Mark Byron

Leroy's Gator Farm and Spa-Bluegrass Branch

Some good news on the job front. I have a freelance writing gig that you can check out here, doing logistics and trucking-related posts. Feel free to check it out.

On a lighter note, we're dog-sitting for my in-laws while they are visiting Eileen's sister and her clan in Zambia. McKenzie is a mild-mannered cairn terrier and easy to work with.

Dog sitting is new to me, but my folks are pros at it. They look after my sister's dog when they are away. When Kathy's first dog Purdy came over to be sat, my brother in law called my folks house Leroy's Gator Farm; after Purdy passed on and Chloe took over, it got upgraded to Leroy's Gator Farm and Spa.

We now have a Bluegrass branch of Leroy's.

Darth Vader isn't Interested?

Draft Dick Cheney? They tried that in the 60s and he used a educational deferment.

One Stone Will Do

As Arte Johnson used to say in Laugh In, "Very interesting, but stoopid."

Two million Muslims are headed to Muzdalifa, Saudi Arabia, to cast stones at the devil in the most dangerous part of the annual hajj pilgrimage, Reuters reported.

Once the Muslim pilgrims get there, they will collect pebbles to throw at walls of the Jamarat Bridge to symbolize the rejection of the devil's temptations.

You only need one stone to do the job,"the stone you builders rejected, which has become the capstone. Salvation is found in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given to men by which we must be saved."

Probability Theory vs The Football Code

I haven't gotten around to analyzing The Bad Call as of yet. Here I go.

For those of you who aren't sports fans, the issue at had flowed from last weekend's New England-Indianapolis game, where Indy was the beneficiary of a gutsy call by NE coach Bill Belichick. Let's set the scene.

34-28 New England. 2:08 to go, Colts sitting on one time out left. New England has it 4th and 2 at their own 28. The warrior code of football says "punt the ball and let the defense win the game for you; if you go for it , you're dissing your defense."

However, there's a Moneyball version of the story where the conventional wisdom might not be valid. Let's run the scenarios.

If the Pats get the first down, we're likely at the two minute warning if the play stays in bounds. Then, New England can call three running plays and milk the clock down to about 25 seconds left; Indy can use their time out to make one play take about 5-7 seconds but the other two will eat up about 45 seconds each as NE will run the play clock down to 1 before snapping. If they pick up another first down on those three plays, it's game over. If they don't, it's still a gut draw for Indy

Since New England is up six, they can take a safety without affecting the final result, as being up by 4 or 6 is moot at this point; Indy needs a touchdown to win either way. If they have the lead, a safety straddle (the punter runs into the end zone and plays keepaway for a few seconds) runs another 7-10 seconds off the clock and sets up a free kick (better than a punt since it can't be blocked or have a botched snap) at the 20 with about 15 seconds left.

Assuming a 40-yard net distance on the free kick (50 would be average, but it would likely be something squibby to prevent a big return), Indy gets the ball at their 40 with about 8 seconds left. Time for one quick pass out of bounds and a Hail Mary.

Thus, the Pats have about a 95% chance of winning it if they get the first down. Only a fumble, a free kick return for a TD or a Hail Mary pulls it off.

If they don't get it, you have Indy in the catbird seat. Two minutes left, ball about the NE 30, one time out and Indy in four-down mode. 80% chance of Manning sticking it in.

If you make the first down 60% of the time and win 95% of those and Indy converts on 80% of those misses, the likelihood of winning while going for it is .6*.95+0.4*.2=0.57+0.08=65%

If you're only 50/50, we get 0.5*.95+0.5*0.2=57.5%.

Then, the flipside comes. What's the chance of Payton Manning and crew marching 70 yards with two minutes and one time out? They'd already done that twice in that fourth quarter, having a pair of 79 yard drives that took 2:04 and 1:49. Throw in the possibility of a punt block or a punt return for a TD and that 60-65% win chance via going for it looks good, since the chance of Manning producing another long drive was about 50-50.

Does it go up against the Football Code? Yes. That's what got people hot and bothered last week.

However, the numbers were with Belichick. Tradition wasn't, but the numbers were.

As it turned out, Indy stuffed the fourth-down try and Manning led them in for a touchdown, winning 35-34. Sometimes you get the bear, and sometimes the bear gets you; however, you need to take your best shot at the bear, even if it is an unorthodox one.

A RickRoll Worm?

Here's an interesting BBC piece on a hacker worm developed for the iPhone; folks who hot-wired their software to use non-Apple aps had someone develop a worm that phished their bank accounts

It is specifically targeting people in the Netherlands who are using their iPhones for internet banking with Dutch online bank ING.

It redirects the bank's customers to a lookalike site with a log-in screen.

The worm attacks "jail-broken" phones - a modification which enables the user to run non-Apple approved software on their handset.

That's nasty. However, the inaugural iPhone worm that preceded it had me LOL.

The first iPhone worm, called ikee, was harmless. Users with infected phones found their wallpaper replaced with a picture of 1980s popstar Rick Astley.

It also targeted jail-broken phones which were SSH enabled.

The first worm was a silent RickRoll, the signature cyber-practical joke of the late 00s. Cute.

When we start having nasty-hacks of a piece of tech, it has arrived. However, there is a cautionary tale here; the people who are getting scammed were using unauthorized stuff in the first place.

When legit aps get worms is when we really start to worry, and we can expect that any day now.

Loss Leaders

One of Eileen's church groups was kicking around the shallowness of the modern Church last week and the phrase "being all things to all people" was being kicked around in a critical manner. The thought that came first to mind is that we need to be Jesus to all people rather than all things.

The counter-thought that came to mind is that the term came from Paul; I Corinthians 9(NIV) is where it came from. I added some italics to the passage-

¹⁹Though I am free and belong to no man, I make myself a slave to everyone, to win as many as possible. ²⁰To the Jews I became like a Jew, to win the Jews. To those under the law I became like one under the law (though I myself am not under the law), so as to win those under the law. ²¹To those not having the law I became like one not having the law (though I am not free from God's law but am under Christ's law), so as to win those not having the law. ²²To the weak I became weak, to win the weak. I have become all things to all men so that by all possible means I might save some. ²³I do all this for the sake of the gospel, that I may share in its blessings.

Paul did become all things to all men but the question is why. The why is to win people to Christ. Just call Paul the Al Davis Apostle- Just win 'em to Jesus, baby!

Comparing evangelism to marketing is always a touchy subject, but it is a metaphor that people understand. Paul changed his marketing approach with the crowd he was with. However, he was always marketing Jesus, not the style du jour. 

Do we need to engage the various cultures and subcultures of our society? Yes, but the means of engagement needs to be in the employ of expanding the Kingdom of God. The goal isn't numbers in the pews, it's helping people to find Christ and to grow closer to Him and to serve His kingdom.

Sometimes those means seem secondary ( "What does [insert outreach item] have to do with the Gospel?") but it gets people in the door; the job after that is to keep them there by bringing them into a real community where the Gospel is lived out and taught. The "all things" part becomes the church equivalent of a "loss leader" special that doesn't make any money but gets people in the store to buy other stuff.

Paul knew about loss leaders as he told the Phillipians (3:8),"I consider everything a loss compared to the surpassing greatness of knowing Christ Jesus my Lord."

Football Musings

• Michigan at 5-7. Two losing seasons in a row; if you could hook up a transformer to Bo spinning in his grave, you could give Detroit Edison plants the weekend off. The story of last week on the too-much-practice story that hit earlier in the season was that they weren't keeping track of the hours last year. That should give the powers that be reason to show RichRod the door. In a way, this reminds me of what Kentucky basketball went through with Billy Gillespie; he wasn't the right fit for the school and lasted two years.
• That begs the question. If RichRod is Billy G, who is Michigan's Calipari? If Notre Dame doesn't grab him first, Brian Kelly of Cincinnati would be my pick. Having some Michigan roots from coaching at CMU and being familiar with the WV spread style of Rodriquez, he'd be a very good coach for Michigan.
• Kelly would also be a good coach for Notre Dame. Charlie Weis might have been a good college coach for the 60s or 70s, but seems a bit too much of a throwback for the 10s. He'll land on his feet, though if they decide to pull the plug; a studio show gig is always a good halfway house for an ousted coach and any number of NFL teams would be interested in him as a coordinator if not a head coach.
• Kentucky had a nice comeback yesterday, storming back from a 20-6 deficit to win at Georgia 34-27, courtesy of three turnovers. It was Kentucky's first win in Athens since the 1970s and actually has them in position to finish second in the SEC East if they can beat Tennesee next week and get out of the Liberty/Music City Bowl rut.
• I remember reading about UGA VII in the summer of 2008 when we had the Russia-Georgia miniwar and joked about them sicking UGA on the South Osettians. Well, he died of heart disease this week before the UK game; did the KGB do him in?
• Could Boise State and TCU both get BCS slots? Possibly. TCU has one at-large slot locked up, as does the SEC runner up. That leaves two to go. Penn State will likely get one of the spots, and the other spot can pick from a 10-2 Pittsburgh (assuming they lose to Cincy), a 10-2 Oklahoma State or a 12-0 Boise State. Iowa can't go if PSU is picked, since there's a two-per-conference quota on BSC slots. In that scenario, the Smuft Turfers might be a more interesting matchup than Pitt or OSU.
• Otherwise it's 12-0, sixth ranked and home for the Humanitarian Bowl. Heads might roll if that happens, and the playoff rumblings that go through Washington every year might get stronger. The BCS folks might want to head off the peasant rebellion and throw Boise a bone.

A Moral Majority?

Bene noted this Manhattan Declaration which seems to unite a broad swath of center-right Christian thought to defend the sanctity of life, the family and of religious liberty. There is much more of an ecumenical feel to this document. It reads far more Catholic than it does evangelical, but not in a way that is non-evangelical.

It seems a bit more than "the usual suspects of of the US religious right" although many of the suspects are there; Chuck Colson was one of three lead authors as well as Christian politicos James Dobson, Gary Bauer and Tony Perkins. In addition, conservative culture warriors Al Mohler, Richard Land, Maggie Gallagher and William Donohue are in the mix.

To balance out the warriors, You have a number of Catholic Bishops, quite a few ex-Episcopal Anglicans (and a parachuting-in Peter J. Akinola who is a bit out of the North American mix) and quite a few apolitical evalgelicals like Ravi Zacharias, J.I. Packer, Wayne Grudem and Tim Keller. 

The writers were Colson, Timothy George and Robert George (no relation, Timothy's Baptist and Robert is Catholic), but it seems like Robert George did a lot of the heavy lifting. He's one of the key folks behind the National Organization for Marriage who has come to the fore in the last few years, although author/pundit Maggie Gallagher is the president.

Timothy George isn't a theocon; he heads up the Beeson seminary in Alabama, which provided theological cover for a center-left tax overhaul championed by GOP Gov Bob Riley in 2003, which probably doesn't endear him to the free-market mavens of the theocon right. He was also on board the Evangelical climate change document, as were Manhattan Declaration signers Ron Sider, the NAE's Leith Anderson and Christianity Today's David Neff. People who were shouting at each other over that document are making common cause with this one.

So, this is a pretty broad coalition that can get into pissing matches on the environment and economics but agree on the other issues that orthodox Christianity (by the way, they do also have a few capital-O Orthodox folks as well as signers) should inform our culture.

Here's one thing that might make Bene breathe a bit more easily; you don't have a big presence of NAR neocharismatics on this bunch; Kay Arthur is the one name that flows from the Trinity Broadcasting quadrant

Here's one passage that seems to have been overtaken by events; it was drafted on 10/20 and just issued yesterday (11/21)-

Although public sentiment has moved in a pro-life direction, we note with sadness that pro-abortion ideology prevails today in our government.  The present administration is led and staffed by those who want to make abortions legal at any stage of fetal development, and who want to provide abortions at taxpayer expense.  Majorities in both houses of Congress hold pro-abortion views. 

That last sentence doesn't ring true in the House after the Stupak Amendment passed, barring abortion coverage from being a required part of health insurance plans. That was passed with some strong lobbying from the Catholic Church, as pro-life Democrats joined with Republicans to have something of a pro-life majority in the House. The senate may be another matter.

How to live this out is a good question; one of the interesting fallouts of the Stupak Amendment was that you had a sizable block of morally-conservative Democrats who can create a moral majority (Oh, yes, Jerry's kid Jonathan Falwell's on board; he's actually a pretty good preacher from what I've seen of him) in Washington, one that had very little input from the normal theocon suspects. In this case, it was Catholic religious leaders who put the squeeze on their more dutiful members to vote their faith rather than their party.

Zero-Based Praxis-Part I-Introduction

Dan Edelen is a prophet. No, not a Rick Joyner type, but one who speaks truth to the modern age in a ouch-you're-right-Dan way. I'm not sure I can go where he's heading, but it beats the heck out of the status quo.

He's asking a lot of questions. Here's the most recent-chatty-ring puller. It's a read-the-whole-thing post, but part III on how to get the modern Church kick-started is what's in my craw at present.

3. We have got to question the way we do EVERYTHING. We can go on and on about how Jesus turned the world on its head when He walked the earth, yet we go out from our Sunday meetings to live conformist lives that never question the status quo.

In concert with the call to sit in silence before God while asking Him to respark our burned-out minds, we Christians must begin anew to ask the question WHY. This is not an exercise with re-evaluating our doctrine. Too many churches fry their theology in the crucible of why. Instead, we need to place every aspect of our praxis as believers in America under the white hot stage lights of why.

The Poli-Sci geek in me trotted out the phrase "Zero-based budgeting." It was a public policy flavor of the month in the 70s, as Jimmy Carter (hold it, you on the back right, he can get things right on occasion) used it in Georgia to some success and tried to bring it to Washington with limited success; here's a Mackinac Center piece on the topic.

The idea behind ZBB was that you assume nothing and justify an organization's existence from scratch. Explain why the department still needs to exist, what it should be doing and what resources it needs to do it. A 3% inflation increase from last year isn't in the cards, since we're assuming bupkis. This keeps things that might have made sense years ago but don't work now from having a life of their own, or allow for agencies that have a worthy core but have gotten bloated and inefficient from mission creep to be trimmed back down to size.

There are a lot of things that churches do that remind me of the old joke "Why do dogs lick their crotch? Because they can." We build the extra gym/youth center because we can, not thinking that the money might be better used to build 10 basic churches in Latin America at the same cost as one state-of-the-art mini-YMCA at Pleasantville Christian.

God willing, I'll go over some of those questions that Dan poses, but we've got a truckload of mission creep in the American church that could use some zero-based praxis.

Health Update

It seems that the bronchitis has been all-but licked. The dose of antibiotics and steroids that were given on Monday seems to have knocked it out, with just a smidge of chest congestion left, along with a lot of fatigue.

Next

I try to be as transparent as possible,  but this one is hard; I got fired on Wednesday from my college teaching job, effective immediately. At least I don't have to deal with the long goodbye of my Warner gig, where my contract wasn't renewed and I was a lame duck from March through May.

In the long term, it seems to be for the best. I have struggled with depression and anxiety most of my life, and it makes it hard for me to be "on" in the classroom for long stretches and hard to focus on grading papers.

It's been a stretch for me to hold the 6-9:40 classes that an adult-ed night schedule calls for; stress-induced asthma sometimes kicked in to cut things short and panic attacks without breathing problems hit at other times. Many nights, I had to resort to pointing students to a previously recorded podcast because I wasn't up to teaching that night.

The three weeks out with bronchitis was the last straw for the powers that be; I wasn't delivering the goods I was being hired to do, as much as I was trying to.

I still have my on-line finance tutoring gig; right now, it's one night a week for this term, but I'll be up to 20-hours a week in a 9PM-1AM slot starting in January.  That's not enough to keep all the bills paid, but it will at least bring in enough cash to pay the basics.

I don't think I'm cut out to be a classroom teacher. I have the intellect for it and the caring, but not the persona. That's hard to accept, especially when I went on to get a doctorate to do just that.

Now, that PhD tends to hang like an albatross on my resume. "Why do I want to hire a PhD for [insert entry-level business job]?" is the question my resume gets when it shows up; I have talent, but I don't fit the mold. Somehow, I have to get someone to look past that and give me a chance, and I have to have the courage and confidence to try to find that person.

Yes, God is in control, but barring a word of knowledge, I have to jump through the normal job-hoops.

Any practical suggestions? Even better, any job leads that you could vouch for personally where you might be able to get my foot in the door for an interview. I'm in Lexington, KY but could relocate for the right position.

I'm good with spreadsheets, can program in Visual Basic and a little C++ and have business schooling up the wazoo (PhD and MBA in Finance and BBA in Accounting along with a BS in Political Science) and have worked as an accountant for three years, albeit in a hospital finance setting that falls through the standard AR/AP/Payroll/GL slots that accounting positions generally look for.

I have a lot of people in the Peanut Gallery who care deeply about me and I take comfort in that. I'll need to take more comfort in that as the give-and-take on current events I got from my students and colleagues at work is now gone.

Hedging your bets, Ohio Style

After giving Kindred Healthcare the once over yesterday, I was looking at Ohio's senate race, where former Congressman and OMB director Rob Portman is the favorite on the Republican side and LG Lee Fisher is holding down the Democratic side.

Who's playing both sides of the aisle today, Mark? The Jones Day law firm. Kevin McDonald gave to both Portman and Fisher. The firm's employees and patrners gave just under $26K to Portman and $17,850 to Fisher, but McDonald was the only one who did the double dip.

Jones Day is the second largest law firm in the country so they have some long tenticles.

There are a lot of law firms and financial institutions on Portman's list of contributers; he's gotten a half-million from law firms and lobby firms. Not a good sign for someone wanting to run in a Republican landscape that wants to run away from such politics.

Wall-eee

I'm finally starting to recover from my bronchitis, having made my fifth trip to the doctor in two weeks and getting a beefed-up inhaler, steroids, an antibiotic to treat a secondary infection and some beefed up cough syrup.

The advantage to that was that I was able to see the UK-Miami U game last night. For the first few minutes, it looked like last years VMI game, as Miami was draining three-pointers at an alarming rate and went out to a 36-18 lead. However, Kentucky clawed their way back, led by all-world freshman John Wall in his regular season debut (he had to sit out the Morehead State opener for accepting improper gifts from his AAU coach) to a 72-70 win.

Was Wall that good? Well, when Miami drained yet another three with six seconds left to tie it, Calipari let Wall bring the ball up and take a jumper to win it with a half-second left rather than call time and set up a play. That's something you'd see with a veteran pro or a senior point gaurd, but not with a first-game freshman.

Wall's line was rather interesting. 19 points, 5 assists and five turnovers. That's not a good assist-to-turnover ratio, but Wall reminds me of slashing two-gaurds like Rip Hamilton who take it to the rack and draw a lot of fouls but sometimes look bad when they get all dressed up and have no place to go when they get to the paint.

Wall was 4-9 from the field, 10-14 from the line. I don't have a blow-by-blow handy, but let's say those 14 freebies are seven foreys to the paint. He thus had 26 plays on the stat sheet, of which at least 14 came out ahead, not counting a putback or two that might have come from a missed runner in the paint; one of the themes of the "dribble-drive" Calipari style is that a driver brings multiple players with him, which will leave rebounding lanes open for people who were left open by rotators. You get credit for an assist on the books, but not for a missed runner that gets cashed by your bigs on the rebound.

Speaking of bigs, UK has no shortage; Patrick Paterson has developed a three-point shot this season, which should move him up a few slots in the lottery. DeMarcus Cousins had a second-half double-double and Daniel Orton looked impressive in limited duty. Last year's starting 4, Perry Stevenson, got pushed to the fourth big on the depth chart, and he'll probably play some European pro ball at least before all is said and done. Eric Bledsoe is playing well as a co-point with Wall and Darius Miller is coming of age as a small forward, having the confidence in his play that he seemed to lack last year as a freshman.

We'll see how this team matures, but they have the makings of a team that can go deep into April.

Are We Not Men? No, We Are Rhino.

Here's an interesting passage from a Dana Milbank WaPo piece on Newt Gingrich from last week. Here's what the Newt's eye is on-

"I believe the most important question in the United States for the next decade is: 'Who are we?' Are we in fact a people who claim that we are endowed by our creator with certain unalienable rights?" Or, are we "just randomly gathered protoplasm -- and lucky for us we're not rhinoceroses -- but that in the end our power is defined by politicians and their appointees? Once you decide on this, almost everything else gets easier."

That choice of animal, rhinoceros, is interesting, especially when Newt was on the wrong end of a intra-Republican dustup in the NY-23 bi-election, where he backed the center-left "RINO" (conservative pejorative for Republican in Name Only- pronounced "Rhino") Republican nominee rather than the Conservative Party upstart. The RINO dropped out as she fell into third place and endorsed her Democratic challenger, who has won a squeaker pending a count of absentee votes.

However, lets talk about Rhinos rather than RINOs.

I'm still coming around to a coherent reply to the Patrol piece dancing on the Evangelical grave that Michael Spencer has commended. Strangely, I find this Gingrich paragraph a good starting point to get an edge to approach things.

The Patrol editorial castigated modern Evangelicals as being "[c]onfined to the paramaters (sic) of liberal rationalism" and "blinded by its symbiotic relationship with the Enlightenment." I'll hit the theology of the piece a bit later, God willing, but we are talking some form of "rationalism" if we talk truth.

The Wikipedia for Rationalism states that "the criterion of the truth is not sensory but intellectual and deductive." If there is a capital T-Truth, it isn't left up to what we feel physically or mentally. Jefferson was no theological conservative, but even he had a vision of a set of moral truths that weren't up for modification.

If that Enlightenment rationality that the Declaration of Independence and Constitution is founded on gets tossed out the window, so do Jefferson's unalienable rights that Gingrich references. If we're ruled by the emotion of the day rather than timeless truth that can be found, all bets are off, both politically and theologically.

The post-modern doesn't buy the concept of Truth and especially don't like it when other people think they have it; if I have the idea right, truth is not fully knowable and we can only talk and observe our way towards something resembling it. 

That's a dangerous place to be.

Eye'n Rand

OK, now that I gave C. Merwin Grayson III's resume a once-over, let's look at his main foe for the nomination, Dr. Randal Paul.

C. Merwin's Google ad blurb goes for "Fifth-generation Kentuckian for U.S. Senate." Rand Paul is first generation, albeit one who has spent as much adult life in the state as Grayson, having set up a eye surgery practice in Bowling Green in 1993 while Grayson was off at Harvard getting his BA.

To be fair to Trey, both have nice backgrounds, for Paul got sent through Duke's MD program on dad's dime; how much of that was avoiding those libertarian-dreaded government-backed student loans and how much was Ron being able to afford to is open to debate.

Rand didn't waste much time getting active in local politics, setting up an anti-tax (no, the apple doesn't fall far from the tree) group Kentucky Taxpayers United a year later and has kept his hand in the political process since then.

Is he Ron Paul 2.0? Just about, which is as much bug as feature. If you want someone tugging at the other end of the rope from Obama and Pelosi with gusto, Paul would be a good choice.

One thing to point out to contrast a prospective Senator Rand Paul from a prospective President Ron Paul is that Rand will need to get at least 49 other Senators to agree with him to put any policies into action, which will limit his more radical policies from getting enacted.

However, that libertarian streak might have him tugging against conservative Republican orthodoxy as well from time to time. He has his dad's dislike of the Federal Reserve and is opposed to being part of the WTO and the IMF. That will make Rand Paul a no vote on a lot of trade policies that might be beneficial to the US on balance but require making binding agreements with other countries, putting him in league with Pat Buchanan and the anti-globalization left.

While his policy papers don't address this, the paleolibertarian tendency towards a minimalist military might come into play down the line as well. That might keep Obama and crew from "spending on unnecessary programs and unconstitutional operations" but might also keep a Jindal or Romney Pentagon of the mid 2010s from functioning well, since the winner of this race will be there through the end of the next presidential term.

This race may boil down to how much of a "loose cannon" Rand Paul is and whether it would be safer for Kentucky's GOP electorate to send a more button-downed, establishmentarian Trey Grayson up as their nominee. Grayson doesn't quite fit the Tea Party vibe, but Paul might fit it a bit too well, using the Tea Party metaphor before it became cliche.

Shooting the Trey

I'm getting a bit of coverage for my Kindred Heathcare piece from earlier in the day, including some linkage from a Paulista Trey Grayson bashing web site.

Who is this young man, Charles Merwin Grayson III? Well, he's from the northernmost part of Kentucky near Cincinnati in the nice suburb of Edgewood, befitting the blue-blood monicker.  Harvard undergrad, then a UK JD/MBA combo.

He then hopped across the Ohio to work for the law firm of Keating Muething & Klekamp. Is that Keating Five Keating? Yes, it is. One of the firms founders was Charles Keating, who (after leaving the firm) played access politics by donating to four Democrats and John McCain and got them to go to bat with financial regulators to go easy on his failing Lincoln Savings and Loan.

His brother, William Keating, got elected to Congress from the Cincinnati area in the 1970s and went on to be the publisher of the Cincy Inquirer. Former senator Mike DeWine is now on the KMK payroll after losing his seat in 2007 as is his son Pat.

From that perch, Grayson won the Secretary of State post in 2003 at the tender age of 31 and managed to get reelected in 2007 despite having GOP governor Fletcher go down amid a patronage scandal.

He seems to be a down-the-line conservative on the issues at hand, but hasn't had to work on those issues too much in his policy-lite post as Secretary of State. There doesn't seem to be a lot of nuance to his stands, just standard conservative boilerplate, especially on hot-button issues like immigration and health care.

Does he have a blue-blood RINOey side to him given the crowd he ran with as a young man? He backed Romney in the 2008 primaries, which would make sense for an establishment conservative; had he gone McCain like a lot of the KMK folks did, you could make more of a case against him.

However, Romney evolved quickly when he moved to a national stage and away from a more moderate persona needed to win statewide in MA. Could Grayson be making the same move in order to win a more-ideological Senate primary race.

He did vote for Clinton in 1992, but I recall voting for Carter in 1980 when I was a 19-year-old. Grayson reminds me a bit of a Republican Bill Clinton (resume only, please no wise cracks), except he got an MBA along with the JD, focused on corporate rather than constitutional law and got his foot in the door as SoS rather than AG. 

Grayson seems to be straight out of the Chamber of Commerce wing of the GOP, but that's a style that leaves me a bit cold. Mitch Junior, anyone?

Haunted by Kindred Spirits

I was looking at the contributor data for the Kentucky Senate race on the Open Secrets web site and saw an interesting tidbit; Republican Trey Grayson's leading contributor was Kindred Healthcare. Interestingly, they are also #5 on Democrat Jack Conway's donor list.

I next did a once-over for Kindred donors. Many of them play both sides of the aisle.

Chief Operating Officer Frank Battafarano gave to both Conway and Grayson with a Republican lean. He gave $2400 to both Grayson and SD's John Thune and $1000 each to Conway and Louisville Democratic congressman John Yarmuth.

John Cowgil gave $1000 each to Conway and Grayson.

CEO Paul Diaz is a Democrat first, giving $30,400 to the Democratic Senatorial campaign committee along with $2000+ worth of donations to Steny Hoyer, Ben Cardin and Maria Cantwell. However, he also gave money to Thune and Grayson.

Four other officials (Richard Lechleiter , Steve Monaghan, Susan Moss and James Novak) did the split-donation route, giving to both Conway and Grayson.

Note that those donations didn't go to Grayson's GOP foe Rand Paul or LG Dan Mongiardo, who is Conway's main foe for the Democratic nomination and who nearly beat Jim Bunning for this seat in 2004.

Could it be that Grayson and Conway play the political game too well, getting donations from folks who want access rather than beacause they back the candidate?

The League of Extraordinary Criminals

Mr. Erickson has some company; Rudy doesn't like trying KSM and company in NYC either.

The Obama administration's decision Friday to bring the alleged conspirators to New York has triggered a backlash from those who say a civilian trial affords the defendants rights they do not deserve, treats them as ordinary criminals and could be used as a platform to spew anti-American rhetoric as well as critique the actions of the Bush administration.

Yes, criminals get rights they don't deserve. That's why they're called rights. If you get stuff that can be taken away, we call those privileges. 

They get treated as ordinary criminals. Do we want to give them the dignity of being POWs?

Oh, if you want to cut down on platforms "to spew anti-American rhetoric as well as critique the actions of the Bush administration" in Nuevo York, you might want to start down the road at the UN and ask them to set up shop in Geneva or somewhere else.

Giuliani said the biggest problem is that the United States is treating terrorists as it did after the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, which was followed by a string of other terrorist attacks on Americans overseas and finally by the Sept. 11 massacre. 

That has two flaws. One is that had he recommended military tribunals in the mid-90s, he would have been laughed out of the room. Pre-9/11 and pre-Afghanistan, that would have sounded exceedingly reactionary. Now, with some 20-20 hindsight, it sounds only debatably reactionary.

What has changed is that we are looking at these militant Islamics as a military threat as well as a law-enforcement issue. The Obama team leans a bit more away from the military side than the Bush team did, at least in tone, but the Bush team was cutting quite a few corners in erring on the military side.

As long as the FBI and others are working on keeping US-based terror cells from functioning and the CIA and the military are working on striking at foreign-based actors, I can comfortably live with bringing cases into our normal court system rather than treating the jihadis as POWs. They don't deserve the fair treatment they are getting, but that's a feature of our system, not a bug, for it makes sure that everyone gets fair treatment.

Robert E. Grayson?

Here's an interesting piece on Trey Grayson, Kentucky's Secretary of State, whose in a mano-a-mano US GOP Senate primary race with Rand Paul, a eye doctor and son of noted libertarian Ron Paul.

Grayson opposes cap-and-trade legislation, and said the Obama administration and Democratic leaders “have declared war on coal, and when they do that I think they’re declaring war on Kentucky.” If elected, Grayson said he, like Bunning, would seek a spot on the Senate Energy Committee.

That's some dangerous rhetoric, especially when coupled with a lot of Tea Party resentment that casts Washington as colonial England. It's almost begging to start a civil war.

He also took a jab at the media and at recent polls that show him running even with opponent Rand Paul of Bowling Green: “The press is going to try to define this race in their own terms, but let me assure you, this campaign is going to be build about people, and that’s the only thing that matters,” Grayson said. “I will always put Kentucky first.”

When coupled with the first paragraph, that sounds strangely like Robert E. Lee, who had his choice of armies to lead at the start of the Civil War and chose Virginia rather than the US.

The job title of the gig he's after is United States Senator. Not the Kentucky senate, the United States Senate. However, part of Grayson's shtick is to be a Kentucky guy rather than a relative newcomer who's dad is Texas-based and who gets 75% of his campaign funding from outside of the state.

There is more to the US than coal, bourbon, tobacco and race horses and I want a senator who represents more than bankers, lawyers and parochial Bluegrass interests. I'm not a great fan of Rand Paul, but he seems to be willing to look at a bigger picture than Grayson at this point.

Al Davis Conservatives

One of the news items of the day was Al Qaida biggie Khalid Sheikh Mohammed and three assistants are going to be put on trial in New York in civilian court; KSM is deemed to be the mastermind behind 9/11.

A military tribunal would be a bit cleaner, as things could be done a notch more secretly and possibly include waterboard-induced testimony that would likely not pass constitutional muster in a civilian court. However, we're a country that likes to have the moral high ground where possible, and using legal short-cuts to get these people locked up for good will be detrimental in the long term.

I got this e-mail from Red State's Erick Erickson earlier today; he don't like the idea. He posted on it earlier but his e-mail was more vitriolic

In that trial, the terrorist will get all the rights afforded an American citizen in a criminal trial, including the right to a fair trial, the right to a taxpayer funded attorney, the right to review all the evidence against him, potentially including classified intelligence matters, the right to exclude evidence against him including, potentially, any confession obtained through enhanced interrogation techniques, etc.

OK. Most of those aren't bugs, those are features. You want an unfair trial where he has to defend himself, can't question his accusers and can't call BS on torture?

Yes, we may have have to bring some classified material to the party, stuff that we might not want publicly seen. However, we've busted spies in the past and had to get sanitized versions of our intel into the public record in those cases.

At best, this will be a show trial fit not for the American Republic, but a third world kleptocratic totalitarian regime.

Them's fighting words, sir; it borders on false witness. I'm reminded of that one photo from the Vietnam War where a suspected Viet Cong was summarily executed by an officer with a bullet to the head on the street. That's efficient, but it isn't how we do things.

Doing away with those legal niceties is the mark of a banana republic, not abiding by them. We have something called the rule of law in the United States of America. Even if you are dead set on destroying the country, you still get your day in court where the prosecution has to prove its case and have its allegations double-checked by the defense. Even Mr. Hasan, the Fort Hood shooter, will get better treatment than he deserves, but that's how the system works; even the nasty guys have to have the proscecution prove their guilt.

What you're proposing is Al Davis geopolitics, "Just win, baby." Torture and constitutional shortcuts are just fine as long as it gets you a victory in the War on Terror. However, that attitude can come back to bite you in the long run; check out how Davis' Raders have done lately.

We can do better.

A Generic Donkey is an Ass

Some interesting polling from Gallop; their generic Dem-versus-GOP congressional question favors the Republicans 48-44. That's within the margin of error, as I would tell my Managerial Econ students were my voice up to it, but given the fact that Republicans tend to underpoll in those generic questions, it means bad juju is coming for Democrats next year if the current mood holds.

The Republican brand got hammered in the second Bush term, but the Democratic brand is not faring so well in 2009, as Will Rogers again proves prophetic when he answered "I don't belong to an organized political party... I'm a Democrat." Nancy Pelosi would rather be a cat-herder right now, since any House majorities are made out of radiocative materials and have a half-life measured in hours.

The Gift that Keeps on GIving

I've got one of those viruses that refuses to go away. I tried teaching through it last night but was coughing my way through an hour of class before calling it a night.

I went back to the doctor today and got some better drugs to try and clear out my bronchitis. Even though I'm felling better than I was this time last week when I had a double-dip of a bacterial and viral bronchitis, I'm not up to talking for long periods. That would be OK if I had a office job, but it's death to a college professor.

The doctor order me back home for two days. Other than my attempt yesterday, I've been out the last two weeks.

That's depressing. What's more depressing is that the virus has to run its course, and other folks have fought it for a month or more. I'm only two weeks in. Lovely.

Prayers for patience and healing are an order.

No I-AA Double-Dipping

I had someone Google in looking for the answer to "why did the northern arizona football game not help ole miss with their bowl eligibility"

Looking at the Reb's schedule, it seems that they scheduled two I-AA (or Football Championship Subdivision in NCAA-speak) clubs this year (SE Louisiana was the other), and you can only count one of them towards the six wins for bowl eligibility. Ole Miss is 6-3 but has to win one more game to be eligible for post-season action. However, they get a short-handed Tennessee team in town Saturday; three Vols got busted for armed robbery in the wee hours of this mornings.

Kentucky has the formula down. They seem to have a recipe of Louisville, two mid-majors (Miami-OH and LA-Monroe this year) and a I-AA club (Eastern Kentucky this year) as their Twinkiesque out-conference schedule. Thus, they can limp into a 2-6 conference record and still be playing a bowl game. Cheesy, but effective.

Ole Miss, they need 7-5, since they went back for seconds on I-AAs.

Mio in Da Moonlight

I'm still recovering from a baaad case of bronchitis that has had me down for the count for over the week; two doc-in-a-box visits and a Sunday visit to the ER later, and I'm starting to recover from the crud I came down with on Halloween night. I'm slated to come off the IR on Thursday if all goes well.

I was thumbing through a Meijer flier for this week and I was reminded of the high holy day coming up in Michigan; November 15. That's the start of firearm deer hunting season, where lots of folks head north for a bit of hunting and a lot of male bonding. It's a non-trivial part of Michigan folk culture, such that seeing Flint-centric Michael Moore as an NRA member isn't shocking; a blue-collar UAW guy is more likely to be a hunter than a Brady Campaign backer.

They had a corner of this week's page three as "Deer Camp Must Haves": Mayo, pancakes, jerky (Sasquatch to tease sold separately) and peanuts. They left off the beer, however. They also may have forgotten that the rest of their domain might not be on the same schedule; that's a bit of a headscratcher for a Kentuckian who doesn't know Meijer's Michigan base.

At least it falls on a Sunday so absenteeism won't be as bad... at work; expect to see a lot of pickups heading north on I-75 Friday night packing hunting gear. However, there will be a lot of churches that will be short quite a few of their menfolk this Sunday.

Sending a Video

We're looking at the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall today. What's wrong with the following passage?

German Chancellor Angela Merkel was joined at the Brandenburg Gate by Russia's Dmitry Medvedev, France's Nicolas Sarkozy and UK PM Gordon Brown.

In a special video address, US President Barack Obama said Berliners had rebuked tyranny on 9 November 1989.

Is Air Force One in the shop? Did the president get so tied up in watching the health care debate that he forgot to RSVP?

I'm reminded of the pro-lifer's critique that conservative presidents would merely sent a taped message to their January marches on Roe's anniversary but wouldn't show up in person; their support was more talk than action.

Murder, Aged Seven Years

Has it already been seven years since the Beltway Sniper case; elder sniper John Allen Muhammad is due to get the better-dying-through-chemistry treatment tomorrow and the Supremes have refused to step in. His last best hope is to have outgoing governor Tim Kaine to give him clemency. Unless Kaine gets the Ryan bug and wipes out Virginia's Death Row on his way out, I don't see that happening.

I'm not a fan of the death penalty, but once someone has gone through the appeals process, it can be morally defensible. This would be one of those cases where it seems appropriate.

It's All in the Spices

Here's an odd story about a Cleveland mass-murderer; the mayor's niece and he were an item.

Residents of the area near the home said they had noted a smell in the neighborhood, but assumed it was from nearby Ray's Sausage Company.

Asked whether she had noticed a foul odor, [Lori] Frazier told WOIO, "Yeah, I smelled stuff, but he always told me that -- at first he said it was his stepmother downstairs. And then I guess after she left, he told me that it was Ray's Sausage."

In Fried Green Tomatoes, it was "all in the sauce." Next door, it must be all in the spices, since you don't want to know what goes into either sausages and laws.

Curiouser and Curiouser

We actually have a few elections tomorrow, with governorships in Virginia and New Jersey up for votes, but the one that has the right juiced is the bi-election for New York's 23rd district, where a liberal Republican candidate, Dede Scozzafava, dropped out after falling into third place behind Democrat Bill Owens and Conservative Doug Hoffman.

The news of the weekend is that Dede decided to endorse Owens. Expect her to change parties in short order, for she is probably persona non grata in many Republican circles and endorsing a Democrat isn't a great career move for even a liberal Republican; in her case, she was running to Owens' left on a number of issues, so crediting her as a liberal isn't just conservative hyperbole.

One of the interesting things in the NY-23 race is that we have a real prospect of having a Conservative Party nominee getting elected to Congress for the first time in almost four decades; William Buckley's brother James got elected on the Conservative ticket in 1970 as a liberal Republican and Democrat split the center-left vote, alowing Buckley a 38% plurality. However, that was back when there were still liberal Republicans in the land and the political parties hadn't distilled down to center-right Republicans and center-left Democrats.

In New York, you can represent more than one party on the ballot, and it is common for the Republican nominee to also get the Conservative nod. However, in the NY-23 case, the Conservatives opted to go with an alternative who might just win.