Twitter
LIKELIHOOD OF CONFUSIONPosted by Ron Coleman on October 8, 2008
As I said last year: Tonight begins Yom Kippur.
If you are Jewish, please consider that by traditional Jewish thinking, fasting and praying by yourself is superior to fasting and driving to synagogue for public prayer during the holiday. In fact, driving is a big no-no, as bad as not fasting. (Driving fast does not help.) I will be happy to answer any questions about this after the holiday.
Have an easy (“and meaningful”!) fast!
Posted in Faith and Works, Heart and spirit | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 7, 2008
Mickey Kaus’s first take on the debate sounds so much like a preposterous rationalization that it makes you wonder:
Obama’s great weakness is that he’s an unknown with an unusual (i.e. strange) background. By painting him as a big-spending liberal, McCain oddly made Obama seem less strange, and more acceptable. Voters are used to dealing with big spending liberals — and they also may think that the there’s not enough money for that much big spending anymore anyway.
The only reason this isn’t hopelessly absurd is that if you stare at it long enough you realize that, that last em-dash clause notwithstanding, most voters really have no problem with big spending liberals.
Democracy today is in that part of the cycle where the majority basically votes itself a new raise with each election. And if it works so great on Wall Street, well why not for the whole darned country?
Posted in Gelt, Politics and Poker | Leave a Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 7, 2008
Jane his wife
[21:48] Jane: Anyone who is really listening can’t help but come away thinking McCain is superior to Obama.
[21:48] Jane: Obama keeps speaking in vague generalities ….
[21:48] Ron Coleman: Good that you’re having that reaction
[21:49] Jane: McCain is full of substantive detail
[21:49] Jane: He accused Obama of being the 2d largest recipient of Fannie Mae (Freddie Mac?) money
[21:49] Jane: And Obama had nothing to say!
[21:49] Jane: He didn’t deny it.
….
Your blogger
[21:51] Ron Coleman: oh my….
[21:51] Jane: Problem is McCain is an old man.
[21:51] Jane: He sounds old.
[21:51] Jane: He is probably a better match for Obama than a hard-line conservative.
[21:52] Jane: Obama can’t beat him on substance.
[21:52] Ron Coleman: Yes, you are onto something, absolutely
[21:52] Ron Coleman: He’s also hard to caracature, unlike a true righty
[21:52] Jane: It comes out in the debate, the same way it came out in Palin’s acceptance speech.
[21:53] Jane: McCain has a long, full substantive record in Congress to back up all his assertions and promises
[21:53] Jane: And Obama has zilch, or worse,
[21:53] Jane: It all came out.
[21:53] Jane: But you have to really be listening.
[21:53] Ron Coleman: Well so much for that!
UPDATE: Jane points out to me that she listened to the debate on the radio, and didn’t see it on TV, unlike most. Is this a Nixon / Kennedy debate type thing?
Posted in Heart and spirit, Politics and Poker | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 7, 2008
You thought Instapundit was a libertarian? So did I! At least on economics issues. But check this:
BOB ZUBRIN: Obama’s Energy Plan a Mix of Bad and Good. “Moreover, there is one part of the Obama plan which is absolutely splendid, and that is his explicit promise to require flex fuel capability on all new cars sold in the USA by the end of his first term. This is indeed a potential real game changer, especially if the flex fuel standard is written to include not only automobile compatibility with gasoline and ethanol, but methanol as well.” You can make methanol from kudzu. ‘Nuff said.
Well, not ’nuff for me. What happened to the free market? Is it inconceivable that oil could be $40 a barrel at the end of Obama’s first term — and cars will either be X dollars more expensive because of this requirement, or perhaps won’t work right, or… whatever?
Whatever, indeed. We see how easy it is to fix massive policy problems merely by legislating a solution, right?
Posted in Futurama, Gelt, Nuvo-Techno, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 6, 2008
Lehman Brothers’ Richard Fuld is angry:
Fuld said he took “full responsibility” for the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and “felt horrible” about it.
But Fuld said he has yet to understand why the federal government helped to bail out the AIG insurance company and other investment banking firms, but did not do so a few days earlier to save Lehman Brothers.
“Until the day they put me in the ground, I will wonder,” Fuld told the Congressional panel, seeming to seethe with anger.
“This is a pain that will stay with me the rest of my life.”
It’s really stunning. I am all for capitalism, free markets, even wildly disparate distributions of wealth — of which, believe me, I have precious little. You have to read through this whole article, however, to see what to me has always been at the heart of this little game: Wall Street has, for a long, long time now, been utterly out of touch with the real value of money… the value of what it provides… and any sense whatsoever of,
well,
reality.
He’s angry? He’s … in pain? Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in Americana, Gelt, O Mores! | 1 Comment »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 5, 2008
SO WHY NOT JUST LEGALIZE IT? Craigslist a hotbed of online prostitution. The comments to the story seem surprisingly pro-legalization.
“Surprisingly”? There he goes again.
Professor Reynolds — how come the keen Yale-trained legal mind goes right out the window once these libertarian tropes come around? — “Craig’s List sells sex” –> “Internet users are in favor of prostitution” –> “QED: Prostitution should be legalized” is not an argument.
Glenn, life is good in your house and mine, and life is good when you go outside to take pictures. But the fact is, my friend, for no small number of its denizens, the Internet is not only a hotbed of libertarianism. It’s a not-so-hot bed of guys who, er, frankly are a little biased on this topic… given their options.
Posted in O Mores!, Sisyphus | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 2, 2008
James Joyner has what I think is the closest sense of the matter of the debates to mine that I’ve seen.
Of course he watched them. Still.
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 2, 2008
[T]he election could be won or lost during the 90 minutes of the debate. If St. Paul Sarah shows up, it could be game changer. If Katie Couric Sarah shows up, goodbye battleground states.
And, as I said in Rick’s comments, the scary thing is the stark contrast, yeah? For Biden, it’s his last chance at any kind of glory. If he can make a woman who is young enough to be his daughter look dumb without saying something arrogant or looking like a bully, he just may cinch that big-time gig he’s always wanted. For him that’s a tall order, but it is probably doable. He certainly will get every benefit of the doubt from the MSM in spinning that he did.
For Palin, she may end her very fast decline and fall right here. But more interestingly, to a large extent it’s in Sarah Palin’s hands to bring an end to Joe Biden’s long political career and great ambition… or to John McCain’s.
Posted in Americana, Medialites, Politics and Poker | 5 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 2, 2008
"Downtown"
Today I went “downtown” for the first time — representing the victim of a crime, I accompanied him to a visit to a special prosecutor for the Manhattan District Attorney, where we discussed coordinating our criminal and civil legal strategies.
So what was it like?
It was actually kind of cool. I have a friend who decided to go to law school about 15 years after I did, and he went to work there, but I had never visited him “inside.” So as someone who grew up entirely in business law, but also a litigator and trial attorney, I have always been fascinated by the prosecutor’s job.
Plus, I look the part, right?
I think I really would have liked it, except for a couple of things. I would have liked the “public service” piece. Eventually I concluded, in my business law career, that I was pretty much going to have be on the side of the angels in any given legal cause in order to be motivated. Now most business disputes don’t really have a good guy or a bad guy, but amazingly in all my cases I represent the good guy!
I would have liked being the G-man, the government’s enforcer, to some extent, too. I am no libertarian, but even libertarians agree with the concept of law enforcement.
No, my objection to be a prosecutor would not have come with respect to the issue of prosecuting people for crimes I would personally find objectionable. I believe in representative democracy, by and large, and if chewing gum on Wednesday or smoking spliff in an elevator is against the law, so be it. Call your congressman.
There are two things I wouldn’t like, though, from what I’ve seen.
One is that, well, it’s not so simple. There’s no question there are prosecutors who are assigned with the task, or who undertake it themselves, of prosecuting people for crimes they probably didn’t commit. I don’t think I could stand even being around that.
The other one is an image I will never get past, and would it implies. It was during my first trial, in fact. We were in federal court in New Jersey, and the judge asked us to recess so he could handle a criminal arraignment.
The jumpsuit-clad defendant, a stocky black man, was brought in a special doorway in the side of the courtroom, out of which had two burly United States Marshals had preceded him. Two more brought him, bringing him into the room by virtue of two hands each gripped on an arm. He was cuffed.
And he was manacled.
He looked pretty fierce. And he looked pretty broken, at the same time.
Maybe this man was guilty of what he was charged with. Maybe he was guilty of a lot more. Maybe I am really glad he was put away.
But at the moment I knew I could not be one of those charged with doing it.
A man may turn himself into an animal, or treat others bestially. Such a person forfeits the right to free and unfettered association with those who retain their humanity, or who are entitled merely not to be his prospective victims. Someone has to tame that man, and divest him of the privileges of human society and, if need be, to shackle him at the wrists and ankles, to make him resemble the captured beast he has become.
I am not the one to do it, however. And as extreme as that vision was, as unusual, and as many prosecutors actually have very little to do with violent crime, that image, that personification of the role of the prosecuted never left me, and I knew that as long as there was someone else who could, and would, do the job, it was never going to be a job for me.
Posted in Heart and spirit, Lex scripta | 2 Comments »
Posted by Ron Coleman on October 1, 2008
Slate Magazine is diagramming Sarah Palin’s sentences, and concludes — surprise! — she’s a doofus.
Scanning this article (it is not worth more than a scan), what is remarkable is that despite being one of the best all-around destinations on the Internet for good, insightful writing, when it comes to politics Slate remains utterly unselfconscious in its bias. There isn’t the slightest suggestion that the exercise of diagramming Sarah Palin’s sentences, which author Kitty Burns Florey starts out by characterizing as “scal[ing] the heights of inanity,” would be a tad more compelling if some control subject were suggested.
Diagram this
I’m not even asking that they apply this new brand of political analysis to the brilliant oral thinkings of the Honorable Barack Obama; we know that is unnecessary seeing as how he is a certified intellectual and academician. His words are beyond diagramming; they are our future, made flesh.
But … Joe Biden? Are his verbal jetés (forget the fibbing part) really amenable to a diagram that Kitty wants someone with time on his hands on the GOP side to throw up there for serious analytical scrutiny?
How about — any politician on earth? The stentorian John Kerry? Bill Clinton — whoa, yes, there are some sentences in that portfolio I’d love to chart. Also the Missus over there, yes, some real beauts.
“Sentence diagramming”: It’s the new way to make your political cheap shots look pointy-headed and thoughtful-like!
Diagram this: Duh.
UPDATE: Like I said!
Posted in Medialites, Politics and Poker, Stragety | 4 Comments »
