Beat the Press, Indeed

Hillary Clinton done come to town and had herself a fundraiser, which did pretty well I hear. Barack Obama, who might as well just be (D-Chicago), had a fundraiser the same day and he made slightly less money.

Now, in the olden days, when journalists thought of themselves as educators of the public rather than administration stenographers, readers would likeley never have seen this rather pedestrian and unenlightening fact. But, this is the age of hysteria, and therefore all local news publications and broadcasts were shrieking this week about how "Hillary Beats Obama on His Home Turf!" "!!!!" "!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

An actual journalist would never have reported this.

Obama has had several large fundraisers here recently, and his take in Chicago from multiple events has to be in the millions. Hillary Clinton, in her lone event, raised less than $1 million. The "story" isn't a story at all if you know that Obama has been in Chicago to drum up donations multiple times, and Clinton's been here a big fat one time.

The angle most outlets have chosen to pursue on this story, though, is that this is Obama's "turf" and Hillary is just some New York Jew Liberal Commie America-Hater who waltzed in and handed him his ass. Well, maybe not the Jew part. But the people doing the reporting work mainly for the Republican/Crazy Chicago Tribune (an organization so fundamentally un-American that it can't even assemble a decent baseball team!), the Tribune's TV station, CLTV, and the only-slightly-less-retarded Sun-Times newspaper. So basically, everybody got to see the story this week, because Chicagoans are about as smart as cows and don't demand better media.

Well, Chicago: since I know you all obsessively read my blog (and, to my largest bloc of new readers, que onda? Bienvenidos a mi blog!), all 3 million of you, you might just all take a second and recall that Barack Obama is our senator, but he's not actually from Illinois. Hillary Clinton, as everyone outside River North (the location of the Tribune and Sun-Times offices) knows, is from Park Ridge, Illinois and was born right here in Chicago.

I know what you're thinking: yeah! Fuck that goddamn interloping bitc--Oh, what? Jeez, how could all those "reporters" have missed something so relevant to the fake story they were making up and peddling as hard news? Shouldn't somebody get fired for wasting all that ink and everybody's time with a bogus tabloid headline?

Basically the week's news consisted of this, this crappy pile-on after the made-up "fact," this, and innumerable similarly inane idiocies. (Deepest apologies for not finding the original Sun-Times and Tribune articles, but I am not made of Google searches.)

If only there were some kind of war going on, with lots of tragic deaths to report; or a famine somewhere; or the housing market was tanking and millions of people were facing utter ruin; or the president were some enormous jackass/lame duck deserving of ridicule and the press' deep scrutiny--that would surely limit the time so-called journalists could spend writing stupid things.

Hawk Harrelson is the Dumbest Man in America

And his co-host is the second-dumbest. I am watching a re-broadcast of yesterday's Cubs-Sox game, where in the 8th inning the Sox' SS, Juan Uribe, threw a check on a Cubs baserunner as he rounded second. Two umps clearly signalled obstruction (and to boot, me and nine drunks in a bar watching it live yesterday all yelled "obstruction!" when it happened live)--and yet, and yet!, Hawk Harrelson, the Sox' announcer, and his co-host, are going on and on about how this is a straightforward situation and the umps are all wrong. Neither of them seems to know what the play was. They think it had something to do with the rundown that happened after the Cubs player who was interfered with fell down (because of the body check from the Sox player). They both--and especially Harrelson, a former major leaguer--are screaming about how the guy should have been out. Harrelson swears he never heard of such a thing--and he's proclaiming that the umps are corrupt and have just created a new rule that has never been seen in a game before.

Really, Hawk? You never saw obstruction before? You don't know what a rule is? Your eyes don't work? Brain broken?

What am I saying--the title of this post says it all. Stupid motherfucker.

For the record: when obstruction is called, the play continues and, if the player who was obstructed is out and the umpire believes it to be the result of the obstruction, then he may reverse the out and award the player the base he believes he would have gotten to if not inetefered with. That's what happened yesterday. See here.

Of course, asking Hawk Harrelson, that venerable icon of the South Side, to use a computer is like asking a monkey to wipe its ass.

Bill Walton of Hockey

Remember when the Bulls used to play some crap team like the Utah Jazz, and Michael Jordan would be lighting it up for 40 points, and Bill Walton would go off on a twenty-minute rant about how Jordan sucks because he's "new" and every "old" player Walton played with would whip his ass one-on-one?

Neither do I. My "mute" button works.

It turns out, hockey has a similar numbnuts commentator, albeit nobody has ever heard this guy speak, since zero Americans watch the games. His name is Darren Eliot, and he was once a mediocre NHL goalie.

Nowadays, he sometimes calls Florida Pantsers games and Sports Illustrated pays Eliot to muse about the sport he once sort of excelled at--and he's dropped one pearl after another from his hogjaws over the last few years. Who can forget two years ago, when he picked the Carolina Hurricanes to win the Stanley Cup? Oh, wait--he actually picked them to finish last. D'oh!

Or last year, when he predicted that the Buffalo Sabres, with their unrivaled speed and scoring ability, would steamroll to the championship? Closer than his 2006 prediction, surely, as Buffalo made it to the Eastern Finals. But, you'll find no mention of Buffalo or any other poor prediction in Darren Eliot's latest "column" (can a column be two paragraphs long?), in which he purports to compare the past 2 champions (the Canes and Ducks, for all you Americans out there) and then "determines" which team's style of play will be more emulated in the future.

The first key problem with the comparison is that the teams have few differences. Both are built on speedy puck movement, precise passing, and lots of scoring.

The next stumbling block for Eliot is that the Hurricanes are built around a core of players (Cole, Staal, Brind'Amour, Williams) who are long-term signees and will not be traded. The rest of the team is static from year-to-year. In other words, the Hurricanes never acquire anybody, with the exception of a trade deadline rental or two.

The Ducks' "style" is the result of trading last season for Chris Pronger and Rob Niedermayer, and assembling a cast of fast, big players in mercenary fashion.

And what do you know? Talk out of LA (sorry, the LA of Anaheim, or whatever) has it that the other Niedermayer (and team captain), Scott, is going to retire. Whoops. Not only that, but the Ducks stand to lose significant players in free agency--JS Giguere, Teemu Selanne, Brad May, Sean O'Donnell, among others.

Darren Eliot, though, boils the differences down to "hard-hitting" (Ducks) vs. "finesse" (Canes). Whatever, dude. But then, he has to make that extra leap--you'd think he'd be tired from jumping to all those conclusions--and declare that Old Tyme Hockey (TM) is back and here to stay, in the form of the Ducks' style. That is, everyone wants to copy the champs, so "everyone" (who?) is going to retool to be more like Anaheim.

I say: great! If this is actually how it works, then no wonder Carolina missed the playoffs the year after winning it all! Everyone copied them and, as a result, the Hurricanes played against a version of themselves every night. No wonder they struggled! That would be like a me-vs-me beauty contest...there has to be a winner, but both me's are awesome!

Or, the Hurricanes' problems could have something to do with losing a top forward, defenseman, and goalie to free agency. Has Darren Eliot heard of free agency? Does he still think players get paid in coal nuggets and whiskey? Stanley Cup = new shoes and a cigar?

If "physical play" (which, in Chris Pronger's terms, we might just call "head hunting") is the norm next year, then the Hurricanes and teams like them will thrive. Why? Simple: as Darren Eliot himself points out in his own article, the Hurricanes' strategy is to avoid stupid altercations and let the other teams take penalties. This would create scoring chances in the form of power plays. What seems smarter and more likely to succeed: bad penalties and rough play, or scoring chances and speed? Hmmm.....

Eliot, and many other dinosaurs, just want to see more fighting in hockey. Well, guess what? There's already enough. Chances are, you'll see a fight in any given game. Messages are sent; hits are avenged; players are protected. There is no extraneous activity, little intent to injure, and few grudges that last beyond the game itself. One suspects Darren Eliot--maybe because he was a goalie--thinks that all-out brawling was good for the game, or that eye-gouging with sticks or stalking a player throughout the season are essential parts of the game that need reviving.

The real leap he made, though, is to assume something normative about the way the Ducks, and Chris Pronger in particular, play the game. Pronger is a 6'6" monster who has always had a petty mean streak. He was suspended twice in the playoffs this year for dirty hits that took another player out of the game. He hits people in the head when they aren't looking, and that makes Pronger a Darren Eliot extraordinaire.

Let's not forget that Pronger was going to wrap his career in Edmonton, until he knocked that girl up, and Mrs. Pronger (different woman) decided she wanted to be in LA-Anaheim (probably to be closer to the heart of the US porn industry) and made her big, tough husband beg for a trade. I'm guessing Pronger won't be a Duck forever, either. Wherever he goes, that style of cheap-shot play goes with him--it was St. Louis' M.O. (St. Louis, MO--I kill!) for ten years.

One also begins to suspect that the NHL has different rules for the Finals. One of them must involve being generous to old wankers like Pronger, who haven't yet won a championship. Now that that's taken care of, we can probably look forward to a crackdown on rough play next season--precisely what happened coming out of the lockout in 2006. After all the hand-wringing this off season about dirty hits and double standards, Darren Eliot, as usual, is a step behind in calling for more of the same.

The Top 10 Conservative Idiots

More on MSRP

The Leegin Creative Leather Goods vs. PSKS, Inc. case is still being decided at the Supreme Court, but there have been more commentaries upon it recently. To review, the point in question is whether the manufacturer of a product can force the retailer to sell it at a fixed minimum price (that is, potentially there could be no discounts at any time, for any reason).

Consumer advocates correctly point out that the ban on such a practice has led to the proliferation of online and real discount stores, saving trillions to consumers since the original ruling in 1911 (Dr. Miles) determined that price-fixing by manufacturers was a per se violation of antitrust law. Seems sensible...

Well, perhaps not. Legal "scholars" are hung up on this point. Most of them hate to see "blanket rulings" like this one stand, as they argue that case-by-case examination is needed to ascertain whether price-fixing actually hurts consumers. To which we might all say, "WHAT?!?"

Aside from providing the best evidence yet that lawyers and economists don't know jack shit about their crafts--they don't really know how the law or the economy are supposed to work--they've dragged poor history into this mess, going so far as to argue that since 1911 there have been half-repeals of Dr. Miles and some pokings and proddings at the state and federal levels to change the rules when the economy seemed to warrant it. And my response is, "so?" History is irrelevant to the law (and the abstraction we call "the economy"--funny how, when you get to it, economists will in the same breath argue that "history" proves Dr. Miles hasn't worked, but also that hypothetical models are the best way to understand practical behavior. Asinine.).

You can read an exchange that more or less sums up the frustrating aspects of this "debate" here. I take umbrage to this passage, though, from some dildo named Lawrence White:

"In other words, under the current rules "Sam, the Catalog Store" may tell customers to get their demonstrations down the block at "Joe's Full Service Store" and then come back to Sam's to buy the product. He can sell it for 10% less because he doesn't provide any of the costly demonstrations. But, of course, then Joe can't stay in business, the service isn't provided, and the manufacturer's sales suffer. So, if setting minimum prices isn't used to build cartels, where's the harm? It's the manufacturer's judgment that this is the best way to sell the product. Shouldn't the manufacturer's judgment be controlling? Isn't that what a market economy generally relies on to benefit consumers?"

No. Idiot! I know where he's going with this--Singer sewing machines. He thinks that, because Singer was founded on higher prices for "quality" machines--the difference in pricing being made up by demonstrators who came to the purchaser's house and taught her how to use the machine--that that is the model for modern commerce. Funny how people like to tack "free riding" onto any discussion of practices that benefit consumers...

"Service" is not what the majority of consumers are looking for. And, ironically, since we are talking about a case that is essentially about whether PSKS, dba Kay's Kloset, can discount a fucking handbag, case-by-case (a.k.a. "rule of reason") examination does not gibe with the better service argument. What sort of demonstration of how to use a handbag does this "scholar" envision? Do women need to be instructed on how to put things in the bag ("no, Mrs. Teakettle--that set of encyclopedias won't fit into the bag. Try something smaller...yes, a packet of tissues will do! Try using your hands. That's it!..."

White's argument really is a very bizarre one: manufacturers ought to be in charge of the retail market. All I can think to say to that is, "if they wanted to be so in charge, why are they not retailers themselves?" To which, I might answer myself, "ah, yes. Because manufacturers who are also retailers tend to dominate the market, thereby becoming...what's the word? Oh, 'trusts."' Vertical integration beyond a certain point--that being of a manufacturer into retail, has long been the sine qua non of trusts. But White treats it as though it is the natural order of things, for reasons I can't imagine. I'm serious: what the fuck is he talking about? Minimum pricing means only that wholesalers can jack prices up--they know for certain what retailers will make. The words "free market" have been thrown around a lot in reference to this case, but I can't think of less appropriate terms to describe this proposal.

I will reiterate 2 points here that, it seems to me, are the only ones worth consideration.

1. If the per se ruling is overturned, then all consumer goods become fair game for price-fixing. "Rule of reason" cases are long and involved. And every single thing you can buy at retail will have to be contested--you don't think manufacturers will let the keys to the kingdom gather rust, do you?

2. Manufacturers should not control retailers. This, it seems to me, is plain. Manufacturers make things, and then they set a wholesale price. Once the commodity has been purchased, it belongs, by definition, to the purchaser. And at that point, the purchaser ought to be able to do whatever the fuck he wants to do with it. In this case, a retailer has already paid for the product. The manufacturer has received the money. Now the manufacturer, in my view, no longer has any connection whatsoever to the product. This seems to me a very simple fact. What is the problem that has prevented most SCOTUS observers from also seeing this fact?

Inserting the manufacturer into the equation is like any uninvolved third party interposing itself into a transaction. Say Jim prints T-shirts with original designs on them. He sells his shirts to a local shop, which in turn retails them. The shop pays Jim for the shirts at the point of exchange, then prices them accordingly. Is it any of Jim's business what the shop charges?

Appendix: the only way I could see the argument for continued interference from the manufacturer after purchase is in the case of intellectual property. We already do this with movies and music, in terms of limiting the resale venues and methods. However, even the recording industry doesn't set the retail price of products in stores. Online, on iTunes, it negotiated a minimum price of $0.99 or whatever.

If Leegin Leather Products could show some artistic/creative claim for protection of the brand, then maybe I'd be sympathetic. But instead, we're talking about taking the retail market we all know and use and detroying it so that manufacturers can turn the greatest possible profit by restricting consumer choice and replacing savings with "service."

However, I also think that from an economics point of view, overturning Dr. Miles would erase decades of innovation in retail. Not that Amazon.com would collapse overnight (but it certainly could, if all its wholesalers simultaneously sued to prevent discounting), but such a ruling would make all categories of goods fair game for re-evaluation.

This includes food. Many people shop at certain grocery stores for certain items. For instance, a less-profitable store might sell a gallon of milk for $2.00 when it's sold for $3.85 everywhere else. This "loss leader" draws people into the store, and while there they buy other things at regular or higher prices, and the store makes money. If you are a savvy consumer--like my mom--you only buy the milk and then go somewhere else for all your other groceries. In short, you save money. But, in most cases, the grocery store makes money due to a sophisticated grasp of economics and pricing flexibility; and importantly, the milk producer already got paid in full.

Contrast that with what Leegin represents: all milk, everywhere, is $3.85. There is no reason, except geographical convenience, to shop at a given store. Hell, all milk might be $17.99, just because that's what milk producers think it should be. And, until enough people sue, that's what it can be.

There are so many things wrong with this whole case that it baffles me.

My Mom Says I'm Cool

Do people still blog? Friendster died a quick death; MySpace ought soon to do the same. What of Blogs? Has the contraction of online opinion media begun, whereby a few sites grow larger and more influential while the small and unconnected (in many senses) wither and disappear?

Or are blogs not cool anymore?

Were they ever cool? Can they live indefinitely, uncool or not?

Don't Eat at Chaim's

Have you ever read the Book of Leviticus? You should--it's the foundational text for most of the hateful shit that comes out of religious people's mouths. Bonus: it's short.

Leviticus is some stone age shit; it comes third in most Bibles, after Genesis and Exodus. It is named for the Levites, or Hebrew priests, and details their rules of conduct and behavior generally. My 1963 Methodist Publishing House (it must be busy!) Bible says parts of Leivitcus were written in 600 BC during the Babylonian captivity (seems a dubious claim), but the book was not finished for more than 200 years, at about the time Genesis and the other Old Testament books were being assembled.

A very good question is why anybody gives a second thought to the Old Testament at all; after all, Christ's death on the lower-case "t" wiped out all our problems, right? And, since we are putatively His disciples--that is, "Christians"--Mike has made an excellent point, which is that we are not Hebrews, or Levites, or any other sect that has any reason to feel bound by the rules set forth in Leviticus.

Some might say, as the Methodist Publishing House introduction of 1963 did, that sayings from Leviticus (like "Love thy neighbor as thyself" (19:18)) are "as good today as when it was first given to the people." But others would counter that nobody needs a 2400-year-old saying to know that they're supposed to be nice. Still others might say that such a notion smacks of socialism (well, duh! Jesus was a total communist subversive...read the Bible!), and that in our day and age we owe no such thing to society. Naturally, people who take that last tack, at least in their actions if not their phony platitudes, are capitalist, Republican, white, affluent Americans in the main.

And besides "giving" the people instructions to "love thy neighbor," Leviticus also instructs them to stone others to death for offenses ranging from accidents (a stranger eating sacred food), to misspeaking (blasphemy; Lev. 24:13), to bestiality, to adultery. Leviticus also contains the second "eye for an eye" passage of the Old Testament (24:20).

But if you really read the damn thing, it isn't so ghastly as you might think.

Mainly, it is an ancient health code. Most of the instructions seem to be straightforward plans to prevent food poisoning (e.g., don't eat meat that's been laying out for more than 3 days; don't eat shellfish, which spoil easily), the spread of germs (don't touch clean things with unclean hands, and vice-versa), and the stain of blood--which clearly they thought was a carrier of infection.

The significance of blood for the Hebrews seems very important. Menstruating women were not to be seen, touched, or given the sweet, sweet ministrations of the disciples of the god Fornicatos. All animals were to be drained of blood entirely before being eaten. And so on.

Of course, everyone knows the most famous passage from Leviticus, the one upon which its reputation as a hateful text is founded, verse 20:13: "If a man lies with a male as with a woman, both of them have committed an abomination; they shall be put to death, their blood is upon them."

So God hates fags right? It could be read that way--if by God, you mean "the deity of Levites 2600-2400 years ago," and if you're willing to overlook the strong possibility that over the course of hundreds of translations many parts of our modern Bible have become garbled or changed completely, and if you accept that the Bible is totally direct in its meaning, and also if you like to pick-and-choose from among rules written for wholly different religions that have no connection whatsoever to our modern Christianity, and...well, so forth.

As for the "abomination," Leviticus also says this: "But anything in the seas or the rivers that has not fins and scales...is an abomination to you." (11:10) Also abominations: some birds (11:13-19); most insects (11:20-23); most reptiles and amphibians (11:29-31); anything forbidden animals touch (11:32); and all "swarming creatures" (11: 41). There are more. Look them up. "Abomination" was to the Levites what "like" or "awesome" are to us: everything was, like, awesomely abominable back then.

I think, though, that the connection of "blood" holds the probable root of the instruction not to have gay sex. As Rictor Norton pointed out, to the early gay culture in Europe fellatio was almost unheard of--it was all buggery. Likely, 600-400 BC, gay sex was also mainly of the anal variety. To be blunt: when you fuck somebody in the ass, they bleed. It's noticeable.

So if you were to think about the rules in Leviticus a little bit...hmmm...maybe, just maybe, a rational person would conclude that the Hebrews had a hangup with blood. They didn't like it, not in their food, not in their women's vaginas, not on their persons--and so not on their dicks and asses, either. Every condemned person was said to "have blood upon them."

Verses 17:10-11: "If any man of the house of Israel or any of the strangers that sojourn among them eats any blood, I will set my face against that person who eats blood and will cut him off from among his people. For the life of the flesh is in the blood; and I have given it for you upon the altar to make atonement for your souls..."

I'm no fancy big city theologian, so I can't say why that's so significant to the Levites and the Hebrews, but it would appear far, far more plausible that what they were trying to do was forbid any practices that led to exposure to blood than to argue without context or evidence that God said homos are bad.

If you want to go that route, He also said that adulterers were to be stoned to death--are you listening, Religious Right? Not to mention, you're so fucked if you like rare steaks...

He's Not Totally Wrong

First responders are sometimes not the people you'd want first on the scene. In many localities, "first responder" is code for "we have a lot of idle firemen who don't do very much most of the time, so we need to give them some busy work, efficiency be damned!"

Sen. Wayne Allard agrees.

Procreation is Good

God is pro-life--we can make that leap in logic. We can ascertain His views from the historical record. How else to explain His will to place upon the Spanish throne a retarded, impotent boy whose jaw was so malformed he couldn't eat?

I will always have a soft spot in my heart (head?) for that portrait. That was the artist trying to make the king look good! Can you imagine what he really looked like?

Clearly, the Great Lawgiver intended the reign of Charles II to demonstrate to all mankind that He loves human life so much that He will put the lives of millions in the hands of an easily-manipulated simpleton. The moral might be that bortion is bad, mmmmkay?

Or, He's a mad comic genius. Or he doesn't exist. You pick.