Sundries

I loves me some late-summer days in September, especially when football season gets well under way. Yesterday was a typical late-summer Saturday (or early Fall, you choose.) at El Casa Móvil De Pennington, which is to say it was an orgy of college football. All day and into the night, as well. Three games (Oregon – UoM, ND – Penn State, and LSU- Virginia Tech), followed by SportsCenter. And then SportsCenter, again. I took time out to nuke some food, get refills from the fridge, and check a blog or two. But other than that? Not much.

I may have mentioned this before, so stop me if you’ve heard this. One of the BEST things about being single at this stage of life is I can be perfectly indolent and watch football and drink beer all damned day if I so choose. And I did so choose yesterday, Gentle Reader. And there was no nagging, no guilt, no looking over my shoulder or dodging pointed little comments from "interested parties" of the female persuasion, such as “Are you going to watch teevee ALL day?” Why, yes, now that you mention it, that’s exactly what I’m going to do. And so I did. Yesterday was “Nothing But Net Football.”

Life is GOOD.

So. I scanned the Detroit papers this morning and the natives are restless after UoM’s loss to Oregon yesterday. Michiganders don’t take losing lightly, especially when it’s Big Blue doing the losing. Lotsa calls for Lloyd Carr’s head, but Mitch Albom isn’t one of those guys. Not that Mitch wasn’t critical; he was:

I hate to put it this way, but there have been Lions games less embarrassing than this.

No, coach Lloyd Carr does not need to be fired -- come on, calm down -- and U-M fans shouldn't throw themselves off a bridge. But let's be honest. The Wolverines are not very good right now. Doesn't matter what they were supposed to be. Doesn't matter what their preseason ranking was or which seniors were returning.

They have played two games now and the defense is apparently still checking into the dorms.

They have played two games and their senior quarterback, Chad Henne, has unhinged the team with uncharacteristic mistakes in key moments, including an opening-drive interception and several momentum-killing sacks Saturday. (To make matters worse, Henne left the game after the first half with a leg injury and is "highly doubtful" for the Notre Dame game, according to Carr. As Woody Allen once joked: "The food here is terrible." "Yeah, and such small portions!")

It's all upside down in Ann Arbor. Right now, this team cannot capitalize on offense. (How's 365 yards and only seven points?) Right now, this team cannot stop anything on defense. (How's six first-half possessions for Oregon, 32 points and no punts?)

Next week’s game against Notre Dame should be a doozy. Not for the quality of play, of course…two programs in deep doo-doo ordinarily would make for a snoozer of a game. But there’s serious drama here. Both Michigan and Notre Dame have a national fan base, and together Michigan and ND have the winningest records in college football, being Numbers One and Two, respectively. You can bet your boots the eyes of America (the college football eyes, anyway) will be on Ann Arbor next weekend. I predict it will be one Helluva game. There’s nothing really on the line in next week’s game except pride. And sometimes pride is everything.

Interesting article on cyber-war in The Times (UK) today…

China’s ambitions extend to crippling an enemy’s financial, military and communications capabilities early in a conflict, according to military documents and generals’ speeches that are being analysed by US intelligence officials. Describing what is in effect a new arms race, a Pentagon assessment states that China’s military regards offensive computer operations as “critical to seize the initiative” in the first stage of a war.

The plan to cripple the US aircraft carrier battle groups was authored by two PLA air force officials, Sun Yiming and Yang Liping. It also emerged this week that the Chinese military hacked into the US Defence Secretary’s computer system in June; have regularly penetrated computers in at least 10 Whitehall departments, including military files, and infiltrated German government systems this year.

[…]

The Pentagon logged more than 79,000 attempted intrusions in 2005. About 1,300 were successful, including the penetration of computers linked to the Army’s 101st and 82nd Airborne Divisions and the 4th Infantry Division. In August and September of that year Chinese hackers penetrated US State Department computers in several parts of the world. Hundreds of computers had to be replaced or taken offline for months. Chinese hackers also disrupted the US Naval War College’s network in November, forcing the college to shut down its computer systems for several weeks. The Pentagon uses more than 5 million computers on 100,000 networks in 65 countries.

The interesting thing about all of this hacking and cracking activity is that we just let it go… publicly, anyway. There’s no denying unauthorized access to computer systems or denial of service (DoS) attacks are acts of aggression. But the problem is that no one dies and nothing is physically blown up. Therefore it’s pretty hard, if not impossible, to retaliate under these circumstances. One would hope the CIA and DoD are cooperating in an effort to develop our own offensive cyber-war capabilities, because playing defense just isn’t enough in this arena. A few narrowly-targeted but pointedly specific covert attacks on the PLA’s IT infrastructure on our part (with plausible deniability, of course) just might send a message. And it would be great training for our guys, too.

Also in The Times…the Brits can rest easy; it’s not as bad as they think. In quantifiable areas, anyway. I don’t think there’s a way to measure a nation’s Political Correctness Quotient. The Brits would have serious cause for worry if there was a way to measure that sort of stuff. As would the US of A…

Further from The Times… “Valium Fred, the panacea of the people.” Excerpts:

People like Fred Thompson. So far as I can tell, that is currently the prime rationale for his candidacy for president of the United States. He doesn’t need to launch a media blitz to achieve this level of public fondness. His avuncular, crumpled tower of a personage is well known from many episodes of Law & Order.

In this year’s race, only one other Republican candidate has even minimal charm – the obscure Mike Huckabee of Arkansas, who is obviously (and rather successfully) running for vice-president. Rudy Giuliani is many things, but likable isn’t one of them. Mitt Romney has failed to win over many conservatives despite an impeccable family life and a platform largely dictated by the far-right activist base. The slickness and eagerness to please seem to glide past any political traction. John McCain is too prickly to be cuddled. But good old Fred has the shtick down.

[…]

Thompson is accused of being lazy. So was Ronald Reagan, of course. But there is a key difference between the Reagan of 1979 and the Thompson of 2007. Reagan had spent a lifetime honing arguments, finessing policy, articulating a broad philosophical view, while proposing concrete and radical policy options.

Thompson has a legislative record as a senator from Tennessee that is all but invisible. Yes, he has a solid conservative record on taxes and other people’s spending. But he was a hog for his home-state pork barrel projects. He was, in other words, a popular backbencher – but no more. At times his candidacy feels merely like a rationale for a man who senses that Americans are deeply uneasy about their current leadership, wants to reassure them, but has no idea substantively how.

A thinker he isn’t. He’s rather a conveyor of mood. In a period of less moment, when less is at stake, this might be an aesthetic preference: a calm presence in a storm. But on the substance of war, and foreign policy, the Thompson shtick can seem somewhat detached from the needs of the moment.

Just so. One might think it odd I agree with the opinion of Andrew Freakin’ Sullivan, of all people. And yeah, it IS strange, given I don’t agree with Sullivan on nearly anything. But I think he’s right about Thompson.

I haven’t made up my mind about who I’m going to support as of yet. But Fred ain’t in MY top tier at the moment, for the reasons quoted above and others that are mentioned in the text of the entire article. Fred’s a nice, likable sort of guy. But being likable ain’t exactly the be-all, end-all quality for the leader of the Free World, now, is it? Substance, please.

Today’s Pic: OK, it’s yet another video. This time it’s SN3 motoring around the premises on his plastic motorcycle, which was one of his Christmas presents back in 2000 (making him three years old at Christmas, but four years old when this video was shot). My first attempt at cultivating a "chip off the old block."

Commentary by The Second Mrs. Pennington.

Somewhere in Colorado. April, 2001.