Category: Uncategorized

Grant Wahl writes on CNN/SI: Strange but true: Portuguese star Cristiano Ronaldo was named for Ronald Reagan, a favorite of his parents. Wonder what the Gipper would think?

If the Gipper saw him play, he’d love it. I’d rather have C. Ronaldo on my team than his more famous counterpart. He was the most dangerous player on the Portuguese side yesterday, and if Ashley Cole hadn’t a) showed incredible stamina and b) played an excellent game, he probably would have scored at least once. The entire game was a battle between the two players but you could tell what tracking Ronaldo was doing taking out of Ashley, as he stopped making his trademark runs up the left side before the end of the first half.

To paraphrase Space Bunny on Ronaldo, “doesn’t that kid ever get tired?” Even at the end of the game, he looked ready to play another 90 minutes. I just wish he didn’t play for bloody United.

Cliff Kincaid writes of Pat Buchanan: It was shocking news that Patrick J. Buchanan, Ronald Reagan’s communications director, is getting $500,000 to write a Bush-bashing book to be titled, Where the Right Went Wrong…. there are disturbing indications that Buchanan, who left the Republican Party in 2000, may even back Ralph Nader for president. Buchanan’s American Conservative Magazine featured a front-page article, “Ralph Nader: Conservatively Speaking. The long-time progressive makes a pitch for the disenfranchised Right”….

Yet Buchanan’s magazine sounds increasingly like a left-wing publication with its constant talk of America’s “empire” around the world. This is a variation of the old Soviet line that the U.S. wants to dominate and control the world. It’s disconcerting to see conservatives who played key roles in fighting communism using such noxious terminology.

First, Pat Buchanan is never going to endorse Ralph Nader, who is a neosocialist egomaniac. However, there is a real point of connection between a leftist like Nader, true conservative like Buchanan and a libertarian such as myself. All three of us are diametrically opposed to the sacrifice of national sovereignty embraced by the Democratic Party and the dominant Bush-worshipping faction of the Republican Party.

What Kincaid and many other economically-illiterate Republicans fail to understand is that America does have an empire. It is a shadow empire, to be sure, but it weighs more heavily and is felt more strongly than the Roman or British empires ever were in their dominions. Ironically, the empire of the Imperial Dollar has never been more fragile or more in danger of collapsing than today, and with its inevitable collapse will come the reduction of America’s stature on the world stage.

Nader’s solutions are likely to prove disastrous than helpful, but unlike Bush and Kerry, he is neither invested in the present system of interlocking globalist institutions nor interested in sacrificing American interests to them. Pat Buchanan realizes this, and in the very fact of the two distinctly different men finding common ground, demonstrates how the most deadly danger to the long-term existence of America lies within.

There is a bitter joke in South Africa: what is the difference between Thabo Mbeki and Robert Mugabe? About ten years. As Mugabe drives Zimbabwe ever deeper into socialist nightmare by murdering the nation’s only productive class and confiscating their property in order to turn it over to feckless squatters, Mbeki gives South Africans clear warning of his long-term intentions to transform that country into yet another Left-wing African hellhole.

“In this climate taxation is depicted as the confiscation of what is properly our own — an intolerable burden that should be reduced. The social, the collective and the public realm are portrayed as the enemies of prosperity and individual autonomy… and worse are opposed to the moral basis of society grounded as it should be in the absolute responsibility of individuals to shoulder their burdens and exercise their rights alone.”

He [Mbeki] noted that [UK columnist Will] Hutton argues that Western democracies had been characterised by “one broad family of ideas that might be called Left — a belief in the social, reduction in inequality, the provision of public services, the principle that workers should be treated as assets rather than commodities, regulation of enterprise, rehabilitation of criminals, tolerance and respect for minorities — and another broad family of ideas that might be called Right: An honouring of our inherited institutional fabric, a respect for order, a belief that private property rights and profit are essential to the operation of the market economy, a suspicion of worker rights, faith in the remedial value of punitive justice and distrust of the new.”

Mbeki emphasised that there could “be no doubt about where we stand” with regard to this “great divide”. It is to pursue the goals contained in what Hutton called ideas “that might be called” Left.

At least Mbeki, unlike the majority of American Democrats who should more properly be termed Democratic Socialists, understands what it is he is rejecting in turning his back on law, order, private property, and age-old institutions. He is the more intelligent form of political evil, whereas the American “liberal” is, by comparison, evil’s idiot cousin, always deluding himself that he is honoring the past by defecating on the present and “fighting” to destroy the future.

I have long loathed referees. From my childhood, when a zebra cost the Vikings one of their best chances to win a Super Bowl in handing the Dallas Cowboys a victory by allowing not one, but two blatant push-offs by Drew Pearson. Almost thirty years later, I don’t think there’s a Viking fan who regrets the bottle with which somebody clocked the ref responsible.

Basketball refs are the absolute bottom, as they haven’t made a correct travelling call in decades and hardcore NBA fans like the Sports Guy openly joke about the corruption of David Stern’s personal referee, Dick Bavetta. Need to get the Knicks or Lakers into the next round? Don’t bet against them if Bavetta is on the floor.

Soccer refs run the gamut, from Collino to the pink-clad Brazilian league prancer who has to be seen to be believed. But all of them, from the world-class FIFA level on down to the local high school have a terrible, terrible habit that probably reduces global scoring at least 5 percent. If the ball is loose in the goalie’s six-yard box and the referee can’t see what is going on, he will always blow the whistle and call a phantom foul on the attacking team.

That’s precisely what happened to England this afternoon, as they scored in the 90th minute to go up 2-1 just before the final whistle against Portugal. They hadn’t played well and Sven showed his Italian roots by trying to go into a defensive shell for 70 minutes after Wayne Rooney got hurt, but they did score. Except, according to the referee, who was some 20 yards away from the action and in no position to see, John Terry committed a foul on the Portugese keeper as Sol Campbell was heading the ball in.

It was a horrible, horrible call and I wouldn’t have blamed Sven if he’d pulled his squad off the field in protest. The linesman, who was standing right there, signaled goal, but was overruled by the idiot referee. One thing soccer refs should learn from basketball refs is to let play go on in the last minute of the game, especially when they can’t even see what is happening!

A lot of fans hate penalties, but I quite like them. It’s always interesting to see who chokes under pressure. For all that he’s possessed of the golden foot, Beckham shouldn’t ever be allowed to take penalties as they are primarily about psychology, not skill. He missed, unsurprisingly, as did Rui Costa – another midfielder, for some reason highly skilled midfielders are quite often bad at taking penalties – and then, the almost completely useless Vassell managed to take a lousy one that put England out.

Portugal was the better team once Rooney went out, but it’s ridiculous that a stupid Swiss ref should be responsible for knocking England out of the tournament. At this point only the Swedes look like they can play with France, although you can never rule out the headcases from Holland, who can look awful against a weak team and great against a strong one.

I’m working on creating some web forms. I understand the HTML tags, what I’m not sure about is where to call the executable action. Is this something that has to be done by the hosting server, or is it more like Java where you just put out the call and it simply runs? The examples I’ve seen tend to suggest the latter, but I need to understand this better before I can move on.

From the Sun: FORMER President Bill Clinton is having a passionate affair with a wealthy divorcee behind wife Hillary’s back, a US magazine claims. The allegation comes in the wake of the publication of Mr Clinton’s autobiography My Life, in which he talks about his infamous fling with Monica Lewinsky.

But the National Enquirer alleges that Mr Clinton, 57, has been seeing a beautiful blonde for more than a year at a hideaway in Westchester County, New York. The magazine does not name the woman, but says she has several young children and got millions in a divorce settlement a few years ago. She is allegedly the daughter of a wealthy Clinton supporter.

An insider tells the Enquirer: “Bill Clinton has been sneaking off to the home of this woman for late-night trysts after her kids are in bed.”

You just can’t keep a bad man down. Or in Bill’s case, shut him up. I thought the whole idea was to move on?

Mark 1:10-11

Authorized version: “And straightway coming up out of the water, he saw the heavens opened, and the Spirit like a dove descending upon him. And there came a voice from the heaven saying, Thou art my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased.”

New: “As he was climbing up the bank again, the sun shone through a gap in the clouds. At the same time a pigeon flew down and perched on him. Jesus took this as a sign that God’s spirit was with him. A voice from overhead was heard saying, ‘That’s my boy! You’re doing fine!'”

Matthew 26:69-70

Authorized version: “Now Peter sat without in the palace: and a damsel came unto him, saying, ‘Thou also wast with Jesus of Galilee.’ But he denied before them all, saying, I know not what thou sayest.”

New: “Meanwhile Rocky was still sitting in the courtyard. A woman came up to him and said: ‘Haven’t I seen you with Jesus, the hero from Galilee?” Rocky shook his head and said: ‘I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about!'”

In keeping with the times, translator Henson deftly translates “demon possession” as “mental illness” and “Son of Man,” the expression Jesus frequently used to describe himself, as “the Complete Person.” In addition, parables are rendered as “riddles,” baptize is to “dip” in water, salvation becomes “healing” or “completeness” and Heaven becomes “the world beyond time and space.”

It sounds to me like someone has been hitting the bong very, very hard.

I’ve been working on improving my Italian, so I decided to tackle translating some the columns that Umberto Eco, one of my favorite writers, writes regularly for L’Espresso. Please note that this translation is without doubt riddled with errors and that the views expressed do not reflect my own. I’m not finished with this one yet, as there’s a few references that are presently beyond me, but as the subject seems timely, I thought I’d post part of it now:

The Passion is a film that wants to rake in lots of money by offering lots of blood and enough violence to make Pulp Fiction look like an animated cartoon. Well, yes, since I was fearing a series of questions, I decided to resolve the affair once and for all and went to see Mel Gibson’s Passion….I must quickly say that this film, which was done very well in technical terms, is not an expression of antisemitism or of Christian fundamentalism, but instead of an obsession with the mysticism of a gory sacrifice. It is splatterpunk, a film intended to rake in lots of money by offering oceans of blood and enough violence to make Pulp Fiction look like an animated cartoon for a children’s school. Except a cartoon like Tom and Jerry never places the whole object of the lesson in the incidents where the characters are flattened like CDs being crushed by a steamroller, where they are falling from skyscrapers and broken into a million pieces or crushed behind a door. There is so much blood, gallons of it, that it appears to have been harvested by the work of every vampire in Transylvania, and brought to the set by ten tanker-trucks….

Gibson’s hatred for the Nazarene must be inexpressable, who can say what ancient repressions he harbors as he pours more and more torture onto the Nazarene’s body, and thank God the story does not permit him, otherwise he would have applied electrodes to Christ’s testicles and poured gasoline into his wounds. This would give a healthy jolt to the mystery of Salvation…. Gibson leaps at the idea that Jesus had to suffer; like Poe, he thinks that the most moving and romantic thing is the death of a beautiful girl, and he senses that the more profitable ‘splatter’ will be that in which he puts the Son of God in a meatgrinder. There, he succeeds extremely well and I must say that, when Jesus is finally dead and has finished his suffering, (or enjoyment), when the hurricane is unleashed, the earth shakes and the Temple veil is torn, we find a certain emotion in that moment, we discern a hint of that transcendence that the film does such a disastrous disservice.

Yes, at that point the Father makes his voice heard. But the enlightened viewer, (and, I hope, the believer), perceives that at that point, it is with him and Mel Gibson that the Father is pissed off.

Dread Pirate writes of a friend: …he basically told me that he could not believe in anything that he himself could not understand. He does not believe that anyone should go to hell, or (for that matter) that hell even exist. However, he believes that everyone should go to heaven. It simply not fair that some should go to hell, especially if one is really seeking truth, but rejects God; or any other kind of diety.

That’s an interesting approach to life. Does he understand how x-rays work? Does he believe in them? Whatever the example, modern life is so complex that there is not a single person, however intelligent and educated, who understands everything. And yet, we have no problem believing whatever a sufficiently large number of people around us happen to believe.

If your friend doesn’t believe in Hell, why does he believe in Heaven? And what does fairness have to do with anything, much less reality? Attempting to ascertain reality through fairness is bizarre – had the situation not been so sad, I would have laughed out loud in the days after a schoolmate died in a car accident and everyone was lamenting the unfairness of it all and wondering why, oh why, did this happen? Well, the girl didn’t wear a seatbelt, drove like a maniac, took a corner too fast and rolled the car. Try it 100 times and you’ll get pretty much the same result almost every time, cause and effect. No great mystery there. Was it fair that she died? Yes, the laws of physics and biology demanded it.

Now, the Bible and the story of Christianity are either true or they are not. Your friend wants to hang onto the parts he likes, and ignore the parts he doesn’t. That’s absurd. If he wants to reject the whole thing, that’s fine, he should reject it all and indulge himself in wine, women and song for he only has a few short decades before his consciousness is obliterated into nothing. Encourage him to be honest with himself and follow his bliss, so to speak.

Not once does the Christian God claim to be fair. He claims to be just – everyone has sinned and is therefore damned. But He is also merciful – He offers a Way out to all. You don’t have to take it, but if you don’t, then be prepared to suffer the consequences. The unbeliever accepts this cheerfully because he rejects the totality. It is only the wishy-washy half-believer who suffers mental turmoil, because he cannot commit either way. But what he wants or what he thinks should be is as utterly irrelevant to the question of the existence of Hell as it is to the existence of Toledo.

It always amazes me that people don’t understand the parable of the wheat and the chaff. If you can’t believe or refuse to bow down before God’s Son, then you are essentially worthless in God’s eyes, you have failed in the purpose for which you were created and you will be tossed aside as useless trash. Don’t think that’s fair? So what. Fairness never entered into the equation.

That’s the headline – angry with the result from Oporto. And, here come the conspiracies. Never mind the fact that the Danes and the Swedes were the best two teams in the group and deserved to progress. Italy almost lost to Bulgaria – they would have if Bulgaria’s striker had been capable of putting away an excellent one-on-one chance with Buffon. But instead of accepting their own responsibility, they’d rather complain that the other teams were too clever, as the Corriere della Sera writes of the tomatoes they will throw at Denmark for allowing the late tying goal: Chissà come si dice «imbarazzati» in danese, e magari in svedese. “Who knows how you say embarrassed in Danish, and maybe in Swedish.”

What’s silly is that Italy was losing at the time the Swedes scored and the Azzurri have no one to blame but themselves for not putting away either Denmark or Sweden in the first two games. Italy was dominating Sweden in the first half, they went into their trademark defensive shell in the second and gave the two points away. The Italian press was screaming that Trappatoni was too conservative after the World Cup; it so happens that they were right and he should have been replaced. The Swedes destroyed Bulgaria, the Danes beat them soundly and Italy had to score in the 94th minute to steal the win.

Italy and Spain have conclusively proven that you can have all the talent in the world, but if your manager is going to saddle you with a defensive approach that simply hopes individual talent will create something out of nothing, you’re going to lose. I’d much rather see the wide-open styles of the Scandinavians going forward anyhow.

PS – the Pan-Gargler blogged that he’s getting tired of all the soccer and baseball blogging on the net. To him, I quote the greatest one-line put-down of all time. “You can’t spell Citrus without UT.”