Word from the Bench
It was a mixed bag from the U.S. Supreme Court yesterday on affirmative action ("racial preferences," if you prefer). The big University of Michigan rulings came down in a somewhat Solomonic fashion: yes, race can be considered for admission to law school, but the automatic awarding of points to minority undergraduate applicants based merely on their ethnicity is no longer allowed.

Actually, I'm fine with this first ruling because I accept the fact that a law school is inherently oriented toward an elite portion of a school's student body; there is an expectation that candidates to a law school would be subject to a more rigorous and individualized assessment than those in the larger-scaled admissions process to the undergraduate program. Moreover, being elite, law schools have a special prerogative in maintaining their political, philosophical, and cultural identities. Perhaps I romanticize the claim to unique reputations that certain law schools have (having experience of none of them), but I can accept that certain law schools do, in fact, have these reputations and, therefore, may reserve the right to cultivate the kind of student bodies they wish to instruct.

The more broad-ranging and influential ruling now keeps schools like Michigan from rewarding undergraduate applicants for being black or Latino or whatever. Giving a middle-class black kid 20 points (on a 150-point scale) he needs to qualify for admission just because he is black is ridiculous when his white counterpart might be the one who hails from a lousy neighborhood with no ethnic-based scholarship or help from his parents to smoothe the way. It's simple racism. Minority parents, kids, and politicians aren't going to like it, but it does an unqualified black kid no good to admit him to a school where he doesn't belong just to see him drop out after a harried semester or two.

Here's the deal, folks: I taught a year in a middle school in Los Angeles. Small experience, you may say (although, if you've never even taught a day, you may not), but look at who my kids were. All but one or two were black, Latino, Filipino, Vietnamese, etc. I had some magnificently talented and bright children (whose names I fairly expect to hear again some day) and I know that they can compete with any kid anywhere. That's a fact in your Library of Congress. Some of my kids will be in the very top few percentiles of their senior high classes. They will find a way to pay for their college and to succeed wildly. But it all has to do with the way they are being raised and prepared now. Some of my kids' parents are going to be involved with their educations like crazy; some are going to be abandoned to the wolves ---and it makes me cringe. But the ones who show the promise and who exhibit the character in their teens are going to make it. They will. They don't need some pencil pusher in Ann Arbor to pity them or make an exception for them: they already are the exception. They will succeed because so many more will not. You can't, as Sgt. Hartman might say, "miracle" their asses over that obstacle; they have to do it for themselves. If they have the ability, they will; if they don't, they shouldn't be there, anyway.

You know the difference between the damned and the elect? Free will. It's a lie that we are pre-ordained by external forces to be what we are; the real choice has always been for each of us to make for ourselves. Aware of that, you strive; unaware, you moulder away. But that's nothing harsh: an active conscience is some evidence of election, but you can still wilfully betray it by ignoring its dictates. Someone wholly ignorant of those dictates and lives conscienceless is, therefore, damned.

Come Listen
Mood:  chillin'
Now Playing: Adam Bork's "Lester the Clown"
Yeah, actually that Beck song is called "Nobody's Fault But My Own." It's really nice. If you're ever lucky enough to catch his performance of that song from his Austin City Limits appearance (earlier this year, I guess), it'll put chills down your spine.

Speaking of chills down spines, an old friend of mine named Adam Bork (who, in certain contexts, calls himself Earthpig) is back from his exile on main street (3 years plus in NYC) and is playing for the edification of us mere mortals. He is a talented singer-songwriter, but the thing I cannot tire of is his guitar-playing. There are certain sounds he makes with his Stratocaster that are his. That is to say, he owns those notes or tones or whatever they're properly called like they were individually-wrapped candies from the Adam Bork Auditory Meme Company. No one else can make them, which is just part of why he is a rare guitarist. Anyway, his work deserves far wider currency than it has, but people are unaccustomed to Adam's little ironies, I guess it is, and so he plays to small rooms when he should be playing to large clubs. Caviar to the general he is not.

If you're in Austin, Texas on any of the next several Wednesday nights (about 10 PM), drop in on him (and probably me) at Flipnotics on Barton Springs Road.

Sure. Why Not?
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: "Wasted Blues" by Beck
Obviously, I feel very foolish for having believed that everything was alright with my friend and his daughter, but I just didn't know. I suppose I could go ahead and compound my folly by wondering out loud about the state of law enforcement in Mexico and why these people can't help execute a Federal warrant on a fugitive from their neighbors del norte, but what good would it do? You see, sovereignty is a fiction that some nations sell to others to help keep their spirits up. Can't have the neighbors see what a ramshackle house of cards you live in. The corruption and incompetence of the Mexican police is proverbial. And I'm pissed off. This should have been over by now.

Hang in there, Greg. Right makes might.

Spurs
Practically every commentary I've read on the San Antonio Spurs' world championship has been negative, except for the obligatory compliments to Robinson and Duncan for their good character. Why should it matter that the championship series was one of the lowest-rated ever? I know it's all business, but there is still a sport there and all its attendant pride and joy. I don't give a good damn that Jordan or O'Neal weren't in on it, either; a very solid team won as a team. Is that too boring for you hotdog-eaters? Like your basketball full of showboat and egotism? Tough. That shit got beat by the Big Fundamental and a deep bench.

Hold On Just a Second
Mood:  incredulous
And now I'm hearing that the Mexican authorities have somehow allowed the situation with Sabrina Allen to deteriorate. Not sure what's happening. But, I think something ridiculous is going on.

The Allens' Prayers Are Answered
Mood:  celebratory
It gives me great pleasure to announce that Sabrina Allen has been found alive and well in Mexico City. Her daddy's hard work down there has paid off. Just as Greg had suspected, his ex-wife had taken Sabrina there and had colored her blonde hair black. But that stuff was never going to work so long as Greg was making his own efforts at detection.

Apparently, it was one of the signs that he's been posting all over Mexico City that finally got the attention of a woman there who had seen Sabrina and her mother.

Let's just hope that the Mexican authorities expedite matters and let Greg come home with Sabrina right away.

I don't know what fate will befall Greg's ex-wife, but I hope it's appropriate.

I can't help but note how soon after I performed my own craniorectal extraction on this subject that it all came to a wonderful and just resolution. Not that the two events are related, but I am quite pleased that one followed the other so closely. I didn't even have the time to find the e-mail addresses of my old friends in Los Angeles to write to about this before it worked itself out.

If I had a cigar, I'd probably smoke it.

Come home soon, Greg and Sabrina.

A Tip for "Our" Media
Mood:  on fire
Quit acting like there's some value in perpetrating this pose of "objectivity" and fairness and balance. You are American media (no offense, Rupert): quit giving these pieces of Palestinian shit a forum to spread their lies and nonsense about the Jews and the state of Israel. America stands with Israel and always will. Fuck these camel-humping losers. If they want to get our attention, let 'em make war on us so we can have an excuse to exterminate them from the face of the Earth.

These Are the Days When Vermin Pose
Mood:  on fire
Just look at these pieces of Palestinian shit. Walking around, looking into the lenses of sympathetic cameras, rushing about, moving bodies on gurneys in masses of fifty and more. Oh, I am impressed, you subhuman jackoffs. You want a war against Israel and the Jews? I hope they give it to you, Apache-style. DOWN WITH THE FUCKING ARAB CONTAGION!!!

Remember that there is no such thing as a Palestinian. These huge masses of unemployed and unemployable sacks of garbage are the sons and grandsons of Jordanian immigrants who came into Jewish Palestine to find the work that they couldn't find back home. (Sound familiar, si?) They eat, sleep, and live hatred for their betters (the Jews) off of whom they leach and against whom they spread contamination. Ever read excerpts from their kids' schoolbooks? They refer to Jews as pigs and monkeys. They refuse to live with the Jews in peace; all they want is to cause death and destruction.

I hope Sharon kills Arafat deader than a fucking roach. Down with these worthless bastards.

The LBJ Exception
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: Naked Raygun's Throb-Throb album
The world has certainly changed since the days of the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution. We can get ourselves embroiled in a decade-long civil war over a deliberately concocted story (and, ultimately, rooted in a questionable ideological obligation), but we have to beat ourselves up over a two-month-long war of liberation based on actual dangers arrayed against our country. What's the difference? Well, the level of distrust and cynicism is far higher now, but that's only because such attitudes were born then.

That's right, kids: LBJ got us into a war against communism to show Goldwater how tough he could be against the Reds. But his pretexts were excused because he was wrapped in the mantle of an assassinated man and because he was throwing open the flood gates to the Great Entitlement Society.

Bush the Younger, of course, won't get any such slack. He's an ignorant cowboy-madman. Never mind that the war he is fighting is entirely just and necessary; he's going to have the anti-Zionist, pro-Islamofascist Left riding his and Tony Blair's asses all the way down to Hell. There's no love for him on the Left because he stole their crown.

Well, fuck off and get over it. What's your next bunch of garbage going to be when our soldiers turn over the next round of evidence of WMD? The mobile weapons labs weren't sufficient? How about the bio-chem suits that Saddam had laid out like the kids' school clothes for the next day? Or, what about just conventional weapons? Like how they had giant stockpiles of them stored in what used to be girls' boarding schools? The anti-American liberal media can look these things over and over and face to face and never see the justification for our having gone to war because it's that clumsy, conservative Christian in the Oval Office calling the shots ---and not one of their own liberal vote-buyers trying to purchase the approval of his party's base.

A Few Things about Greg and Sabrina Allen
First off, I don't know enough about HTML to make Greg's banner ad active, but the link in the text I provided will take you directly to their site. If someone can tell me how to make the banner an active link, that'd be great.

Second, reading through Greg's site for Sabrina is a sobering experience for this reason alone: here I am in a not-too-big-a-city (am I actually saying that?!) where I watch the local news and read the local paper as thoroughly as the great majority of the people here ---and, yet, I was only half-aware (at best) of what had happened. It may well be that I had simply tuned the story out until I realized who, exactly, this child is. That's not an admission I'm proud to make, but my point is that I can think I'm in touch with what's happening around me and only belatedly come to find out that this man (an old friend) has been looking for his daughter for over a year now and that I barely realized it.

I've never been too quick, but I hope I make up for it by being thorough.

It will take more effort from more people to help Greg get Sabrina back. The Allens are a great bunch of folks and I am keeping a good thought for them.

Down with NPR
Mood:  incredulous
Y'all gotta check out this great story at NRO. If you ever had any doubts about what a big bunch of commie rat bastards National Public Radio are, this piece will set your mind to rest. And be sure to use the included link to read the NPR style guide: it could've been edited by Bill Moyers.

Remember: the greatest enemy of Jews and Zionism today is the Left. Liberals in this country and Europe will absolutely stick a knife in the back of Israel if given half a chance. They're on Arafat's shriveled up joint like a crack whore with a date to keep.

Tossing a Pebble for Greg
Mood:  sad
A few weeks ago, I caught the end of a story on the local news (Austin, TX) about a little girl named Sabrina Allen who had been abducted by her non-custodial mother and very probably taken to the area in and around Mexico City. Somehow, this beautiful little blonde-haired child looked familiar to me, but, for what reason, I had no inkling. Slowly, it occurred to me that this child, whom I had never seen before, was the daughter of one of my best friends from high school, Greg Allen. It was interesting to me that maybe there was something in her face that reminded me of Greg's mother and sisters, all of whom are very lovely women.

Anyhow, I had heard before about this abduction from another old friend, but didn't know what the appropriate thing to do would be. I hadn't spoken with Greg in more than a decade (see this space about two weeks ago on the issue of long-unseen friends), but I kept his plight in mind.

Now, there has been a push in the local media to help Greg find his daughter. The local ABC affiliate(KVUE) and the Austin American-Statesman have run stories on Greg's trip to Mexico City, where he is taking a crash-course in conversational Spanish (to help him with the local authorities and any possible witnesses) and plastering signs all over town featuring Sabrina's and his ex-wife's pictures.

I realize, of course, that this weblog is as far from the appropriate forum as it can be to be a place where an appeal can be made, but who can say what a random reminder may or may not yield? I'm simply tossing a pebble into a pond. If, somehow, these words are being read by someone who has just returned from Mexico City and who remembers seeing a blonde-haired six-year old girl in the company of a dark-haired, light-complected woman (neither of whom is fluent in Spanish), that person should consider logging onto Greg's website and comparing his or her memory to the many pictures of Sabrina found there.

I don't know Sabrina, but her daddy was one of the brightest guys I've ever met. He was one of those guys back in high school who was so adept at technical issues that he made wise-crackers like me look like the poser I was. Eagle Scout, salutatorian, or doctoral candidate at the University of Texas: this is a man who would trade any of that for the safety of his child. I wish him all good fortune and hope for the day that I can shake his hand in congratulations ---as I have many times before.

This Emoticon is Suave
Mood:  suave
Now Playing: "Wichita Lineman" by Glen Campbell
Bored and trying out one of Lycos' gimmicks: an emoticon to help people know how you're feeling. Thank goodness they offer one for when, as now, I feel suave.

Try This One On
Looking at the field of Democratic presidential candidates, it is difficult to imagine any of them taking the party's nomination by storm. If they aren't kooks, they're racists or corrupt incompetents or wafflers or self-important liberal robots or, in the case of Gephardt, too Democratic (Old Style). So, why won't the following happen? Since Hillary's sucking up all the air and airtime and sentiment and speculative energies of the media (and condemning ambulance chasers like Edwards to obscurity) anyway, why don't they draft her to make a run at Bush? It would most obviously be a trial run (maybe something like Dewey's run against FDR in 1944?), since there is no chance that Bush will lose, and it will set the stage for Ms. Rodham-Clinton to run for the empty throne in 2008.

Now, to counter her ambitions for the Presidency five years from now, what the Bush people have got to do is have Mr. Cheney choose to resign the Vice Presidency in 2006 (right around the mid-terms) and replace him with Dr. Rice, who would certainly pass all muster with conservatives and be in the perfect spot in 2008 to run as the virtual incumbent. A black woman as the GOP standardbearer in five years? What do you suppose the Democrats would do then?

Change their drawers is what.

At any rate, we'd certainly find out in a big hurry just how much conservatives believe in the individual, race-blind society. Could Cooter down on the bayou vote for a "nigra woman"? He will if he doesn't want Ms. Pantsuit to take over and implement a reign of soft Stalinism. He will if he doesn't want a [village] to raise his child, by God.

An Indissipatible Fart
Why don't the Clintons go away? Why do the Democratic Party and liberals, in general, indulge their egocentrism? Ms. Rodham-Clinton is very obviously lying about her reaction to her husband's admission of philandery; everyone knew that he had had an affair with "that woman" and that he was going to have to eventually cop to it. But, let's not bother with old tales of stolen blow jobs. See, fellatio was never an impeachable offense. And, because this was no capital crime (don't you love a good Latinate pun?), there was never any reason to lie about it. Right? That is the bottom line, you braying proctologers: since the First Pantsuit knew her husband to have been an adulterous liar from day one, he was never in any danger of "hurting" her with the truth that he was being unfaithful. Get it? His oh-so-human reasons for lying and subjecting the country to some of the most undignified and vulgar bullshit since the first Cleveland Administration were invalid ab initio.

So, why did Bill Clinton lie about something that was, as all of his defenders insisted, unimportant and private? Why is his wife lying now about her reaction to him "finally" telling the truth? Well, because they know that, despite the pettiness of busting a philanderer for blowing his choad on an intern while working in the White House, there are still people in this society who look down on adultery or, at least, think it's a moral failure to commit it repeatedly and on the job. Remember, of course, that this somehow doesn't include feminists or liberals. One of the great unrepented and unexplained sins of the liberals committed during the Clinton years is their utter fucking hypocrisy in looking the other way from Clinton's indiscretions when, had he been a conservative CEO or an army general or a male high school teacher who was dorking a young female, he would have been excoriated and crucified. And they fucking well know it. Patricia Ireland and that whole bunch are a fat lot of hypocrites and craphounds. They stuck up for Clinton by ignoring his lies and adulteries because, no matter how much he might betray the women within his reach, he just "had" to be better for their own political purposes than some puritanical and talibanical Republican. So, forget personal character; we'll cover for you so long as you pay lip service to whatever's on our agenda.

You liberal tapeworms don't yet realize it (apparently), but Bill Clinton sold you down the river like a boatload of negroes. He singlehandedly destroyed the viability of the liberal wing of the Democratic Party by turning himself into a moderate Republican whenever his numbers started to slip. Fine, he was a great fundraiser, but what does that matter in the long-term? What has that done to the focus of the Democrats today? Look at the crap they've allowed into their race for the nomination. They should be ashamed of themselves. And then they should tell the Clintons to shut up and go away so that the party can find its voice again.

No More from the Myopic Turds
Here come the Leftists and the anti-war ostriches and the chin-strokers to haul Mr. Blair and Mr. Bush before the bench and let their blood out. These conscientious objectors believe they are on to something. They've uncovered a giant cabal of oilmen and sheiks and Trilateralists and whatnot, all gathered round a candled pentagram and condemning our youth to ignominious death in the Middle East.

"A-HA!" the uncoverers cry. "You've found no WMD! Your war was really a war of conquest and crusade and greed!"

Where does a rational man begin to address the stupidity of the Left's objections? Why must patriotic Americans and Britons find these rats in the posture of apologizing for Saddam? Don't they have any interest in liberating a deeply oppressed people from such tyranny? And don't they realize just how crucial the American military's presence in Iraq is for further developments in the peace of that region? Just look at how much more play our poor dumb yokel of a President is getting when he can sit down in the presence of these towelheaded billionaires and terrorist sponsors and say, "Hey, gang: y'all got a new sheriff in town. Either you get your shit straight or I'll bring you down." It's the only way to play these clowns and I LOVE IT.

The Left, of course, is still wallowing around in the shitpile of November 2000 when Al Gore-bot had his crown stolen from him in broad daylight by that dumbass governor from Texas. You know the one: the Ivy League MBA who's so incompetent that he was twice elected governor of one of the most important states in the Union. How much better off we'd be if only Clinton's cupholder had won (never mind the Electoral College or the absurdity of the Florida Supreme Court's very obviously partisan rulings).

As I enjoy this wonderful late-night thunderstorm, I can only think to laugh at the Democratic Party and the liberal wash-outs that infest it. You're not getting rid of Bush unless you resort to violence. No matter who you run against him in 2004, you will lose. (Just imagine how badly you will lose if Mr. Cheney withdraws from the veep spot in favor of Dr. Rice. Oh, how much fun we will have being told by the Left what a cynical, racist ploy that selection would be!) Bush the Younger will be in power until January 2009. Maybe you can run Ms. Rodham-Clinton in 2008. Maybe everyone will have forgotten what a corrupt and sleazy couple of craphounds she and her co-conspirator were.

The Radar's Gone Psychedelic
Now, look: if there's that much activity to the west (the radar's gone psychedelic), we had better get some action. WE NEED RAIN ---AND LOTS OF IT!!! I'm sick of seeing everyone else get a good soaking and all we get is teased. Let's go, dude: I want to smell some ozone!

Simmer Down, All Ye Myopic Turds
Having seen what we have of Saddamite Iraq and its psychopathic ways, why is there all this second-guessing from the Leftists and the hysterical European press about our reasons for going to war? They're like a bunch of goddamned lawyers insisting upon the letter ---and never the spirit--- of the law. Which is to say that it is irrelevant whether WMD is ever found in quantity or kind sufficient to persuade the anti-war craphounds that our "warmongering" was justified. If our people did find some bioweapons, you just know that they were planted, so what's the point?

More later....

Moved to Tears
I am finally moved in. There's no doubting the pop-psychological truism that moving is one of the most stressful operations in the whole catalogue of western man. You got your death of a family member, weddings, and moving.

I am still sore and sucker-punched from the whole deal, especially the last, desperate hours. Jesus. I simply must find a way to winnow down the great mass of my possessions so that this will never happen again.

Naturally, my family and friends came to my rescue. I could not have done this without them.

Thanks.