99 Things To Meme

This list of 99 Things to Do has been making the rounds. Thought I'd join in and see just how interesting I am. Those items I've completed are in bold.

1. Started your own blog
2. Slept under the stars
3. Played in a band
4. Visited Hawaii
5. Watched a meteor shower
6. Given more than you can afford to charity
7. Been to Disneyland/world
8. Climbed a mountain
9. Held a praying mantis
10. Sang a solo
11. Bungee jumped
12. Visited Paris
13. Watched a lightning storm at sea
14. Taught yourself an art from scratch
15. Adopted a child
16. Had food poisoning
17. Walked to the top of the Statue of Liberty
18. Grown your own vegetables
19. Seen the Mona Lisa in France
20. Slept on an overnight train
21. Had a pillow fight
22. Hitch hiked
23. Taken a sick day when you’re not ill
24. Built a snow fort
25. Held a lamb
26. Gone skinny dipping
27. Run a Marathon
28. Ridden in a gondola in Venice
29. Seen a total eclipse
30. Watched a sunrise or sunset
31. Hit a home run
32. Been on a cruise
33. Seen Niagara Falls in person
34. Visited the birthplace of your ancestors
35. Seen an Amish community
36. Taught yourself a new language
37. Had enough money to be truly satisfied
38. Seen the Leaning Tower of Pisa in person
39. Gone rock climbing
40. Seen Michelangelo’s David
41. Sung karaoke
42. Seen Old Faithful geyser erupt
43. Bought a stranger a meal at a restaurant
44. Visited Africa
45. Walked on a beach by moonlight
46. Been transported in an ambulance
47. Had your portrait painted
48. Gone deep sea fishing
49. Seen the Sistine Chapel in person
50. Been to the top of the Eiffel Tower in Paris
51. Gone scuba diving or snorkeling
52. Kissed in the rain
53. Played in the mud
54. Gone to a drive-in theater
55. Been in a movie
56. Visited the Great Wall of China
57. Started a business
58. Taken a martial arts class
59. Visited Russia
60. Served at a soup kitchen
61. Sold Girl Scout Cookies
62. Gone whale watching
63. Got flowers for no reason
64. Donated blood, platelets or plasma
65. Gone sky diving
66. Visited a Nazi Concentration Camp
67. Bounced a check
68. Flown in a helicopter
69. Saved a favorite childhood toy
70. Visited the Lincoln Memorial
71. Eaten Caviar
72. Pieced a quilt
73. Stood in Times Square
74. Toured the Everglades
75. Been fired from a job
76. Seen the Changing of the Guards in London
77. Broken a bone
78. Been on a speeding motorcycle
79. Seen the Grand Canyon in person
80. Published a book
81. Visited the Vatican
82. Bought a brand new car
83. Walked in Jerusalem
84. Had your picture in the newspaper
85. Read the entire Bible
86. Visited the White House
87. Killed and prepared an animal for eating
88. Had chickenpox
89. Saved someone’s life
90. Sat on a jury
91. Met someone famous
92. Joined a book club
93. Lost a loved one
94. Had a baby
95. Seen the Alamo in person
96. Swam in the Great Salt Lake
97. Been involved in a law suit
98. Owned a cell phone
99. Been stung by a bee

Hmm, 54 out of 99 isn't bad. It appears that my failure to tour Europe has really hurt my score. Alas, I am not yet The Most Interesting Man in the World. But it's always nice to have goals.
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A Holiday Poem

Well, it's once again that time of year. Here's a little something I wrote a few years ago in law school. For it to make sense, here's a quick primer: freshmen live in dorms on the Boston College law school campus, Joe Liu was my Property professor, and the Asahi case spelled out the rules for obtaining jurisdiction over someone. Don't worry about the law jokes, though, it's mostly about Santa's substance abuse problem.

'Twas the Night Before Finals

Twas the night before finals, and in the library
Law students were stirring and starting to worry.

Their laptops were plugged into outlets with care
In hopes that their outlines soon would be there.

While students in college were snug in their beds
and visions of beer funnels danced in their heads,

I sat with my casebook propped up in my lap,
And stared at the pages of State vs. Shack.

When out in the lot there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the chair to see what was the matter.

Away to the window I shuffled and slouched,
Expecting to see an old dormit’ry couch

That had fallen and crashed on the new fallen snow,
While freshmen tossed more things to the ground down below.

When what to my wondering eyes should appear,
But a miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer.

With a little old driver so lively and true,
I thought for a moment it might be Joe Liu.

My eyes did deceive me I soon came to see,
For the beard on his chin came down near his knee.

My eyes, how they twinkled, my dimples, how deep,
For under the sleigh, I could see my crushed Jeep.

“A lawsuit!” I cried, as I ran out the door
To catch up with Santa and give him what for.

As I got out to see him, he turned with a jerk –
It was clear he’d been drinking ‘fore coming to work.

He nearly fell over, right out of his sleigh,
But I looked right up at him and started to say,

“You fucked up my Jeep, you stupid drunk dick.”
“It wasn’t my fault,” said fat old Saint Nick,

“It was that stripper named Vixen from two stops ago,
She didn’t have cookies, but knew how to --“

“Hey!” I said, “Nobody wants to hear that,
But for the sake of the Mrs. I hope it was wrapped.

Now back to this problem of you on my Jeep.
I’m going to sue you, and it’ll be steep.”

“Sue me?” said the elf. “I’d like you to try.”
“The court in Asahi says your ass is mine,

Unless we can settle right here and right now.”
“I’d like to,” he said, “but I don’t see how.”

“I want a new Jeep with really big tires.”
“Is that all,” he asked, “is there more you require?”

“Darn tootin’,” I said, “I need the exams
For all 1L courses so I can finish this cram.”

“I’ll do you one better,” he said looking sly
“If you won’t go tell about this little toy.”

He held out a bong from floor to his shoulder
That was mounted right there in a candy cane holder.

“I’ll give you the answers,” the old stoner wheezed,
And you’ll ace your exams with A’s and no B’s.”

“Sounds good to me, are they there in your sack?”
I asked the old devil as he reached in his pack.

“They are here in my hand,” and he gave them to me,
And I made lots of copies for the whole class to see.

So if you’re real tired and starting to crack,
And you’d like all the answers, just e-mail me back.


Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone.
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Does the Hardware Store Have Beartraps?

A few years back, the DC townhouse in which I reside was burgled over Thanksgiving weekend. My brother and his college roommates lived in the house at the time, and the burglars made a thorough job of their work. They waited until everyone had gone home for the long weekend, and then just popped the back door and walked in. They would have made the Grinch proud with their thoroughness:

They took everything:
iPods and flatscreens, some laptops and phones,
computers, playstations, all the best clothes.
Then they stuffed them in bags,
And then without dally,
Shoved all the bags in a van down the alley.

(musical interlude)

Then they slunk to the icebox.
They took my bro's feast.
They took my bro's Natty,
They ate his roast beast.
They cleaned out the icebox as quick as they might.
Why, those guys even took the last can of Bud Light.

Then they stuffed all food in the van with such glee.
"Now," they all cried, "We will make lots of g's."


That's actually what happened. They took every electronic device, video game, CD, DVD, a whole bunch of clothes, and nearly everything else of value besides the furniture. Then they took the time to cook and eat a steak that was in fridge. And they hauled everything out through the dark, unlit alleyway behind the house.

Now, three years later, I'm living in the same house, and I'm about to take off for Thanksgiving. I would rather not return home to a busted-in window and the discovery that my light-saber and extended-edition Lord of the Rings DVDs are for sale in Southeast DC. How, then, to prevent a break-in on a modest budget that doesn't include an alarm system?

As a new lawyer, I know that you cannot use deadly force to protect mere property. Thus I cannot hide beartraps under all the windows or run electric current through all the doorknobs, "Home Alone" style. [FN 1]. Instead, I may use only passive means to deter would-be criminals. That sucks, because nothing tells would-be burglars "Go Away" like losing a limb in a shiny new beartrap.

So, I am reduced to installing motion lights in the backyard. That way, at least the banditos can work without worrying that they'll trip over something in the dark. Similarly, I have put timers on all the interior lights. I've also made sure that the shades and blinds are drawn, the newspaper and mail are on hold, and I've asked the neighbors to pick up any papers, flyers, or packages that appear on the doorstep. Can't fail right? I mean, the place is practically a fortress, what with all those lights coming on and going off.

And that's why I just updated my renter's insurance. The end.

[FN 1] Interestingly, little Macaulay Culkin's "Saw"-like house of horrors was probably legal because he was actually in the house. One may use deadly force to protect one's own life. Thus, as long as Macaulay was in the house, and reasonably believed that the Wet Bandits threatened his life, all his nefarious little traps were probably permissible. However, had he set his traps and then gone to hide out at a neighbor's, he could have been charged with assault, if not attempted murder. Take that, Chris Columbus and your charming family holiday films.
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Demosthenes, Esq.

I passed the California bar exam. Bring me all the finest meats and cheeses of the land. Read more...

Cultural Divide

There was recently a good piece in the Times about Egypt. In it, Michael Slackman dissects what he perceives to be an Egyptian tendency toward patience in the face of adversity. "The [Egyptian] education system is in crisis, and unemployment, traffic and pollution area all major problems," Slackman writes, also noting that 40% of the Egyptian population lives on $2 a day. Slackman quotes Mr. Ahmed Sayed Baghali, the Egyptian on the street, who bemoaned his government's impotence to improve the country's plight. What does Mr. Baghali do to help himself, you may wonder? He waits patiently for the government to fix things. What does the government, run by Hosni Mubarek for the past 27 years, do about it? Nothing really, but Mr. Mubarek's son and heir apparent, Gamal, "counsels patience." [FN 1]

It is true that patience is a virtue. But when patience leads to stasis and eventually stagnation, it becomes a vice. For example, when I was in Egypt, I noticed that many buildings were incomplete. They were missing windows, or doors, or plumbing. The only complete buildings belonged to the government, or foreign-owned hotels and touristy places. Why? Tax loopholes - Egyptians don't have to pay taxes on incomplete properties, so they leave properties incomplete. The government hasn't closed this loophole. Why? "Maalesh," Slackman writes. "Maalesh" is Arabic for "Oh well" or "Whatever." With its companion sentiment, "Inshallah" or "God willing," these Middle Eastern concepts of "whatever will be will be" are both foreign and infuriating to Westerners. Allow me to explain.

Americans are born problem-solvers. We're not always good at solving problems (see: the Global War on Terror; the economic bailout; Katrina; etc.), but we're sure as heck going to try. For example, imagine the wailing and gnashing of teeth if, after 9/11, government officials collectively shrugged their shoulders and said, "Oh well." No no, we demand action when things go wrong.

This is not the case in many instances in the Middle East. When things go wrong there, the knee-jerk reaction is to wait it out. "Inshallah, things will get better." I don't know what this fatalistic acceptance of fate stems from. In his article, Slackman posits that it arises from a combination of factors. First, he says it arises from "strong religious faith and a conviction that all events are God's will." Second, it is attributable to a cultural recognition of the length of history.

There is much sense in this second factor. History literally began in the Middle East - the Fertile Crescent is in Iraq and the Pyramids still stand in downtown Cairo. These constant reminders of the timeless stretch of human history have molded the mindset of Middle Eastern culture. When one's sense of history is measured in millennia, fleeting day-to-day existence holds less importance. As a result, things like The Crusades are still a fresh wound in the minds of many Arabs.

When this long-term mindset meets the frenetic, A.D.D. Western mind, with its 24-hour news cycle and ignorance of even recent history [FN 2], the culture clash can be astounding.

How about a story to illustrate?

Give industrious Americans a tough job, and we will move mountains to see that it gets done. For example, in Iraq, my unit was put in charge of creating, training, and deploying the local police force and border patrol. Because my commander at the time was the Rock With Lips, who possessed the planning skills of your average pillowcase, that really meant that I was in charge of creating, training, and deploying the local police force.

My police training consisted entirely of watching "Law & Order" re-runs, so I was not really prepared for the job. However, lack of training, knowledge or preparation hadn't stopped Operation Iraqi Freedom up to that point, so I put together my plan. I guesstimated that we'd need 900 police officers to cover the 4 municipalities in our area. I broke that number down into different departments for each municipality, assigning personnel levels based on the size of the town. Then I broke each department down into units and assigned a command structure - chief, officers, support staff, patrolmen, etc. Then I figured we'd have to pay them, so I set up a payscale.

'Well, they'll need equipment too,' I thought. Weapons and ammo, radios, patrol vehicles, body armor, uniforms, file cabinets, desks, headquarters buildings, and record-keeping equipment were just a few things I put on my wish-list. I set up a meeting with the various mayors, and after greasing the proper palms, I got permission to use various buildings as police stations. I submitted my supply request to the chain of command, and a week later stuff started falling into my lap - 1000 Chinese-made AK-47s, crates of ammo, 20 new pickup trucks with machine gun mounts, flak vests, helmets, uniforms, rank insignia, a complete radio system with hand-held radios and building-mounted booster antennas, office supplies, boots in all sizes, sand-bags and concertina wire, and thousands of U.S. dollars in cash to start paying people. Thanks, U.S. taxpayers.

I located a set of abandoned buildings outside town to use as a training area, and I requisitioned more still more supplies to set up a police academy: desks, chairs, easels and paper for visual aids, bull-horns, marksmanship targets, notepads, pens, pencils, police-training manuals, and more. 'We'll have to feed the trainees,' I thought, so I ordered weeks worth of rations. This stuff too fell from the sky, courtesy of all you Joe the Plumbers out there.

I designed a program of study - classes on the rule of law (no corruption in this police department, no sir), checkpoint operations, marksmanship, weapons searches, emergency response operations, arrest and booking procedure, etc. Then I did what the Army calls "train the trainer." I designated those personnel from my unit - namely the best officers and NCOs - that would train the new police officers, and I taught them how to conduct the police training.

'Now we'll need some police officers,' I thought. I met with our squadron's Civil Affairs team and reserved the best translators to help conduct class (as usual, we didn't speak Arabic, and the police officers wouldn't know English). I then had the Civil Affairs team contact known former police officers or Iraqi Army officers in the area. Rationalizing that I couldn't start completely from scratch, and that I'd need someone in the police force who knew what was going on, I'd put people with prior experience in the officer positions. The Civil Affairs people gave me a list of names, many of which were known to us already as informants or at least nominal American allies. We vetted them as best we could (which wasn't very good, but what could we do?), and put them through the first round of training.

'Great, we have our police force's leadership,' I thought. Then the recruiting began. In an area where unemployment ran at something like 75%, it wasn't hard to find 850 people to sign up as police officers. Some 2500 men showed up on the first day. I had anticipated that level of turnout, and therefore had set up an obstacle course as an initial screening process. Anyone that refused to complete the obstacle course (and there were quite a few who did refuse - these individuals claimed they were the son or brother or cousin of so-and-so, and expected to get hired via nepotism) or could not complete the course (lots of them too) were told to leave. That left us with about 1200 semi-able-bodied men. We took down their names, issued them temporary photo IDs, and told them to come back the next day when we would assign them to training schedules.

We spent the night checking the new roster against known names and aliases of insurgents, thereby eliminating a few dozen more applicants. The next day we quietly arrested those individuals on the known insurgent list, and then assigned the rest to training schedules.

Training was a high-profile event. We were one of the first Army units to create a new civilian police force from scratch, and everyone in the chain of command wanted a piece of the action. I never saw so many colonels and generals as I did in those few weeks - every couple of days a helicopter full of VIPs would show up at our base and demand to be taken out to view training. They were roundly impressed, and I was ordered to write up a report on the program. The 82nd Airborne incorporated my report into their standard civilian police-training procedures.

About 9 weeks after I began, I had 4 shiny new police forces. They had everything they needed to take responsibility for their own communities. I felt that I had moved heaven and earth to get it done, and I really thought we had taken a major step in handing control of Iraq back to the Iraqis. 'There, that's how you get things done,' I thought. However, in all my planning, I had made a central error - I had not accounted for "Maalesh" and "Inshallah."

Less than a week into the new forces's operations, things started to fall apart. The new police chiefs were taking bribes from local officials and insurgents alike. "Baksheesh," they called these bribes, but Iraqis don't see it as bribery. Rather, it's more like an employment perk. For example, let's say the police chief ordered gloves for his officers from a local supplier, who charged $1000. The police chief would raise the price to $2000 and submit a request to me for the money. If I gave him the money, he'd keep $500 for himself, give $500 to the supplier (likely his cousin or brother), and the supplier would pay $1000 to the glove manufacturer.

Obviously, this is defrauding the U.S. government, which is one problem. Another is that justice was very much for sale - just as the police inflated cost in their budget requests to me, they'd sell services to the highest bidder. I almost immediately got reports of insurgents buying passage through police checkpoints set up to stop them. The police force also began "finding" stashes of insurgent weapons (they likely just bought the weapons themselves), and brought these weapons to me looking for bounties or rewards. I complemented them on a job well done, and told them to keep up the good work. The officers were more than a little peeved when I told them they don't get bounties for finding weapons caches or capturing insurgents - that's part of their job and what they were being paid to do.

Seeing that no bounties were forthcoming, the police offices basically shut down. Officers deserted and took their uniforms and weapons and radios with them. Checkpoints and patrols ceased. I confronted the chiefs and told them they had to get control of their departments. Uniformly, they responded with, "Inshallah."

"No, not God Willing," I replied, through a translator. "You willing. You have to do this. You have to take charge of your own forces. You have to protect your own citizens." They all nodded and smiled and said, again, "Inshallah." Exasperating doesn't describe the half of it. Maddening is closer.

Of course they did nothing. Insurgent attacks increased. Officers actually took bribes to allow insurgents to emplace IEDs near to police checkpoints - the better for insurgents to blow up U.S. patrols because they knew we'd come by to observe the checkpoints. Collaborating with the enemy should have been the final straw, and I should have disbanded the police force entirely, but I couldn't. Too much money and time had been put into the program, and there were too many high-profile eyes watching. I had become too big to fail.

To make matters worse, the insurgents themselves disbanded the police force. One night, 25 armed and masked men raided the central police station, and told the chief that if he and his officers didn't quit, they'd kill all of them and their families. Rather than take offense at this and fight back - if not out of pride then at least to protect their friends and families from a reign of terror - they all quit. They walked out that night, leaving the station vacant. Iraqis are excellent looters, and by the time we received the report of what happened and got out there, everything was gone - the desks, the chairs, the file cabinets, and, most disturbingly, all the weapons and ammo.

Fuck fuckity fuck fuck fuck. Now what? The Rock With Lips and I went to the police chief's house. "You can't just let this happen!" we told him. "Maalesh," he told me. Oh, I wanted to strangle him on the spot.

The police force fell apart, and never really got off the ground while I was there. At best, we were able to set up a shell of the force we really needed, and they were little more than traffic cops. The American forces in the area fought the insurgency with little to no help. The lack of help was astounding, especially because soon thereafter the insurgents began putting IEDs in the marketplace and blowing up more Iraqis than Americans.

But the locals didn't help us to help them. Why? "Maalesh." "Inshallah, the insurgents will stop the attacks." Patience is a virtue, and a vice. The end.

[FN 1] The Egyptian government is good at one thing: accepting U.S. handouts. We give them about $1.3 billion a year in military aid, and about $815 million a year in humanitarian aid. As of 2004, this totaled about $50 billion dollars in U.S. largesse. Compare that to the $9.2 billion in aid to Katrina victims.

[FN 2] A 2001 study found that American high schoolers are basically ignorant. 1 in 5 students thought that Watergate occurred before 1900 and 2/3 could not place the Civil War in the correct half century. A separate study [cited in the previous link] found that 53% of high school students didn't know the meaning of "holocaust." Another survey found that a quarter of high school students thought Columbus sailed to the New World after 1750. It was in 1492, in case you forgot when Columbus sailed the ocean blue.
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A Night At the Opera

Ms. Demosthenes and I went to see "Carmen" at the Kennedy Center a few nights ago. It was my first live opera experience. Although the plot was insipid, the performances were uniformly impressive - much like the ones in the video below. Enjoy.

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No Red States, No Blue States, Just Football

President-elect Obama told us there are no Red States, and there are no Blue States. There are only the United States. He was 100% right, but it had nothing to do with politics. As a nation we are still divided on any number of political issues: abortion, bailouts, tax policy, the Clintons, immigration, war, gay rights, women's rights, etc, etc, etc. We do have common ground, however. It's football.

Go to Massachusetts on a crisp fall Sunday when the leaves are in full color. There, in the land of John Kerry, gay marriage, and legalized marijuana, there is only one thing that matters come Sunday afternoon - the Pats game.

Compare that to an autumn Sunday in Texas, when the weather is still as warm as a pit barbecue. There, in the land of George W. Bush, evangelicism, and oil companies, there is only one thing that matters come Sunday afternoon - the Cowboys game (or, if one was unlucky enough to be from Houston, the Texans game. Go Sage Rosenfels!)

To paraphrase Lee Greenwood [FN 1], from the lakes of Minnesota to the hills of Tennessee, across the plains of Texas, from sea to shining sea, we're proud to be American football fans.

I have a story that proves this fact.


My good friend Pipes and I went to Texas to visit our Army buddy, Bakes. Bakes was born and raised just outside Dallas, and was every inch the Great American Hero: strapping young lad, blond hair, blue eyes, high school football player, West Point graduate, Army officer, married to his high school sweetheart, and life-long Texas A&M fan. Pipes and I flew to Dallas, hopped into Bakes's ginormous pick-up truck, and drove to the heart of A&M football - Aggieland, aka College Station, Texas.

Now, I grew up in NJ, where football is certainly popular - what kind of a week people are having often depends on how well the Giants or Jets are doing. But football in Texas is something else entirely. Once you get within 60 miles of College Station, you are in Aggieland. The water towers and billboards proclaim the greatness of the Aggies. Everything from gas stations to restaurants to doctors offices is dedicated to Aggie fanaticism. Every radio and television station covers some aspect of Aggie football.

We drove into College Station, and Bakes nosed his monster truck through the throngs of maroon-clad fans that mobbed the streets. We had arrived hours before the game - in which the Aggies would face the Cornhuskers of Nebraska - and the pre-game celebrations were already in full swing. "Where to?" I asked Bakes. "We're goin' to the Dixie Chicken," Bakes said, spitting a stream of Copenhagen juice into a Coke can.

Ah, the Dixie Chicken: a cowboy football bar to beat all others. A single-story pine-board building housing hundreds of feet of bar, serving cold beer and hot wings to the hundreds of Aggie faithful that mob it each weekend.

Bakes found a nearby parking spot and our intrepid trio walked into the bar. Inside was a sea of Aggie fans in maroon and gray, interspersed with a few brave Nebraska fans. Raucous groups of fans circled around their pitchers of Bud and Shiner Bock, scarfing down nachos and wings. Solid Red-Staters all. Bakes, Pipes and I grabbed a few pitchers and found an unoccupied corner between some Aggie college kids and Nebraska alums.

We drank up, and Pipes pulled out his camera for some group shots. We passed the camera around, each of us taking pictures of the other two. We looked around to ask someone to take a picture of all three of us. Who to ask? Aggie kids? Cornhusker alums? "How about that guy?" asked Bakes.

He pointed at a tall feller standing 20th in line for the men's room. "Who, the guy in the blue rugby shirt?" I asked. "Yeah," he said.

Pipes put his beer down and said, "Hey, you know who that is?" I gave him a blank look and shrugged. "That's Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks."

For those who don't know, Mark Cuban is a multi-billionaire. He lives in a 24,000 square foot mansion just outside Dallas. Recently, he was doing the Watusi with Wayne Brady on "Don't Forget the Lyrics." But there he was, elbow to elbow with the hoi polloi, waiting his turn for the pisser, enjoying some authentic football Americana.

"Let's get a picture with him," I said. "Nah," said Pipes, "People've probably been bothering him for that all day."

"Ok," said Bakes. "Let's just ask him to take a picture of us." He grabbed the camera and tapped Cuban on the shoulder.

"Yeah," Mark Cuban asked, looking at Bakes and eying the camera. "Excuse me, sir, but would you take a picture of me and my friends?" asked Bakes, smiling widely. Mark Cuban looked at him quizzically, clearly taken aback. I think he had a "Don't you know who I am?" moment. But Bakes didn't blink (good Republican that he is, he's incapable of blinking in the face of adversity). Mark Cuban recovered his composure, smiled and said, "Sure!"

He took the camera, and Bakes stepped back and put his arms around me and Pipes. Cuban held up the camera and focused it. "A little closer, guys." We got closer. "No, cheek to cheek," he said. We got cheek to cheek. "Good. On 3. 1, 2, 3." Flash, click. "One more, just in case," Cuban said. Flash, click. "Ok guys, that's great," he said.

Bakes stepped forward and took the camera back. "Thanks a lot, sir, I really appreciate it," Bakes said. "Oh, no problem guys," said Cuban, and he turned to resume his place in line. Bakes came back over to our corner, and we noticed the dropped jaws of the Aggie kids and Husker alums around us.

"Y'all know who that was?" asked one of the Nebraska guys. "Yeah," said Pipes, "that was Mark Cuban." "Well that's about the most awesome thing I've seen," said the Nebraska guy, laughing, and he high-fived us all around.

Indeed, it was pretty awesome. It's not every day you can get the billionaire owner of a championship-caliber sports franchise to take your picture in a bar.

And even more awesome was the disparate group brought together by this little scene: Bakes, the red-blooded Texan; Pipes, the hockey kid from Minnesota, don'cha know; me, from Joisey; the Husker and Aggie fans that would be clamoring for each other's heads in the upcoming game; and one of the richest men in America who really just had to pee. But backgrounds didn't matter, because we were all united in our desire for cold beer and good football.

See, there are no Red States, and there are no Blue States. Just the United States of Football. The end.

[FN 1] Lee Greenwood pretty much has one hit, "Proud to be an American." Because this song only gets air time when America goes to war, I wonder if it bothers Lee that the amount of his royalties directly corresponds to the severity of our armed conflicts.
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Too Big To Fail: Auto Industry Edition II

I recently posted my thoughts on bailing out the auto industry. In brief summary, I said that a well-tailored government solution would best serve all parties. However, I feared that no such government solution was possible, and it might therefore be better just to let the market take its course.

In today's NY Times, the author of "The World is Flat" and "Hot, Flat and Crowded", Thomas L. Friedman, agreed with me. Nothing like validation by a Pulitzer-Prize-winning journalist to make one smile. Here's what we said:


Just as I pointed out that the automotive industry was pushing dead technology via an outmoded business model, Friedman similarly stated that both automobiles and the automobile industry are "un-innovative." He went on to highlight GM's resistance to innovation on all fronts: a GM executive said hybrids made "'no economic sense,'"; this exec also referred to global warming as a "'total crock of [expletive]'". Additionally, GM gave no support to a national health care program, even though it cited rising health care costs as a major source of its economic troubles. Finally, GM chose to make money by selling "gas-guzzling SUVs and trucks" rather than "innovating around fuel efficiency, productivity, and design."

Given this institutional bias against innovation, Friedman was stunned to hear that Bob Nardelli, CEO of Chrysler, wanted $25 billion of taxpayer money to "retool for innovation." Indeed, this is stunning to hear. Since when does a worthwhile business need outside stimulation to innovate? Isn't that the driving force behind a capitalist economy - the need to find the next big thing? That is precisely the point Friedman and I made: the auto-industry is not a worthwhile business.

He counsels (as did I) against issuing a blank check to the auto industry, and instead called for stringent limitations on any government assistance. Specifically, he wants automakers to develop that next step in transportation technology that I spoke of - something more efficient (and not just in terms of fuel economy) than the cars we have now.

We did differ on one point. If a suitable government bailout can't be put together, I recommended just letting Porsche come in and take over, given their extraordinary automotive and business credentials. Friedman recommended calling Steve Jobs, the king of innovators, so he could develop the iCar. Either way, it's a win-win: we all get Porsches, or we all get iCars. What a bright morning in America that will be, don't you think?

Thanks for agreeing with me Mr. Friedman, and please call if you need help on your next book.

The end.

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November 11th

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Too Big To Fail: Auto Industry Edition

Hi again. Since all I do everyday is apply to jobs, watch news, and read the NY Times, I have a lot of time on my hands. I also spend a lot of time thinking about the news. Recent news has focused on the Democrats' plan to bailout the auto industry. No doubt this comes at the urging of the auto workers' unions, who are probably looking for payback for their support of Obama.

I am of two minds about the auto bailout, but leaning toward permitting car manufacturers to fall on their faces and let the market sort things out. The other side of me says that there's no need for such draconian measures, and a thoughtful, well-crafted government intervention could stave off many problems. Thanks to our two-party system of republican government, we'll get neither a pure market solution nor a well-crafted government solution.

Instead, we'll get a bill that spews money at a dying industry, and this bill will temporarily breathe some life back into U.S. auto manufacturers, but that will only delay the inevitable. I think it's is a bad idea. Here's why:


Throwing money at car manufacturers is akin to administering flu shots to dinosaurs at the same time as the asteroid enters the upper atmosphere. Sure, the dinosaurs won't get the flu, but, really, there are bigger concerns on the horizon. Same for the car companies: lack of money isn't the problem, and giving them a revenue injection won't fix the real problem. The real problem is they are going extinct.

Now, I'm not raising the global warming flag, and talking about banning cars for the good of mankind. We're too tied to cars to give them up entirely. But the modern auto industry itself is doomed. Let's look at some facts: cars operate via an internal combustion engine, which is 19th century technology. They are assembled and sold based on Ford's business model, which is an early 20th century invention. Both the product and the methods by which it is manufactured and sold are outdated.

The product - the car - is outdated because it's efficiency is rapidly becoming less than its cost. When measuring the total cost of cars' existence - product price, insurance, maintenance, accident-related litigation, environmental impact, loss of life, etc. - it becomes clear that the benefit of the automobile will soon be outweighed by the cost, if that is not already the case.

The business model is outdated too. There's nothing wrong with assembly-line production - that's not the issue. The problem is that the business model for building cars was originally predicated on abundant supplies of steel and energy, each of which is shrinking and/or disappearing and driving up the cost of production. Similarly, cars were originally designed to be almost disposable, and American cars are still nearly disposable. It's an inherent part of the system - if you build cars that never break down, eventually no one will buy new cars. You need people to need new cars to keep up your business. But again, as resources shrink, that model becomes less viable.

So, what we have is an industry that is croaking its last breaths, because the world is moving on without it. But in the name of protecting jobs and American industry, the government is seriously considering propping up this industry, thereby perpetuating rather than solving the underlying problems driving auto manufacturers into the ground.

But if there's no bailout, what will we do? What will happen to all those jobs, not just in auto manufacture, but in parts manufacture, mechanics shops, tire places, auto accessories, and all the thousands of other jobs that these jobs support? And don't forget the oil industry, what will happen to them? Surely the auto industry is too big to fail? We can't let this big a chunk of the economy collapse, can we?

Well, that's why I'm of two minds. One part says yes, let it fail. It might not be so bad. Let's say GM collapses, totally and completely. What will happen? Well, a lot of people will be out of work. But GM owns lots of assets: factories, r&d labs, offices, raw materials, a trained labor force, etc. If GM breathed its last, it's almost certain that another company would swoop in and buy up these assets, open another car company, and put those employees back to work. I nominate Porsche. They just raked in a billion dollars by cornering the market on Volkswagen stock and then short-selling it. Clearly, Porsche knows how to run a business, and they make a good car too.

And if it isn't Porsche, it would be someone else that buys up GM (or Dodge, or Ford, or whoever) and takes it over. This wouldn't solve the long term problem of the automobile's looming demise, but it would at least mitigate some of the short-term harm. It would also have the added benefit of putting people that know how to build good cars and run a profitable company in charge, and a rising tide raises all ships. Domestic competition would increase, automobiles would evolve into the next step in transportation technology, and we'd all live happily ever after.

However, the collapse of an American auto giant is likely to be painful, even if only in the short-term. So that's where the other side of my indecision comes in: if we can see this collapse coming, and we know that our goal is to move to the next step of transportation technology, why endure such pain? Let's skip the middle man and put our own companies on that path now.

I guess the short answer is that it's really, really hard to do that. First of all, there's no ready-made technology to shift to. We stopped using horses because the car was invented. There's no parallel here - we still need someone to come up with the next big idea to replace the car. Second, it costs a lot of money to shift paths from one way of doing business to another. New designs must be made, new materials procured, factories must be refitted or new ones must be built, and the new cars have to actually be better than the old ones. That is all costly and hard to achieve. Plus, because a bailout will have to come from the government, it will necessarily be full of compromises, attached strings, and pork, all of which may throw off the whole program.

So, which is it? Both options are jagged little pills. I can't decide. Thankfully, I don't have to. That's why we hire smart people like politicians to do the thinking for us. They'll make sure it's all ok. The end.



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The Tax Man Cometh

Um, if you're not interested in tax policy, you just may want to move on to a different post. Go ahead, I won't mind. If you are interested in hearing my questions about Obama's tax plan, click "read more."



Ok, so for those of you still with me, here's the basic issue. Obama wants to increase taxes on the upper levels of the tax bracket. Fine.

However, I suspect that when Obama's tax plan goes into place, companies will merely increase the salary of management and executives so that their after-tax dollars are the same as before the tax revision took effect. In turn, this increase in salary would be paid for by increasing prices for consumers and/or cutting jobs. This would, in effect, set the tax burden firmly back on the shoulders of the middle and working classes. This is because the lower income earners would have to pay more or lose their jobs, thereby undermining the purpose of the tax plan - namely to shift a greater share of the burden to the upper levels of the tax bracket and alleviate financial strain on the lower brackets.

So here's my question: what safeguards are available to prevent that from happening? Surely there must be some combination of carrots and sticks available to prevent my hypothetical from happening. Otherwise, we're basically asking wealthy people to make a charitable donation - please pay more taxes out of your own pocket, and don't shift the cost to the lower classes. Please. Pretty please.

The only solution I can think of is indirectly tying the corporate tax system to the personal income tax system. Here's the idea: increase personal taxes on the upper tax bracket as planned. Simultaneously, increase corporate taxes, but offer a tax break for those companies that maintain upper bracket salaries at previous levels, adjusted for inflation. This tax break has to be big enough to make it fiscally viable enough to keep salaries as-is. By that I mean that the corporate tax break must be sufficiently large that foregoing the tax break and increasing upper bracket salaries would equate to an irresponsible waste of profits, which would hurt shareholder value.

Thus, by offering greater profits, we incentivize companies to freeze upper bracket salaries. In turn, this hopefully minimizes the transfer of the cost of increased taxes from upper brackets to lower brackets.

Doing the mathematic modeling on this is beyond my skill level. I don't know at what rate to set the upper bracket tax hike and the corresponding corporate tax increase/tax break. At the bottom line, the new rates must be sufficient to actually raise revenue. That is, the corporate tax breaks can't offset the revenue increase from upper level tax hikes. Similarly, some percentage of companies will probably raise salaries anyway, and that must be factored in. There also has to be a tightening of loopholes that would permit corporations and upper bracket earners to hide income in tax shelters.

There's also the problem of selling this idea. It is redistributionist, no two ways about that. I'm hoping that the idea of letting corporations increase profit margins would make it easier to swallow. However, letting corporations make more money is seldom popular with voters.

Finally, there's another consideration: state and local taxes. State and local governments are also suffering under budget strains, and need to increase revenue as well. If state and local governments hike sales tax, property tax, excise tax, and state income tax, then all the work done to keep money in the hands of middle class earners will be undone because they'd be paying more in state and local tax.

This is starting to make my head hurt, and I'm sure I've committed an egregious error somewhere in my modest proposal. If you have any thoughts, feel free to comment.

In closing, I don't know how Obama sleeps at night. In fact, I think he doesn't sleep. This morning CNN ran footage of him from 2006, and he looked great. Now, he's already grayer, his face more lined, and he hasn't even raised his right hand and taken office yet. I suppose it must be hard work when one takes seriously the job of carrying the weight of the world. The end.
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A Failure To Communicate

As you probably know, Paul Newman died recently. I mentioned in my last post that America's super soldiers give off a certain air, one that makes men want to be them and women want to be with them. But the coolest cucumber in the special forces doesn't hold a candle to Mr. Newman. Classy, clever, and adept in any role in any genre. Action, sports, drama, animation - he did it all. "Cool Hand Luke" is one of the best movies ever made, and Paul Newman managed to show up Tom Cruise in "Color of Money," a feat few actors have ever done.

I've seen "Cool Hand Luke" 20+ times. One of the most famous lines in the movie belongs to the Captain, played by Strother Martin doing his best squeaky, effete Truman Capote. In the scene, Luke, Newman's character, is brought back to the chain gang after another failed attempt at escape, and the jail Captain beats Luke with a blackjack. Standing over him, the Captain says, "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Cue cinematic gold.

What the Captain was getting at, of course, was that Luke simply wasn't receiving the message he was sending - namely do your time quietly and don't make waves. The message was clear and in no uncertain terms, and the failure in this case was Luke's unwillingness to receive the message.

Sometimes, however, the message is less clear. Sometimes the message is obtuse to the point of being meaningless. Like when I was in Iraq, and I was assigned to set up a check point and detain "any vehicle with two or more Arab males in it."


'Hmm,' I thought upon receiving this mission, 'that's going to be a lot of detainees.' You see, Iraq is practically overrun with Arab males. The place is crawling with them. They also have the annoying habit of traveling two or more to a vehicle. My mission, therefore, was basically to arrest everyone.

Now as it turned out, that should not have been my mission. The actual intelligence the mission was predicated on was that two non-Iraqi Arabs who were known IED (improvised explosive devise) manufacturers were suspected of moving through our area en route to Syria. There was only one road that ran through the desert from Haditha to the border, so they would probably be on that road. We were supposed to look for two military aged males traveling with bomb-making material and no Iraqi identification. But that didn't reach my level. "What we've got here is failure to communicate." Cue disastrous mission.

I don't know where the breakdown occurred. It could have come from the intelligence officer who received the report and left out the important details. It could have been, and I believe likely was, an intentional decision by the higher-ups to cast as wide a net as possible. However, being staff weenies that never left base, they didn't realize that hundreds if not thousands of people passed down that stretch of highway everyday, and that there was no way we could possibly arrest, handle, and interrogate so many people. Nor did they realize that if we tried to do it, it would turn into such a snarling clusterfuck that the guys we actually wanted would probably spot the checkpoint and get away. Alas, I was a lowly lieutenant, what did I know? Off to the checkpoint!

Having been out on that highway quite a bit, I knew the level of traffic to expect. So I brought all 40 guys in my platoon, every humvee and truck I could get, and as much barbed wire, MREs (pre-packaged field rations), and bottled water as we could carry. My plan, you see, was to do exactly what they told me: I would stop every vehicle. I'd have each one parked on the side of the road in one area, put all vehicle occupants in a separate barbed wire ring, and give each a bottle of water so they wouldn't die of heatstroke in the 125-degree sun. I'd wait until the staff weenies called off the mission once they realized I had several hundred detainees, then I'd free everyone that wasn't an insurgent and give them an MRE by way of apology. Couldn't fail, right? I am too big to fail.

So it was noon on a sunbaked stretch of highway. The thermometer topped out at 120, but it was probably hotter (the hottest I ever saw was 135, as measured at an aviation unit's flight control center). What we were doing was extraordinarily dangerous because checkpoints are sitting targets, and insurgents were getting good at driving car-bombs into them. [FN 1] Therefore, we were in full battle rattle: helmet, body armor, armed to the teeth. And we were more than a little tense, because there's nothing like the threat of imminent demise to jangle the nerves. To top it all off, we had 75 cars parked in lines along the highway, and just over 130 furious, innocent Iraqi men, women, and children milling around a barbed-wire holding area. Did I mention we didn't have a translator? We didn't. There weren't any to be had, so, like good Americans, we just shouted in English.

We had been at the site for two hours, and I was becoming exceedingly nervous. Not only was there the threat of car bombs, but there was also the specter of having to quell a riot. We were now outnumbered 3 to 1, and if the detainees decided to rush us and leave, we'd have to start physically restraining completely innocent people. That would likely lead to someone getting shot, and I'd be responsible for innocent loss of life.

I walked from my humvee, which was parked on a slight rise so I could get radio reception, down to my platoon sergeant, Smoke. [FN 2] He was standing near our make-shift ops center, overwatching the detainees with a small detail of guards. "Enough of this," I said. "Roger that, sir," he replied. "You've gotta us the fuck outta here." "Good," I said. "What are the current numbers so I can call them in?" "134 detainees, 77 vehicles," he told me. "Alright, I'll be back," I said, and went back to my humvee.

I radioed in a sitrep (situation report), and requested further guidance.

"Stay put," the battle captain on duty said.
"We've been here over two hours, can we relocate to improve security?" I asked.
"Negative, you are to remain in position."
"Can we release the current detainees?"
"Negative."
"How about the women and children?"
"Negative, you are to retain all detainees and remain in location."
"Could you send a tank detail to beef up security?"
"Negative, all available tank units are on border security."
"Roger, anything else?"
"Negative, send sitrep if anything changes."
"Roger, Red 1 out."

So we stayed. And stayed. And stayed. And stayed. It got dark. Where before I had 130 hot and furious Iraqis, I now had 227 irate and shivering Iraqis. You see, as the sun set, the temperature dropped dramatically, and the sweat on the detainees was now chilling them. My soldiers were about at their wits' ends too - 10 hours is a long time to stand around in battle readiness.

I called in yet another sitrep. A different voice came on the line.

"Red 1, this 6." The squadron commander? What was the colonel doing on the radio? "Are you still out there," he asked.
"Roger 6, this is Red 1. We're maintaining our position."
"What the hell are you doing? You were supposed to close that position this morning."
"Uh, 6, Red 1, I have negative knowledge of that. I've been sending sitreps and I requested that we close this position, over."
"Standby," he said.

Some time passed.

"Red 1, 6. Have you detained any potential insurgents?"

I had a farmer trying to get his produce to market. I had a truck full of very thirsty goats. I had numerous mothers and fathers with wailing children, and any number of other mothers, fathers, sisters, and brothers that had been expected home hours ago. I had a one-armed man. I had two motorcycles. I had a guy who claimed to be a sheikh and had offered me several hundred U.S. dollars, in cash, to let him and everyone else go (this made me suspicious, but he was traveling with his wife, and his car was free of suspect material. Nothing to hold him on).

"6, Red 1, negative, no one I'd classify as an insurgent, over." My radio procedure got better when I talked to the SCO (squadron commander).
"Roger, Red 1, wrap it up, and come home. See me when you get back."
"6, Red 1, roger, over."
"6 out."

"Smoke, let's get out of here," I yelled from my humvee down to the detainee area. Smoke and the guards downloaded the pallet of MREs from the truck and broke open the boxes. We opened the string of barbed wire, and the soldiers made sure everyone filed out one by one and got their MREs. We smiled and kind of bowed in apology. The Iraqis were not pleased. If I had any idea what they were saying, I have no doubt I would have learned some very colorful Arabic curse-words that day. I'd have been a veritable George Carlin Ali, I'm sure.

We watched people find their cars in the darkness, and one by one the engines started. The headlights shined through the cloud of dust that skittering tires kicked up as trucks, taxis, vans, and sedans of all makes and condition bounced up onto the road and headed home. I watched the last car leave, a single finger fully extended from the driver's window. 'Well, at least he knows some English,' I thought. And we went back to base.

In talking to the SCO during my debriefing back at base, I learned something. During our radio conversation, he told me to standby, and a pause followed. Apparently, during that pause he practically melted the battle captain's face with a string of profanity, the gist of which was we should never have been left out there. Particularly because the insurgents we were supposed to be looking for had been captured in Haditha before we even set up the checkpoint. Then he got back on the radio and told me to come in.

What we had there was a failure to communicate. Cue the loss of a few more Iraqi hearts and minds. The end.

[FN 1] A good friend of mine, in a moment of gallows humor, suggested modifying Irish Car Bombs (a shot of Bailey's and Jameson dropped into a class of Guinness) into Iraqi Car Bombs. His suggestion: drop a shot of sand and armpit sweat into a glass of warm goat milk. Mm mm mm.

[FN 2] In artillery units, platoon sergeants are called Smoke. That's just the way it is.
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Fox and Friends

Obama's election has apparently rendered the Bush administration the lamest of ducks. "Lame" might even connote too much activity - Bush is more like the duck enjoyed by Ralphie and family in "A Christmas Story." He's been roasted and served on a platter, patiently awaiting carving at the hands of historians, and yet he's still got that goofy, incongruous grin on his face.

Suffice it to say that it seems Bush retired, and I'm 98% sure he won't do anything between now and Inauguration Day. That does leave a wary 2% that fears preemption of CBS' broadcast of "How the Grinch Stole Christmas," at which time Bush, clad in a Santa suit, jeerily announces that he's sent our zoom-bombers to drop their boom-boomers on all the Whos still asnooze in the town of Tehran. That spine-chilling scenario aside, I'm pretty sure that nothing of substance will get done before Obama takes over.

This surprises me. The Bush administration has been nothing if not industrious over the past 8 years. I'm not sure you would score everything the administration accomplished as an "achievement," but starting multiple wars, squandering both international good will and budget surpluses alike, deregulating the economy, rewriting the Constitution, and turning the Vice President into Emperor Palpatine - all of this takes time and effort. Especially because Bush did all that in the fewest proportion of working days of any president ever. He took more vacation days than any other president, including FDR, who served almost twice as long. Understandable though - that brush in Crawford doesn't clear itself.

I mention Bush's industriousness, and the current lack thereof, because of all the underhanded things Bush did, he didn't do the most obvious one. Sure, he redefined torture, then outsourced it when CIA agents expressed moral qualms about torture; he removed the transparency required for democratic government; and he sent soldiers to die for questionable causes. And it is that, the purported justifications for the war in Iraq, that brings me to the point of today's posting: the one devious thing that Bush did not do. He did not order the planting of weapons of mass destruction in Iraq. Why not?



Why draw the line there? W. thought it was ok to willfully misinterpret WMD intelligence, browbeat poor Colin Powell into selling it to the UN, bully Congress into supporting a war based on the misinterpreted intelligence, then send soldiers to die for it, right? So why not seal the deal, and plant some WMDs in Iraq? We have chemical weapons in our own arsenal. Would it have been so hard for a few clandestine operations to scatter a few chemical weapons around Iraqi arms depots? The short answer is no, it would not have been that hard. Here's why:

In the very early days of the Iraq war, the hunt was on. Every U.S. soldier was looking for 4 things: Saddam, Uday, Qusay, and WMDs. And we looked everywhere - every truck, every factory, every weapons depot, every hillside, and every nook and cranny in a country that is nothing but nooks and crannies.

At one point, probably in April or very early May 2003, my unit arrived at a large airfield west of Baghdad. It was an enormous facility - dozens of bomb-proof bunkers and jet hangers, plus luxury facilities like a swimming pool and gym. We were not the first ones there, though. We were the third. The Air Force had swung by and dropped their share of boom-boomers. Shortly thereafter, the super soldiers showed up. You may remember having met some of them in my previous post, "Duck!" These were the guys who rode horses and ATVs around in Afghanistan, wore sporty wrap-around Oakleys, favored moisture-wicking outdoor gear to actual uniforms, and went by "Fox" and "Duke" and, probably, "Snake Eyes." [FN 1] Men wanted to be them, and women wanted to be with them.

By the time we arrived on site, the super soldiers had been there for a few days. We pulled in, circled the vehicles in a defensive posture, and got the humvees ready to begin a sweep for WMDs. My commander, Stumpy [FN 2], had spread his map on the hood of his humvee and called First Sergeant, me, and the other officers over to divvy up the sectors. As we pored over the map, naming the sectors cool things like Red, White, and Blue, another humvee full of super soldiers came through our defensive perimeter (there's another story in there about one of my soldiers almost killing them because they didn't know the challenge and password, but Stumpy let them in essentially because they were white and spoke English. Ah, racial profiling. I digress).

The super soldiers came over to our little coffee clatch, which was gathered around Stumpy's humvee. Their leader strode over. He looked remarkably like a mustached Michael Phelps decked out as a Guns And Ammo centerfold. "Hi, y'all, I'm Fox," he said. "Which one a y'alls in charge?"

"I am," said Stumpy. Fox lowered his Oakleys, looked down - far down - at the 5'4" dumpling that was our fearless leader, laughed, and said, "Really?"

This made me laugh, along with First Sergeant, who I'm sure would have happily killed Stumpy were it not for all the paperwork that would ensue. Instead, he satisfied his bloodlust by taking Stumpy's boots when he slept and super-gluing them to the ceiling, where Stumpy couldn't reach them.

"Yes, really, I'm Captain Stumpy, I'm the commander," Stumpy fairly squeaked. "Ok," said Fox, still smiling bemusedly. I couldn't tell, what with the black Oakleys, but I thought he gave the rest of us a sympathetic look, one that said, "You have to obey this guy?" Anyway, Fox continued, "We thought we'd save y'all some trouble. We've already been through here, searched and cleared everything. No need for you to look for WMDs, place is clean."

"Well, we're going to search again," said Stumpy defiantly. "No, you don't understand," said Fox. "You won't search again. We cleared it, it's our AO [area of operations]. You sit tight here. Bear's orders."

Huffy at having been told what to do by someone obviously much cooler than he was, Stumpy snapped back with, "Yeah, who's Bear? He's not in my chain of command."

A hush fell.

"Son," Fox replied, a steely edge coming into his voice as the folksy "y'alls" fell away, "Bear's the boss here, and I don't give a flaming pile of shit about your chain of command. But, if it makes you feel better, I'm sure Bear will meet with your old man, and you'll be told to sit tight here. Like I said, just trying to save you some trouble. Understood?"

So let it be written, so let it be done. In less than 20 minutes after Fox and crew took off, the radio beeped, and we were informed that all units were to cease movement and remain in their current positions. Which we did.

But here's the point of all this. It would have been the easiest thing in the world for Bear and Fox and the rest of them to have planted chemical and biological weapons at that sight. Fox could have rolled up to us in his humvee and taken us over to see Bear. Bear could have been seated on a big pile of chemical weapons, all stamped with Iraqi markings. He could have told us, "Here it is boys, Saddam's stockpile." We would have called our commander, he'd have called his, and in a matter of hours God and everybody would have descended on the site. In the meantime, Fox and Bear would have disappeared into the desert, and Mission would actually have been Accomplished.

Do I want my government to lie to me? No. But they lie anyway, so they should make it a good lie, one that at least convinces me of the rightness of their decisions. Imagine the difference - if we were told WMDs were found, everything else would have been so much easier to stomach. The insurgency, the mismanagement, the loss of life - all just a small price to pay for keeping those weapons away from America, and we'd all have been happy in our ignorant bliss.

Interesting, isn't it? That Bush is so incompetent that he could be criticized not only for doing so many bad things, but also for not doing enough bad things? Oh well. Incompetence is as incompetence does - the Bush administration isn't even good at being bad. Let's hope they don't try to fix it in the last few months. The end.

[FN 1] I would have been Snake Eyes if I was a super soldier. He was the best G.I. Joe ever. However,if someone else had already taken Snake Eyes, then I would have been Panthro.

[FN 2] Stumpy was a different commander than the Rock With Lips, who you met in "Iraq Story #1." Stumpy was an equal pain in the ass as Rock, however, and you'll hear more about them both, I'm sure.

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Yard Sales

Nowadays, yard sales evoke an image of desperate suburbanites selling off their kids' hand-me-downs in a last-ditch effort to avoid foreclosure. In fact, I recently read an article about California communities that were compelled to enforce little-known ordinances limiting homeowners to 2 yard sales a year. Apparently, there were so many yard sales going on that traffic was backing up and causing other neighborhood disturbances. Have these people not heard of e-bay, the world's biggest purveyor of useless crap?

Actually, that's not fair. There is good stuff on e-bay. Ms. Demosthenes, my beautiful and intelligent girlfriend, recently purchased a Bose iPod docking station from e-bay. Assuming it actually shows up, it was a great purchase, since she got it at almost half the retail price.

The spike in traditional yard sales aside, the term "yard sale" has a different connotation. Allow me to explain.



Before I was the unemployed pseudo-lawyer you all have come to know and love, I lived in Colorado. If one lives in Colorado, one becomes a skiing connoisseur, just as if one lives in New York, one becomes a pizza and bagel connoisseur. You can't help it. By dint of merely living in Colorado, you qualify for something called the Colorado pass, which, for a minimal fee, grants the bearer unlimited access to some of the finest skiing on Earth. I used to ski Vail 10 times a year, never mind Winter Park, Aspen, Copper Mountain, Breckenridge, Keystone, A-Basin, Beaver Creek or Snowmass. 1000's of miles of trails, feet of powdery snow, a ski season that lasts from November til June, and all within a 2 hour drive! People say that money can't buy happiness. That's bullshit, because money buys a Colorado pass, and I defy you not to smile when you wear your Colorado pass.

So, back when I lived in Colorado, I took my friend Barry skiing. Barry was from Kansas. If you haven't been to Kansas, don't bother. I'll illustrate it for you here: __________. There. That's Kansas. Flat. Add several million cows and tractor trailers doing 88 mph, and you pretty much have it. Suffice it to say, there are no mountains in Kansas, meaning Barry wasn't much of a skier. Barry skied like a newborn caribou first trying to stand up. He was wobbly and slow, and you kind of wanted the wolves to put him out of his misery.

I, on the other hand, was a three-year skiing veteran - there wasn't terrain I couldn't handle, a black diamond I couldn't ski, or some fresh powder I couldn't shred. [FN 1] For the morning, I was happy to stay with Barry, but as the day progressed and he didn't, I really itched to let loose, build some speed, and hurl myself helter-skelter down some tough terrain. However, at that moment I was inching down a "green" beginner's hill with Barry. This trail was, at best, flat. If you brought your children to it for some sledding, they'd roll their eyes at you and sit in the car. But in the distance, I saw an adjoining trail: a blue-black leading to a black diamond. Oooo. I slid to a stop and turned to look at Barry turn wide S-turns down the "slope."

He approached slowly and as he came close he put his skis into a perfect V-shaped snowplow to slow down. Then he crossed his skis, fell over, rolled once, and bounced into my legs. "Sorry," he said as he wiped the snow from his goggles. I helped Barry up, got him dusted off, and said, "Hey, I'm going to split off real quick." "Oh, uh, ok," said Barry, clearly thinking he'd probably just die Sonny Bono style on the next turn.

"It's fine," I said. "You just stay on this green trail, and take it slow to the bottom. I'll meet you by the lift, and we'll go grab lunch." "Ok," Barry said again, and I watched him wobbly-knee it down the trail.

Finally free from my anchor, I looked around. It was glorious - snow-capped peaks ringed heavily forested mountains veined with ski trails, which threaded their way into the distance. The sun hung in a clear blue sky. The mountain had 14 inches of fresh powder, and there was almost no one on it. If John Denver weren't dead, he'd have been plucking his guitar at my side. Time to ski!

I squared my shoulders to the slope and began poling to build speed. A few speed-skater-like kicks, and a few more strokes with the poles, and the wind was whistling past me. I aimed at the blue-black trail. As I got closer, I could see there was a slight upward lip leading from the green trail to the blue-black. 'Awesome,' I thought. I could jump off the lip like a ramp and really barrel down the blue-black trail.

I tucked down into a ball to reduce drag and build speed, as much speed as I could. I zoomed straight at the upward lip and got ready to jump when I hit it. The hiss of my skis across the snow blended with the whistle of the wind in my ears. I jumped as high as I could when I hit the lip.

This was a mistake.

As I jumped, I looked down to check my landing. Below me were nothing but moguls - bumpy mounds of snow that a skier must skillfully and quickly thread to avoid falling. At high speed like I had, it took Olympic-caliber athletics to avoid broken bones. I was not an Olymipic athlete.

Nevertheless, despite my lack of elite skiing prowess, in times of stress the human mind is capable of marvelous things. You'll often hear athletes or soldiers or performing artists talk of time stopping or slowing as events unfold before them. This happened to me at the moment I hung suspended over a field of demonic little moguls, each one a land mine threatening broken limbs and brain damage should I tumble over them. 'Ok,' I thought, 'you can do this. Take the impact with your legs, slow down, and you'll be fine.'

I braced for impact, ready to flex my legs and turn through the first mogul. I'd bounce through a mogul or two, then slow down and stop. I'd be fine.

Unfortunately, my mind was nimbler than my body. I hit the first mogul and skipped right off the top of it. There was no cushioning of impact, no turn, no nothing. My skis hit the second mogul, my teeth clacked shut, and my skis crossed. For those who don't know, crossing your skis is bad in the same way that having your car's brakes fail is bad - high speed impacts will ensue.

I felt my skis eject their bindings. I used Volant skis at the time, which are stainless steel and basically a pair of six foot blades. They flew up and hit me as I went face first into mogul number three.

Feet head feet head feet head feet head feet head I went down the mountain. When I came to rest, I was face down in a pile of snow. I was still wearing my goggles, but they were full of snow. I rolled over and reached a mittened hand to my face and pulled the goggles off. My hat was gone. I wiped snow from my goggles, and tried to identify my injuries. Hm, puncture wound in left arm. Skinned knees. Bleeding gash in right shin. Buzzing in ears that wasn't there before. I tried to stand, then threw up.

As I got to my feet and wiped my mouth, I heard this: "Hey man, you all right?" I waved at the snowboarder standing on top of the lip I had just leapt from. "Dude, man, that was awesome!" he exclaimed. "I've never seen anyone yard sale like that before."

Ah, there it was. "Yard sale": when a skier or snow boarder wipes out so completely and thoroughly that all his gear is scattered across the mountain as if laid out for a yard sale. And a yard sale it was. My skis, poles, hat, and backpack were all over the place. Actually, I couldn't initially locate one pole. I eventually found it in the trees alongside the trail. In my hazy shock-to-the-head but glad-to-be-alive state, it took me some time to gather and inventory my possessions.

By the time I made it to the bottom of the hill and found Barry by the ski lift, the puncture wound in my arm and the gash in my leg were really quite painful. I wasn't sure I had a full afternoon of skiing left in me. Plus I thought I should probably do something to prevent infection. "Hey Barry," I asked, "what do you say to getting lunch and then just heading to the bar?" Alcohol was good for infections, right?

Barry looked at me like a murderer that just got sentenced to community service. His eyes lit up, he smiled, and said, "Oh, heck yeah. I'd love to get off the mountain about now." "Perfect," I said. "There's a place on the highway with dollar tacos and two-dollar Coronas. Ok by you?" "Ok by me," Barry said.

And that explains some of the scars I have. Stay tuned to hear the tale of my bloody battle with a dirt bike, some pointy rocks, and cacti. The end.



[FN 1] I was not always such. The first time I tried to ski in fresh powder, I went 4 feet, crossed my skis, ejected from my bindings, and tumbled down the mountain. It took me an hour and fifteen minutes to find my left ski, which was buried under the snow somewhere.

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Hi, Mom? I'm in federal custody.

I just finished a conversation with my housemate, RB. In the parlance of our times, she's totally in the tank for Obama. Yesterday, she spent 12 hours en route to and from Obama's final campaign stop in Manassas, VA. Tonight she has a slate of 3 election parties to attend. Our conversation covered a lot of electiony topics, one of which was whether the Republicans would attempt to rig the outcome by challenging provisional ballots. She was generally opposed to provisional ballots, while I said they helped both sides. For example, I argued, wouldn't the Democrats want to challenge provisional ballots if a judge kept polls open to support a Republican candidate?

Maybe, she conceded. Nevertheless, she didn't trust the Republicans, and wouldn't lower her guard until McCain conceded. Then she went to bed, so as to be peppy during her full evening of Obamamania.

After she left, the question of federal judges and their politics sent my mind to wondering. However, the question of federal judicial politics is boring, so I ended up recalling my own experience working for a federal judge. Which brings me to the story I really want to tell you:

Politics play a very small role in a federal judge's job. Mostly, they handle apolitical cases, or are handcuffed into imposing statutorily required sentences that prevent "liberal" judges from "letting criminals off easy." However, nestled in a judge's humdrum day of initial appearances, warrant-granting, discovery hearings, and pre-trial conferences, there sometimes appears a real gem of a case. For example:



I once worked for Judge B, a federal district court judge. Every day after lunch, we'd go down to the courtroom for an afternoon of work - some civil, some criminal. The criminal cases were almost always drug-related and featured a young man wearing the latest in gangland haute couture or federal-issue orange. Except once.

One afternoon, as the other clerks and I entered the courtroom with the Judge, I looked at the defendant's table. There sat a young white male in his late teens or early 20's. He was decked out in preppie fall classics: wire-rim glasses, green sweater over white button down, jeans, and birkenstocks. Oh, and handcuffs and leg irons.

'Hm,' I thought to myself, 'this is out of the ordinary.' I looked questioningly at my fellow clerk, but he just shrugged. We took our usual seats next to the bench, and the courtroom clerk announced Judge B and opened the proceedings.

"Your Honor, first we have the initial appearance of Topher McWhitey," the courtroom clerk, Mark, announced.

"Very well," Judge B. said. She looked at the U.S. Attorney at the prosecutor's table. "Mr. U.S. Attorney?" she prompted.

The U.S. Attorney stood and cleared his throat. "Your Honor, Topher McWhitey is here on his initial appearance," he began. "Federal agents apprehended him in class at Boston University this morning, and he is being charged with 28 counts of international drug trafficking." My eyes widened, my co-clerk and I looked at each other, and we both sat up in our seats.

"Go on," said Judge B.

'Yes, do go on,' I thought, pen poised above my yellow legal pad.

"Your Honor, Topher McWhitey was arrested this morning after his co-conspirators were arrested while attempting to bring 2000 pounds of marijuana from Canada into Idaho. Upon their arrest, they identified Mr. McWhitey as the central figure in the drug trafficking scheme. I have prepared for the court a list of the 28 charges Mr. McWhitey faces, and have also provided the list to Mr. McWhitey's counsel."

Mark handed the list of charges to Judge B. She pursed her lips as she looked over it. "Mr. U.S. Attorney, what punishment does Mr. McWhitey face?" "Well," said U.S. Attorney, "he faces a mandatory minimum of 25 years, and statutory maximum of 40 years."

Geez! They yanked him out of class?! 25 years minimum?! A freaking ton of marijuana! And his buddies already rolled on him, so no plea bargain! This dude was way, way up Shit's Creek, and nary a paddle was in sight.

"Mr. McWhitey, please stand," said Judge B. He stood, as did his attorney. "I need some information for your packet, Mr. McWhitey. What is your address?"

He gave an address off Commonwealth Avenue. "You go to Boston University," said Judge B. "Is that your permanent address or your school address."

Topher looked green around the gills, althought it might have been his sweater. "That's my school address, ma'am," he said, looking at the table in front of him.

"Please address the court as 'Your Honor', not ma'am," said Judge B. "Sorry," mumbled Topher. "Now," said Judge B., "do you have roommates in Boston?"

"I live in a house with 5 other guys." said Topher. His lawyer nudged him. "Oh, uh, Your Honor," he said.

Hm, a house with 5 other dudes? I could only imagine things in that house that evening:
First Dude: "Hey guys, anyone seen Topher?"
Second Dude, playing XBox: "No, haven't seen him all day."
Third Dude, watching Second Dude play XBox: "You didn't hear? The fuzz dragged him out of Econ this morning. Heard it was the Feds."
First and Second Dudes: "Shit, man, no way."
Third Dude: "I know, right. Think Topher's a terrorist?"
First Dude: "Nah, it's probably drugs."
Uncomfortable pause in conversation while XBox bleeps and blorps.
Second dude drops XBox controller, exeunt rapidly.
Moments later follows the sound of marijuana being flushed down toilets.

"Ok, Mr. McWhitey," said Judge B. "And what is your home address?" Topher gave an address in Idaho. "Is that your parents' house?" asked Judge B. "It is," said Topher. "Have you been in contact with them?" asked Judge B. "I called my Mom this morning, after, well, this whole thing," said Topher. "She wasn't home, though, so I had to leave a message."

Awesome! Beep. "Hi Mom, this is Topher. I just wanted to let you know I got those socks you sent me. They're really great, thanks. Have I said I love you recently? Because it's really important you know how much I love you. And Dad too. And also Uncle Chuck. He's a lawyer, right? Could you call him for me? I kind of got a little bit arrested this morning. It's not like a big deal or anything, but I think you should really call Uncle Chuck. And, if you could, see if he knows anything about international drug trafficking charges. Ok? That'd be really great. Thanks. I love you guys."

"That's ok, Mr. McWhitey," said the Judge. "You'll be able to call home later. Now, you recognize you're facing some very serious charges, don't you?" "Yes, Your Honor" said Topher, looking up at the Judge, and then sighing as he looked up at the ceiling. Maybe he was hoping for a bolt of lightning to strike him dead before his first night in federal lockup. I know I would have been.

Judge B. looked at the sheet of charges. "Mr. McWhitey, I have no idea how you got your hands on so much marijuana. Nor do I have any idea what you planned to do with it once you got it into this country. However, I counsel you to cooperate with the U.S. Government and give them as much information as you can. If you do not cooperate, you could be in prison for the next quarter century, or longer."

By this point, I was riveted and bursting with questions: How'd you get into this, Topher? Paying gambling debts? Adventure? Medical bills? What? And who's your connection? Are you just a dopey kid that grew a bunch of weed in the woods and tried to sneak it over the border? Or does this go higher? Unfortunately, no answers were forthcoming.

Also unfortunate, for Topher anyway, was his list of options. Either he was the mastermind of this operation, which meant he was going to jail for 25-40. Or, he could flip on his boss to get a reduced sentence, but spend the rest of his life in witness protection. Either way, it wasn't likely the outcome he planned with his buddies back in Idaho.

Judge B. wrapped up some formalities, and the U.S. Marshalls collected up Topher. He did the leg-iron shuffle as he followed them out the door and back to the holding cell where he'd wait for a prisoner transport van. From there, if he was lucky, he'd get a con-air flight to Idaho that night. If he was unlucky, Judge B. said, he'd trade his J. Crew threads for a jumpsuit, spend the night in holding, and get a prison bus to Idaho.

Gah, a prison bus to Idaho? I suppose if there's anything worse than a regular bus to Idaho, it would have to be a prison bus to Idaho, but still. Poor Topher was F-U-K fucked.

And that's why I voted to decriminalize possession of 1 oz. or less of marijuana in Massachusetts. The end.

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