GeekPol's evil twin

O happy day! Ocian in view!

No wait, that was Lewis & Clark...

O happy day! The Media Horse is back!

Here we go again: Time for another data collection trip at APS up near Chicago. No visits by the Shrubbery this time.

The latest Gene Lyons column is a must-read, as usual. He blasts Joe Lieberman (D-in name only) for taking a whack at Al Gore because Gore dared to try to distinguish himself from Shrub. Alas, Lieberman whipped Gore into shape and gave the Naderites a reason to complain. Other things include a review of an Economist article (sorry, no link) that says that Gore's populism at the convention was prophecy. To quote Lyons, "During the campaign, Gore warned that Bush was being bankrolled by 'a new generation of special-interest power-brokers who would like nothing better than a pliant president who would bend public policy to suit their purposes and profits.' Boys and girls, can you spell Enron?" And the next graf, "Gore also cautioned that 'when powerful interests try to take advantage of the American people, it's often other businesses that are hurt in the process....small- and medium-sized companies that are playing by the rules and earning profits the old-fashioned way.'" Hmmm... that doesn't sound like 'anti-business' rhetoric that Lieberman complained about.

While we're on the subject of prophecy, I was somewhere with a February 4 issue of Time lying around. The Enron-Shrubbery connection was the cover story, and there was a story inside about other Enrons. First there was Tyco defending their accounting that turned out to be a fraud, then they mentioned other companies that may have had problems. Qwest (fraud), Xerox (now being investigated), K-Mart (bankrupt), Big Blue (not much from them lately) were among those listed. A bit prescient, eh?

Todd Weiner came up with an odd thought - that the last time there was a baseball strike, the Angry White Men routed the Democratic Party from Congress. And this year, there may be another baseball strike. Only this time it would lead to the GOP being routed from Congress.

I don't know if I agree with him. Angry White Men had a lot to complain about back then, and with corporate big'uns defunding their pensions, the GOP is in trouble, strike or not.

Aside from that possibility, let's expound on the great thinkers of the players union. They're against revenue sharing. Last graf: "Players don't want to drain too much money from the high-revenue teams, who would otherwise spend it on players." Well, where's that money going to go? Lower-revenue clubs. And what will they do with it? Spend it on players. At least they will if the new rules forbid the likes of Carl Pohlad or Jeffrey Loria from pocketing the revenue sharing proceeds.

Last night's Nightline was on the unusually high incidence of breast cancer in Marin County, CA - 30% higher that the rest of the Bay Area and 40% higher than the rest of the U.S. They're doing what they can to figure out how to deal with this. Being Marin County, they can do more than most. Good for them, and it might help out the rest of the country, too.

But a not-so-nice thought struck me while hearing this resport from the kitchen. Ann Coulter must be waxing ecstatic over the prospect of Marin County liberals ill with cancer. Probably gave Limbaa some thoughts along those same lines as well.

Another example of meadi whoredom that I probably would have known about earlier if the Media Horse weren't on vacation.

Apparently, the major dailies (save for USA Today) buried a story that 25 mostly Northeastern GOP congressmen voted to authorize an independent 9-11 investigation. The Senate still has to act.

Now come on, press 'hos. Regardless of what you think about the merits of an independent investigation, a vote like that should be front page news. Why hide it?

Via Smokin' Joe Conason

From The Rittenhouse Review and Cooped Up...

There are stupid writers in the world, but this week's Coulter Award for witless hackery goes to Ron Borges, a crappy sportswriter for the Boston Globe, for his comments about 4-time Tour de France champion Lance Armstrong. Witness:

Athletes, for my money, must do more with their bodies than pump their legs up and down. If that’s all it took, the Radio City Rockettes would have to be considered the greatest athletes of all time.

Well, let's just use his criteria. We don't have to go far to find another sport where the participant is not much of an athlete by Borges' standards. That would be track and field, especially the running events. Gee, they only have to pump their legs up and down and move their arms. Not much athletic ability needed there by those standards.

Do I even need to go on? Does it have to be mentioned that the older name for "track and field" is "athletics"? And is he saying that those in athletics aren't athletes.

We could also go to Borges' main beat of boxing. Well, there were two heavyweight fights this past weekend which don't match his criteria for athletic events. On the undercard was Butterbean Esch against Larry Holmes. That one's barely suitable for Fox's Celebrity Boxing. At the top was a John Ruiz title defense against someone who got DQ'd because he kept taking shots at Ruiz's, um, package. Hey, if it were a real athletic event, Ruiz would've just fought through it, eh? Some toughness. I guess since Borges' own beat stunk so bad this weekend, he had to go pout about something else.

Cooped Up has a complete analysis of his comments. Permalinks broken, yadayadayada.

Why has it become axiomatic in political circles that regulation must necessarily be antibusiness?

That's the premise that Joe Lieberman (D-corporate crook coddler) starts off with. He really screeches when the Democratic Party embraces a more populist platform, which he calls "antibusiness".

What Lieberman and most shortsighted market funnermentalists don't quite get is that regulation is actually quite a bit preferable to the alternative in force in most other countries. Here's how it works: regulation is there to prevent market manipulation by power-hungry bidnessmen - the true impediment to a free market. Where the markets aren't so well-regulated, manipulation is rampant on all sides, and you need to bribe officials just to get in the marketplace.

Now where would you be more comfortable? And what is really a cheaper and better way of doing business?