Island Passage

Well, not ultimately. But presidential candidates that start with large warchests of cash have a expotential advantage over their poorer bretheren. One reason that George Bush was the Republican candidate in 2000 was because he had a direct pipeline to mainstream Republican donors. He could use that early cash to raise name awareness (though it hardly seemed necessary in his case) and prime the pump for the serious fundraising needed for the long slog to the convention. With the culture so media-connected, candidates have to hit big early. (Kids today don't remember that Robert Kennedy didn't enter into the 1968 Democratic primary until mid-March, after sitting president LBJ had made a poor showing in the New Hampshire primaries.) Every twitch from the buildup leading to the Iowa caucases to Super Tuesday is relentlessly examined, spun, and respun. Candidates that can't fund media buys in the early markets are left as footnotes in civics textbooks. New York Republicans hav...

So I look at my blog output so far and wonder, "Why aren't I like James Lileks?" Why the bitter edge to my posts? Why so few idyls about family and home life? Hey, my kids started moving out last century and finally achieved escape velocity a couple of years ago. With the kids gone, my home life has reverted to two people doing things that they don't talk about to other people. And yet. I am going to strive mightily in 2006 to try to post a little more about where I live--the change of seasons, the way the island wakes up after winter and becomes busy with summer people, the blue skies and salt air. Just as soon as this grey, rainy weather lets up.

Via The Corner : BLACKWELL LEADS PETRO [Jonathan H. Adler] An independent poll commissioned by the Ohio Republican party shows Ken Blackwell with a substantial lead over Jim Petro for the party's gubernatorial nomination. Yet the same poll shows Petro faring better in the general election. Word is that the state party is hoping to avoid a contentious primary and wants one of the candidates to drop out, yet the poll seems not to be having this effect. More on Right Angle Blog here . The Republican party has often succumed to the John Kerry disease. That is, fronting a candidate whom they think is "electable" over one of principle. This has been the case in the Specter vs. Toomey race in 2004 and might play out again in Chaffee vs. Laffey. Of course, all these remarks must be put in the context of a conservative, more than a Republican viewpoint. But the situation becomes like that old joke about the rat race: even it you win it, you're still a rat. The Kos Kidz are...

So there is another movie to add to my list of must-see's. Flight 93 tells the story of, well, United flight 93. The 9/11 flight that crashed into rural southwest Pennsylvania. The passengers abord that flight that September morning decided that they were not a flock, but instead were a pack and fought the hijackers. By their actions the saved uncounted lives in the nation's capitol. They spent what they could not keep to gain what could easily be lost. Paul Greengrass (Bloody Sunday, The Bourne Supremacy) wrote and directed this film. hat tip: John J. Miller

It seems as though fond rememberances for a childhood that never was are as prevelant in Australia as they are in the United States . Tim Blair points out the inconsistancies in leftist nostalgia for a never-never past: Christopher Bantick gets all nostalgic in The Age : Children these days are growing up in a very different, less open, society than when I grew up in the 1950s. Curiously, even with high postwar levels of Mediterranean migration, there was less need to ostentatiously show what being an Australian meant. Those simple days were measured out with Vegemite on crusts at the school tuckshop and singing the national anthem on Monday mornings. Not even John Howard wants to return to that sort of monoculture. Bantick’s nostalgia is perverse. Back then, there were no wire fences in the desert keeping new arrivals from the rest of Australian society. “New arrivals”? He’s talking about illegal arrivals, who tend to turn up without passports or any other supporting ...

In this post on capital punishment and the court system I wrote, "Mostly the courts are right." In this NY Times piece , Joshua Marquis reports on the metrics of how large is the margin on "mostly." To start, only 14 Americans who were once on death row have been exonerated by DNA evidence alone. The hordes of Americans wrongfully convicted exist primarily on Planet Hollywood. In the Winter 2005 Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology, a group led by Samuel Gross, a law professor at the University of Michigan, published an exhaustive study of exonerations around the country from 1989 to 2003 in cases ranging from robbery to capital murder. They were able to document only 340 inmates who were eventually freed. (They counted cases where defendants were retried after an initial conviction and subsequently found not guilty as "exonerations.") Yet, despite the relatively small number his research came up with, Mr. Gross says he is certain that far more innocen...

Taleena over at Sun Comprehending Glass has been posting reviews of movies that she has recently seen in the theater or by Netflix; so I thought I'd post about some upcoming movies that I am looking forward to or dreading. Nanny McPhee . This Movie looks to be the corrective to the unaccountable sweetness of Disney's Mary Poppins . With Colin Firth and Emma Thompson leading the cast, It seems as though it can't miss. Emma Thompson play the title character under pounds of makeup, including warts and a snaggle tooth. Miami Vice . Yeah, I know. Another remake of an old television show. But, doggone it, Michael Mann is the kind of a certain kind of artistic look, and the trailer shows this look in spades. It's shown in the composition of the shots, the odd muting of the sound track at critical moments, letting the music track and images develop a completely new momentum. If you have seen Manhunter , Crime Story , or Last of the Mohicans , you know what I mean. What I wond...

City Journal has a wonderful article on Ken Blackwell, a black Regeanite running for the governorship of Ohio. He seems to be the candidate that frightens both the Democrats and the tax-and-spend Republicans in his own party: Right now, Ken Blackwell stands at a pivotal point in American politics. He'’s taken an early lead in the race for governor of a state that was key to reelecting George W. Bush and that may well be even more crucial in picking the next American president. Moreover, Blackwell has built his early lead not by tacking toward the center of this swing state but by running on an uncompromisingly conservative platform that's won him grassroots support from both Christian groups and taxpayer organizations--a novel coalition that makes the old-boy network in his own Ohio GOP as uneasy as it makes the state'’s Democrats, who have begun a "“stop Blackwell"” campaign. Ken Blackwell has so many people worried because he represents a new political calculus...

There has been a meme going around for a few years that has annoyed me more and more as time goes by. I call it: "The America I Knew." Ed Asner is the worst offender: I feel that George Bush's actions are desecrating the America that I grew up in and believed in. He is making us an imperialist government. He is choosing to replace heads of state and government he doesn't like.” Anne Levinson chimed in this last holiday season: If it is not too much to ask, this holiday season I'd like my country back. It's really what I want most. I think about it every day, without fail. I understand it would be easier to get me an iPod, but that joy would be short-lived compared with helping me be proud of my country again... The America I grew up loving used to stand as a symbol of hope, of equality, of liberty and justice, not only for the rest of the world, but for its own citizens. I love this country, but the America I live in today makes me long for unwavering and pri...

Maybe it's my advancing age, but the older I get the less I oppose capital punishment. My initial feelings on capital punishment spring from my native distrust of any government agency. I hesitate to entrust anyone to the mercies of a bureaucracy. Right now the country is going through one of its periodic reassesments of capital punishment. Tookie Williams had thousands of supporters claiming that he was innocent. ABC has just launched a critically-panned show InJustice , in which every week a new criminal is shown to have been railroaded by corrupt and incompetent police and prosecutors. And yet. Mostly the courts are right ; and sometimes locking someone up for life isn't enough. The case of Clarence Ray Allen provides a strong argument that the extreme sentence of justice is not just and "eye for and eye." From Wikipedia : In the 1970's Allen ran a security guard business in Central California. He knew both sides of the security business because he ran a burgl...

Last Saturday I attended a suwari waza clinic. Suwari waza are techniques executed with both nage and uke in a sitting position. In this clinic the sensei included attacks from a standing position. I was glad to spend two hours in study on a technique that will play an increasing role in my future tests, but... TWO HOURS moving and twisting on your knees! I have two knees without skin! I also discovered that seated moves, while similar to standing moves, require a new set of muscles to balance and walk. Shikko , the "samurai walk" looks much easier than it is to do. I have a brand new set of aches!

Taleena, over at Sun Comprehending Glass posts her take on the News John Stewart is emcee-ing the 2006 Motion Picture Academy Awards Ceremony: I hope Stewart revitalizes the Oscars. I hope that he is funny and takes great pot shots at such a self congradulatory industry. I will tune into his opening monologue, a good bet to be the most entertaining portion of the evening. I just will not hold my breath that it will remain funny. No reflection on Stewart, Hollywood continues to marginalize itself because it usually ignores or belittles those of us who place importance on religion and other traditional societal building blocks. My take on it? Glad you asked. Scott Ott has already addressed this one: Stewart to Host Oscars, Rumsfeld to Give GOP Response (2006-01-05) — Just hours after the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences named Comedy Channel news anchor Jon Stewart to host this year’s Academy Awards show , the White House announced that Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld h...