
Most likely to appear onstage with Jeff Foxworthy...	Kevin Millar
Most likely to retire to Italy...	Johnny Damon

Feel free to add your own!

Pour Some Sugar On Me

Former Governor Pete du Pont's article in the Journal today goes right to InstantReplay's sweet tooth.

The American sugar industry is so strongly advantaged by quotas, tariffs and subsidies that total sugar imports have declined by about a third since the 1990s. Cafta would allow additional sugar imports from the Central American nations totaling 107,000 metric tons in the first year. Annual U.S. sugar production is about 7.8 million metric tons, so the effect of Cafta is to raise sugar imports into America by about one day's sugar production, or as Mr. Portman puts it, "approximately one teaspoon of sugar per week per adult American."...

American sugar prices today are about three times the world market's, so some price reduction would be good for Americans, just as lower gasoline prices would be.

Two strong arguments for ratifying CAFTA over the objections of the muscular sugar lobby are contained herein. First of all, the increase in sugar imports would be marginal and phased in. Second, sugar imports may not be such a good thing for the sugar industry, but they're good for the rest of us who consume products that include sugar.

The more important argument for CAFTA is also made: it would reduce barriers to American exports, essentially leveling the playing field between us and the Central American countries.

The Revolution In the Middle

Nick Kristof, writing from the Middle Kingdom, opines that blogs will ultimately bring down the Chinese Communist kleptocracy:

I tried my own experiment, posting comments on Internet chat rooms. In a Chinese-language chat room on Sohu.com, I called for multiparty elections and said, "If Chinese on the other side of the Taiwan Strait can choose their leaders, why can't we choose our leaders?" That went on the site automatically, like all other messages. But after 10 minutes, the censor spotted it and removed it.

Then I toned it down: "Under the Communist Party's great leadership, China has changed tremendously. I wonder if in 20 years the party will introduce competing parties, because that could benefit us greatly." That stayed up for all to see, even though any Chinese would read it as an implicit call for a multiparty system.

So where is China going? I think the Internet is hastening China along the same path that South Korea, Chile and especially Taiwan pioneered. In each place, a booming economy nurtured a middle class, rising education, increased international contact and a growing squeamishness about torturing dissidents.

Kristof's view of democracy is a healthy compromise between the neo-conservatives' and the neo-progressives. The Neocons believe that democracy is good for and longed for by everyone, regardless of their socioeconomic state. The neoprogs apparently believe that no culture has the authority to promote any aspect of itself over another, including the system of government. They believe that society is so deterministic that democracy is simply unfit for certain cultures. Kristof finds the middle way: democracy is good for and desired by all cultures, but is not generally attainable without certain underlying circumstances, which are generally called "civil society". A free press, a middle class, and economic opportunity are among the keystones in this foundation for democracy, and China is beginning to realize all of them.

Free At Last

The end of the second stage of the Lebanese Restoration has been reached. The first stage was restoring order after the civil war ended in 1990. The heavy hand of the al-Assad dynasty was able to bring order, but not self-rule or true peace. Now, the truly astounding Cedar Revolution has reached a milestone after a lightening-swift, and now complete, exorcism of Syrian military apparatus from the Republic. The next step? To set up a government based on democratic consensus and the rule of law.

The Compromise of the Fourteen

Fourteen U.S. Senators have earned their paychecks by forging a compromise and averting a collision in the game of chicken being played between Senate leaderships. The text of the deal is here, courtesy of National Review Online, and the AP story that broke less than an hour ago is here.

This is good news for the Senate, good news for the White House, good news for the courts, and good news for the American people. The Democrats promise to vote for cloture on three nominees - Brown, Pryor, and Owen - and make no commitment on Saad and Myers. The moderate Dems also pledge not to filibuster except "under extraordinary circumstances", which no doubt include any Supreme Court nomination.

The pundits will now set about arguing who came out better in this deal: Reid or Frist. Probably both profited from the whole confrontation. They got a lot of press and they looked tough and uncompromising, which appeals to base voters. However, whether any of those who actually took action will end up profiting remains to be seen. The Democrats took a greater risk; they can be accused of "selling out" in the next go-round at the polls, whereas the Republicans did not make any concrete concessions, and the worst that can be said is that they compromised. And compromise is exactly what we should be desirous of in the senior circuit of U.S. lawmaking.

Search Your Peelings, Cuke, You Know It To Be True

Hat tip to Best of the Web for linking to one of the best parody videos on the web: Store Wars: A New Hope. See your old favorites, from Obi-Wan Cannoli to C3 Peanuts battle the Dark Side of the Farm in a stunning battle for control of the supermarket.

Mythbusting: Income Inequality

Alan Reynolds of the Cato Institute goes a long way to show that the current NYTimes series on "class", which is interesting reading but a poor basis for policy, is quite spurious in their assertion that class mobility has shrunk. He goes through a series of statistics to show that all Americans have done better in the last 25 years, and most inequality is due to (a) non-work and (b) age. Age inequality is easy to accept, and non-work-based inequality needs to be addressed by compelling more people into work, either by withdrawing welfare benefits or providing work incentives like lower taxes/EITC. So don't believe the hype: life may not be fair, but it's not becoming significantly less so.

Dr. Frist or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Filibuster

Tensions are high in the District today as the Senate hurtles toward a collision over the future of an arcane piece of parliamentary procedure: cloture. Unlike most Americans, I've encountered this rule before. In college, I taught parliamentary procedure to underclassmen. My first task was convincing them that procedure actually matters. They were skeptical. Needless to say, my explanation has now been vividly illustrated by the U.S. Senate.

The motion for cloture was introduced in the House of Representatives in the early 1800's as a majority vote. Whig Senator Henry Clay threatened to introduce it to the Senate in 1841 along the same lines, but he made the mistake of calling it the "nuclear option", and nobody knew what 'nuclear' meant, so the attempt failed.

In 1917, cloture was introduced in the Senate, but with a two-thirds supermajority needed. The filibuster had its "glory days" in the middle of the 20th century, courtesy of Jimmy Stewart and Senator Strom Thurmond. In 1975, the Senate downsized the supermajority to two-fifths. At the time, not coincidentally, sixty senators were Democrats.

However, another rule change was made in 1975 that is, I believe, the root of our current confrontation: the real filibuster was abolished. Instead of senators actually standing before the body and speaking for hours and hours on end, reciting poems, reading the Constitution, and sharing homebrew liquor recipes, they just raise their little placards to indicate that they intend to filibuster.

Both sides in the current debate have a valid point. As Senator Frist points out, the Democrats have set a new precedent in partisanship by filibustering judicial nominees. As Senator Reid points out, the Republicans are poised to make it dangerously difficult to prevent even the slimmest of Senate majorities from pushing through its agenda.

Bringing back the real filibuster - the one with the homebrew liquor recipes - would solve all of our problems. The Democrats would be forced to choose their battles. Not only is it physically taxing to speak for hours on end, it also makes for bad C-SPAN2 and bad politics. Senators would have to use the filibuster judiciously to avoid being seen (accurately?) as obstructionists.

On the other hand, the Democrats would retain the filibuster as a tool and could use it to call attention to those truly unsuitable nominees. It's unlikely any questionable nominee would survive a good, organized filibuster of the Jimmy Stewart variety. So the Democrats could get what they want: no radical conservatives on the Supreme Court bench, for example, and no Bush cronies on any court.

The filibuster is a useful and sensible tool, but only when it is in proper political balance. The sit-down filibuster of the past thirty years has proven unsustainable. We have a choice: either the filibuster dies (sooner or later), or we return to a balanced filibuster, complete with sore throats and homebrew liquor recipes.

Sources:
U.S. Senate website
About.com on the U.S. Senate filibuster

Note: this post was originally written for Watchblog

Tough Love

The CS Monitor castigates the world community today for ignoring Africa's warfare and hunger problems, which receive far less press and far less money than other hot spots. Their facts are correct: African problems, especially those of hunger and drought, receive scant coverage in the world press. Compare what we've heard about this year's droughts (basically nothing) with coverage of the tsunami. Compare coverage - and action - on Congo's civil war with the same thing in Yugoslavia. Africa loses out, again and again.

Jan Egeland, the UN Relief Coordinator and the Monitor's quote source, and the Monitor's editors blame insufficient compassion and perseverence vis-a-vis the world's poorest continent. But is that really fair? Has the world helped other deeply impoverished nations (Bangladesh, say, or Haiti?) out of poverty? Have governments intervened to solve most other internal conflicts, that of the Kurds, for instance, or of the Chechens? Congo, in fact, has the UN's largest peacekeeping force anywhere, and Africa receives more U.S. aid than any other region.

The reality is that, for good reason, the world community addresses solvable problems, as well as close-to-home problems. The latter accounts for our fixation with Israel's conflicts, as well as the quick response to anything on the European continent. However, the tsunami aid was not ill-placed, because it could be reasonably expected to solve the problem, not merely to postpone it. Already, most of the tsunami-affected economies and communities are back on their feet and self-supporting. The aid was a short-term fix to a short-term problem.

Africa, by contrast, is plagued by long-term problems demanding long-term solutions. A positive development of the last few years has been the willingness of the African Union and ECOWAS to commit troops to peacekeeping operations. Africa is on its way to creating an atmosphere of political problem-solving, as more democratic governments understand that their neighbors are important partners, not just competitors for a limited pool of foreign aid.

The same Africa-based problem solving needs to be applied to the realm of drought and food distribution. The spread of the Sahara is an unstoppable force, not a short-term disaster. The Sahel nations and their neighbors need to find ways to address the economic and survival issues related to it. One bright spot here is the peace agreement in southern Sudan. This water-rich region is lauded as one of the best agricultural zones on Earth, and can be developed as the breadbasket for the region. However, this requires that the region's governments quit harboring each others' rebels and allowing/encouraging (as in Darfur) internecine warfare.

Africa, and only Africa, can solve Africa's problems.

Dirty Laundry

What do Charles Johnston of Juno Beach, Florida, Neptunus Yachts of Stevensville, Maryland, and Matthew Hobika of Boston all have in common?

Each of them owes more than a million dollars in taxes to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. The top 10 individuals and businesses are listed here, and a list of those who owe more than $500 is searchable from the same site. Find your tax-delinquent friends, or blackmail your boss!

Free-For-All 2008: One Way to the White House

Brendan Miniter of Opinion Journal has a worthy strategy for presidential hopeful Mitt Romney. For Romney, he suggests, the road to the White House goes through the Senate. Running against Ted Kennedy would give him a high profile and strong credentials, and he could easily play the centrist against Kennedy's far-left winger. Even if he fails, the political capital is likely to be greater than if he subjects himself to another term battling the Democratic Goliaths of the state legislature. In local reporting, the Salem News quotes former Governor Dukakis and other Massachusetts political watchers who agree that another term would not help Romney. As for the Journal's assertion that Romney would have a chance to carry Massachusetts for the Republicans in 2008... yeah right.

Unfortunately for Romney, even his news surge in the past two weeks since a closed-door meeting with Washington operatives has failed to propel him above 10th in the first edition of InstantReplay's Chatter Rankings.

Rank	Candidate	Chatter
R.1	Sen. Bill Frist	1,610
R.2	Rudy Giuliani	692
R.3	Gov. George Pataki	622
R.4	Secy. Condoleezza Rice	606
R.5	Sen. John McCain	547
R.6	Newt Gingrich	536
R.7	Sen. Chuck Hagel	309
R.8	V.P. Dick Cheney	199
R.9	Sen. George Allen	169
R.10	Gov. Mitt Romney	140
...............	...............................................	..........
D.1	Sen. Hillary Clinton	1,570
D.2	Sen. John Kerry	827
D.3	Sen. Joseph Biden	318
D.4	Howard Dean	250
D.5	Sen. John Edwards	225
D.6	Gov. Bill Richardson	164

The Chatter Rankings are created by searching each candidate's name plus "2008" in the Google News database. For example, see the surprisingly high results for Dick Cheney. In every case, many (most?) of the articles don't say anything substantive about the politician's potential candidacy, but they provide what I think is a fair measure of the candidate's current media exposure and their broadly considered chances.

Of course, candidates who are in the news for other reasons (e.g. Frist) will inflate their totals. However, this is not totally unfair: after all, name recognition is vital at this stage. Some of these candidates will fail to get enough political and media types excited about them and will in turn fail to attract the donors who want to spend their money on potential winners. Polls, I think, are of less use at this point, unless they are targeted at the writing/politicking/donating class. Frankly, most people are sane enough not to be thinking about the next presidency this early. However, this is only the second wide-open election since 1920, so InstantReplay fully intends to make the most of it.

Note: for Rudy Giuliani, I left his first name out of the search, because he splits time between being "Rudy" and "Rudolph". In most cases, using both the candidate's names weeds out (a) unrelated articles and (b) non-professional publications and cursory mentions. If Senator Obama ever makes it onto the list, he'll get the same treatment, because journalists can't seem to agree how to spell his first name.

Tested but not qualifying: Evan Bayh, Colin Powell, Barack Obama, Dennis Kucinich, Dick Gephardt, Alan Keyes, Al Sharpton.

Tell me what you think of this feature - if it's popular, I'll keep it running periodically. Also, feel free to GoogleNews your own candidate and post his results in the comments.

The Maritime Republic of Eastport

This isn't the Eastport where my mother was born, but maybe they'd prosper as well if they seceded. Check it out: The Maritime Republic of Eastport.

Red Sox v. Oakland

The A's (or is that the F's?) are fielding a "lineup" tonight that features four players with batting averages below .200, and seven players with averages south of .250. In addition, their pitcher (Saarloos) has an ERA over two points higher than ours (Arroyo). In football, this would be a foregone conclusion. In baseball, there's no such thing. Good luck, Sox!

Movie Monday

Here are a couple of movie reviews I read today:

Bill Simmons on Fever Pitch.

When it finally ended, my father quickly scurried off to hit a men's room. I lingered behind for a few seconds to make sure that there weren't any bonus scenes during the closing credits – just in case they showed Schilling's toast from the champagne celebration or something – then followed him at an adjoining urinal. And we were standing there, peeing in silence, until Dad finally said, "By the way, that sucked."

A surprisingly positive review of Star Wars: Episode III - Return of the Sith.

Would George Lucas at last restore some of the old grandeur and excitement to his up-to-the-minute Industrial Light and Magic? Would my grown-up longing for a return to the wide-eyed enthusiasm of my own moviegoing boyhood - and my undiminished hunger for entertainment with sweep and power as well as noise and dazzle - be satisfied by "Revenge of the Sith"?

The answer is yeth.

What A Loser

I don't want to think about how much time I just spent writing an essay on the internal evolution of the Republican ascendancy, based on Pew Center data, for Watchblog. Sick, dude, it's sick. But you've gotta read the essay (which I'm not reprinting here for space considerations).

Hard-Line Moderates and Freedom-Loving Totalitarians

Clashing oxymorons continue to define Central Asian politics.

Rebels today stormed government buildings in the provincial Uzbek city of Andijan (aka Andizhan). Reuters reports that 50 rebels were killed fighting police and government troops, whose bullets finally scattered the crowd of thousands of protesters.

This seems distinctly like overflow from the popular Kyrgyz coup earlier this year. The West's path is far from clear in this area. We cannot ignore the conflicts in this strategic region, but neither is there a side that the U.S. can safely take. President Islam Karimov, who took this so seriously that he actually went to Andijan today to negotiate with the rebels, is no Jeffersonian democrat, but he keeps the peace. On the other side, the rebels pitch themselves as democrats, but have better credentials as hard-line Islamists. So far the Great Powers have taken the correct approach: better the devil that I know than the devil I don't. However, their influence is not decisive: even Russia was powerless to keep Askar Abayev in power in Kyrgyzstan. Thus, it would be unwise to get too close to Karimov or any of the others, lest we lose our chances of accommodating a revolutionary government. For now, we just have to hold our breath and pray for peace.

World Baseball Classic

America's pastime is going global in a new way. The first World Baseball Classic has been scheduled, and sixteen countries will be invited to field teams in a March, 2006, contest for global bragging rights. Kudos to the owners and players of MLB for not holding this up - it's the best thing for the sport, and could take off into a truly great contest.

Keeping Up With Darth

What does Darth Vader think about between long, sonorous breaths? With the digital revolution, he's had a chance to share his thoughts with the rest of us. Give him a glance over at darthside.blogspot.com.

You Get What You Want

A great deal of 0's and 1's have been wasted in politically correct intellectual gymnastics attempting to explain why certain groups don't prosper economically. In response, conservatives have had to come up with myriad studies showing that the traditional explanations for poverty remain statistically valid.

LaShawn Barber cites one such study among poor blacks. Though not a statistical study, it comes to the conclusion that those who are willing to accept such conclusions come to: parents who place a premium on education and working out of poverty end up succeeding.

So are we saying that irresponsible parents (in this case) are a failure? Or, in other examples, that Africans or Latin Americans are a failure because they haven't paralleled the economic development of Asian countries? No. I would argue that precisely the opposite is true: they are succesful. However, they are succesful at something else (in each case different), and in many cases the effects are quite undesirable.

Bad parents want kids who will stay out of their hair and want to get by without working hard (at parenting or anything else). And they get what they want. And, by and large, it sucks. It's not that they aren't succeeding - it's that they're succeeding at the wrong thing. In Africa and Latin America, more emphasis is placed on family, leisure, and social enjoyment and less on work and material success relative to Asia; should it surprise us that cultures get results corresponding to the ideas they value?

Many development economists spend a lifetime denying this blatant reality and looking for ways that people who don't care (as much) about education and money can get as educated and as rich as those who do. And they have failed again and again. The best that the politicians and economists can do is (1) remove legal barriers to success, (2) make clear what causes and effects different pursuits have, and (3) let individuals take over their own destiny.

And in some cases, maybe we shouldn't judge people by our standards. The standard measure of a society's quality has traditionally been its per-person GDP. Maybe we should look at a variety of other indicators: crime rate, birth rate (this is considered the sign of success for many cultures), and "general happiness". In exchange, those who have placed less value on material things should stop demanding an unfairly large share of the pie.

That About Sums It Up

One of my favorite professors from Northeastern, Andrew Sum, is the source material for one of my least-favorite editorialists, Bob Herbert. But where Sum (in my experience) would rather spend the majority of his time discussing solutions, Herbert quotes him only in describing the problems with employment today. Maybe that's because Herbert doesn't like Sum's recipe for fixing the problem of youth unemployment: more responsibility and earlier marriage, combined with income-redistribution measures that reward work.

More Pascal and Kreeft

My current reading, Christianity for Modern Pagans: Pascal's Pensees, continues to be amazing. A few more exerpts:

[Pascal:] A given man lives a life free from boredom by gambling a small sum every day. Give him every morning the money he might win that day, but on condition that he does not gamble, and you will make him unhappy. It might be argued that what he wants is the entertainment of gaming and not the winnings. Make him play then for nothing; his interest will not be fired and he will become bored, so it is not just entertainment he wants. A half-hearted entertainment without excitement will bore him. He must have excitement, he must delude himself into imagining that he would be happy to win what he would not want as a gift if it meant giving up gambling. He must create some target for his passions and then arouse his desire, anger, fear, for this object he has created, just like children taking fright at a face they have daubed themselves.

[Kreeft:] His penetrating question here is: What does the gambler (symbollically, all of us) want? (a) Not just the winnings, and (b) not just the playing, but (c) the self-delusion that comes from "the only-if syndrome"; the false faith that winning would make him happy...

[Pascal:] Anyone who does not hate the self-love within him and the instinct which leads him to make himself into a God must be really blind. Who can fail to see that there is nothing so contrary to justice and truth? For it is false that we deserve this position and unjust and impossible to attain it, because everyone demands the same thing...

[Kreeft:] There can only be one "I"; all others are "yous" or "its". There can only be one Absolute. All objects are relative to the subject, the I AM. The fundamental question of human existence is wherther I will let God be I AM and consent to be his "you", or whether I will be I AM and make God into my "you", relative to me, "you, over there"...

And herein lies the great tragic truth of human existence. First, that we cannot stand to be with ourselves, so we create diversions innumerable to keep us from noticing ourselves. Pascal goes on about this at captivating length; his gambling example is just a part of that discourse. According to Kreeft's analysis, I am somewhat better off than otherwise inasmuch as I recognize my own dependence on diversion. An "enlightened", self-aware Chops is shallow; an unenlightened Chops is fatally self-deceived.

Yet, if I ever I attempt to cut through the diversion, and come face to face with the underlying Self that I have been diverting myself from confronting in that mirror of quietude, a worse apparition is seen: one who at heart desires to be God. My highest goals and greatest ambitions are truly a supplanting of God, a seeking of worship. Whether in diversion or in clear-eyed self-seeking, I set my self up as the great "I", that unique reference point around which the universe revolves. Understanding this, the reverence inherent in the Hebrew non-use of the words "I am" becomes clear, as does the awesomeness of God's choice of His own Name in Humanese: I AM. He is the great Existence, the Being, the central reference point of all that Is. It is thus only in those moments when we can remove ourselves from the center of the universe that we can do anything meaningful or valuable, that is, anything done truly to glorify God. And we are incapable of removing ourselves in that way, for the very act of removal denotes that we are capable of rearranging the universe, and therefore we are an absolute reference within it. Rather, God Himself is the only one who can remove us from the center of our own universes and elicit rightful worship from His creation.

This is a fearful truth, and above all drives me to diversion. I wonder what's in the NYTimes today?

Quarter-Season Report

Following Thadeus' lead, InstantReplay will take a quick look at the state of the Red Sox and MLB one-third of the way through the season. Compare with InstantReplay's pre-season Soxapalooza.

So how did InstantReplay do at predicting standings? Obviously, forty games do not a season make, but we've got to compare something. And brag.
AL East: Wow. Not even close.
AL Central: Mmm, got KC right.
AL West: Perfect.
NL East: Got Atlanta right. This has gotta be MLB's toughest division.
NL Central: If you flip Milwaukee up to 2nd from 6th, I got this one.
NL West: I have the two "San's" inverted, but otherwise correct. As I recall, I was mocked for picking LA first and Arizona second, but so far that's right on target.

The big question in Red Sox Nation is whether or not we can write the Yankees off and/or pencil the Orioles in. I think neither. The Yankees have deep pockets, lots of latent talent on the field, and an owner who fits neatly into Belinda Board's diagnosis of many CEO's as bordering on psychopathic. The O's owner is also insane, but he won't spend a cent on his value-guaranteed team unless they stay in first place through July, which they won't. The O's will finish third, Toronto fourth, and Tampa Bay fifth. Just like last year.

And how are the Sox doing? Here's a hitting breakdown as I see it:
Likely to improve significantly: Manny Ramirez, David Ortiz, Kevin Millar (in power), Mark Bellhorn.
Likely to decline significantly: Johnny Damon, Trot Nixon, Kevin Youkilis (if he gets some playing time).
Good, and staying that way: Jason Varitek.
Bad, and staying that way: Edgar Rentaria, Billy Mueller, Jay Payton. These should improve marginally, but probably will end the season with AVG's below .260.

Also, today is the last day of the Sox's toughest stretch of the season: 28 games in 29 days (though 1 was postponed). Tomorrow they embark on a 15-game road trip, but with three days off interspersed. The series ends in the Bronx on Memorial Day weekend, by which time the Yankees could easily be above .500. Immediately after that, the Olde Towne Team comes home to face the Orioles. By then, we should be gaining a better idea of who's sticking around in the rest of the league, though I won't say the AL East has "settled down" until the ample three-way action has been played out on both sides of the All-Star break.

Smart Donkey

Maureen Dowd's furlough from the NYTimes editorial page is welcome, especially since the liberal who has taken her place seems to have intelligent things to say. His first article, appearing today, is appropriately on the biggest issue of the day: Social Security. And unlike Dowd and the other party-line Democrats at the Times, he's coming out and admitting that there is a problem. The thrust of his article is that Democrats need to engage intelligently on Social Security. He's not calling for compromise: he urges harsh politics and demagogery to tear down the illiberal aspects of Bush's plan. But he does call for Democrats to recognize that the (Democrat-originated) scheme for slowing benefit growth that Bush recently adopted shouldn't be thrown out with the bathwater. More importantly, he's admitting that there is a problem. And that's the first step to recovery.

Denying the Holocaust

Whenever a revisionist historian attempts to deny or minimize the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazi regime against Jews, he is rightly derided and humiliated by the scholarly community and the Jewish community.

However, as we remember the end of World War II this month, I can't help noticing that the Holocaust is being minimized by Jews and the "rememberance industry" as much as by non-Jews. As a third-generation survivor, I've grown up with an active (though not morbid) interest in Europe's Darkest Age. I knew from a child that 14,000,000 people, including 6,000,000 Jews, were killed by the Nazi death-dealers. I knew that the experience of the Jews was unique: Hitler was attempting their extermination in a way that perhaps only the campaign against the Roma can compare to. However, a growing trend in the media that I read is to remember only the 6,000,000 under the "Holocaust" blanket. The latest transgressors are the new Berlin Holocaust Memorial and Nick Kristof, writing on an unrelated topic. He says that the 20 million who have died of AIDS are more than three times as many as those killed by the Holocaust. Clearly, his Holocaust excludes 8,000,000 goyim who paid the ultimate penalty for being communist, Roma, homosexual, mentally retarded, evangelical, nationalist, or just unpopular with the Germans.

Kristof and others would no doubt agree quickly that the deaths of the 8,000,000 were also terrible. However, the designation "Holocaust" is special. It enshrines those it encompasses in a category more mournful than the millions who died of bombing and disease and the millions of soldiers who died in the line of duty. The purposefulness of the Nazi killing machine gives their deaths a more pointed meaning. They were not collateral: they were the target. To exclude gentiles from the "Holocaust" designation is to cheapen and minimize the designation. A solely-Jewish Holocaust becomes less accurate, less universal, and less poignant.

As a third-generation survivor, I want the world never to forget my Jewish ancestors nor the gentiles who were killed alongside them.

This Is Justice?

The State of Israel has a reputation for having some of the weirdest politics in the free world. They can add to that one of the weirdest senses of 'justice'. Haaretz reports - with a straight face - on an IDF soldier who was fined $4,000 and sentenced to 6 months community service. What was the crime? Vandalism, perhaps? Or shirking his soldierly duties? Libel or slander? Disturbance of the peace?

Nope, try violent rape of a child.

Tel Aviv District Court on Tuesday sentenced an Israel Defense Forces soldier to six months community service for raping his young cousin repeatedly over a period of two years, beginning when she was 11...

Following the rapes, the girl began to lose her religious faith, had difficulty sleeping and suffered from recurring nightmares. She also lost all of her hair, and has to wear a wig. In handing down their ruling, the three women judges wrote that they intended to send the message that it is not pointless for women to make a rape complaint, and to show the accused that he is directly responsible for an attack on a child, and for the need to seek her forgiveness.

Woah, I'll bet the poor kid feels better: her cousin isn't behind bars, but at least he's washing toilets. And she's got $4,000 to defray the costs of therapy. Whoopie.

But you can't say the Israeli justice system isn't merciful. Look how well they treated the soldier:

In deciding on his sentence, the court had taken into account an psychological evaluation of the accused, which determined that he had no pedophiliac inclinations, or other sexual perversions.

Good to know. After two years of repeated child-rape, I was beginning to have my doubts about his sexual normalcy. Thanks for reassuring me. I'd hate to think an IDF soldier was a pedophile.

The psychological examination also found that the soldier had difficulty sleeping at night, and found the possibility of jail very distressing. The psychologist said that the trauma of imprisonment would cause him to have a nervous breakdown and could even spark thoughts of suicide.

Poor fella!

Act Now To Stop The National ID Card

Senate sleeze has resulted in the attachment of the 'Real ID' bill as a rider to a military appropriations bill. The 'Real ID' part has not been debated at all in the Senate, and is a poorly written and destructive document with an anti-American goal: central government control of private citizens.

Fortunately, some enterprising folks set up a website just for this issue with technology that allows you to write both your Senators and have the message faxed to them in two minutes flat. Act now: the vote is tomorrow (5/10). Thanks to Andrew Parker at Watchblog for pointing out both the problem and the solution.

Confession of Sin

This was part of my church's worship service this morning, and I thought it was worthwhile. It comes from a book of puritan prayers.

O God of grace,
You have imputed his righteousness to my soul
clothing me with a bridegroom's robe,
decking me with jewels of holiness.

But I am still robed with rages;
my best prayers are stained with sin.
I need to repent of my repentance;
I need my tears to be washed.

I have no robe to bring to cover my sins;
no loom to weave my own righteousness.
I am always standing clothed in filthy garments,
and by grace am always receiving new robes,
for You always justify the ungodly.

I am always going into the far country,
and always returning home as a prodigal,
always saying, Father, forgive me,
and you always bring me the best robe.

Grant me never to lose sight of
the exceeding sinfulness of sin,
the exceeding righteousness of salvation,
the exceeding glory of Christ,
the exceeding beauty of holiness,
the exceeding wonder of grace.

Amen.

In other Christ Church news, our search committee identified a candidate: Rusty Whitener (sp?), a pastor from southwestern Virginia whose last church grew from 12 to 88 members under his tutelage. We will meet him in two weeks, and vote on whether to invite him in four.

You Might Be A Nerd If...

You've RSVP'd to attend this wildly popular event at M.I.T. Of course, if you don't have time to go on Saturday, you can go back later whenever you have time.

Introducing: Financial Times

InstantReplay is adding another news source: London's Financial Times, whose august links will grace the pages of InstantReplay with briefly stated facts and commentary. FT gets rave reviews across the worldwide web, and its web page is simple and easy to navigate. Rather than link to the front page, InstantReplay will go straight to the World page, which is lighter on the financial data and heavier on the news.

The first bit of news that we'll bring over from FT is that the U.S. economy added 274,000 jobs in April, far exceeding expectations, and estimates for March and February have been revised upward by 97,000 jobs. This growth is an excellent sign for the economy, which had hit a "soft spot" in March, though economists now think the reason was simple: an early Easter break threw off seasonal adjustments.

Britain Votes

The BBC has a useful page on the election results in the UK's parliamentary elections. Most of Northern Ireland has not yet reported, but with most of the vote in, Labour won a plurality of the popular vote with 37% and won a majority of the seats, 355 of 646 by last count. They lost 47 seats, and failed to gain a single new one. Another BBC feature breaks down each major party's targets, defences, gains, and losses.

That Good Night

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

The New York Yankees have not read Dylan Thomas. They have gone gentle and losing into six of the last eight good nights, and in none of those six losses have they put a single baserunner on in the ninth. Their record is identical to Tampa Bay's (see the standings), and it's not because Tampa has been playing well. Prior to winning three in a row over the reigning AL East champs, the pathetic Rays had dropped eight straight. Which only emphasizes how far the Yankees have fallen.

Are the Yankees a bad team? By no means. They have a fearsome roster. King George III has purchased the top players from Baltimore, Oakland, Seattle, Japan, Los Angeles, Arizona, and Florida. However, their depth is simply not very um... deep. The starting rotation was (or at least, seemed) unparalleled at the season's start. But with two of the starters on the DL and one failing miserably, their two best starters have ERA's above 4 and records of 2-2. Hardly the "Five Aces" that we feared on April 1st.

Things could still come around for the Yanks (God forbid), but it will be nearly impossible for them to make worthwhile acquisitions. Their salaries are stretching to the sky, and they have very little talent to offer - even among their 'stars'. Overpaid, underachieving stars from the 1990's won't get much more than a bucket of balls at the trading deadline.

This is the first time InstantReplay has devoted a post to the New Yorkers. It's fitting, is it not, to turn the spotlight on them at this moment? After all, it's been 30 years since they started this poorly.

Environmentalists Have Their Cake, Want to Eat It Too

Environmentalists agree with the rest of America that we need alternative sources of fuel. But not in their backyards.

Environmental advocates and other assorted NIMBY* and BANANA** people are doing their darnedest to prevent the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission from installing new terminals, which is the first step towards getting Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) - a clean and efficient alternative to gasoline and heating oil - onto the market. A few LNG terminals currently exist, and busriders in Boston can attest that their new LNG buses are a boon to city air. But without sufficient offloading facilities, other cities won't be able to take advantage of this superior new fuel.

See tomorrow's CS Monitor for the latest on jurisdictional conflicts in attempting to build the new terminals.

California's Energy Commission has a helpful website on LNG facts and history.

* NIMBY: "Not In My Back Yard"
** BANANA: "Build Absolutely Nothing Anywhere Near Anyone"

Ethics Scandal Spreads

Drudge reports that the ethics scandal famously plaguing Tom DeLay has grown to include 14 Congressmen, a majority of whom are Democrats, and numerous staffers.

05/05/05

Today is the only time in the century that we'll get to enjoy writing 05/05/05. InstantReplay is already dreading the date a year, a month, and a day from now: that will be, according to numerical traditions, the Devil's Day. But 5/5/5 can't be that bad, can it?

Some of today's news:

Identity Theft Hits the Government, with frightening consequences.

Tom DeLay Speaks Out on Ethics Code Revisions

Right-Wing Christians Publish New Monopoly Rip-Off: Theopoly

U.S. Forces Nab Zarqawi's Personal Laptop

And lastly...

Authorities are cracking down on fake news sites

Keep Those Clicks Coming!

InstantReplay sold out to the man just a few weeks ago, adding Google advertizing to the right navbar. The ads have survived their probationary period: with an average earnings of $4.50 per week, they have proved to be a huge success. So keep those clicks coming - each one sends the InstantReplay Bandwidth Fund between 5 and 15 cents.

The Null Theology

I wrote an email today responding to a friend's questions following up on a conversation we had about reform theology. Part of that email is worth revising and reprinting.

This is my "personal theology", if one can righteously say such a thing exists. I call it the "Null Theology".

• I accept the Bible as God's true word, and I am convinced by the archaeological evidence that it has come down to us almost untouched. There is ample evidence that it was not tampered with at Nicaea or anywhere else.
• I believe the Bible says first what it means. A passage must be farmed for its principal meaning; secondary meanings inferred from the text may or may not be valid.
• God never promises that we will understand His ways; in fact, He says we will not understand them.
• Based on my reading of the Bible, I do not see it presenting a unified, codified theology. There are some basic, crucial points that it hammers home again and again; many of the "finer points" of doctrine are touched on only tangentially.
• Any human document must stand up to the criticism of the Bible, and does not receive the benefit of the doubt. I.e., if something is seemingly supported by one passage, but contradicted by another, it is false. Most dogmatic theologies depart from the Bible. Even when they venerate it as God's Word, they find that it does not well state their points, and they bring in passages to defend what they believe.

In conclusion, any argument that cannot be made by simply reading the Bible aloud is an argument that should never be presented as dogma. We may have opinions and traditions and preferences, but if the Bible is not explicit about a specific matter, then it does not apply even if it follows directly from scripture by means of logical arguments. We lack explicit permission to "extend" God's word by use of Reason (or Superstition, or Empiricism, or any other human thought pattern), and when we do so we invariably introduce divisions into the body of Christ.

Of course, my theology is self-defeating: it is formulated and advanced using reason and syllogisms. Hence its title. However, I am satisfied that before its self-immolation, it takes down with it all other human systems, leaving us with only... the Bible. And I'm happy with that.

The Constipated Conservatives

Harry Stein attempts 'scathing' (and fails) in an Opinion Journal criticism of Jon Stewart and The Daily Show. Stewart has been praised up and down as being a fearless voice in a politically correct world; Stein disagrees. According to Stein, Stewart is just another liberal, and his jokes are little more than another way to skewer Bush. But Stein misses the point: Stewart is liberal and everybody knows it. Unlike the Anderson Coopers and Chris Matthewses of the world, he's not pretending to be fair. Nor, like Tucker Carlson and Paul Begata, whom he famously brought low, is he just a party organ. He's a liberal, but he knows the truth when he sees it. That's why the routine that Stein quotes as the epitome of Bushwhacking was actually quite the opposite (I saw it):

...with the democratic tide rising in the Middle East, he acknowledged that maybe President Bush's policy in the region hadn't been so loony after all. He admitted that such a thought left him full of "cognitive dissonance," but "when you see the Lebanese in the streets, you say, 'Oh my God, it's working!' " "Pretty soon, Republicans are gonna be like, 'Reagan was nothing compared to this guy,' " Mr. Stewart added, cradling his head in his hands. "Like, my kid's gonna go to a high school named after him, I just know it."

"Well," comforted his guest, a diehard former Clinton official, "there's still Iran and North Korea, don't forget."

"Iran and North Korea," echoed Mr. Stewart hopefully, as he thrust crossed fingers up in the air for luck. "That's true, that is true." At least somewhat reassured, his audience roared.

Harry Stein does Stewart a service in his article. There's nothing like the dour daggers of a humorless, constipated conservative to make a comedian look smart.

Of course, InstantReplay isn't entirely unbiased. As an occassional Daily Show viewer, I take issue with Stein's assertion that the majority of Stewart's viewers have no coherent political philosophy nor any sense of history. The reality is that they are (empirically) one of the smartest audiences in front of a television, for a simple reason: if you don't follow politics and world events, you don't get the jokes. The Wall Street Journal needs to be a bit more careful in finding decent opinion writers, and maybe they need a moderate liberal on the editorial board to weed out the truly stupid conservatives.

If You Get All Choked Up Reading About Gol Airlines...

...you might be a conservative. And a nerd.

Gol, profiled in the CS Monitor, is a Brazilian airline startup, which took advantage of the soft economy of 2001 to enter the airline industry as the first low-cost carrier in Brazil. They're expanding quickly - and popularizing air travel among previous non-fliers. It is Constantino de Oliveira, Jr., (Gol's founder), not Hugo Chavez, who will bring South America into the 21st century economy.

The Village Computer?

Nicholas Negroponte (see below) is not the only one intent on bringing computers to the third world. An Indian IT businessman, Sugata Mitra, has already begun setting up computer kiosks in poor neighborhoods and villages in northern India. His initial experiment, as described by the BBC, is fascinating:

Beyond the perimeter fence [of his IT compound], [Sugata] could see the dispossessed children sleeping rough in a shanty town. He decided it was time to break a hole in the wall and give the children outside a chance to see what a computer was. He cut a hole and hooked one up. What happened next amazed him. They taught themselves how to use it.

He responded by adding more computer kiosks:

Sugata took his experiment further and set up computers amongst the underprivileged communities of Delhi. He built special kiosks where only children could reach the keyboard, and left them connected to the internet. In each case the results were the same. Without adult intervention, the children got to grips with the technology, even with their limited understanding of English.

Sugata was able to make some important but controversial observations. "Groups of children given adequate digital resources can meet the objectives of primary education on their own - most of the objectives."

Very interesting, and very conservative. Liberal thinking demands that Experts be sent to enlighten benighted villagers (the Beeb quotes an editor who cites Bill Gates' good-old-liberal efforts); conservative thinking expects the same of people everywhere, and leaves them the responsibility of using what is in their grasp. Sugata's is a true compassionate conservatism: he is placing more with the grasp of the children, and then expecting them to develop that resource with their own brain-power. His approach in a rural village:

Sugata gives a short talk before letting them loose. "Who can ride a bicycle?" he asks. Forty hands shoot up. "And who taught you?" There is some confusion and shaking of heads. "No-one taught you," he says. "It's a skill you can learn on your own." He turns to the computer behind him. "And the computer is like a bicycle."

Old People Suck

Nick Kristof hit the nail on the head in the NYTimes yesterday. He looks at the progress America has made in eliminating senior poverty in the U.S. in the last forty years, and the lack of progress we've made among children. He calls the Boomers "the greediest generation", and warns his co-generationalists not to get so greedy that they end up living off their children in the 2010's much as they lived off their parents in the 1970's.

While his article focuses on poverty, I have another beef: Social Security. In polls, most seniors oppose Bush's SocSec privatization plan even when they are informed by pollsters that benefits for current retirees will not change. What the heck? What right does the AARP have to loudly opine about a policy change that is fundamentally the business of young workers? They're all going to be pushing up daisies in the 2040's - I'm going to be retiring, having paid their Social Security checks all my life, and I want to have something left over for me. I'm not convinced that Bush's plan will work (though his proposal to slow the growth of middle- and upper-class benefits is a step in the right direction), but I am convinced that this is an issue that should be decided by the young. Old people have plenty of programs of their own. I don't get involved in the Medicare drug benefit debate - why should old folks mess up the politics of the debate over my retirement?