Good Catch Media Omnibus Feed

Excellent Take-Down of Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged

Sat, 02 May 2009 21:39 GMT

Some News

Tue, 28 Apr 2009 20:57 GMT

I am pleased to announce that I have been approved to join the Baltimore Examiner as a liberal politics Examiner (commentator). I will be one of maybe twelve such commentators on political matters from different viewpoints throughout Baltimore City and County, as best as I can tell. I look forward to posting my first column there shortly.

Some material from the Examiner may find its way here as well.

Post Retracted

Thu, 26 Mar 2009 18:03 GMT

I have retracted the post that I had written previously disagreeing with Mark Newgent about "Maryland My Maryland", Maryland's state song. While my disagreements with Mark on this topic are very profound and multi-faceted, I don't feel comfortable with what I wrote. I don't have a more sophisticated explanation for my discomfort than that I am simply uncomfortable with my post. Since this blog is either an enlightened despotism or an unenlightened one, I have made a despotic decision to kill the post.

Personal - The Crab is back (Feb 16)

Mon, 16 Feb 2009 09:10 GMT

Well, after nearly 8 weeks of radio silence, the Crab is back.

A number of factors contributed to my silence online. The biggest was a daisy chain of crazy work hours, punctuated barely by Christmas, New Year's Day & the Inauguration, averaging and occasionally exceeding 60/week. It was a good earn and a good save, since I was too tired to think about spending, let alone actually spending any mone - but what a cost in terms of quality life! In a sense, I have been living in a "time famine."

Additional factors were various projects on my to-do lists including my upcoming divorce filing, and my role as an active hands-on parent of my two autistic sons when they are with me in DC. I have also been focusing on maintaining and improving my real-life, "actual live human being" relationships, a frequent weak spot for men entering divorced life. In short, I attempted to have more of a real life at the cost of online life. People have made more foolish choices in a crunch.

A few personal updates.

1) The Crab will be moving back to Maryland at the end of April or thereabouts. 50 miles away from my boys is too far. My original purpose for moving into DC no longer applies, and if I am going to live in Maryland I should live where I can be a better father to the little fellows by reaching their school in Lochearn, their day care in Reisterstown and their mother and stepfather's apartment easily in Owings Mills. Western Baltimore County or maybe a few neighborhoods in West/NW Baltimore are under consideration. Irvington/Ten Hills, Ashburton, Mount Washington, Cheswolde and basically all of the suburban region between Park Heights Avenue and the MARC station in Halethorpe/Arbutus.

2) In light of the time famine aforementioned, I remain in flux on what to do with my blogging "empire." The empire needs some roads and taverns and ports.

3) I am in transition professionally to work in metro Baltimore, ideally in the western suburbs such as Towson or Pikesville. More to come on this. Specifically, I am considering a major revamp of www.responsivedocuments.com in furtherance of this contemplated move.

4) Good Catch Blog and Palimpsest will get revamped in turn, but mostly cosmetically.

Many thanks to all my readers, all 10 of you who have stayed on during this period of near-monastic silence.

Nice piece by Michael Dresser on Baltimore's Rail Transit

Mon, 22 Dec 2008 10:48 GMT

I agree with Michael Dresser of the Sun that Howard Street is pretty dismal and that the rail system in Baltimore leaves a great deal to be desired. I am optimistic that the Red Line will make the sorts of connections that visitors and commuters actually want to make, especially if they can put a little bit of the rail underground downtown.

A lot of European cities have hybrid light-rail/subway systems that run at grade for most of their length but burrow underground in the densest parts of town. Baltimore does not need 20 miles of grade-separated elevated/tunnelled rail; it needs 70 miles of dual-tracked rail with maybe 7-8 of it underground. The light rail currently in operation would be much more attractive if it ran underground along Howard Street; there is already a freight rail tunnel there and a crossing by the subway near Baltimore. But a new east-west tunnel from, say, MLK Boulevard to Little Italy, with pedestrian connections underground to a portal at Charles Center and Convention Center, would be great. If it connects to Little Italy, Greektown and Highlandtown, awesome for the future of dining in this city (I can already see it marketed as the "lunch train.")

Daily Record's On the Record: Let The Senator Fail

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 13:47 GMT

Joe Bacchus of On the Record, December 19, 2008:

I understand people have memories attached to the place, but all their praise and all their memories haven’t translated into the dollars needed to keep the theater running these past few years. So now it needs yet another bailout. Seems there’s a lot of that going around in this economy.

The market doesn’t want the Senator. It doesn’t care how many single-screen theaters are left in the U.S. It only cares about businesses that can sustain themselves — not those that can only tug on heartstrings every couple of years in order to eke out a little more time on the ventilator.

Even non-profit organizations participate in "the free market," engage in marketing, cope with competition and market realities, etc. The dichotomy between "free market" and "non-profit cultural institution" is a false one.

But I think that Bacchus has a good point generally. A great deal of Baltimore's local cultural and historical heritage is observed in the breach and in the past/present perfect tense. Baltimoreans (and though I live in DC now I don't exclude myself from the label) are among the most parochial people on the planet at times, but not in ways that provide the sorts of support to local institutions and points of heritage.

Everybody remembers the Senator Theater, right? But the annoying multiplexes fill up. Why? Because we have no streetcars any more to take people to the Senator from downtown. Why? Because we ripped them up and replaced them with lower-grade buses that we can barely keep safe. Plus, without the streetcars, without the urban and near-suburban industrial and commercial base, most Baltimoreans live outside the Beltway now. Folks in Columbia or in Hunt Valley aren't driving to Govans to questionable parking and the risk of getting attacked or their car vandalized.

Washington, DC is not a particularly safe city by any stretch; there have been a lot of stabbings and shootings here of late. But the idea that the city is just doomed and is giving up, the sense of "Teh Fail" from so many things in Baltimore from transit to crime to open-air dope dealing rendering almost entire ZIP codes into combat zones, just doesn't dominate DC, even the nastier parts of the city. Even in beleaguered Anacostia, one sees signs of hope, discussions of new development, etc.

Unfortunately, Baltimore cannot just say "we fouled up" and get a federal bailout because, unfortunately, Baltimore is neither Wall Street nor Detroit's feudal industrial base (whose workers are often from Detroit and maybe Dearborn and the executives are from Grosse Pointe, never Detroit.) To quote Kurt Vonnegut, so it goes.

What Mark Newgent Said About Che Guevara

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 12:02 GMT

Today seems to be the day for grudging praise. My only disagreement with Mark Newgent's approach is that he didn't take down more targets than Ernesto Guevara when he had the opportunity in his post. I am no cheerleader for Red Maryland after the last election but Newgent hit this one right. The entirety of hammer-and-sickle kitsch is hideous, not just the one with the Castro's pal's face on it.

Not all communist governments have been the same historically of course. Vietnam was a far less vicious place than neighboring Cambodia. Yugoslavia managed to avoid the wholesale persecution of religion (and some of the worst inefficiencies of top-down economic inefficiency) that characterized neighboring states such as Albania and Romania. The Indian state of Kerala has repeatedly elected a Communist party over many years, and through its policies has achieved the longest life expectancies and literacy levels in all of India (though at considerable costs in other economic indicators.) Of course, residents of Kerala are free to leave Kerala and to leave India and to criticize the government loudly and publicly without state sanction, unlike residents of Soviet-bloc or other unfree societies have been or, in the case of Belarus, still are.

But let's face the facts: there is (extremely appropriately) a memorial museum in Washington for the many millions of murders of the Holocaust, but none for the victims of reckless and intentional killing by communists either by bullets, by death in prison or by starvation through famines inflicted with either depraved indifference or specific intent. Stalin's liquidation of private farm land and command economics on food inflicted a hideous death toll on Ukraine, long known as the "breadbasket of Europe" for its fertile soil and fairly favorable weather for wheat and livestock raising. The murders during the Cultural Revolution in China, Ceaucescu's torture chambers and secret police, the killing fields of Cambodia under Pol Pot, the communist efforts to destroy local cultures in favor of granite and concrete Communist temples, shrines and "iconography" - these outrages have no memorial monument in DC. Not one.

Stalin's policies killed perhaps 3 million in Ukraine in the 1930's; it is speculated that Stalin inflicted this famine as a tool against Ukrainian nationalism, under the theory that dead and starving people cannot easily rebel. There's not even an outhouse or fire hydrant in DC dedicated to these victims, nor to those who survived. We think that the Great Depression was bad here, and it was in many ways, but outright starvation was rare. Kansas didn't starve, didn't lose 25% of its people in between 1929 and 1933 as large sections of central Ukraine's breadbasket did from starvation and the effort to escape that starvation. And this is only one facet of one atrocity; there are many, many more.

Yet these hideously ignorant or indifferent children even today, decades after the Soviet Union has fallen and most of Eastern Europe is economically and politically free, wear gear with red stars and hammer-and-sickle logos to look "cool." They may as well wear swastikas as well and give all of the totalitarian murderers equal time. I dare them to wear that garbage on the streets of Tallinn or Riga after dark; if they do, they should bring friends built like bricklayers, not scrawny-assed coffee-shop effetes.

Congratulations to Paul Foer on a Good Scoop

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:49 GMT

Paul Foer of Annapolis Capital Punishment and I don't see eye-to-eye generally. We differ both in substance and style on the best way to deal with conservative opposition, and we have some significant differences on policy, he being a much stronger supporter of regulation and critic of development than I. We have scrapped a few times.

But no one can deny the level of detail and effort that he puts into work covering transportation issues, crime and local politics the City of Annapolis and to a lesser extent Anne Arundel County.

Foer scored a mention in the Baltimore Sun today for breaking the story that the acting Annapolis city attorney Stephen Kling's law license had been suspended for, reportedly, 2 years for failing to report his pro bono hours as an attorney.

To clarify the matter (as Foer does pretty well in his links), attorneys must do three things to stay certified: they have to pay annual dues to the Maryland Client Protection Fund, they have to submit a report regarding their escrow accounts' status and they have to report the total number of pro bono hours that they have performed. There is no pro bono requirement in Maryland; though the rules of professional conduct do indicate that an attorney "should" render pro bono professional service, it's a "should", not a "must." Reporting the hours done, however, is mandatory (even if zero, "zero" needs to be reported.) The escrow and pro bono forms can be done on paper or online; takes maybe 5-6 minutes. As Foer noted, "You'd think this would be pretty easy to do" and he's right: it is. The only mitigating factor is that the CPF dues form, the escrow filing and the pro bono filing are not done the same way; the latter two can be done online and are due on a different annual schedule from the green-enveloped dues form, which currently cannot be completed online, only by dead-tree check.

I will neither endorse nor criticize any other comments that Foer made in his long posts on this topic, as most of the other material reflects either his personal experiences with Kling or his detailed knowledge of local politics far exceeding mine as a non-resident. But congratulations to Paul Foer on the sort of good scoop that local bloggers can do best.

Opinion: Four Thoughts on the Rick Warren Invitation

Fri, 19 Dec 2008 08:20 GMT

Three things come to mind regarding the invitation of Protestant evangelist and author Rick Warren to the Presidential Inauguration next month.

1) Who honestly didn't expect this? Did anyone expect the Protestant Christian Obama not to invoke Protestant Christianity at his inauguration, and not to invite one of that community's most prominent speakers and authors? Did your naive mind expect Obama to invite the President of the Unitarian Universalist Association instead? Obama already owns Beacon Street; he needs the rest of the country politically on his side as much as possible in the face of a near-guaranteed theocratic wingnut assault.

2) "Gay Incorporated" barely lost California through an ineffable level of organizational sloth and stupidity. Its ads mostly looked like garbage and it campaigned as if the highly-Protestant Christian, moderately-homophobic African-American community were not going to show up to vote for Obama. Can anyone expect Obama to do anything other than ignore the indignity that the Rick Warren invitation inflicts on the gay community? Gay Americans and gay couples don't deserve the insult of this theocratic, bigoted buffoon on the Inauguration stage but I think a lot of gay political consultants and mainstream gay organizations do deserve the humiliation. (Don't get me started on gay advocacy groups who themselves have endorsed open opponents of gay marriage.) I have read a lot of comparisons of Warren to Hitler, David Duke, etc., but there are a whole lot more people angry now about Warren than were six weeks ago about the Proposition 8 same-sex marriage ban in California that Warren aggressively backed.

3) Maybe inflicting a flesh wound on gay politicos' dignity is even a feature for Team Obama. Obama might want not to have a "choice", rather to be compelled politically to help the gay community. It's important in politics that screw-ups be punished, and I suspect that gay political strategists will perceive this indignity from Team Obama as an invitation to improve their organizational effort. It might be better for gay politics for the gay community and its allies to look at Obama as a moderately adversarial figure who needs to be pushed, and Team Obama may be perfectly happy with that dynamic.

4) Warren will probably sell a lot more books in the short term as a result of this appearance, but I suspect that Warren will suffer a loss of core market share because of this in the long term. While Obama will get a chance to have a few more evangelical Protestants listen to him seriously after this appearance, Warren will have to deal with people who want to slap him for sharing the stage again with a very pro-choice, moderately pro-gay president. A lot of evangelical Protestants openly disrespect evangelist Joel Osteen for being too optimistic, gentle and mushy, and some will throw their Rick Warren books into the garbage after this for the same reason. In other words, I think Team Obama tempted Warren into a mistake and Warren bit.

I have been an aggressive and unapologetic supporter of same-sex marriage in multiple fora for a very long time, from before anyone thought that the Massachusetts decision had even a shot of coming to pass, but really: it's important that stupidity in politics be punished. Had I been Obama's consigliere, I'd have probably advised him to extend a similar invitation from the cold-blooded politics of it all.

Byzantine Christmas Hymn in Arabic

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 01:45 GMT

Football Agony of Defeat

Tue, 16 Dec 2008 00:34 GMT

What's worse: losing a meaningless game that you bloody well should have won (Skins losing to the now 2-692 Bengals) or losing a critical game that you bloody well could have won (Ravens losing in the last minute at home to the division-leading Steelers)? Despondent, grieving minds actually don't want to know, just to drink week 14 away or throw themselves. I was just grateful for the company of old friends from work who met me at the Olney Ale House last night to keep my eyes off of the television set that, otherwise, surely would have ruined my entire night.

Those who remember the opening montage of the old ABC Wild World of Sports with Jim McKay, where McKay intones "...and the agony of defeat" while a skier takes one unforgettable hideous tumbling bail off of the slope? If you have seen it, you don't forget it. Ray Lewis and Jason Campbell probably envied that poor bastard when they got up this morning.

Greg Kline: Christmas is a Time for Slapping Heretics

Sun, 14 Dec 2008 12:17 GMT

I respect Greg Kline for his work ethic and professional acumen as an attorney. I have a harder time seeing the merits of a call to slap heretics, even metaphorically, however. Then again, even a lapsed-with-extreme-prejudice (ex-)Catholic like me still looks at Lutherans as heretics (though there has been some irenic effort along that line of thinking), and at Luther as an abomination, so a call from a Lutheran minister to slap heretics does not resonate well here at Good Catch Media.

Kline's citation is perhaps a capstone of Maryland right-blogosphere theological (?) discussion on whether people who say something other than "Merry Christmas", or perhaps fail to utter that phrase or any at all, should be suffered politely. As usual, Brian Griffiths has his common-sense eye on the bottom line, which is why he is catching hell from the social conservatives on his side with whom he has an uneasy alliance. One need not accept "separation of church and state" as a logical jurisprudential conclusion to accept "separation of theology department and political party" as a way to stop losing elections. But here at Team Blue, I say proudly: Onward Christian Soldiers, marching off the cliff!

A Big Thank-You to Isaac Smith

Sat, 13 Dec 2008 10:48 GMT

Isaac Smith of Free State Politics has been arguably the best liberal blogger in Maryland or at a minimum a bona fide competitor for the title. Isaac kept Free State Politics going as long as he could as a labor of love, but the demands of life as a public policy grad student at Maryland gave way to the challenges of securing employment in this hideous economy where Wall Street and Detroit are competing for multi-billions in corporate welfare for survival.

Isaac has hung it up, at least for now - disappointing news but entirely understandable and worthy of respect. I have taken breaks from blogging for far less serious grounds.

Isaac's apparent/imminent departure leaves a hole in the Maryland blogosphere. Technically I am not part of the Maryland blogosphere; I live in DC and do not blog as heavily about Maryland-specific issues as I used to, though the Maryland Blogger Alliance has generously kept me in "expat" status.

There are some fissures and differences among conservative bloggers in Maryland. Brian Griffiths, for example, takes a noticeably less socially-conservative approach from, say, Greg Kline (check out Greg's piece on Christmas for an example of his social conservatism.) And Team Red in the Maryland blogosphere has had a few squabbles amongst themselves along the way, though more about personalities and inside baseball than about ideology. On the whole, though, they have had a stronger identity, presence and output than Team Blue in MD.

I have certainly had my differences with some liberal bloggers in MD, some about ideology (I am more sympathetic to free-market economics than most liberals) and some about style and approach. I don't feel like rehashing old boring blog-flames here, but I don't feel a sense of identity with Team Blue here. But I always respected Isaac's approach, staunch advocacy for progressive policy positions (even when I disagreed on details) and his cautious decency when suffering the occasional wingnut troll on his site (as opposed to bona fide conservative critiques which he also handled extremely well.)

Whither the liberal blogosphere in Maryland? A question not quickly answered, in my view.

Om Mani Padme Hum, Continued

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:46 GMT

I posted the foregoing music performance and video of a folk-music style of the Om Mani Padme Hum for one reason alone: I found it beautiful.

The Buddhist world in its facets and diversity exceeds my grasp; I don't know how to speak in a sophisticated manner about it. Perhaps I can put that down as an area for "blogger self-improvement."

Mezmur Sung by Mirtinesh

Fri, 12 Dec 2008 21:35 GMT

This is a continuation of the mezmur videos here at Palimpsest. This particular hymn by Mirtinesh was the first I had heard of the genre, and would be the one I would most like to have translated. Please click the "mezmur" tag below for additional videos.