Coachspeak

"Does anyone else wonder how Bill Parcells spent the holidays? Wandering around his home alone in his underwear with a bottle of scotch in one hand and a chocolate cake in the other? Lighting the chimney whenever he thought Santa might be coming down? Calling Drew Bledsoe just to curse on his answering machine?"

--Dan Le Batard

Worst Prosecutor of 2007

Vote at Radley Balko's blog, The Agitator

Safe Bet

More Americans between Christmas and New Year's Day get killed by drunk drivers than Iraqis.

Tonight's a going-through-the-motions "holiday"; me and my gal, we're staying put with the Woodford Reserve and THE WIRE.

Happy Amateur Night, wherever you'll be.

"New"?!

From the AP:

"'In some respects, the positive developments in the latter half of 2007 also represent the challenges of 2008,' U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker said during a recent briefing.

An example, Crocker said, is how the improving security situation is in part luring back Iraqis who took refugee [sp.] in neighboring Syria, Jordan and elsewhere.

'The return of refugees — a good thing obviously, but a process is going to have to be carefully managed so that it doesn't sow the seeds of new tension and instability,' he said."

Dave Barry's Year in Review

From miamiherald.com:

"It was a year that strode boldly into the stall of human events and took a wide stance astride the porcelain bowl of history.

"It was a year in which roughly 17,000 leading presidential contenders, plus of course Dennis Kucinich, held roughly 63,000 debates, during which they spewed out roughly 153 trillion words; and yet the only truly memorable phrase emitted in any political context was 'Don't tase me, bro!'''

Top 10

Here are 2007's top 10 stories, as voted by Associated Press member editors and news directors, along with my comments (No-Prize for the first reader who spots the story at which I got bored stupid):

1. VIRGINIA TECH KILLINGS: What would have prevented the nation's worst mass murder? I'd guess, unsatisfyingly, whether at Virginia Tech or in almost any other workplace in the country, it's "nothing" (well, almost nothing).


2. MORTGAGE CRISIS: Amity Schlaes said it best: "The price of a standard fixed-rate mortgage is too high for many families, even at today's historically low rates. The appeal of the adjustable-rate loan, never mind that of the subprime no-doc mortgage, lay precisely in that it allowed borrowers to fool themselves about the true price of the debt they were assuming." So: Hoopleheads take money they can't pay back to the banks, who give that money to get the federal okee-doke for mergers. The rest of us? Paying for so-called entitlements and regulatory abuse with higher rates on our next mortgages, and lower market values for our homes.


3. IRAQ WAR: It ain't over when it's over. Yeah, yeah; I'll see your "bang bang, shoot shoot," and raise you an "Ob-La-Di, Ob-La-Da."


4. OIL PRICES: Standards for energy efficiency, meet market inefficiency.
   
5. CHINESE EXPORTS: The AP slips on its judge's robe and adds that, "Despite the high-profile problems [toys with lead paint, tainted toothpaste and food], America's trade deficit with China was running at record-high levels." SOMEBODY: DO SOMETHING!


6. GLOBAL WARMING: And the No-Prize goes to . . .


7. BRIDGE COLLAPSE: Missed this one the first go-around. Let's see: Aug. 1, Aug. 1. Oh, yeah!


8. PRESIDENTIAL CAMPAIGN: sigh


9. IMMIGRATION DEBATE: Unknown Blogger beats Reason's Kerry Howley to the punch in winner-leaves-town match. UBlo: You're missed.


10. IRAN'S NUCLEAR PROGRAM: Years later and the story essentially remains the same. Here's Ron Paul: "If they have been paying attention, and I think they have, they would see that if countries do have a nuclear weapon, they tend to be left alone, or possibly get a subsidy, but if they do not gain such a weapon then we threaten them. Why wouldn't they want to pursue a nuclear weapon if that is our current foreign policy?"

Shot in the ARM?

From Amity Shlaes, "Bush's Subprime Plan Spells a Raw Deal for 2008" at Bloomberg.com:

"The first step would be to rid the financial system of the existing toxic subprime mortgages, for which there are no reliable market prices, and scaring banks from lending to other banks holding such mortgages. My Council on Foreign Relations colleague Benn Steil has suggested a short-term government program that would offer to buy up such mortgages on a deeply discounted and publicly disclosed price schedule.

"Something like that happened during the savings-and-loan crisis of the early 1990s. President George H.W. Bush and Congress created the Resolution Trust Corp. to sort out the credit mess. Hundreds of thrifts failed. Hundreds of billions in assets were marked down. But at least they had prices. And the process was fast."

A Christma$ Story

From Lew Rockwell, "The Economic Lessons of Bethlehem" at LewRockwell.com:

"His inn was full, but he offered them what he had: the stable. There is no mention that the innkeeper charged the couple even one copper coin, though given his rights as a property owner, he certainly could have.

It’s remarkable, then, to think that when the Word was made flesh with the birth of Jesus, it was through the intercessory work of a private businessman. Without his assistance, the story would have been very different indeed. People complain about the 'commercialization' of Christmas, but clearly commerce was there from the beginning, playing an essential and laudable role.

And yet we don’t even know the innkeeper’s name. In two thousand years of celebrating Christmas, tributes today to the owner of the inn are absent. Such is the fate of the merchant throughout all history: doing well, doing good, and forgotten for his service to humanity."

Vote Note

"I doubt that libertarianism will be advanced by any campaign for national office. I suspect that the best way to advance libertarianism is not to compete for government office but to compete against government."

--Arnold Kling, "Ron Paul: My Two Cents" at EconLog

Now, I Know What You're Thinking . . .

From Blogthings:

Your Superpower Should Be Mind Reading

You are brilliant, insightful, and intuitive. You understand people better than they would like to be understood. Highly sensitive, you are good at putting together seemingly irrelevant details. You figure out what's going on before anyone knows that anything is going on! Why you would be a good superhero: You don't care what people think, and you'd do whatever needed to be done. Your biggest problem as a superhero: feeling even more isolated than you do now.

Wet Picture

. . . in the sunny street
the shadows of passers-by were kissing
and people walked away total strangers.

--Jaroslav Seifert (translated by Ewald Osers)

Sharp Tongue

"All relationships are open. Don't believe there's any difference between a monogamous and a polygamous relationship. Those are all just big words, like 'gymnasium.' Human beings will do whatever the hell they want to do. [But] they lie about it, because they think they have to answer to somebody."

--Gene Simmons, KISS

Trigger Happy

Malone the Mathemagician is asking for a solution to our problems with Iraq blowback.

For the war or agin' it, "solution" is too straight-ahead a word for what's to come, whether it's in combat; on foot across our all-but-open borders; 30,000 feet in the air beside guys out of Newark successfully screened for moisturizers instead of pistols; or in one of the billions of shipping crates that inconspicuously arrive annually on our busy shores.

Here then, is a "suggestion,” and from my lips to lawmakers' ears: Live free and lock and load—anytime, anywhere, and legally.

Assume the risk our soldiers do. Second Amendment absolutists had it right after Virginia Tech: Someone armed would have had a shot at saving lives. That's not a solution to mass murder, terrorist or otherwise—and nothing in a free country can be—but that is a chance, then and now, at your life. Who better to take it?

Safety is a bet, never a sure thing no matter what you're willing to pay. We're paying American soldiers by the thousands into Iraqi dust for the chance that what's left of the country will somehow simultaneously be, a terrorist killing floor AND, in the midst of a civil war, a free and prosperous nation. It's a dessert topping AND a floor wax.

But it ain't funny. And it ain't ever gonna work.

Here's what else won't work, at least for what we as a nation are now willing to pay:

• tighter borders;
• increased screening;
• "intel";
• diplomacy;
• this president;
• the next president;
• President Jack Bauer;
• bowing our heads in prayer;
• or, again, putting our heads in the sand and letting our armed forces “do the job” fewer and fewer kids all the time are enlisting to do.

So do “the job” for them: Get strapped. Whether you "put up or shut up," it's going to be a bumpy ride.