Charlie Brown for Congress?

I don't know, this guy's head doesn't look round enough. But he's a Dem, and is running against eight-term Republican incumbent John Doolittle, so good luck to him. Hope he wears the yellow and black shirt (he's gotta own one, right?) to his victory party.

Africa Bound!

It's a done deal - we recently sent in our deposit and purchased our plane tickets for our two-week Tanzanian safari in early '07. We're certainly excited about it, now once I get the P.E. exam out of the way, I can concentrate on outfitting for this trip. We've already got most of the clothing and other gear covered, but we're probably going to need some additional photographic equipment; extra lenses for digital cameras - for what that's worth, they're nice cameras, but not super-nice digital SLRs - and some kind of way to store digital photos so we don't have to buy dozens of memory cards and sticks. And then, of course, there's the camoflouge.

That's right, every trip can be spiced up with a little bit of ugly-Americanism. I'm planning on passing myself off as an up-and-coming soldier-of-fortune, in Africa for the first time scouting the terrain and getting to know local customs and wildlife. Then, the last half of the trip will be the training portion, where I practice my fighting skills by sneaking up on wildlife and punching and/or kicking them, and then running away.

Why no weapons, you ask? First, I don't have any. Second, try bringing them on a plane these days. But most important, what kind of soldier-of-fortune would I be if I couldn't fight a lion with my bare hands? How would I expect the UN peacekeepers to hire me on for their secret UN asskicking unit that's going to finally restore order in the Sudan? Tanzania and its carnivores will serve as my proving ground for that conflict. Wish me luck!

I Couldn't Resist

I know, no political posts for the rest of the month is what I promised, so I'll just link to this item w/o comment, and let it speak for itself. Keith Olbermann's ratings on MSNBC are up 69% since August 30, perhaps because of segments like this.

Throwback Baseball

What I dig so far about this season's playoffs - all the old dudes getting the job done:

• Tommy Lasorda's ad spots for ESPN. Corny, yes. But also sincere and funny. Who doesn't like Tommy?
• Ernie Harwell hanging out with Jon Miller and Joe Morgan in the TV booth tonight during the middle innings of the Detroit-NY game. 88 years old, and still sounds terrific - smart, quick-witted, and solid play-by-play during the fourth. Ernie was the original radio voice of the Orioles when they came back to Baltimore in 1954.
  
• The Tigers being up two games to one against the Yankees , after tonight's 6-0 victory. Kenny Rogers pitched an awesome game for Detroit, facing a NY lineup that came into the game hitting .391 against him - he obviously didn't care much for those numbers, since he shut them out for seven and two-thirds innings. Kenny Rogers?!? Didn't see that performance coming, at least not in the postseason.

What I'm not so crazy about: 3 one-sided series (thus far), with one of those already over. Kinda boring.

Hey, if the NYY end up losing this series, what are the odds that A-Rod gets traded this winter?

You Have the Right to Remain Silent

By now you've probably read about this incident in Denver between a citizen daring to speak his mind, Cheney, and the Secret Service. Freedom of Speech, meet Cone of Silence.

OK, gotta take a break from the political/legal/human-rights posts for a while; even thinking about this shit pisses me off. I'm going to try to keep it a little lighter through the rest of this month. Call it my own version of Oktoberfest - oooh, this is so bad it's good...wait for it...Blogtoberfest! Wow, that looks worse on the screen than it did in my head. Oh well.

Remember This Vote in 2008

Here are the votes on the Military Commissions Bill, which gives the executive the power to cancel a citizen's Bill of Rights protections by fiat, never mind the thumbs-up to torture. When 2008 rolls around, I hope that all potential presidential candidates who voted for this Bill are held accountable - Hagel, Frist, and especially McCain, who one would think would know better. Bush commanded them to wipe their collective asses with the Constitution, and they happily obliged, after a token show of resistance. Way to go, guys!

Battery Powered

I'm not sure what possessed me to tune in to the Baltimore-NY game last night. Masochism? After all, they had lost the night before by the humbling final of 16-5. Loyalty to the team? Maybe, but I haven't watched even parts of 20 games since the All-Star break, and have only been to 3 games this year. How many times have I mentioned them in this space all season? I think this may be the first.

But something made me flip the channel at 9:00, in time to catch Daniel Cabrera overcome a sixth inning error, his no-hitter still intact and nine outs away from reality. Did it happen? Nope. He was unperturbed by two errors and two passed balls in the seventh that gave NY a run, but with two outs to go in the ninth, an opposite-field single by Cano broke it up. What a game to watch though. Ramon "Javy Lopez, isn't he retired?" Hernandez had two homers and drove in four of the seven O's runs (hence this post's title), but it was really all about Cabrera, a pitcher who can be so dominating at times that it makes his inconsistency that much more maddening. A microcosm of the Orioles, a team with plenty of talent and potential, yet to be harnessed en masse.

'Balkinization' Blog

Dan Froomkin linked to this blog during his online chat yesterday; it's called Balkinization, and although I'm not sure who some of these guys are or how they all got together, there's lots of smart, in-depth analysis from a truly wide variety of perspectives. It does have a legal tilt though, since the blog's eponymous founder, Jack Balkin, is the Knight Professor of Constitutional Law and the First Amendment at Yale Law School.

Governor Who?

While Charm City Blogger's political reporters usually go after the hard-hitting stories, we are not above having some fun at a candidate's expense, especially if the candidate is a Republican named Chandler Woodcock (his friends call him...Chan).

Danger! High Voltage

While his Shrubberiness is seemingly having his way with Congress when it comes to spying on citizens, he's still having some trouble getting the Senate to come around to his new definition of torture. Here's where it stands now: the Geneva Conventions define torture as "outrages upon personal dignity, in particular, humiliating and degrading treatment", while Schrobbe wants that changed, for the sake of clarity, to treatment that "shocks the conscience".

Let's examine this for a minute. Aside from the clarity issue, which speaks for itself, there are several surprising revelations in this latest language. The first and most obvious: the torture experts at the CIA have not only located the consience, but have figured out how to hook electrodes to it and have incorporated it into their torture techniques! This is big news, although I doubt we'll be getting the details anytime soon. The CIA probably wants to keep these new methods to themselves for a while, before exporting them to Uzbekistan and Saudi Arabia. Perhaps in the not-so-distant future, the location of the conscience will be leaked to reporters, along with details on required voltage, and possible variances in conscience size between people of different faiths (my uneducated guess - Hindus have the largest consciences, with Catholics a close second).

Perhaps the more shocking revelation, though, is that the Torturer-in-Chief himself would prohibit these amazing new techniques! Imagine the frustration of the CIA torturers - their boss wants to take away the new toy almost as soon as it comes out of the box.

I'm no political expert, but I think that the Democrats have just had their mid-term election slogan handed to them: Republicans: Soft on the Conscience, Soft on Terror.

Political Losers

Every single candidate that I voted for in the major (competitive) races in yesterday's Democratic primary has lost or is losing! Not a terrible thing in any of the races, but still the results are a bit discouraging in 2 of the 3 races, where the status quo won out.

U.S. Senate: I voted for Mfume, but it looks like Cardin is going to win by 7 or 8 points. I'm not bothered by this at all because I think Cardin will be a fine Senator, however I did like Mfume as a guy who would stir things up a bit; Cardin seemed like more of the same, and I thought Mfume's criticism of Cardin's acceptance of almost $1 million in lobbyist money was quite valid.

Comptroller: Usually not a big race, but any election that could potentially remove crazy (senile?) incumbent Schaefer was an important one. I voted for Janet Owens, since she was polling well ahead of Peter Franchot, the guy I really wanted to vote for, but felt that it was more important for Schaefer to lose. Well, it's close but it looks like Franchot will win after all, so this is actually an ideal result.

MD-3: Long-time Baltimore Helath Commissioner Peter Beilenson was my guy, but unsurprisingly he came in second by 6 points to John, Son of Sarbanes. Sarbanes will likely be perfectly competent in the House, but there are far too many 'hereditary' seats in Congress as it is.

Weekend Fun, Pigtown Style!

On Saturday we had a rather full day; first we headed down to the Inner Harbor - ugh, so many tourists, and NYY fans no less, since the Yanks were in town - to check out the Dragon Boat Races. Kinda disappointing, actual. Basically big canoes being paddled across the harbor.

The afternoon was redeemed though, when we walked over to the Pigtown neighborhood just west of Camden Yards, to take in the annual Pigtown Festival! We arrived just before the Running of the Pigs, which I managed to capture on lo-res video (I had the regular camera with me, not the video camera). But unbelievably, the fun didn't stop there! We also caught the Pigtown Pooch Pageant, possbily the lamest - but still fun! - dog show ever; apparently dressing your dog up in a dress or other costume is the way to go. Finally, I'd be remiss if I didn't mention the huge-ass piece of pineapple upside-down cake that we managed to snag for the Baltimore-bargain-basement price of $2.50!!! Look at the size of that brick of cake. We even came close to finishing it!

(Note: I had some additional photos that didn't upload to Flickr due to some problems the site was having yesterday, including a close-up of the cake...)

Bad Fundraiser Idea

I'm not quite sure what's worse, that it's a dove shoot, or that it's on 9/11. Ugh.

Big Brother is a Moron

Here's a real shocker: the RFID chips in California state legislature IDs are apparently not so secure.

This is quite a comfort, considering that the U.S. government recently started issuing e-passports with RFID technology on-board. So if you're in the market for a new passport or passport renewal, you might want to invest in some protection.

(PS - if I mysteriously disappear after this post, it's probably because BB - aka Dick Cheney - was probably not pleased about the title; see you in Room 101...)

Annapolis Ten-Miler, Year Three

I was actually about a minute slower last year than the year before (1:29:41), I think that's because my pace on the first two to three miles, before the course gets tough, was simply too slow. It was also as warm as humid as ever during race time (mid-eighties, temperature and humidity), and for some reason it really got to me mid-way through the race. All in all though, pretty happy with the time, considering I've been running less this summer with how hot it's been. I just need to continue to work on my pacing.

And here's where I have a complaint of this year's race that hasn't been a problem in previous years (this is an extremely well-organized event, for the most part): it would certainly help runners to monitor and adjust their pace if the mile markers were clearly visible throughout the course. I still don't know where mile one was, none of the mile markers were more than a few feet off the ground (several were at ground level), some were in the middle of water stations, not a good spot for them, IMO, and one was in the wrong spot by a healthy margin - I know that I didn't run mile 5 in 10:30 and mile 6 in 7:30.

They Cause Scenes

Improv Everywhere. Cool idea.

Today's Amazing & Amusing Links

An Irish company is wondering if it has a perpetual motion machine on it hands. And it's not beer/whiskey powered - suspicious.

This guy is enjoying the Washington, D.C. Mall way more than most tourists.

And finally, a World Cup-related link; the super-authentic Cristiano Ronaldo action figure!

Western Excursion

This past weekend, Jenny and I were in Florissant, Colorado for a family reunion of her mom's side of the family. Not what I would call a relaxing trip - our bed in the lodge that we stayed as was less than comfortable, plus we were hanging out with seven kids, all under the age of twelve, and most under the age of six, so that can certainly wear one down after a while - but a good time nonetheless, with gorgeous weather most of the time too. I'll have to post or link to the photos from our Sunday hike at a later date (still need to download and sort through the pics).

Amongst the plethora of entertainment options at this place - pool table, ping pong, foosball, air hockey, swimming pool - was something I had never seen before. An outdoor horseshoes-like game, we didn't even know what it was called, but Jenny's cousin Rob had played it before so at least we knew how to play. Turns out it goes by several different names (at least according to this morning's web search) - Monkey Bar Golf, Ladder Golf, and Bolo Ball are three names that I found. Bolo Ball seems to make the most sense, because this game's sole relation to golf is that golf balls are used to construct the bolos; you could easily use another type of ball.

The Candidate

(WARNING!!! Long-winded politics post below, proceed at your own peril)

In light of Dick's latest fear mongering, it got me thinking about the ideal 2006/2008 candidate - for any office - and what I really wish somebody would say (out loud!) in response to the current political climate. In a perfect world, that candidate would be a progressive Democrat, but I won't be picky; if he or she actually existed, then I could care less about party affliation. Somehow I always picture a John Edwards type, but maybe that's because he's so good in front of a crowd - Bill Clinton, but without all the baggage. Maybe it's Russ Feingold instead, maybe it's Chuck Hagel. Anyway, here's what that person's national security portion of a stump speech would sound like (bear with me, I'm not a speechwriter):

Many of you may have heard Dick Cheney's comments the other day, equating Ned Lamont's primary victory over Joe Lieberman in Connecticut last week with a victory for terrorists. I think that's it's a sad day in this country when the vice president suggests that a fair exercise in democracy is somehow aiding al Queda. Isn't this the same administration that claims that terrorists attacked this nation because they hate our freedom? The White House is going to have to make up its mind on this one, because it seems to me that they're trying to have it both ways.

This election can help put an end to this Bush administration tactic - using Fear as an instrument to scare the public into supporting a failed war, and a failed foreign policy in general. Using that Fear to bludgeon its critics, to brand them as unpatriotic. Citizens of this country don't trust their government simply because their government isn't honest with them! I hate to break it to them, but we're spending billions fighting a war that produces more terrorists, and billions more to prevent toothpaste from being brought onto an airplane. Why are we allowing this administration to force us to live in fear? Nobody's talking about this, not them, and not anyone in my party either, but all the Homeland Security funding in the world isn't going to stop another terrorist attack. All the billions spent on a pre-emptive war aren't going to guarantee a democratic Middle East.

They will no doubt use this speech to brand me as soft on security, or as giving "aid and comfort" to the enemy. But I'm just embracing a reality that they're not willing to accept - we won't ever be completely safe from determined terrorists, so let's take reasonable steps to protect our country, while still ensuring that people's rights are preserved! Reasonable steps like removing ourselves from the mess in Iraq, where every incident of torture, prisoner abuse, and stray bombs that blow up Iraqi civilians, just serves to create more terrorists. Steps like using our diplomatic muscle to bring together Israel and its neighbors for contructive negoitations, not the blind support for Israel practiced by this administration that often does more harm than good.

And what can we do with all that money that's currently going to military-industrial spending? Well, last time I checked, killers such as heart disease, cancer, even drunk drivers, have a much better success rate than terrorists. We could use some of that money to increase research into renewable energy, and the search for a technology-based solution to global warming. All real concerns and real threats, all just as worthy of our efforts, our considerable talents, and our tax money, as terrorism. That old line about "life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness"? I sure don't recall any mention about pursuing that happiness under a cloud of irrational fear. This world can be a frightening place, but we can't afford to let a relatively small source of danger paralyze our lives and undermine the spirit of this country, not when there's so much else to be done.

One Beard to Rule Them All

Some clever YouTube contributor figured out why those Lord of the Rings movies were so commercially and critically successfuly.