On a plane tomorrow at 0-dark-30 for Dulles, then down to Charlottesville, where I’ll help the Biggest Guy get out of his apt, and into a dorm room. I’m ass-u-ming I’ll have access and time to read and blog a bit, but it may be sketchy. Back Saturday. Please don’t blow anything up while I’m gone…

(from Blog Critics)
Hot Rod Circuit Sorry About Tomorrow/Vagrant
Part of what is so cool about music is that it evokes place so well. Listen. Go put on a Springsteen or U2 disc; where are you? A stadium, packed shoulder to shoulder in a kind of Leni Riefenstahl collective human mass. Put on Bach’s Suites for Solo Cello and suddenly you’re in a church.
My weakness is for the kind of music that makes you feel like you’re leaning against the cigarette-grimed wall of a small club, a bottle of cold beer in your hand, as you shout to try and talk to the person next to you. There are a lot of subclasses here…you may be dodging chairs thrown from the mosh pit, or listening to synthesizers while watching clips from 50’s TV projected on the wall, or actually dancing, as opposed to bobbing up and down in place, to a hard-edged update of Bob Wills…but the sweet spot is a band with 2 guitars, bass, and drums. The singer is a tortured intellectual with a reedy, slightly sharp voice who sings smart-sounding lyrics, and the guitars phase back and forth between a buzz of noise and melody.
Some of my favorite bands sound sort of like that; Jesus and Mary Chain, The Pursuit of Happiness, Thirteen Engines, Black Rebel Motorcycle Club, and now Hot Rod Circuit.
So call me a sucker for this style. Put the disc in and go open a Bud. You’ll be transported back to every little rock club you’ve ever been to; feel all the edgy insecurity you felt being there, as well as that adolescent hunger for something more than sex that brought you there in the first place.
BOOK REVIEW
(also, surprisingly enough, from Blog Critics)
‘A Brief History of the Flood’ by Jean Harfenist
…disclaimer; I know the author. But I know several other authors with books out and you don’t see me talking about them…
I’m a city boy, raised under the brilliant glow of success and possibility which I saw everywhere around me. This is a novel about someone who grew up in a place where possibility was barely a faint glimmer on the horizon.
It’s a novel – there is a character, Lillian Anderson, who undergoes trial and changes as we watch. But it’s written as a linked set of short stories (think Susan Minot) and so is episodic. Each of the stories closes you in more and more tightly, and in each one you see Lillian struggling harder and harder to get out. Unlike Ray Carver, who similarly wrote about isolated people on questionable roads, the love and respect the author has for these real characters comes through. But not at the expense of an acid point of view: “My sister is the kind of girl who thinks letting Buddy Franklin fuck her in the Hoffmans’ hayloft is the same thing as a date”
It’s a modern Huckleberry Finn, with the modern demons…family rage, the limits of class…replacing the more-concrete demons…bandits, slave-catchers…that Huck and Jim faced together. But both the characters – Huck and Lillian – share a saucy grit that pulls you toward them, and makes you know that wherever they are today, their demons are at least a little bit behind them. And because of that, the book matters.

Not intentionally, but telling nontheless. From the Washington Post, an article about styles of argument. Style #9:

The author was a scoundrel. Which doesn’t, of course, mean that he wrote a bad book, but that has never stopped critics hoping to find that elusive philosopher’s stone that connects personal misbehavior with bad art. The best practitioner of this form of mudslinging is the surviving spouse of the scoundrel, who is best able to paint an intimate picture of the beast. After the spouse lays out the ammunition, professional critics step in and “reconsider” the author’s work, looking for evidence of suppressed rage, wife-beating, child abuse and addiction. Then the all-important sleight of hand: connecting personal weakness to artistic weakness. “So is Nietzsche’s philosophy really no more than a coded confession of secret experiences?” asks a recent New York Times review of a book that examines Nietzsche’s supposed homosexuality. The conclusion, at the end, is no, he was human and he had ideas. But the reviewer raises the specter of a damning accusation: that the philosopher is really just a memoirist, dealing not with ideas but with repetitive personal obsessions. Just raising the idea for 800 words is usually enough to be sure some mud sticks.

This squares with my belief that [fill in the name of the writer/ actor/ composer/ whatever] may have been an asshole, but damn I do love the work.
I don’t have to live with him or her. He didn’t abuse me as a child, she didn’t beat me with coathangers. It is of some slight interest that they advocated parboiling children, or wound up dying poor, divorced, syphilitic, and advocating random acts of violence.
It is the work that matters. I’m building a body of work here that people can do what they will with. Someday, I would like to tie it into the other things I do and have done with my life. But right now, what you see is what you get.

Demosthenes builds on Nathan Newman’s post on the Democratic accomplishments of the last few years, and adds this:

To be honest, it’s just a logical fallacy to say that the Dems (in their entirety) are no different than the Republicans (in their entirety), and the Greens are pretty obviously trying a “invasion from the margin” attack (where a third party takes over an increasingly large group from the margins of a party in a two-party system, until the party it’s trying to eliminate is left only with moderates and eventually drops out of sight), but it’s still worth proving that Democrats are Democrats.

First, as to all this, I really wish that Nathan, who I respect and is on my blogroll, had done more than give an unattributed link to Ann Salisbury, who did the original list on her great blog, Two tears in a Bucket.
Next, I’ve discussed this myself almost endlessly, but the money quote is this one:

[there are]…two different sets of issues, which are rooted in our political ecology.
One set are substantive, and have to do with policy, governance, and what exactly we want the government to do…in my case, offer great day care, have a moderately progressive tax code, etc. etc. … the other set are procedural, and have to do with how the government makes decisions and constitutes itself.
Substantively, I stand with the liberal side of the house (with a few wrinkles on guns and foreign policy).
But procedurally, I think that the mainstream liberal and conservative actors are indistinguishable, and I have a huge problem with them and with the process that maintains them.

I’ve said it before, and I’ll keep saying it: There is a huge structural problem with the way we think about and conduct politics in this country, and more than anything, it continues to result in piss-poor elected officials, laws, policies, and in the increasing loss of legitimacy that I believe is far more important than which set of lobbyists’ issues get promoted this week (while still believing in fact that some lobbyists have better claims than others).

Check this out!!
Launch is tomorrow…I’ll try and do some linking…

In response to the SFSU events I discuss here, the task force has met, labored mightily, and brought forth a mouse. Islamic studies proposed for S.F. State. “Trying to improve relations between pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli students at San Francisco State University, a task force has recommended that the college create an Arab and Islamic studies program.”
Charles Johnson has comments as well; but my take is simple.
First, I’m typically dubious about [fill-in-the-ethnic-group] studies, even though there are a number of legitimate things to study, because in fact they typically become job programs and sinecures for those who make their living in ‘racial identity’ politics. I know there is a Jewish Studies department there, and so in the abstract it’s probably not a bad thing to also have one for Islamic Studies.
But…the lack of significant condemnation and consequence (a moderately strong letter from the University Presdent to the GUPS regarding the hateful poster, and defunding of GUPS for one year) to what were outrageous and repressive actions by the GUPS-led counterdemonstrators blows the decision into the stratosphere.
Here’s a thought experiment. The demonstrators were African American. The counter-demonstrators were white. Imagine the same words spoken, the same actions taken. We’ll skip over the fact that the counterdemonstrators would have needed police protection as the justifiably outraged demonstrators reacted; what would the moral reaction be? Even if one were under consideration, would we be seeing a ‘department of Christian Identity Studies” right now? So obviously not that the very idea is absurd.
Here’s the deal. The reported behavior of the GUPS-led counterdemonstrators was outrageous. There has been no report anywhere that I have read that has suggsted that the reported behavior didn’t happen. So we’ll assume it happened. The University is now complicit in this behavior by a) tolerating it in the first place, only reacting late (which certainly gives the appearance of reacting to the public response, not the event), reacting to it minimally, and now by doing something which while possibly reasonable on its own (establishing a Muslim Studies Department) sure gives the impression of rewarding the wrongdoers.
Great. Just great.

From WahooPundit:

As some of the comments on your blog have alluded to: a Wahoo is a fish that can drink twice its weight. The Wahoo is a long, narrow fish — similar to a gar — with many sharp teeth and a bad temper. It certainly makes for a much fiercer mascot than a Terrapin, a Tarheel or a Hokie.
As for the official version, I defer to the Unofficial Fan Page of Virginia Sports — The Sabre.com
“Legend has it that Washington & Lee baseball fans dubbed the Virginia players Wahoos during the fiercely contested rivalry that existed between the two in-state schools in the 1890s. By 1940, Wahoos was in general use around Grounds to denote University students or events relating to them. The abbreviated Hoos sprang up later in student newspapers and has gained growing popularity in recent years.
Cavaliers is derived from those who supported the Restoration of the Monarchy during the English Civil War — in opposition to the Roundheads who backed Oliver Cromwell.

I’ve read a great deal about anonymity in the last few days; mostly critical to be sure. From comments on Electrolyte:

Regarding blog pseudonyms: I don’t like ’em. I try not to make an issue out of it, and I know people of all stripes who feel they have good reason to use them. But it bothers me. When I’m in a dispute with someone who calls themself “Pericles” or whatever, I feel very much at a disadvantage. Patrick Nielsen Hayden is a real person; you can look me up in the phone book, you can accost me in front of my office building, you can find me at conventions and public appearances. “Pericles” is a drive-by with mirrored glass windows. (comment by Patrick Nielsen Hayden)

From Den Beste:

When someone won’t even reveal his name, it should set off alarm bells unless he provides a legitimate reason for keeping it secret. If someone is confident about what they’re saying, they should be willing to own up in public to holding those opinions. A person who debates anonymously may not be wrong, but you should certainly be far more skeptical about anything they say.

Now, to be blunt, I think these comments are directed here and here, more than at me.
But they do give me pause to reflect, and to try and explain why I chose to be, and for now, still choose to be anonymous.
First, because one of the reasons I started this blog is to try and reconcile some of what I perceived to be contradictions in my own politics. How can I have dinner with Jeff Cooper (that one, not the law one) and still send money to Amnesty International (although I’ve stopped in light of their recent piss-poor performance in the Middle East)? How can I believe in progressive taxation, and be opposed to teacher’s unions?
One of the features of modern political life (that I continue to beat on in the vain hope that it will get up and walk and talk, thereby dazzling my readers) is the fact that we are first and foremost formed into narrow political teams. We wear our team colors, and sing the fight songs from scripts handed us by the marketing division of the team that’s playing today.
The problem is that there is no “America’s team” any more (Sorry Jerry Jones), even though pretty much every team would have us believe that secretly, it’s really them.
And, like a lot of people, I belong to more than one. So when I talk to my progressive friends, it’s hard to address shooting or gun rights without triggering yet another dead-end disagreement. When I’m with my friends who shoot, I really don’t spend a lot of time debating environmental policy, because I’m not going to convince them to look beyond what Rush has said. It’s simpler that way. When I’m with my friends who work in politics, I don’t spend a lot of time dwelling on the failures of our electoral system, because no matter how diplomatically I couch what I say, I’m talking about them and their livelihood.
Now the reality is, that I lose and they lose in that, because I can’t express my full self…can’t as it were come out of the closet…and they don’t get their worldviews broadened. It even feels kind of cowardly right now as I write it.
But the reality is that our political lives are so Balkanized (meaning that we passionately defend and exploit the boundaries in the narrowly fragmented landscape) that I have to question whether it’s worth it to be engaged in battle every day, and so I quietly hold my tongue.
This page is where I get to speak out.
There are other petty practical issues as well. I contract for a living, meaning that like an actor, I need to audition for work several times a year. (did I mention that I’m looking for consulting right now?) Getting and not getting work can seem capricious and in fact is highly political. Which means that I need to exercise care not to overtly offend those who put bread on my family table.
And on this page, I get to offend them. Like almost everyone else in the Blog-verse, I’d love to make my living opining, and so be free to stand behind my words. I’d also love a pony, as long as you’re delivering on wishes…

I wasn’t going to blog this, because it’s not like Matt Welch needs traffic from me, but moral consistency (and an instinctive desire to tweak Ann’s reflexive ‘protect all Democrats’ instincts) forced my hand.
Short version: Gov. ‘SkyBox’ Davis offers $650 Million to Movie Studios.
Now this is something I know little bit about, and the reality is a) that the costs of production in Canada are lower in part because of the Canadian/U.S. dollar spread, and b) because the Canadians gave a significant tax incentive to produce there. Davis proposes to offset this with a state tax credit.
I’m not inherently opposed to tax credits or other government incentives. But the sad reality is that they more often reflect the desire of politicians to be close to those incented…often to ensure the steady supply of donations…than any kind of reasoned effort to grow the economy.
So the incentives often go to the places that need it least…sugar growers, as a good example. There’s actually a great quote from this article: “The U.S. sugar program is the most efficient tax we have,” says Kempner with bitter sarcasm. “It comes directly from consumers and goes directly to the growers, who turn around and give some of the money to the politicians. It never goes through Washington at all.”.
The film (and music) industries have been critical to the health of the California economy. Sadly, they are facing huge structural challenges right now, as anyone who reads Instapundit or Eric Olsen knows. There’s a huge budget shortfall in the state. You gotta ask yourself; is this the right place to spend our cash right now? Well… is it, Governor?

Biggest Guy is starting UVA in a few weeks (I’ll be there next week, who’s close to there in the Blogosphere?), and one thing has tormented me for the entire time he’s been there (he’s been working in a research lab for over a year, trying the place out before deciding to go there). How does the school…mascot Cavaliers (makes sense, Southern light cavalry and all)…wind up with the nickname ‘Wahoos’??
And, aimlessly surfing the blogs this morning, I discovered…wait for it…the WahooPundit. Email has been sent, and an answer anxiously awaited.