NBC announced its Fall lineup, and Studio 60 has been canned. This makes Sorkin 1 for 3 in his recent endeavors (well, 1.5 for three since critics liked Sportsnight). I will miss the witty banter. Time to go watch my stash of West Wing I guess…. boo

Spent last week in Texas, on the Rio Grande Border near Harlingen, Browsville and South Padre Island. Interesting trip.

- The reason for the trip was to look at how CBP and ICE handle illegals they catch. I had a lot of respect for these guys before, and even more now. And a better understanding of the systems used and the shortcoming and frustrations they have.

- Had a preconception that that area was going to be flat, with just scrub and cattle as far as the eye could see. Only the flat part was right. The area felt more like Florida than anything else. Didn’t see any cattle at all (though King Ranch was about ten miles to north)

- Funniest part of the trip – when leaving Harlingen via Valley International Airport, there’s a sign at the airport exit that says “Next time fly to Brownsville”. I suppose it means that next time rather than driving to Browsville, you could fly, but it’s funnier if you read it the other way.

Driving into work on Thursday, J had the radio tuned to WMAL – which is a right of center (at best of times) radio station that carries Sean Hannity and Rush Limbaugh among their more well known commentators. Fred Thompson was filling in for Paul Harvey at the 8:30 “news” break, and finished his broadcast with this gem:

I feel bad for Nancy Pelosi, AND her neighbors. Anti-war activists from the group Code Pink have been giving her the same treatment the president gets at his Crawford, Texas, ranch. Camping on her San Francisco lawn, they’re demanding she cut off funds to the troops in Iraq.

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”

And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER. During World War II, Gandhi penned an open letter to the British people, urging them to surrender to the Nazis. Later, when the extent of the holocaust was known, he criticized Jews who had tried to escape or fight for their lives as they did in Warsaw and Treblinka. “The Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife,” he said. “They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs.” “Collective suicide,” he told his biographer, “would have been heroism.”

The so-called peace movement certainly has the right to make Gandhi’s way their way, but their efforts to make collective suicide American foreign policy just won’t cut it in this country. When American’s think of heroism, we think of the young American soldiers in Iraq and Afghanistan, risking their lives to prevent another Adolph Hitler or Saddam Hussein.

Gandhi probably wouldn’t approve, but I can live with that.

© PAUL HARVEY SHOW, ABC RADIO NETWORKS

Original Audio

Now, having read a few books on Gandhi, this wasn’t news to me. But the red flags were going off in the back of my head. My belief at the time was that Thompson was pulling his most controversial quotes out of context, and sure enough, there is nuance to all three of Gandhi’s quotes. Sure enough, Wikiquote provides some of the key missing context:

I will be the first to admit that Gandhi’s ideas don’t make the most sense, but that’s with the perfect vision of hindsight. But at least someone should point out that Senator Thompson may have left out some of the critical ideas…. especially as he debates running for President in a field where some on the right and more on the far right are looking for a truly conservative candidate.

Picked up a copy of MLB 07: The Show for the PSP. The 2006 version was pretty much welded into my PSP, so when the 07 version came out, I grabbed it. It’s playing pretty well, and it’s a good upgrade – graphics, play, commentary all have been tweaked to be better. Lineups are pretty up to date (though, the Red Sox have the mystery “T. Baik” as a fourth starter – there must by MLB union or licensing issues with using Dice-K).

I have, however, noticed some bugs. A 3-5-X double play instead going 3-1-X, with the pitcher still standing on the mound (thereby killing any chance at a double play). My favorite bug, though, has been in the movie below. I took a digital video of the replay off the PSP, so the quality is crap, but you should be able to see what’s going on… The ball is hit deep into the gap – it is an easy double, and the runner, apparently was thinking triple all the way… and basically decided to take a shortcut.

Get the Flash Player to see this player.

As you can tell from my relatively lame book review of Riding Rockets below, I have installed the Structured Blogging plugin for Wordpress, which enables a set of templates for microformats (though, alas, no hresume or hcard, which I’ll have to dig out from somewhere. The microformats use a standardized structure for common posts. I’ll be using them as needed.

On to finding something for hresume and hcard…

Yummy. No real pear here, but very good.

1 Tblspn Superfine Sugar
3 Lime Sections
5 Leaves of Mint
1 oz. Sour Apple Pucker
1.5 oz. Bicardi Limon Rum
1 oz. Pineapple Juice
Club Soda
Ice

Muddle (mash) the lime, sugar and mint leaves together. Add the Sour Apple Pucker, Limon Rum, & Pineapple Juice and shake with ice. Pour into a tall glass (highball or collins) top off with the club soda. Enjoy.

– Added a del.icio.us sidebar

– Added gallery to the site (currently empty, requires registration)

– Added Mediawiki to the site (bare bones, requires registration)

A late trip report on our trip to LA and SD in mid Jan:

– It was cold. None of this 80 degree weather you hear about. 50 degree highs, and 30 degree lows. It was warmer at home in DC than it was in Southern California. Go figure

– The wedding was okay. Like I said, it was cold, which limited the number of things you could do. We split time between the wedding and reception watching the Patriots beat the Chargers. Needless to say, in southern CA, there weren’t many Pats fans

– Had a blowout on the interstate travelling from LA to SD, while travelling at 80 mph. Luckily J got us over in time and without injury.

– Saw Y’s palace in SD, and got to meet G (Y got to meet J). Went to the SD Zoo, the Wild Animal Park, the USS Midway, the beach, and had some pretty decent sushi.

Hope to do it again soon….