"No Larger Nation"– A Tribute to Ireland

On the occurrence of St Patrick's day just past, I offer this tribute to Ireland. President Kennedy gave this speech to the Irish Parlaiment (Dail) in 1963. It's almost 50 years old, but it still rings true. It's worth the 25-min it takes to listen, or just read the text. Two excerpts:

The 13th day of September, 1862, will be a day long remembered in American history. At Fredericksburg, Maryland, thousands of men fought and died on one of the bloodiest battlefields of the American Civil War. One of the most brilliant stories of that day was written by a band of 1200 men who went into battle wearing a green sprig in their hats. They bore a proud heritage and a special courage, given to those who had long fought for the cause of freedom. I am referring, of course, to the Irish Brigade. General Robert E. Lee, the great military leader of the Southern Confederate Forces, said of this group of men after the battle, "The gallant stand which this bold brigade made on the heights of Fredericksburg is well known. Never were men so brave. They ennobled their race by their splendid gallantry on that desperate occasion. Their brilliant though hopeless assaults on our lines excited the hearty applause of our officers and soldiers."

and

"All the world owes much to the little 'five feet high' nations. The greatest art of the world was the work of little nations. The most enduring literature of the world came from little nations. The heroic deeds that thrill humanity through generations were the deeds of little nations fighting for their freedom. And oh, yes, the salvation of mankind came through a little nation."

Ireland has already set an example and a standard for other small nations to follow.

This has never been a rich or powerful country, and yet, since earliest times, its influence on the world has been rich and powerful. No larger nation did more to keep Christianity and Western culture alive in their darkest centuries. No larger nation did more to spark the cause of independence in America, indeed, around the world. And no larger nation has ever provided the world with more literary and artistic genius.

This is an extraordinary country. George Bernard Shaw, speaking as an Irishman, summed up an approach to life: Other people, he said "see things and say 'Why?' . . . But I dream things that never were -- and I say: 'Why not?'"

When Is a Basketball Lead Safe?

See Here.

I have never personally seen a game in which a team lost after having a safe lead. In February 1994, LSU led Kentucky by 31 with 15:30 left to play, only to see Kentucky rally for a 99-95 victory. That was impressive, but a 31-point lead without the ball is safe for 12:36. The lead was 81 percent safe. And then this year, LSU blew a 15-point lead to Villanova with 2:59 to go—which, again, is close but no kewpie doll. With 179 seconds to play you need a 13.5-point margin, which means a 16-point lead with the ball or 17 without. The curse of Dale Brown. Actually, I would guess Dale was cursing up a storm when that happened.

My editor, doing his due diligence, found one game in which a team lost after holding a safe lead. On March 2, 1974, North Carolina trailed Duke, 86-78, with 17 seconds to play—a safe lead for Duke. Duke had repeated misadventures in in-bounding the basketball and wound up losing the game in overtime. That was before the human typo was hired to coach Duke, but ... does anybody know where I could get a tape of that game?

Nathanael Greene and the Cat That Started the Civil War

Ed Cone reminds us today is the 228th anniversary of the Battle of Guilford Courthouse. Most of us don't know much about General Greene's life and even less about his legacy, particularly his tie to the Civil War. The Georgia Encyclopedia tells us some of his later life.

Greene willingly gave much of his personal wealth to help support the war, even sacrificing his Rhode Island home. To thank him for his service during the war, the Georgia government gave Greene a plantation named Mulberry Grove, outside Savannah in Chatham County. He lived on the Mulberry Grove estate for less than a year, troubled by insecure finances; the plantation did not become profitable. Greene died unexpectedly of sunstroke in 1786, at the age of forty-four. Greene's remains and those of his son, George Washington Greene, lie beneath a monument in Johnson Square in Savannah.

After Greene's death, a young Yale University graduate, Eli Whitney, came to Savannah to take a tutoring job. Whitney began working for Greene's widow, Catharine, and it was at Mulberry Grove that Whitney invented the cotton gin, the machine that revolutionized the production of cotton.

In fact, Whitney met Mrs. Greene on a ship from Rhode Island to Georgia when he was moving to take the teaching job and she was going to remarry. They struck up a friendship, and when he discovered that the pay for the teaching job was half what he had been promised, she offered to let him live at Mulberry Plantation while he decided what to do next.

At Mulberry Grove, much of the evening conversation was about the difficult economic situation plantation owners faced. At that point in US history, slavery was a dying enterprise. Slaves were expensive to keep and there was little profitable work for them to do. The market for local crops, indigo and rice, would not support large plantations, and though growing cotton was a possibility, it was too expensive separating the cotton seeds from the fiber to make the crop profitable.

A few days later, Whitney was in the plantation barnyard watching a cat try to catch a chicken through a wire fence. Each time the cat would reach through the fence for the chicken, all he would bring back was a paw-full of feathers. This lit the bulb in Whitney's imagination and he realized that folks were trying to solve the wrong problem with cotton. The solution wasn't separating the seeds from the cotton fiber, it was separating the fibers from the seeds. He devised a screen-wire basket in which a roller with small picks would pull the fibers through the screen leaving the seeds on the other side. This became his Cotton Engine and was an immediate success throughout the cotton-growing regions of the south. This drove a huge demand for field labor in Georgia, Alabama, and Mississippi and lead to a great transfer of slaves from Virginia and the Carolinas, greatly upsetting slave families and leading to the upheaval that lead to the Civil War some sixth years later.

Had Whitney not seen that cat, who knows what would have happened in American history. This is why a cat should be credited with starting the Civil War.

I Miss W.

From the Blogfather

“From Election Day 2000 to Election Day 2008, the S&P 500 fell 29.8%. From Election Day 2008 til this afternoon, it’s down 33.3%.”

Bumper sticker here.

A Modest Proposal for The Real ACC Tournament

Next week we will celebrate the basketball tournament between the all-but-professional athletes representing the 12 schools of the ACC. I think we should have a chance to see which school has the best student basketball players. I propose The Real ACC Tournament!

• Let's plan it for April, after the big dance.

• Let's invite each school to send its 12 best student basketball players: students who are not receiving any athletic scholarship money.

• Each team should be coached by the school's regular basketball coach. We can see who might be the best coach, as opposed to the best recruiter.

• Let them play real rules, with real officials, etc. to keep everything on the up-and-up.

• To save money, we don't need fancy uniforms or anything like that. Let them play in whatever shorts the players prefer, and distinguish the sides by playing shirts-vs-skins. If this tournament is successful and leads to a women's version, this part alone would assure a sell-out in any arena in the area.

• The tournament could be concluded in three days, since the games, without the interruption of TV timeouts, etc., would only take 90-min or so to complete.

• Surely we can find the money required to fund this in the $700.000.000 the government wants to spend on stimulus. I know it would stimulate me.

After Mitch Johnson, What Next?

I wrote about my thoughts on the Greensboro city management situation here, and offered thoughts as to what the council should do. Last night the council ran right through steps One and Two and landed us directly at step Three. After Mitch, the council must now work to get the city back on track. I offer these further thoughts:

1. We need a strong, professional city manager. I don't know Roger Cotton. Maybe he is the right person for the job. In today's economic climate there must be many professional managers available, even if they do not come from a governmental management background. The city should cast a wide net to find the best candidate. Whoever is chosen should have some sort of employment contract beyond a month-to-month 5-4 vote of confidence from the City Council.

2. We need a strong mayor. Yvonne Johnson isn't it. She seems a competent consensus builder, but she seems unable to lead the council in any direction it needs to go. The Council would do better with her as a member, not as the Mayor.

3. We need a better, less racially-oriented council. Surely there are better candidates in Districts One and Two than we've seen in the past several elections. To TDB Small, everything seems to have a strong racial overtone, whether it is the city manager's performance, the state of sidewalks and curb-and-gutters. or the entrance to City Gardens. The district and the city deserve better.

4. I'm thinking experience may be an over-rated attribute on Council. I have a lot of respect for Robbie Perkins, but it is disconcerting that as late as last night he could not see how poor Mitch was as a manger. If Robbie is bought-and-paid-for by special interests in town, we need better. I have been very impressed with Bill Knight and his approach to city problems over the past couple of years. His perspective as a "numbers guy" is badly needed on council, and he seems to have the proper temperament as a civic leader. I hope he will again seek a council spot in the next election.

5. I don't know that it was necessarily a bad thing that two members of the Pulpit Forum chose to speak in support of Mitch last night, but it is worrisome if Mitch's departure is seen only in a racial light. IMHO, Mitch committed several firing offenses. He improperly painted the "black book" issue in racial terms to "get" David Wray. He badly mismanaged the termination of Wray. He badly mismanaged the Taping of Black Leaders issue. He allowed the witch hunt that resulted in Scott Sanders trial. At the meeting last night, there was a little discussion of the city staff not following the Council's directions (on the Jordan Lake rules). What the staff does is Mitch's responsibility. If he won't get them to follow council policies, he shouldn't be City Manager. It doesn't have to be Racial.

6. We must get beyond the black/white victim/oppressor mindset. Not every injustice and inequity is rooted in racial issues. Sometimes it's bad luck, bad precedence, and incompetence. Thinking all problems are racial is counter-productive.

First-Ladies Gone Wild

There has been some buzz among fashionistas about Michelle Obama's recent sleeveless stylings. I've seen pieces about this on the Today Show last week and Good Morning America this morning. Both features made an issue of her work-out regime contributing to her toned arms. There is even a blog post on the subject.

All this reminds me of an important exercise principle I learned some time ago: Fat doesn't belong to the muscles around it. You can't lose belly fat by doing sit-ups or lose arm fat by doing arm exercises. You have to lose fat overall to lose fat in any particular spot on your body. Fat comes off sort of in reverse order of how it went on. Arm exercises are good, but they won't cause arm fat to go away.

The Crappiest Generation

of spoiled idiots

Some Sensible Thoughts on the Housing Crisis

Ann Althouse pointed to this article "I Bought an Expensive House. My Bad, Not Yours" by Joel Stein in Time Magazine. I think it makes a lot of sense.

"The only people affected by plummeting real estate prices are the ones who bought a house that cost more than they could afford, hoping for a spike in value so they could sell at a profit or take out a new loan based on an increased value. Their home wasn't just a place to live; it was an investment they thought they could liquefy at will. If we're saving these poor souls from the 26.7% drop in their investment, we should give twice as much aid to everyone who has lost approximately 50% in the stock market since its peak."

Thoughts On the Solution to the Mess in Greensboro

I don't usually write about politics, particularly on a local level. There are lots of other folks who do a very good job of that. I'm making an exception in this post.

An editorial in the WSJ this morning on a different subject quotes federal judge Laurence Silberman: "I have always thought that the most heinous act in which a democratic government can engage is to use its law enforcement machinery for political ends." He was speaking of some of J. Edgar Hoover's actions at the FBI, but it applies to two more recent events, the Duke lacrosse mess in Durham and the Scott Sanders trial here this week. It also applies to the enter David Wray situation.

I've commented at Gaurino's place about this whole mess, and advocated the removal of Mitch Johnson as Greensboro City Manager. But on further thought, I don't believe that is the real solution to this matter. There are cries from lots of folks that we should just move on now, and I don't think that is the right path either.

I'm reminded of a person who, after having some physical symptoms, visits his doctor and finds he has a serious medical condition. The man has several possible courses of action:

1. He can ignore the symptoms and begin to live a better live-style, perhaps eating more healthily, getting more exercise, cutting back on drinking and smoking, etc. These are all good things to do, but none will help his underlying problem. This is the equivalent of the city "just moving on."

2. He can just treat the symptoms, and with the state of medicine today he may well be able to make them seem to go away, but this doesn't cure the underlying condition either. I think this is the equivalent of replacing Mitch Johnson, and perhaps even Tim Bellemy, and maybe even some political leadership, but the basic problem will still be there.

3. He can take whatever treatment steps are required to cure or arrest the condition causing all the problems. These may be difficult and unpleasant, but it the only way to cure the real problem. I don't know what these actual steps are. I'm not a doctor, or a politician, but I believe the people at the head of our city government, the city administration, and the various other groups and organizations that are interested in making this a better city must identify and implement these solutions.

When the Wray Fray first began, I thought it was basically a labor/management dispute over rotating police work schedules. As time went by, there appeared to be a significant racial tint to that dispute as well. I believe it was Sam Spagnola who first proposed the theory that the Fray was a continuation of the Project Homestead problem and the desire of certain powers-that-be to see Project Homestead just go away not be re-opened and examined. Again, there was a strong racial aspect. Other folks have voiced the thought that there is some other yet untold conspiracy orchestrated by some other unidentified group that is behind all this.

I don't know what the solution is, but I do know that just moving on or just replacing certain management and political leaders is not the right path. We need Leadership – new people with the ability to identify problems, craft solutions, and manage their implementation. If these people aren't currently in the proper roles, we need to find the right people and get them installed. Otherwise we'll still be writing about these problems in five years but to a much smaller audience.

Having Car Trouble?

Maybe this will help, particularly if the trouble involves fiery explosions. "The guys really like fiery explosions."

Want to Go to the ACC Tournament?

Over at Ed Cone's he reports that tickets might be available for mere mortals for this year's ACC tournament in the Georgia Dome. This reminds me of one of Preston's Laws: "Just because you can do something, it doesn't mean you should." I went to the first ACC tourney in Atlanta (1983, I think) at the Omni Center. Our seats weren't great, but they weren't terrible either.

It could have been worse. Here is the view from the upper balcony:

But this year the tournament is not in the Omni, it's in the Georgia Dome a much larger venue. Here is the layout for basketball. Note that this shows just one end of the field, where the court is located.

I went to the SEC football Championship game in the Georgia Dome in 2007, and here are some views to show what the Georgia Dome interior looks like. The basketball court will be at the other end of the field in this view.

This is the view from our seats in section 132, row 31. These would be pretty good seats for basketball. They could be much worse.

Of course, if the games are exciting and some fans stand up, this is what the view will be like.

If you go to the Tournament, I hope you have a good time. I think Keith has a better idea.

Happy Valentine's Day

I was somewhat otherwise occupied this weekend, so I pretty much missed Valentine's day. I missed James Taranto's post about Valentine's Day (scroll down to "Heart Attacks") which references this WSJ article about various protests over St. V's day. Taranto writes mostly about Arab pushback against the Love Holiday and ignores Jewish resistance. On the other hand, at least the blogfather offers an alternative. I hope missing the big day because I was otherwise occupied doesn't disqualify me from the men's version of Valentine's day come March 14.

Happy Friday the 13th

I don't usually worry too much about Friday the 13th's but I may change my mind. I've been having some medical symptoms. A visit with my cardiologist showed everything OK heartwise, so I visited my regular doctor Wednesday to look into other possibilities and he ordered a number of blood tests. At lunch Friday his nurse called and asked me to come by their office late Friday pm. The doctor wanted to discuss my lab results.

No Problem. Except when I got there, they measured my blood pressure and got a reading of something like 87/44 and everybody got a little excited. The doctor reported that a number of my blood enzymes were out of whack (not his precise medical term, but close) and he wanted to admit me to Cone Hospital to do some tests before I died of kidney failure over the week-end (or at least that's what it sounded like he said). I hadn't seen James Lileks' Bleat column on Friday so I'd missed his warning about kidneys, but the doctor had gotten my attention.

I spent two days getting poked, prodded and punctured courtesy of Medicare and AARP (I hope). Everything was normal (except for some catheter excitement) and they found no significant issues, so we'll continue to look into the "symptoms", and I will be much more respectful of Friday-the-13th's in the future.

News & Record Makes Another Big Mistake

The News & Record had another big error in a headline this morning. I'm not talking about the page A-1 head about the Cathy Vance surveillance taping, or the B-1 head on the article about the Scott Sanders trial. I'm talking about the C-2 headline "Lawson to the rescue" headline over the UNC-Miami basketball game article.

I didn't watch the game but I did see the highlights (numerous times) on SportsCenter. Ty Lawson wasn't the key to the game; the key was the performance of officials John Cahill, Sean Hull, and Mike Kitts. The key play occurred with 42 seconds left in the game with Miami down one point and having possession of the ball. Tyler Hansborough drew a charging call which gave the Heels the ball and led to Lawson's last 3-pointer.

My friend Sam Croft used to be an ACC referee and I'd kid him that at least he had a 50:50 chance of getting the block/charge call right. He'd remind me it was worse than that. Actually he had only a one in three chance of being right. The third option was "no call".

I don't pretend to know whether the Hansborough call at the end of the game was correct or not, but I do see that UNC made seven of eight free throws, while Miami was only two for two in free throws. This sounds to me like the headline should have been "Cahill/Hull/Kitts to the rescue".

Party Like It's 1993!

Will Collier at Vodkapundit had an interesting post last week recalling the halcyon days of the early 1990's and the first Bill Clinton term in office:

"After campaigning for a year and a half decrying “the worst economy in the last 50 years”–despite the fact that the mild recession of 1990-91 actually ended in March of ‘91–one of Bill Clinton’s first priorities was to try and ram through (wait for it) a “stimulus package.” Back in those days, politicians hadn’t yet realized that they could add another three zeroes to their raids on everybody else’s pockets, so the Clinton bill was by today’s outlandish standards relatively modest, starting at a mere $30 billion dollars. Most of that was sold as “targeted stimulus,” which meant it was carefully targeted to pay off Democratic grandees and constituencies that had contributed to the 1992 campaign."

and

"The Clinton “stimulus” bill failed, going down to final defeat on April 22, 1993. It was never revived. As we all know, the American economy never recovered–oh, wait, that’s not correct. A year later, despite the non-presence of a federal “stimulus” law, unemployment had dropped from 7.1% to to 6.6%. Tyson’s growth prediction was not quite correct, either; the US GDP positively boomed in the fourth quarter of 1993 to the tune of 5.5%, and rose by 4% in 1994–all without the help of Clinton’s “stimulus” package.

"The boom accelerated in the second half of the decade, with the greatest gains being realized from 1995 onwards–after the Democrats had been swept out of Congressional power, and as a result, Clinton’s penchants for tax hikes and big spending packages were effectively neutered. There were no grand “stimulus” packages from that point on, only good, old-fashioned gridlock that kept the government from raising taxes or spending to outrageous excess."

He concludes "All of this has happened before . . . and if we’re very lucky, all of this will happen again."

"I say let's roll the dice . . ."

A number of folks have talked about the reluctance of local governments to respond promptly and fully to public document requests. During the Ben Holder Show at the recent city council meeting, Mike Barber addressed this subject with a recommendation that the city should be much more pro-active in responding to requests (see about the 8'30" mark in Ben's first video). Mike talked about the need to be more responsive to document requests and suggested the city take more risk in releasing documents.

On Wednesday the Blogfather referenced an article which lead to this where we learned that King County (Seattle) is facing perhaps nearly a million dollars in fines because it delayed in releasing public documents.

"The state Supreme Court has ruled that a $124,000 fine paid by King County for blatant violations of the state Public Records Act isn't nearly enough, and has sent the case back to Superior Court with a recommendation to increase the penalty."

"In 1997, Yousoufian asked the office of County Executive Ron Sims for copies of studies pertaining to the impact of the proposed $300 million Seahawks stadium. County residents were about to vote on a referendum to pay for Qwest Field."

"Yousoufian's attorney, Michael Brannan, said he'll ask the trial court to impose the maximum penalty: $825,200. That would equal $100 a day for each of the 8,252 days the trial court said the county violated the law."

If there is a risk in releasing documents too liberally, as Mike alleges, there is also a risk in the opposite action. Of course, we're a long way from the Seattle stage as of today, but we're getting closer every day the city behaves ostrich-like in reacting to these document requests.

I thought it was also interesting that during this discussion no one on City Council addressed any comment to the one person who could resolve this matter--the person charged with actually running the city: Mitch Johnson. Everyone on Council spoke in support of "getting the truth out", but no one addressed any comment to Mitch, who seemed to just sit there tar-baby-like.

There was considerable discussion about releasing the content of the tapes, but I believe Ben's primary concern was not the actual content of the tapes but the fact the city has continued to say the taping was part of an overt police investigation when subsequent facts have shown that isn't true, but the city won't admit it. Why not?

Whores

Folks say that it isn't your enemies telling lies about you that you should worry about, it's your friends telling the truth. I was reminded of this after I read Powerline's recent attack on Tom Daschle. I don't usually read Glen Greenwald, but the blogfather referenced this article which quotes Rolling Stone's Matt Taibbi:

"In Washington there are whores and there are whores, and then there is Tom Daschle. Tom Daschle would suck off a corpse for a cheeseburger. True, he is probably only the second-biggest whore for the health care industry in American politics — the biggest being doctor/cat-torturer Bill Frist, whose visit to South Dakota on behalf of John Thune in 2004 was one of the factors in ending Daschle's tenure in the Senate."

Them's harsh words. Whore, indeed!

To their credit, both the New York Times and Ed Cone have called for Daschle to withdraw. I thought that had happened this morning when I saw this headline: "Tax issues prompt Obama nominee to withdraw" but it turned out to be a different Obama nominee.

I saw this store-front last week on High Point Road. It looks like they are selling them in big-box stores now.

I Forgot!

Sue Polinsky laments having to pay taxes. Doesn't everyone. Perhaps Sue should do what other loyal democrats do: just don't pay them. See Rangel, Geithner, and Daschle for more details.The Daschle case is particularly worrying. According to the WSJ article, he recently paid some $140,000 in back taxes for 2005-2007 that

". . . reflected unreported income from the use of the car service valued at $255,256 for those three years, according to the Finance Committee report. He also amended his returns to cover $83,333 in unreported consulting income for 2007. And he reduced his charitable contributions by $14,963."

Now, that car service averages $7,000 per month which seems pretty ritzy, and forgetting $80,000 in income and fibbing about $15,000 in charitable contributions doesn't seem to be the kind of behavior I'd want someone who is in charge of reforming our health-care mess to exhibit. I'd much prefer an honest man in that position!

Beverly Perdue's Shovel

Piedmont Publicus blog is a little miffed at Gov. Perdue and the phrase "Shovel Ready". Perhaps he needs to take a look at this:

It's from this blog post, and it isn't what it seems.