Clareified

I’m wondering…

Where Lileks, Taranto and Kashei stand…

Now that the shoe is on the other foot?

I’m Proud to be an American…

As you’ve all, no doubt, heard by now, American forces (er… I mean Coalition forces) captured Saddam Hussein in a mudhole outside his hometown of Tikrit. What strikes me the most about the operation though, is that these units had orders to kill or capture Saddam. There were loaded guns found with him, but without firing any shots, they simply took him into custody.
The honor in it is quietly beautiful.
Our troops aren’t killers, they’re soldiers and I am proud of them.
I mean the coalition’s troops.

BOY DISCIPLINED FOR EXPLAINING ‘GAY’

I know this story is days old now, which in the blogosphere is virtual history, but I came across this post about it, and was struck by the behavior contract. In the contract the boy is asked to write what he did wrong, how he was punished, what he should have done and what would have happened if he did what he was supposed to do.
Now, granted, he is seven, but the spelling errors are glaring.
I wonder if in the midst of all this hub bub about stopping all talk of “gay” in the classroom or his parents’ civil rights violation lawsuit, did anyone stop to show him how to spell ’said’ or ‘mouth?’
School’s supposed to be about educating him, after all.

You Gotta Ask Yourself…

Did you Vote for Clareified today?

Dawn hearts Dennis

I don’t want to marry him, but I would like to cast my vote for him in the primaries. Will he make it to New York? ABC doesn’t think so. They have decided to pull their embeded reporter from his campaign (as well as the campaigns of Braun and Sharpton).

The network issued a long, long… did I mention long? explanation here, that goes something like this: Yeah, we pulled our reporter, but Dennis still has her phone number and e-mail address.

“The day after Presidential Candidate Dennis Kucinich took ABC debate moderator Ted Koppel to task for avoiding questions that would be useful to voters in favor of questions about endorsements, money, and polls, ABC pulled its fulltime “embedded” reporter from the Kucinich campaign, a reporter who had been given no warning that such a move was coming and who had discussed at length yesterday with the Kucinich campaign staff her plans and her needs for the coming months.”

Michael Craig has some suggestions for protests (and the full story) here.

Supreme Court Makes Death Row Inmate Suffer

As a death penalty opponent, I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.

A Not-So-Simple Look at ‘The Simple Life’

I know conventional wisdom on ‘The Simple Life,’ is that Paris and Nicole are the spoiled losers, who have never done an honest day’s work in their lives. Putting aside that Nicole used to figure skate and is now working on an album, all that may be true.
On the other hand, the Leding’s do not lead a typical life, much less a simple one. I have never plucked a dead chicken in all my days, I only learned about “in and out burger” about five years ago, I’m still not sure what Kroger’s does or sells and Cracker Barrel is a cheese as far as I”m concerned. All that and I grew up Poor’n Pairn. It’s just a cultural difference (like the middle aged man at the barbecue who admitted that he’s never flown anywhere and wouldn’t want to, was America howling with laughter at that?)
Then, I came across this article and while I can’t vouch for his statistics on poverty, the rest of the piece is dead on.

Maybe he’s going to visit his policies

Daily Wire sends President Bush to outer space.

That’s the ring, I’ve been waiting for!

Now, it may be that he is the great Japanese hope of the long suffering Mets, or that he will be playing the Jeter position, but most likely it was when he flashed that 1986 championship ring and promised me that the Mets would earn another one. For that, I pledge my devotion to Kazuo Matsui and hereby coin the term “Kazmaniacs” for all those who will soon follow me.
It’s time to win one for the little boy in Staten Island with a Mets Championship poster on his wall who doesn’t realize that 18 years have passed since that day.

(Disclaimer: As with most NY fandom, this devotion will only last if you are successful and win games.)

THE YANG

I went to my company’s holiday party at the Ritz Carlton yesterday.
It was, as you can imagine, an extravagant affair with four open bars, two full buffet tables, a huge dessert table featuring an assortment of holiday shaped confections and a monster dance floor.
As I looked around at tables of junior associates chatting with our law librarians and senior partners dancing to ‘hip hop hooray’ with legal assistants and mail delivery guys, I was reminded why I decided to work here: the people rock!
Certainly, I have been fortunate enough to have some of the people I work with become friends (and more importantly blog readers, commenters and guest posters) but even the people who are, strictly speaking, co-workers, are incredible.
I spend a good deal of time pouring through documents in huge, windowless conference rooms- but when the other people there can passionately debate whether Buffy season two was series’ best or not, what more could you ask for? (oh, and yes, it was.)
Or working with junior associates who don’t mind singing sitcom theme songs at two in the morning before a court hearing… Yeah, I’m pretty sure “don’t mind” was what they said… I was filling out their evaluations at the time and not really listening. (I keed, I keed)
Of course, who could forget watching the special counsel on my case do the Snoopy dance in the partner’s office when we were told to take the weekend off. That’s right: head tilt, knee raises, fingers in air as he hummed the Charlie Brown theme song.
Classic.
I’ve celebrated five birthdays with the people here (strangely enough, I turned 25 for four of them.) I adopted my next door neighbor’s plant when he left the firm, well, not so much adopted, as saw it sitting on my chair the day after he left, with a note in his handwriting that said “take care of me”
I’ve named it Annie.
There’s the guy in dispatch who mocks me because I haven’t started my Christmas shopping yet, and the cashier who always forgets I understand Spanish as she launches into “secret” conversations with one of the cleaning guys.
Hee hee.
Anyway, the document review room beckons and if I’m late I’ll miss all the good gossip about last night’s ‘after party,’ if you know what I mean.
Heh heh heh.