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Linking Fool Friday

It's been all GMU basketball all week around these parts. Here's a couple other things.

Atrios explains why not so much good news is reported from Iraq in terms that any dope should be able to understand. The UCC has some good new ads but can't get them aired, because the networks wouldn't want to offend anyone who hates gay people, now would they.

Teh sports: Frank Robinson can be scary. Can anyone actually tell the difference between cockfighting and Phillies baseball? And finally, it must be hard to be a Jets fan.

Fewer fat cats = Boo freakin' hoo

After Abramoff, Nats Fear It's Out With the Hill Crowd

But with the start of the new season a week away, Nationals executives fear their popularity among the federal elite might decline. They are concerned that a significant piece of their business could be affected in the aftermath of the Jack Abramoff bribery and corruption scandal, which is leading many lobbyists and elected officials to reconsider how and where they do business.
[...]
The Nationals say they will go ahead with their plan to include 78 luxury suites at their new 41,000-seat ballpark on the Anacostia River because they are confident they can make up the difference from any lost business from lobbyists. "Lobbying is just one small part of the commercial population that is out there," Tavares said. "There are other parts of the D.C. economy that can fill the demand."

Like, you know, regular fans. Maybe you could change the plans a little so that more good seats are priced at a point where you don't have to have an expense account to buy them.

Ha! Ha! I crack myself up sometimes.

Mason Mania

Mrs. Fool rounded up the Little Fools yesterday and headed over to campus yesterday, to pick up a work-suitable GMU shirt as a surprise for me (my old green sweatshirt probably won't meet the office dress code, even on casual Friday). She's a good woman, that one.

She was greeted first by a screaming horde. CBS had a camera crew in the Johnson Center (the student union-type building, for the unfamiliar), and got the students to have an informal pep rally, which didn't take much coaxing at all. Next, she was greeted by an immense line snaking out of the bookstore. That line turned out to be the wait for the official Final Four/DC region champions T-shirt, which apparently was due in early yesterday afternoon. She was able to grab a lovely green polo shirt, a window decal (I have a "GMU alumni" decal somewhere, but I never stuck it on the car), and a purple teddy bear in a little green GMU shirt, and waited a good 20 minutes to check out.

Suffice to say, it's freakin' crazy over there. Just today, they were to have a live report on Good Morning America, a live broadcast by the Sports Junkies, a pep rally at 11:30, and another one on the loading dock of the Patriot Center at 2 to wave goodbye to the team bus as it heads for the airport.

Like the good corporate slave that I am, I didn't blow off work to attend these events today. But I am planning on hitting Brion's Grill for lunch on Friday. That's pretty much THE Mason bar/restauarnt--across the street from the Patriot Center, they take the GMU meal card, and they have a Jim Larranaga burger (honey mustard barbecue sauce, banana peppers, and jack cheese).

ESPN's state-by-state poll earlier today was "How will George Mason fare in the Final Four?" A plurality of the country, and 49 states, believes they'll lose to the Gators. Virginia, of course, is the home of the true believers, who think they'll win it all.

And why the hell not? SI's Stewart Mandel says the Patriots might not do any one thing better than everyone else at the Final Four, but they also have no obvious weakness. If I had to nominate one, I'd say depth--the bench played a grand total of 25 minutes against UConn, and Mason didn't make a single substitution from about midway through the second half. Thomas, Skinn and Bulter finished with four fouls. A team with a good frontcourt (say, Florida or LSU) that was willing to relentlessly pound the ball inside could get Lewis and Thomas in foul trouble, which would be bad news for GMU.

But that won't happen, now will it? Let the ride continue!

A curious comment

I don't get many comments here on the FoolBlog, and when I do it's usually from one of the usual suspects. So when something out of the ordinary comes in, I have to take notice.

I put up a post on the abortion debate on March 7. Saturday, I got a comment from a "Kizzy Vazquez" that is just about the length of a novel. Ms. Vazquez claims to have had an abortion two days prior, owing to pressure from her boyfriend and her own financial situation, and is extremely depressed over it.

You will forgive my skepticism, but I figured this was an anti-choice boilerplate "abortion is terrible for women" piece, and that I'd find it here and there in the blogosphere. After all, why, two days after her abortion, would this woman post her piece as a comment to a two-week-old post on a crappy blog with six readers? But there's nothing on Snopes, and it's not showing up on Technorati or Google (there is a Kizzy Vazquez who's a real estate agent in New York; no idea if it's the same person).

"Kizzy" almost had me; the first draft of this reply post was very careful to be respectful, and made counter-points "if this is for real." But then I re-read the paragraph where she lists her "symptoms," and they sounded too much like an anti-abortion laundry list. Sure enough, I found more or less the same thing here, in the "psychological effects of abortion" section.

Takeaway points:
1. The key word is "choice." If "Kizzy" wanted her baby so badly, she should have stood up to her boyfriend and had the baby. The pro-life movement likes to say there's always a way; maybe she could have asked one of those groups for help. Because, you know, they're so famous for helping the newborn children of the economically disadvantaged.
2. Should women considering an abortion take the psychological after-effects into account? Sure. Do I trust the anti-choice movement to accurately represent those effects? Not so much. Will all women react the same to an abortion? No.
3. Haven't you learned anything from that Ben Domenech kid? Don't make your propaganda so easily Google-able.

OMG GMU WTF LOL

"They don't measure heart by inches. They don't measure courage; they don't measure basketball instinct and intelligence."
--Connecticut Coach Jim Calhoun

"Fellas, I want to tell you one thing. There's no place I'd rather be right now than here with you guys playing this game. You lapsed on defense for five seconds, so now we have to beat Connecticut for another five minutes. There's no reason we can't do it."
--Coach Larranaga, after regulation. Count me among those who thought the Patriots were done for after UConn tied it. The man is a great motivator.

"You play this tournament again from the beginning, you probably have four different teams."
--Florida coach Billy Donovan, seen on SportsCenter this morning

"You deserve this."
"No, Liz, a lot of coaches deserve this."
"Well, let their wives worry about them."
--Liz & Jim Larranga

Anybody want to go to Indianapolis next weekend?

Masoooooooooooon.
MASOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOON!
GEORGE MASON!

Nats tickets on the block

Don't want to end up eating any tickets, so I'm going to start pimping these now. Any local FoolBlog readers who want to buy a pair of these, shoot me an e-mail.

Section 515, Row 4, Seats 7-8. $32 for each pair, which is face value. Great seats for the money.

Thursday, April 13, 1:05 PM, Mets
Sunday, April 23, 8:05 PM, Braves
Thursday, May 4, 7:05 PM, Fish
Tuesday, May 23, 7:05 PM, Astros
Thursday, June 8, 7:05 PM, Phils
MondayJune 12, 7:05 PM, Rocks
Sunday, July 2, 1:05 PM, Devil Rays
Thursday, July 6, 1:05 PM, Fish
Thursday, August 10, 7:05 PM, Fish
Tuesday, August 29, 7:05 PM, Phils
Sunday, September 3, 7:05 PM, Snakes
Tuesday, September 5, 7:05 PM, Cardinals
Sunday, September 17, 1:05 PM, Brewers
Tuesday, September 19, 7:05 PM, Braves

Linking Fool Friday

Holy CRAP I have a lot to do today. Let's knock this out.

A good reason to raise your kids to be confident and secure. Also, make your kids go outside every once in a while.

Yeah, things in Iraq are fucking fantastic, and we've made things so much better for the Iraqi people. If only those of us who are opposed to the war would shut up, everything would be perfect.

A couple months ago here in NoVA, police sent a SWAT team to arrest a guy suspected of running a gambling ring, which seemed a bit of overkill considering that he had no priors and was not considered particularly dangerous. While he was surrendering, one of the cops accidentally shot him. Kieran Healy has a good item on why SWAT teams get overused.

You can argue about who's right and whether it matters, but I still get a kick out of this coffee shop walkout.

Finally, the producers of Snakes on a Plane are additional shots in response to the fan frenzy, hopefully to include Samuel L. Jackson saying "motherfuckin' snakes!"

What I cooked this weekend

I do this every year: mid-March, corned beef and cabbage go on sale, so I pick them up and boil the living crap out of them. The meat is OK, the potatoes are bland, and the cabbage... is just not particularly enjoyable. And there's a trailer-load of it left over.

Culinarily speaking, I'm glad I'm not Irish. But then, my ancestors' culinary speciality is haggis, so I don't have much leverage there.

More hoops

We'll expect an apology from Billy Packer any day now.

In some ways, it must suck to be a fan of a basketball powerhouse like North Carolina. Right now their fans are all crushed and disappointed; this season will be considered a failure. If they had won yesterday, their fans would have been happy, sure, but it would have been shrugged off to a degree. Gotta make the Final Four before they can really celebrate. Here in NoVA, this is a HUGE deal. This is easily the most excited I've ever been about a basketball game--I went to a D3 school for undergrad, and despite their making the national championship game my junior year (and half the team living down the hall from me), people didn't get too hopped up. Now I've actually got ties to a Division I school, they're making waves on the national stage, and it's hella fun.

Of course, it's all a trade-off. In seasons when Mason lost in the CAA tournament and couldn't even get an NIT bid, UNC was all playing in the NCAAs and winning championships and stuff.

Am I the only one who thought Roy Williams was being a whiny little bitch? He didn't look like he was trying to fire up his team; he looked genuinely apopleptic that they were losing, especially when he slammed a chair down near the end. You could almost hear him saying, "This can't be happening! We're North Carolina!" But Roy, that's why they play the games on the court. Some years you win a national championship; other years you get your ass handed to you by a mostly-commuter school.

While the regionals are right here in DC, tickets will be hard to come by. GMU's allocation of tickets are going to students and to season ticket holders (like the sorry fair-weather fan I am, I didn't go to a home game all season). Going for $300 a stub and up on eBay. I'm not that excited.

Father of the Bill of Rights, bitches!

GO PATRIOTS!

License to Ill

Now that the Nats look to be semi-permanent, perhaps the Virginia DMV will come out with Nationals license plates (they already have Redskins tags). If that happens, I may have to spend $20 to finally get vanity tags. The dot-com Internet Capital tags only take six characters, or I'd have had BIGFOOL plates long ago.

I had decided RFK515 would be a good thing to put on a Nats-themed license plate, but unfortunately it's taken. So are 463DP, NATS05, 05NATS, GRAYS, and GIBSON. These are available: MLBSUX, EEPHUS, YOUPPI, THEIBC, and EXPOS.

Any other ideas?

Linking Fool Friday

Good thing we have TV characters to say what our Democratic leaders should say, but don't. Argh.

Long and thoughtful post at Slacktivist, both on the irredeemability of torture, and on how pro-lifers perceive us pro-choicers.

Apparently, one grainy teenage orgy scene is worth almost 8200 mine safety violations.

Quote-tacular: that whole church 'n' state thing. And this one is wildly popular, deservedly: spetacular quotes from the run-up to war in Iraq.

Finally, if you enjoy my "Kids TV Is Bad For You" entries, you'll like Belle Waring's thoughts on Little Einsteins.

FAR A-WAY!

Like I said yesterday.

Big Money Ballpark

A few months ago the DC City Paper forecast that a new stadium for the Nats would be a playground for the rich, but us plebes would have to watch from far a-way. Yesterday, proposed stadium design sketches were released with much fanfare, and not surprisingly the have vs. have-not factor is definitely there. Witness this Post article that says this stadium design is all about revenue generation.

In all, about 8,000 seats will be in the premium category, commanding a significantly higher price than the rest of the seats in the $611 million, taxpayer-funded stadium. The remaining seats, approximately 33,000, will be less expensive season ticket, partial ticket plan and day-of-game seats -- and the vast majority of those lie farther down the baselines, in the outfield or in the upper deck.

"This stadium is being built to reflect the condition of this market, which is a huge corporate presence, a huge lobbying presence and high residential incomes," said Mark Rivers of Brix and Company, a Bethesda-based real estate development company that specializes in sports and entertainment venues.

"Screw the rest of you, you can wait in long lines to eat crappy hot dogs and nachos, and drink Bud Lite for $8 a cup." Rivers went on to say. (OK, no.)

It's hard to really tell from the sketches, but the upper deck sure does look far away from the field. Rather famously, the front row of the upper deck at the new Comiskey Park are farther from the field than the last row of the upper deck at the old Comiskey. I fear we're in for the same treatment here. Yes, that prevents obstructed-view seating, but that's sacrificing the view of thousands to the benefit of a couple hundred. I'd be interested to see a measurement from my current seats to home plate at RFK, and for comparable seats at the new park.

Linking Fool Friday (Monday Edition)

Runnin' late.

Love that right-wing blogosphere self-correction. And their famous civility. Because we here on the left are all just Bush-haters, and are causing us to lose the war in ways that nobody has really been able to specify.

Remember, the innocent have nothing to hide.

Libertarian? Republican? Conservative? If it looks like a duck...

As I've said before, one of my favorite things about writing online is the ability to easily provide links and source data. I read a comment debate a few weeks ago between Oliver Willis and some wingnut that was all "Abstinence programs reduce teen pregnancy!" "No they don't!" I desperately wanted one of them to provide something to back it up, but it didn't happen. Gilliard comes through here.

Back on the abortion front, I get a kick out of the "fire at the fertility clinic" conundrum.

Lastly, teh funny: Live-actor Simpsons intro.

My abortion is necessary and permissible. You are a selfish killer.

This post of Digby's is under heavy discussion right now. He links back to a blog called Responding to the Left, whose author responds to the story of a mother of two who had an abortion rather than a third child she couldn't afford with "[S]he's a selfish woman who was thinking only of herself....Nothing is going to happen to us if we don't have sex." As far as he is concerned, if you can't afford to have a child, you shouldn't do the deed. Period. (I am assuming the author is male; there's no indication on the blog itself that I can find.)

It sure is easy to tell others how they should handle their sex lives, isn't it? But what if it was you? Birth control isn't 100% foolproof; things happen despite our best efforts. Has the author of this post sworn off sex until he's ready to be a father? I always come back to this article on women who are picketing the abortion clinic one day, inside it the next.

"We have anti-choice women in for abortions all the time. Many of them are just naive and ignorant until they find themselves with an unwanted pregnancy. Many of them are not malicious. They just haven't given it the proper amount of thought until it completely affects them. They can be judgmental about their friends, family, and other women. Then suddenly they become pregnant. Suddenly they see the truth. That it should only be their own choice. Unfortunately, many also think that somehow they are different than everyone else and they deserve to have an abortion, while no one else does." (Physician, Washington State)

[...]

Many anti-choice women are convinced that their need for abortion is unique -- not like those "other" women -- even though they have abortions for the same sorts of reasons.

Now, I don't know the proprietor of "Responding to the Left" from Adam. For all I know, he's a virgin waiting until he gets married, or he's trying to have children right now. Or if he is sexually active and got someone pregnant, he'd "do the right thing," whatever that means to him, and help raise the baby.

But suppose he did hook up with some woman, and the condom broke. He doesn't want to marry this girl, and neither of them can afford a kid, and and and... not their fault, right? They did their best to be responsible, but it just happened. And they'd do what they had to do.

Would anyone be too surprised?

Baseball, Ray

The Good: The World Baseball Classic is on. Some think it's a joke, but it's better than regular ol' spring training game. I'm listening to Venezuela vs. the Dominican Republic right now, and in the current inning the DR's first three hitters are Miguel Tejada, Albert Pujols, and David Ortiz. Yikes.

The Bad: Kirby Puckett, RIP. In memoriam: Ball-Wonk, Jackalope, and BatGirl.

The Ugly: Much more detailed news of Barry Bonds' steroid use. This must have just come out, because there doesn't seem to be much reaction in the usual channels as of yet. I expect Bonds to continue to deny all and go ahead and play this year, but if he was booed last year, he ain't heard nothing yet. The calls to strike his records will get louder. I have tickets for Giants-Nats on July 25; for good or for bad, I want to be able to say I saw Bonds at this point in his career; nay, at this point in baseball history.

I have a two-year-old

The Little Fool had a minor tantrum this morning. The trigger: she wanted to touch Mommy's eyeball, and Mommy wouldn't let her.

"You're a mean mommy," I told Mrs. Fool.

Linking Fool Friday

I bowled a 196 on Wednesday. How you like me now?

Everyone knows the Bush administration sucks, right? OK, I won't spend too much more time on that one.

I've been opposed to the Iraq war from the beginning for a lot of reasons, but one that I don't think gets enough play is the cost. "Freedom isn't free!" they shout, but if I proposed we send our entire national budget to Iraq, that wouldn't fly. So there is a limit on the cost of "bringing democracy to the Middle East," it's just a matter of deciding what that limit should be. So now we're stripping our National Guard units at home, and cutting the life out of quality government programs that really don't cost that much, so we can pay through the nose for whatever the hell we're supposed to be accomplishing in Iraq. But it if it is a colossal waste of money and lives, it certainly isn't the fault of the people who called for war in the first place.

Elsewhere: Amsuing unintended benefits of a la carte cable. Sadly, this is why letting people shoot when they "feel threatened" is a bad idea.

I've always thought the best response to an Affirmative Action bake sale was to have someone who gets the lowest price go up and buy their entire stock. I like comment #13's idea even better--use that stock to run your own bake sale at higher prices.

I enjoyed this response to this Atrios post.

Has the poker thing has run its course. Bill Simmons is all gonna play in the WSOP. If he so much as makes the final table, I'm giving up the game.

Finally: Yeah, everyone drives 70 when the speed limit is 55, blah blah. I still enjoyed this video.

This link is good today only

This is why I love Vegas. Plus the gambling, drinking, vast buffet meals, fancy restaurants, and shows.

Did I buy a laptop today?

When I get the urge to post about a bad customer service experience, I stop myself, because I don't want to sound like Pat Reynolds. But this one's truly perplexing.

We're in the market for a new laptop. My company has a discount program with Dell, so I went to their site and picked out the one we wanted, and went through the drag of their offering me every option under the sun. Finally I put in the credit card info and clicked through, and I got a screen saying, in so many words, "You will receive a confirmation e-mail. Thanks for playing."

That's it? No order number? No "print this screen for your records?" Odd.

Four hours later, I ain't got no confirmation e-mail. I go back to Dell's site and log in: "Your profile does not have any orders on record."

What the hell? I call the 800 number, and the outsourced customer service rep tells me "It takes up to 24 hours for the confirmation e-mail to be sent and for the order information to show up in your profile."

Am I the only one who finds this spectacularly lame for an Internet age titan like Dell?