Sunday, January 20, 2008

Go Chargers!

Their three best players are hurt, they're a slow-starting team against the best front-runners ever, they're a SoCal team playing in frigid New England --- what could go wrong?

Five minutes to kickoff. Go Chargers!

UPDATE (3:35): 3-0, can't lose now.

UPDATE (4:32): 14-6, Chargers driving inside the 25 with 18 seconds before halftime. Stall. About to kick a field goal. The San Diego defense has been very impressive containing the Pats. Take away the interceptions, and it's a very close game.

UPDATE (4:45): Halftime. Shannon Sharpe's take on the NFC game: "You want to play man-to-man, talent against talent. Unfortunately, some woman showed up, and that's mother nature." It's true; chicks ruin football. Also, Dan Marino's cell-phone went off three times during the halftime report. Jesus H. Christ, laces out, Dan.

UPDATE (5:17): Cromartie intercepts Brady with NE on the 2 yard line. The San Diego defense is pwning New England. The offense is playing damn well too. Just fucking finish a drive.

UPDATE (5:55): Goddamn. Once again, New England looks beatable, isn't beaten.

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Friday, January 18, 2008

New At PJM

I have a piece up called "Hillary Clinton's Democracy Problem," about the New York senator's attempt to prevent Obama-supporting casino and hotel workers from voting in the Nevada caucuses. I wrote the piece just before the ruling came down throwing out the pro-Clinton lawsuit, so there are a couple of seams in the tenses, but basically it all stands.

One argument against the Nevada teachers union suit I didn't mention, and should have, is that the Democratic Party of Nevada is a private organization, the caucuses are its meetings, and it has a right to organize them any way it wants to. If the Nevada Dems wanted to awarded 99% of the delegates to the winner of the World Series of Poker, and the remaining 1% to winner of the statewide vote, that would be their right.

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Thursday, January 17, 2008

New At The Guardian

At the Democratic debate in Las Vegas the other night, all three candidates pledged to support the odious Solomon Amendment. No one seemed to notice, including Tim Russert, who asked the question. I did notice, though.

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Monday, January 14, 2008

The Daily Show

Wow, Jon Stewart really needs writers:

"If you taped over your child's birthday video with a martyrdom message, you might be an Islamofascist"... and so on, to the tune of Jeff Foxworthy's "you might be a redneck" spiel.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Divisional Playoffs Blogging

Wow, what a great weekend. 3 of the 4 teams in the conference championships are sctually likable, while the most loathsome franchise in sports went down to ignominious defeat, and Tony Romo cemented his reputation as a choke-artist. What do you suppose the over/under on how long it takes TO to start attacking his coaches and teammates publicly?

The dark cloud on the horizon, of course, is the inevitable perfect season and superbowl championship of the second most loathsome franchise in sports. The Jaguars were able to shut down Randy Moss --- at the cost of an anemic pass rush and enabling Brady to pick them apart with everything else he had at his disposal. What might a winning strategy against the Patriots look like? Another way of asking this is, is there any plausible scenario in which the Patriots don't win everything?

Also, happy as I am with the Giants winning, it's time to stop defining successful quarterbacking down for Eli Manning. Throwing 12/18 for 173 yds and 2 touchdowns may yield a respectable QB rating --- which just goes to show that the rating algorithm is imperfect --- but all it indicates is competent game management.

UPDATE: Jesus, TO had a Hillary Clinton moment in the post-game presser, weeping at perceived press criticism of "my quarterback."

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Wednesday, January 09, 2008

I'm An International Punk

So, some news: I've got a piece at the Guardian's Comment is Free about the substance behind Barack Obama's "change and hope" theme --- and why it's congenial to libertarianism.

Also, Jamie Kirchick wrote a fairly devastating expose of Ron Paul's twenty year history of trading in racism, anti-Semitism, anti-gay bigotry, and conspiracy theories. I've got a companion piece at Pajamas Media, basically just cataloging some of the especially flagrant remarks in the Ron Paul Political Report.

Well, Matt Drudge linked to my PJM piece, and within about 15 minutes, it got more traffic than everything else I've ever written combined, or very nearly. True fact: Drudge rules the world.

Going in, I was fully aware of the buckets and buckets of bile the Paulites were going to hurl at me, but I thought that by being a libertarian, and explicitly stating that I was writing the piece as a libertarian, I'd be somewhat insulated. On the other hand, this was inevitable:

Daniel Koffler was James Kirchik's classmate at Yale.

This is the same story told by the original author's friend, yet passed off as another source in perfect disinformation style.

How do these things get so orchestrated and precisely timed?

That's right, the whole thing was a Skull & Bones/Illuminati/Bohemian Grove conspiracy to bring down Ron Paul.

My favorite response of all was the one I found at this anti-Semitic conspiracy nut web forum, under the heading "Other jews [sic] pick up TNR attack on Ron Paul." The thread begins begins:
Hi Alex,

Another hit piece, this time by Daniel Koffler (a Jew).

Then the webmaster quotes my bio and reacts to it:
Daniel Koffler graduated from Yale in 2006 with a BA in philosophy. He has written for Reason, Dissent, Jewcy, and the Guardian’s “Comment is Free,” among other outlets.

For people who think we overestimate the jewish [sic] network - this punk is one year out of school and he's writing for international publications. That does not happen without incredible connections. Jews are virtually the only people apart from sons of presidents who have those connections.
So true!

I'll be on the radio in Houston and Dallas tomorrow at 11:20 talking about the Ron Paul revelations. You can listen here.

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Thursday, January 03, 2008

In Soviet Union, Tonight Show Watches You

Celebrating his return back to the air tonight, Jay Leno took questions from the audience. Here was one:

"Mr. Leno, do you think you'll ever bring your fine show to Branson, Missouri?"

"Missouri," naturally, was pronounced "Mizzur-a."

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