How do you scare a terrorist?

Sounds like the opening line to a joke, eh? Well, I guess I'll entertain any good punchlines, if you can come up with one. I can't really do that at this point 'cause I'm just so frustrated.

The Chicago Tribune this morning had a front-page article on Kerry's loss of support from American women. For some reason, of all the election coverage I've read over the last year, this article has bothered me the most. It may be partly because anyone who knows most anything about Presidential elections knows that you don't become President if you don't carry the female vote. And the fact that Kerry is now blowing that is the most clear proof I've seen yet that he's not gonna pull this out.

But I think the thing that amazes me the most is that women -- or at least the women who were interviewed for this article -- indicate that even though they disagree with Bush on major social issues, all of those issues must be put on the back burner while we make our country safe. I'm just ... stunned. Speechless. Luckily, I can still type.

The fear-mongering has worked. Say what awful things you want about the Bush administration (and believe me, I have, though mostly to the inside of my car's windshield as I listen to news on the radio), but they are entirely superior to the Kerry campaign in absolute control of a message. They apparently have a majority of Americans convinced that America is safer when they are in the cockpit. But the notion stuns me ... Not that people would think that Bush is the better protector, but that anyone in the Oval Office would be a better protector than someone else.

Bush-Cheney have gone on and on about how Kerry's "flip-flops" mean that he would be wishy-washy on national security, and that somehow this would "send a message" to al-Qaeda and other terrorist organizations that we won't strike back.

Think about that for a moment: Members of this terrorist organization happily take the wheel as they drive their [insert mode of transportation here] into [insert building here], taking their own life. They are willing to strap bombs to themselves and press the button as they call out a prayer. Do you really think they're scared of our reprisal?

All the terrorist organizations care about is how effectively they terrorize. If they are hunted down and killed in the aftermath, so be it -- they believe they die as martyrs and will be glorified in Heaven. The big, scary U.S. military machine is not their concern. Does Bush actually believe that Osama bin Laden thinks: "I better not blow that bridge up, because then America might really be mad and hurt me!" Umm, no. Their only concern is this: "Where are the weak spots in the borders of the U.S. that will allow us to strike?"

Now, is Bush any better at strengthening all weak spots than Kerry is? I suggest that there's no difference. In fact, I suggest that, as much as the workers under different administrations change, in the end, they are all getting essentially the same advice about protecting our country. In fact, when you get into the upper echelons of security experts in our government, I bet they are specialized enough that you would find the exact same people working for both administrations!

Richard Clarke worked for both administrations, and I bet that was because he was the best at what he does. Whoever the current equivalent of Richard Clarke might be (if there is one), if (s)he really is the best person for that job, I submit that a Kerry administration would be smart enough to keep that person on board. The whole idea that Bush is protecting us ... that Kerry would protect us better or worse, seems ignorant of the many, many advisors and aides to these men who shape their policy and tell them what to do and what not to do ... and to the thousands and thousands of people out there actually doing the protecting -- none of which will be out of a job based on who you vote for in November.

If you are honestly choosing to vote for Bush because you think that there will be any difference in the level of security under him versus a country under Kerry, then you have bought a line. You've been "handled." You've been manipulated. You just may want to look at some other criteria for who your next leader is going to be.

What to do when your baseball team has been blown out.

WGN radio personality John Williams is a bit of a trivia buff, in the sense that the most trivial things can sometimes fascinate him. This must be one of the reasons that I like John, because I too have this interest for useless information.

Many things about John's show frustrates me — he can be frighteningly shallow sometimes when he attempts to become serious — but for the most part, he is very fair and (to me, at least) entertaining. On several occasions throughout this baseball season, John has wondered aloud about the number of actual baseballs used in a regulation major league game. He asked one woman going to a game to count for him, but he never really heard back from her.

My wife surprised me with tickets to the Cubs-Expos match-up on my birthday (Labor Day), and while it was nice to see the Cubs win one for a change (I almost always seem to catch losses at Wrigley), in this case the Cubs were winning so handily that I was getting as restless as my two-and-a-half year old daughter by the seventh inning. So I let my mind wander, thinking about the "counting baseballs" thing. And i devised in my head a way to score the baseball. Not the baseball game — the baseball.

We caught another game on Sunday — Cubs-Marlins this time — and after having run a few test innings through the week, I tried a whole game of watching the baseball and home plate umpire Bill Hohn closer than the actual action. The result was a rather thorough report, which I compiled (with analysis) for John Williams and sent to him yesterday afternoon. He teased it at the end of his show yesterday, so it looks like he'll be talking about it on the air sometime soon.

If you're interested in useless information as much as the next person — and hey, you're already reading a blog, fer chrissakes, so you must have a little extra time on your hand! — you are welcome to download my report (in PDF format). (This document will only be available on the server for a limited time, so if the link doesn't work and you're interested in seeing it, click the "Email me directly" link on the left and I'd be happy to provide you with your own copy.)

I'm sitting in my basement ...

... working on some stuff for my "night job," and I've left the monitor on. The other end of the monitor is in Piper's bedroom. She has not made noise for an hour, since Mommy put her down. But all of a sudden, out of nowhere, she begins singing in a clear (and surprisingly in-tune) voice several verses of "Old MacDonald Had A Farm." I'm not sure if she had fallen asleep and woke up to sing this song, or if she's just been lying there thinking about things and decided she needed some music to accompany her thoughts. (The Justin Roberts CD that was playing has long since died out.) The real entertainment comes when she runs out of animals. Not that that should ever slow down a determined late-night "Old MacDonald" singer.

Old MacDonald had a farm, E - I - E - I - O
And on this farm he had a daddy, E - I - E - I - O
With a "Hi, hi" here, A "Hi, hi' there,
Here a "Hi," there a "Hi,"
Everywhere a "Hi, hi"
Old MacDonald had a farm, E - I - E - I - O.

It doesn't stop there: She continues with verses about Mommy, Gammy (Laura's mom), Gammy Jean (my mom), and Penny (Gammy Jean's dachshund). Penny doesn't get a "Hi, hi;" she gets the more apropos "Woof, woof." After a few more minutes of silence, "Rock-A-Bye, Baby" starts up, but I can already hear her starting to fade again. She barely gets out the last line — the one I modified to remove some of the morbidity of that song:

When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall And Daddy will catch you, cradle and all.

One of the greatest rewards of parenting is the knowledge that — for a few years, at least — there is one soul out there who believes you to be omnipotent. I certainly don't want her believing it for long. But it's good for her to feel that now, and hell, it certainly makes me walk an extra foot off the ground.

It's been a quiet coupla months in Lake Wobegone....

So we've quickly adjusted to many things ....

• The shock of being not just a homeowner, but a homeowner of a vintage (ca. 1925) home. In the first month-and-a-half, we had electrical and plumbing issues, at least partially related to the age of our home. "Well," our real estate agent said, "that's why I always say to put an extra 2% of your purchase price aside for situations just like this." Laura and I looked at each other and then simultaneously said to him: "You never told us that."
  
  
• The constant upstream battle against the "customer service" branches of just about every utility in the world. I have thought very seriously of starting a separate blog just for my remarkable travails with SBC, Comcast, AT&T Wireless, GE Medical Systems, ADT Security, Allstate Insurance, ComEd, NiCor, and I'm sure others that I'm way too exhausted/angry to think of at the moment. Then I realized that I'm barely keeping this blog alive, and the last thing I need is to start another blog I never write in.
  
  
• The reality that we're really going to be parents again. Yes, Laura is 22 weeks along. For those of you not into math, that would be a due date of around January 11. Every once in awhile, we look at each other at around 9 p.m., after we've put Piper down and we're trying to figure out if we can stay awake long enough to go water the yard in the dark or work on ridding the paper pile-up on our dining room table ... and we can't believe we're going to do this again. Early on, we asked Piper if she would rather have a baby brother or a baby sister. Piper was very clear every time we asked: "A baby sister." I thought it best that we find out the gender of the baby so that she would have plenty of time to adjust, lest she be getting a brother instead. But once again, Her Royal Highness will be getting just what she wants.
  
  
• The idea that summer is coming to a close ... and yet Chicago never really had it. It seems like all through July and August, we were setting records for new LOW temperatures. We had the occasional spate of warm days, but it was kind of a drag of a summer overall. I think Piper's three-day-a-week babysitter, Marta, has decided that this is the way Chicago is every year. She's moving back to Slovakia. And football's already here! I can't believe it. And speaking of sports ....
  
  
• The slow realization that the Cubs are not the team everyone said they would be. Hell, there are still baseball analysts that say the Cubs are the team to beat if they make it to the post-season. People, they've had 130+ games to prove that they're the team to beat, and they've been beat pretty well by just about everybody. What makes you think that they're going to make it past the first set of playoffs, if they get that far? I'm holding out for a miracle and a good, long winnning streak here in the waning days of the season, but the words "Wait 'til next year" are slowly coming into better and better focus.

I miss you all, and I'm looking forward to more writing here soon.