U.S Capitol (AP) – In tonight\’s state of the union address, President George W. Bush unveiled a bold plan to regain public confidence in the Iraq War. \”Difficult times in Iraq call for drastic changes – and renaming the war after President Ronald Reagan is a serious step that needs to be taken,\” said Bush, referring to the former President who enjoyed historically high approval ratings following his death in 2004.

\”Renaming the war after our greatest president is a stroke of genius,\” said Grover Norquist, who founded the Ronald Reagan Legacy project, an organization whose sole goal is to get crap named after Reagan. \”It\’s not often you see a worldwide disaster of this magnitude – Reagan\’s name will be in the paper every day for the next decade,\” gushed Norquist.

Bush announced his plan immediately before he detailed his push for a troop surge in Iraq. \”The war has been going extremely well up to this point, so naturally we need to do the same thing, just more of it and all at once,\” explained the President, before he started laughing at how f\’ing stupid that sounded.

Sensing discontent with his speech, Bush stopped midway through and immediately made every member of Congress a delicious turkey sandwich. \”It was an uncoventional move, but his use of cranberry sauce as a topping was unparalleled,\” said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

\”The American soldiers who have died in Iraq are heroes,\” said Bush, adding that the war is creating more and more heroes on a daily basis. \”The second worst thing that can happen to a fallen soldier is to devalue their sacrifice by opposing the war,\” said Bush. Coincidentally, the worst thing that can happen to a soldier is to no longer be alive.

Bush also announced that Baghdad will now be known as \”Lance Armstrong,\” and that roadside bombs will be known as \”Barbaros.\” Furthermore, internment camps will be set up in America for anyone that appears to have a unibrow. The latter move was immediately denounced by TV President Wayne Palmer, who had one of his writers script a third-grade level explanation of what internment camps were for him, and why they were bad. Finally, Bush announced that all military decisions would be made by a popular vote of the public. The American public responded by saying they would get around to planning the next strategic attack after taking a nap, watching the Rachael Ray Show, and heading downtown to cash their child support check.

Another provision of Bush\’s bold new agenda will mandate that bad news in Iraq now delivered to American citizens by a sassy, ambiguously gay Brit. \”Americans love nothing better that having bad news being broken to them by tight t-shirt wearing British men,\” observed Bush. Following the Democratic response criticizing his speech, Bush pleaded with judges to give him a chance to just do one more speech, since his throat was a little dry the first time.

Detractors of the President\’s plan point out that he stole the idea from the best-selling Gerald Ford Feminine Napkins, unveiled late last year. Having failed to bring a Western-style democracy to Iraq, Bush lowered expectations and instead said that he would settle for installing a western-style Baskin Robbins restaurant in Baghdad.

So the Super Bowl is set, as is the storyline that will be pounded into our heads for the next two weeks – that Lovie Smith and Tony Dungy are the first two African-American head coaches to make the Super Bowl. Since modern sport stories are usually geared toward the lowest common denominator, this is the story that sports writers will think is the cheapest hit. It\’s only a matter of time before a reporter at Media Day asks Tony Dungy, \”so how long have you been black?\”

If I were African-American, I would probably think that was pretty cool – America can never have enough positive \”firsts\” for African-Americans. But let\’s not get carried away – African-Americans shouldn\’t exactly sit by their mailboxes waiting for their \”Lovie Check\” to show up in the mail.

To point out that both these coaches are black over and over again seems insulting and condescending – as if they are at some inherent coaching disadvantage simply because of their skin color. (Lovie Smith\’s greatest disadvantage is that he has a caucasian quarterback who sucks.) It has an almost \”Awwww…. aren\’t those black coaches cute\” type of vibe to it – like when they give a kid in a wheelchair an at-bat in tee ball.

What they are are simply two excellent head coaches who paid their dues. Unfortunately, it took too long for them to be able to start gaining the experience they have now. However, there have been really good African-American coaches for years and years now. Herm Edwards will make a Super Bowl, as will Marvin Lewis. People keep hiring Denny Green for some reason. The dude the Steelers just hired will suck, but not because he\’s black – because he was a Vikings assistant coach.

For the next two weeks, however, this will be a celebration of condescending white guilt on display. Sports commentators will be able to announce to the world how happy they are that there are two black coaches in the Super Bowl, and the sins of all their ancestors will vanish. Certainly, celebrating the skin color of two head coaches will go a long way to helping African-American kids trapped in failing schools with single mothers barely staying afloat. As I\’ve said before, America shouldn\’t be judged on how many black head coaches we have – we should be judged on how many black CEOs, computer programmers, and doctors we have. And we\’re not doing well.

But this will be the obvious story that will be drilled into us over and over. Just like last week, when we were led to believe that New Orleans is only liveable now because the Saints won a few games this year. So now that the Saints lost today, does that mean New Orleans falls back to being a hopeless, unliveable hellhole?

So it\’s time to celebrate, Black America – all your problems have now been solved with these two head coaches making the Super Bowl. Racism has officially been eradicated – because Chris Berman told me so. Hopefully, African Americans will be able to cope with the fact that one of these coaches will actually lose.

That being said, go Colts.

It goes without saying that for all races and cultures to co-exist in America, there will need to be a high level of cross-cultural acceptance. On the other hand, some Hmong men may be stretching things just a little bit.

From today’s Milwaukee Journal Sentinel:

SHEBOYGAN, Wis. (AP) — A 22-year-old Hmong man who impregnated his 16 year-old wife when she was 15 will avoid jail by speaking to other Hmong about the importance of adhering to U.S. law.

“This resolution not only allows Lee to avoid a serious felony conviction and registration as a sex offender, it also provides education to traditional members of the Hmong community that while they have every right to celebrate their traditions and customs, they must do so in compliance with the law,” he said.

The article also points out that they were not married when she was impregnated. So as long as you\’re from the right ethnic group, feel free to scope for dates at Chuck E. Cheese. But this paragraph killed me:

It\’s common for Hmong girls in Laos to marry and have children at age 15 or 16. But the Lees, who were both born in the United States, said their decision to have a child had nothing to do with their Hmong heritage.

So they admit it had nothing to do with being Hmong? So what did it have to do with? Lee\’s desire to throw it in a 15 year old? And for this he gets a slap on the wrist? He was better off with the Hmong cultural excuse.

Clearly, not all Hmong residents adhere to some of their traditions that conflict with Wisconsin law. However, there are also some who don’t – which is why the state needs to fund programs like the Refugee Family Strengthening Project, a state program that primarily teaches Hmong men that beating their wives is illegal.

In 2004, Jim Doyle described the need for the program in a Department of Workforce Development press release, saying there was a need to “address family violence arising from cultural adjustment issues faced by refugee families as they assimilate into new communities within Wisconsin.”

The Legislative Fiscal Bureau described the need for the program thusly:

Domestic abuse service providers believe domestic abuse is more prevalent among immigrant women than among U.S. citizens. Research has found that victims of domestic violence from certain communities, including non-English speaking communities, face greater barriers in accessing protections from abuse. Some of these barriers are lack of information about U.S. laws, lack of economic resources, language barriers, lack of culturally relevant services, and the socio-cultural impact on women from traditional cultures who decide to leave a marriage.

In the 2005-07 budget (p. 116, item 13), Doyle proposed $1.12 million in general purpose revenue for the Refugee Family Strengthening program. Legislative Republicans, not wanting to touch the issue with a 20 foot pole, approved the funding with a modest suggestion that the Governor should find the funding from a different source in the future.

Obviously, domestic abuse is a matter to be taken seriously. And the state does – in 2004-05, Wisconsin spent over $8 million in state and federal dollars on domestic abuse services, battered women shelters, and the like. Is it really necessary to spend extra money to teach people what the law is?

The Jason Lee case described above is a perfect example. Lee was born in America, impregnated a 15 year old, and didn\’t even claim that it was a “cultural” act. Yet he gets lenience anyway – the court actually applied a defense to Lee that he didn’t even claim.

With Hmong men who abuse their wives, they likely make a claim that their behavior is “cultural.” So instead of treating their behavior with the seriousness it demands, we excuse their behavior and spend a million dollars in scarce general purpose tax revenue to teach them what the law is. Sounds pretty “sensitive,” unless you’re a woman victimized by one of these “cultural” attacks.

It was a huge night in our household, as my daughter pooped on the toilet for the first time. We celebrated like she had just won an academy award (I would put a red carpet out leading up to the toilet, but people might confuse the poop for Joan Rivers.)

After 10 minutes of telling her what a Super Duper Pooper was, she actually started displaying some false modesty. She said, \”Dad, it wasn\’t that big of a deal.\” She\’s almost Dwyane Wade-esque in her ability to downplay her superhuman abilities.

And when she reads this in 10 years, there is a 90% chance she will poison me.

Seeing as how American Idol is the most popular show in the world, and seeing as how two Wisconsin natives moved on to Hollywood on last night\’s show, I don\’t think it\’s a stretch at all to say that the Badger State is now calling the shots on a global stage, at least until tonight\’s show. (Wisconsin is now the world\’s crack spider, if you will – see previous post.)

Denise Jackson of Madison and Sarah Krueger of Eau Claire both impressed the judges on a day where most other contestants looked dreadful. Jackson taught us all an important lesson – that if you do crack while your baby is in the womb, it is likely that your child will be able to sing like Billie Holliday.

Anyway, I hope the whole City of Madison gets behind her when the Hollywood competition starts (even though I think it\’s already been filmed, right?) I will be at any rally the city holds for her. It might be the only way I can get a 16 year old girl to talk to me, since hanging out near high schools seems to be yielding mixed results.

In other big singing news, I caughed up a phlegm ball as big as a watermelon when attempting to sing \”Champagne Supernova\” yesterday. So there\’s that.

I\’m no doctor, but I\’m 90% sure I\’ll be dead by the end of the week. In fact, don\’t get to close to your computer – you might catch something.

As I do every Monday, this morning I gathered my trash and recycling up and started to take it out to the curb. My wife leaned out the door and told me that there wasn\’t any trash pickup today, since it\’s Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. I then looked around my neighborhood and noticed most of my neighbors had their trash out at the curb. It all made sense when I remembered that they are all racist.

I was walking by a west side Madison ice cream shop yesterday, when a flier taped to their window caught my eye. In honor of Martin Luther King, Jr. day on Monday, they are offering the \”I Have a Dream… Sundae,\” complete with a phony MLK speech about the importance of having a good sundae \”without being judged.\” I knew nobody would believe me, so I snapped a picture:

When hearing of the news, Michael\’s Frozen Custard immedately unveiled the \”Keep Hope Alive\” pork sandwich.

But seriously, who knew Michael Richards owned an ice cream store?

UPDATE: VH1 aired the \”Flavor of Love 2\” reunion show today – ironic, because that show single-handedly set back race relations by 30 years.

Oh, and I\’m kicking myself for not calling this post \”I have a Dreamsicle.\”

Bill Lueders of The Isthmus is getting rave reviews for his new book Cry Rape, and I have enjoyed the excerpts of it that I\’ve read. That being said, his piece in this week\’s paper that attempts to make apologies for local criminal Vairin Meesouk is simply preposterous.

The story goes like this: Meesouk, 21, was arrested at and charged with multiple felonies at age 15 for breaking into and robbing several gas stations and convenience stores and setting a fire at one. A protracted legal battle followed, with the understanding that if sentenced to a felony, Meesouk (here legally but not a legal resident) could be deported to Laos. Eventually, the charges were reduced to misdemeanors.

By the time his charges were reduced, howerver, Meesouk had committed another crime. He and a group of friends broke into an apartment where the 77 year old resident was beaten and smothered until he lost consciousness. Meesouk initially lied to police and denied involvement, but later plead guilty to three felonies. One of his accomplices said Meesouk had punched the old man in the testicles.

The prosecutor immediately asked for a 10 year sentence, while Meesouk\’s attorneys have asked for 364 days, to avoid the one-year threshold that could trigger deportation. Meesouk now has a two year old daughter, and his attorneys argue that he should stay in America to care for her. Since breaking in and assaulting the elderly man, Meesouk has had \”minor scrapes with the law,\” including a 2003 \”altercation\” with his sister for which he received two years probation.

Lueders concludes that deportation is too harsh of a penalty for Meesouk, as he is still a young man and is now a caring father. My observations differ dramatically:

1. We have reached a point in society now where having an illegitimate child is actually a sign of responsibility. The article doesn\’t explicitly say the child is out of wedlock, but trust me – if Meesouk was married to the mother, that would have been in his talking points. Meesouk\’s attorneys argue that he can\’t be deported because he\’s responsible… because he had a child with a woman to which… he\’s not married. It\’s like we\’re living in a bizarro world – it\’s like a kid killing his parents and then complaining that he\’s an orphan.

2. Meesouk\’s attorney argued for leniency and \”maintained the youths broke in believing the residence was empty.\” So it\’s the old guy\’s fault that he was there in the apartment when they broke in? How dare he be sitting home and enjoying Wheel of Fortune when these thugs broke into his house – the nerve of that guy! Kind of sounds like he deserved to be beaten and smothered unconscious to me.

3. The article argues that Meesouk is no longer a threat because he has a job. What happens when he\’s fired or quits? Does he then go on an uncontrollable elderly nut-punching spree?

4. The article quotes the 77 year old victim as saying \”that the trauma of this crime paled compared to what he experienced in World War II.\” What in the world does this possibly mean? When people commit crimes, should we immediately compare their transgression to a World War II battlefield to see if it measures up? Does Meesouk deserve a lenient sentence because he wasn\’t throwing grenades at the old guy? Try this defense when your wife catches you sleeping with your babysitter – \”Yeah, honey, it was wrong. But you should have seen what was going on in \’Nam.\”

5. Chances of Lueders going to the wall for Meesouk if he has a white kid from suburban Middleton – zero point zero. Unfortunately for the victim, testicular pugilism knows no skin color.

So anyone willing to chip in for a plane ticket for Meesouk, I\’ll set up a collection. It\’ll save you the cost of having to wear a protective cup while you\’re sitting at home watching \”According to Jim.\” In fact, I might make the trip with Meesouk, if only to save myself from having to hear about the Rosie O\’Donnell/Donald Trump feud anymore.

(Oh, and lest you think I\’m bagging on The Isthmus, they are more than generous in linking to my posts via their internet site. And lest you think I\’m afraid of using the word \”lest,\” I have now proven you wrong.)

Today, the Milwaukee Bucks traded Steve Blake to the Denver Nuggets for guards Earl Boykins and Julius Hodge. You may remember Hodge from his days at North Carolina State, where he was a standout player and apparently a fantastic quote. Here\’s a website that has compiled some of his funnier theories. Among them:

Advice given to Cameron Bennerman, starting in place of the injured Scooter Sherrill, before a March 6, 2004 game at Wake Forest’s Lawrence Joel Coliseum:
“When you’re hungry, you eat; when you’re a frog, you leap; if you’re scared, get a dog.”

On the differences between Harlem, NY and Raleigh, NC, January 21, 2002
“New York is the place to be. I could wake up there at three in the morning and decide to go to the store for some chips and Snapple and there would be cars racing down the street and people walking around everywhere. If I do that here, I\’d probably get attacked by a deer.”

As for the trade, I think it\’s a steal for the Bucks. I dumped on Steve Blake a month ago, and I stand by it. The only possible explanation for his generous playing time was that he secretly only has a couple weeks to live and the Bucks were granting him his Make-A-Wish.

In his book \”The Tipping Point,\” Malcolm Gladwell cites a study from influential British psychologist Hans Eysenck when making a link between smoking and certain personality traits. He says:

In countless studies since Eysenck\’s grounbreaking work, this picture of the smoking \”type\” has been filled out. Heavy smokers have been shown to have a much greater sex drive than nonsmokers. They are more sexually precocious; they have a greater \”need\” for sex, and greater attraction to the opposite sex. At age nineteen, for example, 15 percent of nonsmoking white women attending college have had sex. The same number for white female students who do smoke is 55 percent.

This is why cities who ban smoking in bars have it so wrong. Think about the desperate dorky guy who regularly hits the bars hoping to trick a random \”precocious\” young lady into some lovin\’. The City of Madison has removed a valuable arrow from that young man\’s quiver by not allowing him to see which girls at the bars smoke and which ones don\’t. This changes your odds significantly – we\’re talking about a 40 percent swing here.

Smoking issue aside, men have used nonverbal cues for centuries to pick out eligible mates. Tattoo? Check. Nose ring? Double check. Wearing a necklace with a marijuana leaf on it? Hit the family planning aisle ASAP. Wearing her UW Softball Team jersey? Run like the wind, my friend.

By removing these cues, men would waste infinite amounts of time talking to women with which they have no chance (for me, also known as \”all women.\”) They have it easy in the animal world – when male monkeys go to monkey bars, they just have to find a girl monkey with a swollen buttocks. Dogs just have to make sure they don\’t have a stuffy nose, otherwise they\’re guaranteed to go home empty-pawed (where they will pour themselves a drink, have their way with a sofa leg, and pass out.)

The only other option, of course, is a process known as \”dating,\” where apparently you are supposed to actually get to know a girl for a while. But this is a high risk proposition, as it can be expensive and cuts into your time normally spent attending license plate conventions.

I\’m surprised that this ordinance wasn\’t more ardently opposed by nerdy college guys and guys with bad breath. Of course, that would make for a pretty unpleasant public hearing for everyone involved.

The nonverbal clues women offer you to hint that they don\’t want to go home with you are varied. They involve kicking you in the groin, pouring a drink on you, hiding under a table, and having their girlfriend beat you about the head, neck, and chest area.

And for the ladies that are looking for nonverbal clues as to whether a certain guy will go home with them, there is one telltale hint that says he will: He\’s alive.

Yesterday, I had to take my car in for service and they gave me a loaner car to use while it was in the shop. As I drove away from the mechanic\’s shop, I felt a disconcerting warm sensation under my rear. I thought maybe I had developed a urinary problem I didn\’t know about, so I actually stopped the car and checked my pants, only to realize that the car had built-in electric seat warmers.

I guess I\’ve never had a car fancy enough to have a seat warming device, so this took me by surprise. Kids these days and their fancy new technology. Next thing you know, they\’ll let women vote.

In only marginally related news, a girl at work told me that she went on a date with a guy who attempted the \”pretend to yawn and put your arm around her\” maneuver at the movies. She asked me if this was actually still an acceptable way of trying to \”get close\” to your date.

I told her that I hadn\’t been on a date since the invention of the internal combustion engine, and that I was surprised that this procedure was still utilized. I figured that since the time that I was single, someone would have invented some kind of new and exciting hug sneaking technology that the kids would now be using. In fact, I told her that I admired this guy for kicking it old school and using a maneuver that I had thought was retired to the Lame Date Moves Hall of Fame.

I now have to go soak my teeth.

A few posts back, a reader left a comment accusing me of libel and threatening a lawsuit against me, in which he would collect \”a handsome five figure amount.\” I was wondering exactly what a \”handsome amount\” would look like, so I figured I\’d send him a bag of these in the mail:

Now that\’s a handsome sum.

It\’s taken me about 20 clumsy posts to try to say what George Will sums up in this one 800 word column. In fact, it\’s so good, I\’ll post the whole thing – plus, there\’s a local Wisconsin angle.

A Retreat on Rationing Free Speech?

By George F. Will
Sunday, December 31, 2006; B07

A three-judge federal court recently tugged a thread that may begin the unraveling of the fabric of murky laws and regulations that traduce the First Amendment by suppressing political speech. Divided 2 to 1, the court held — unremarkably, you might think — that issue advocacy ads can run during an election campaign, when they matter most. This decision will strike zealous (there is no other kind) advocates of ever-tighter regulation of political speech (campaign finance \”reformers\”) as ominous. Why? Because it partially emancipates millions of Americans who incorporate thousands of groups to advocate their causes, groups such as the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Rifle Association.

And Wisconsin Right to Life. It is another organization by which people assemble (see the First Amendment) to speak (see it again) in order to seek redress of grievances (the amendment, one more time). In 2004 Wisconsin Right to Life was distressed because Wisconsin\’s senators, Russ Feingold and Herb Kohl, were helping to block confirmation votes on some of President Bush\’s judicial nominees. It wanted to run ads urging people to \”contact Senators Feingold and Kohl and tell them to oppose the filibuster.\”

But Feingold was running for reelection, and the McCain-Feingold \”reform\” makes it a crime for entities such as Wisconsin Right to Life to use their corporate funds to broadcast an \”electioneering communication\” within 30 days of a primary or 60 days of a general election. An \”electioneering communication\” is one that \”refers to\” a candidate for federal office.

Although in 2003 the Supreme Court upheld McCain-Feingold, the court said later that it would consider appeals against the law \”as applied.\” The majority on the three-judge court, preserving the distinction between electioneering and grass-roots lobbying, held that Wisconsin Right to Life\’s ads were exempt from the McCain-Feingold election-eve blackouts of speech because the ads were not \”coordinated\” with a candidate\’s campaign and did not engage in \”express advocacy\” — did not use the words \”vote for\” or \”vote against\” a candidate.

The dissenting judge wanted to examine the \”intent\” of the ads by examining their \”context,\” looking for clues as to whether the group hoped to not only advocate an issue but influence an election. Imagine: Judges scouring the political landscape, searching for evidence (people\’s past opinions or associations; e-mails and other communications) that would empower them to rule that grass-roots lobbying about an issue is \”really\” the functional equivalent of electioneering (express advocacy).

Such a process would necessarily be so protracted that no challenged ad could be authorized in time for an election. Besides, Bob Bauer, a Democratic campaign lawyer, rightly warns that the prospect of such inquiries should \”make a sensible citizen\’s blood run cold.\” An uncircumscribed inquiry into \”intent\” would become \”an intrusive process\” in which an organization\’s internal communications would be subpoenaed and political operatives and consultants would be \”put under oath and questioned about what they meant and intended and thought.\”

The Wisconsin Right to Life case is probably heading for the Supreme Court. There, Justice Samuel Alito occupies the chair that Sandra Day O\’Connor occupied when she voted with the majority in the 5 to 4 ruling that upheld McCain-Feingold.

Still, the reformers\’ zeal for regulating speech is undiminished. The Federal Election Commission recently fined some \”527\” groups (named for the tax code provision under which they organize) $630,000. Their offense? Issue advocacy in 2004 that, \”taken as a whole,\” could \”only be interpreted by a reasonable person as containing the advocacy of the election or defeat\” of a federal candidate. Editorial writers at The Post and the New York Times, ever eager to regulate political advocacy not done by newspaper editorial writers, approved, although the Times thought the fines insufficient, and although The Post, calling the current law \”murky,\” thought the FEC should have enforced the murkiness quicker.

The Times no longer bothers to pretend that its rationale for speech regulation is fear of corruption or the appearance thereof. Rather, the Times justifies suppressing 527s on aesthetic grounds — they are run by \”hard-edged activists\” and their ads are too negative. Presumably, suppressing 527s will elevate political discourse — and, presumably, it is the government\’s business to enforce the elevation. The Post also is tellingly silent about the reformers\’ original corruption rationale for rationing political speech by restricting the political money that finances it. Instead, The Post says 527s wield \”significant\” — by implication, excessive (relative to The Post\’s?) — influence.

Bauer wonders why, absent a compelling government interest in combating corruption, unregulated speech resulting in influence should be a federal offense. When, as surely it will, the Supreme Court considers that question, it can begin undoing the damage it did at the time it affirmed McCain-Feingold and licensed government to ration political speech.

Courtesy of the Fond du Lac Reporter: