I don't normally deign to go out of my way to write posts responding to critics in the Comments section, but I am going to make an exception in this case. I am annoyed by people who accuse me of insulting Barcelona, Catalonia, and/or Spain. I would not live here if I did not like it. As a matter of fact, I could earn a lot more money if I went back to the States, assuming my mental health held up.

To demonstrate that I have written many positive things about Spain, let's pick two months more or less at random, one from the early days of this blog and one from recent times, specifically avoiding "big news" months like the Iraq war, the March 11 bombing and subsequent election, and the November 2004 US election.

Here's some stuff from June 2003.

I have been accused of speaking scornfully of Catalan intellectuals. But, come on, if this is the best they can do, no amount of scorn is unjustified. And remember, Baltasar Porcel is the Official Catalan Candidate for the Nobel Prize for Literature. Wouldn't it be great if they actually gave it to him one of these years?

OK, that actually was pretty snarky, but we are talking about Baltasar Porcel here.

As I've said before, Iberian Notes does not take sides on the Spanish Civil War. We're in favor of the victims and against the killers. That means we detest both sides, the revolutionaries and the reactionaries, equally.

That should take care of those who call us Francoists.

They actually had a cool anti-war protest here in Barcelona. First there was a manifesto that was a typical anti-Yankee tantrum, but then they read Lysistrata, the comedy by Aristophanes in which the women of a city at war refuse sex to their husbands until they stop the war. Well-known local actors, to whom I will give no publicity, were the readers. That's pretty classy; I much prefer Greek theater to the normal fare at a demo.

Isn't that pretty tolerant of me?

One of the reasons I appreciate Spain is its tolerance for cannabis use. I think it might be because all working-class men and most middle-class men over about 30 years old have done military service, and they learned to smoke dope in the Spanish Army. No kidding. There wasn't anything else to do, and Spain controlled northern Morocco (including the Rif, where more dope is grown than anywhere else in the world) until 1956 and the Spanish Sahara, due south of Morocco, until 1975. Spain still controls Ceuta and Melilla, outposts on the coast of the Rif, and the Canary Islands, just a few miles off the Moroccan coast. Andalusia is a short boat ride from the heart of the Rif. All these guys who were in the Army smoked dope, and they learned from personal experience that it's no big deal. Therefore they don't think it's some sort of evil monster.

See? I said Spain's policy on cannabis was better than America's.

I love Barcelona. I really do. Hey, just a couple of days ago it was Corpus Christi, and they have a cool local tradition: on Corpus, in the fountains in the city's several medieval cloisters, they place an egg on top of the spout and the water plays with it; I assume the inside of the egg is blown out first. Anyway, though, the egg is continuously held aloft by the water spouting up. It's called "l'ou com balla"--"the dancing egg". It's pretty to see inside the cloisters at Santa Anna or Felip Neri or Sant Pau. But I bloody well hate the verbena de San Juan, St. John's Eve. San Juan is a big holiday in Catalonia and they blow off tons of fireworks and everybody goes out and parties their asses off. There is an excellent fireworks display every year, but my problem is that every single kid in Catalonia is blowing off hundreds of firecrackers per second even as I speak.I don't like big crowds or loud noises. They make me nervous. They frighten the cats. And I don't like party nights when everybody goes out and gets wasted en masse. It's amateur night, a whole lot of people who aren't used to drinking hitting it way too hard and getting smashed and puking all over the place and starting fights and generally acting like a bunch of morons. Conclusion: If you like going out and wandering the streets and getting trashed and spending lots of money and being subjected to sharp loud noises and getting puked on, San Juan is your night. I will admit that the city's fireworks display is pretty spectacular for people who like that sort of thing. But except for that, I stay home on the night of San Juan.

That's pretty positive, isn't it? And the part that isn't positive is affectionate toward everybody but drunks. Also, anybody who doubts I know my way around town ought to be convinced by that little post.

This article from the Telegraph about street crime in Barcelona is sadly all too true. Muggings, pickpocketings, and purse-snatchings are much too common. Tourists who appear to be well-off are the main--really only--targets. Locals are rarely molested. The main culprits are Arab street kids. This is not racism. It is a fact. Holes in the Spanish legal and judicial system prevent us from either locking up the little bastards or deporting them. Yes, they were born poor--they now have plenty of ill-gotten cash and flashy name-brand sports clothes--and have had crappy lives. No, that doesn't give them the right to victimize those people who were not born poor and have not had crappy lives.

That isn't positive at all. However, if you read the whole post, some of which will piss you off, you will see that it is CONSTRUCTIVE criticism. That is, it identifies a serious problem and calls for action. It is not bitching for the sake of bitching. It shows that I care, because if I did not care I wouldn't have wasted my time alerting people to something that very badly needs to be fixed.

Anecdote. A couple of years ago I was in KC and I went to get my drivers license renewed six months before it ran out. The clerk down at the DMV got a little suspicious and asked why. I replied that I was going abroad and just wanted to make sure I had a valid license. She asked where and I said Spain. She said, "Oh, you'd better watch out in Barcelona, it seems like half the people who come in here for new licenses got robbed in Barcelona." If the first thing that comes to the mind of a typical, standard American, a clerk at the Kansas Department of Motor Vehicles, when she thinks of Spain, is "Barcelona is dangerous" and not "Spain is beautiful", then we've got a problem, Houston. Over and out.

This is another paragraph from the same post. Is this criticism constructive or not? Do I want to make things better or do I just not care?

Aznar, however, is scrupulously democratic and has been so ever since he discovered sensible conservative politics during his university days. If he were American he'd fit well into the moderate Republicans. He'd be rather left for a Republican on government spending issues. Aznar might also fit in pretty well with the Democrat "far right", but those Charlie Stenholm Texas wheeler-dealer guys might be too corrupt for his taste. See, one of the things Aznar did was to clean up the Spanish conservative wing, getting rid of old Franquistas and local caciques. The most famous to fall were Cantabria's Juan Hormaechea, who did some jail time, and the PP's Balearic confederation, up to their eyeballs in corrupt construction-development sleaze. By the way, several notable people who later joined the Socialists also worked in the government under Franco. To be fair, these were "technocratic" administration rather than ideological guys--somebody's got to take charge of the country's finances, for example, whether we've got a dictatorship or not. Two examples are former economics minister Miguel Boyer and the late former foreign minister, Paco Ordonez. Boyer has now jumped the Socialist sinking ship and is considered close to the PP.

Is this a reasonable conservative take on recent Spanish politics or not? Remember it was written while Aznar was still in power, in June 2003.

This damn Gibraltar thing--the Spaniards consider Gibraltar España Irridenta and they want it very badly. They consider the current situation, with Britain owning Gibraltar, intolerable and unacceptable. They also know they can't go to war with the Brits over this. So they continually pressure the British, and everybody else who might have some influence over them, to turn over Gib. Now, the problem is that 99% of the Giblets don't want to be turned over to Spanish sovereignty, and the British can't just turn 'em over without their say-so. This isn't like it was Hong Kong or something. Or, more accurately, Spain ain't China. Next thing the Arabs are going to start yelling for Gib to be turned over to them, since they did, after all, hold it from 711 to 1492, while Spain only held it between 1492 and 1714.

I wouldn't call that positive or negative. It's history. Is it unfair? Am I lying?

American Movies Most Overplayed on Spanish TV: 7. All those slapstick parody movies with Leslie Nielsen 6. Those damn Chevy Chase vacation movies 5. Thelma and Louise 4. Fried Green Tomatoes 3. Those pieces of crap with Clint Eastwood and the ape 2. The Shawshank Redemption 1. Mississippi Burning

What's wrong with that?

We preview Barcelona life in the immediate future
by Alan Murphy and John Chappell
“ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE”
OFFICIAL FORUM-2004-THOUGHT COMPLIANCE DIRECTIVE #4032

All Barcelonans will be obliged to appear naked at the Diagonal Mar Fine Arts and Sustainable Urbanism Peace Camp at 6.25 AM tomorrow for the inauguration of the “International Workshop on Gender-neutral Encounter on Clothes-Optional Peace and Arts Sustainable Governability Project for Solidarity”. Organic pita bread and garlic-lentil casserole will be served for breakfast. All citizens must bring their pita-bread ration card, from which two Forum Solidarity Points will be subtracted.Those with “NO TO WAR” already tattooed on their left buttock cheek will be exempted from the Semiotic-Workshop on Body Messaging this evening. Those who have not yet fulfilled their solidarious commitment will have the message tattooed this evening. All citizens with surnames A-M will report to the Rigoberta Menchu Tattooage and Ethical Body-Piercing Commissariat at the site of the Lenin Barracks in Plaza Espanya by 22.00. Those with surnames N-Z will report to The Jose Saramago Forumization and High-Colonic Enema Institute, at the Port Olympic, also before 22.00. Failure to comply will result in obligatory attendance at the Sustainability of Solidarian Forum-Thought, to be held at the Manresa Rock Quarry from August 1-31 2004. As you all know, our right buttocks are being reserved for the “ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE” message to be inscribed there for the gala Closing Ceremony. Expect another directive on this during September.

Yours in solidarity,
OUR DEAR LEADER, JOAN CLOS
COMMISSAR FOR SOLIDARITY COMPLIANCE, INMA MAYOL

I thought that was funny. I understand if you don't, but it's not offensive or anything.

Now here's one for Andrew Sullivan's Sontag Award. It's Paul Auster, who is very popular here among our local Illustrated and Enlightened--a good rule of thumb regarding fiction is if the Barcelona critics like it, it's probably a bunch of pretentious crap.

OK, that was pretty snarky, too, but I stand by it. I agree that the New York and London critics are equally obnoxious.

Auster, by the way, shows his philistinism regarding Spanish culture when he states he is going to Madrid to meet Pedro Almódovar and then to Granada to see Lorca's house. Oh, jeez, has any American ever heard of any Spanish writers except García Lorca, who is massively overrated and is still known--not read by anyone but Spanish lit majors, though--today largely because of the manner of his death? Trust me, people, forget all that crap about how Lorca reaches down into the soul of Spain and puts the depth of sensitivity of the pueblo de España into words on the printed page. Spare me that "Verde que te quiero verde" stuff. And I personally wouldn't bother crossing the street to talk to Almódovar. We'd have nothing to say to one another. He would hate me and I probably wouldn't like him.

See, my point here is that I LIKE, admire, and respect Spanish culture--there's so much more in Spanish lit than Lorca that most English-speakers know nothing about. I don't like Lorca. Of other 20th-century Spanish authors, I prefer Unamuno, both Machados, Juan Ramon Jimenez, Pio Baroja, Josep Pla, Eduardo Mendoza, even Miguel Hernandez and Camilo Jose Cela and Merce Rodoreda. Among many others. Spain's 2oth century literary record is excellent. And I don't like Almodovar, but I wouldn't like him if he were, say, Bulgarian either. The guy who really gets dissed in this post is none other than American author Auster.

There's bad news today regarding two of Spain's biggest social problems, illegal immigration and domestic violence. Nine immigrants drowned when their raft sank off the Canary Isle of Fuerteventura, the island closest to the Moroccan coast. So far in 2003 ten rafts are known to have sunk, with 67 confirmed dead or missing and presumed dead. These statistics include 15 drowned off Fuerteventura in January and 12 drowned from a raft found between Tenerife and Grand Canary in February. Yet the Spanish media go wild when a truck full of illegal Mexicans get found dead somewhere in West Texas. The problem in both countries seems to be the same to me; more people want to come to Spain and the US than, at least some believe, either country can handle. As long as that attitude persists, there will be illegal immigration and some illegal immigrants will die, since illegal immigration is by definition dangerous and full of low criminals likely to take your money and dump you in the sea under the pretext of guiding you to the promised land. By the way, Iberian Notes strongly supports the execution of "coyotes" who abandon their "clients" to die. That's first-degree premeditated murder with the aggravating factors of extortion and breach of promise. Hang them. They're scum.

More than forty people have died in Spain this year as victims of domestic violence. Yesterday, in the crummy part of the Sant Andreu working-class area of Barcelona, a man beat his common-law wife to death with a hammer. The two were fiftyish alcoholics. They had met seven months ago and she invited him to live with her, since he had nowhere to go. The two argued and fought all the time, according to the neighbors, and threats of violence were heard several times by different witnesses. The cops spent a lot of time breaking up fights at their place. Once she locked him out and he took off all his clothes and pounded on her door until three in the morning (there's the pacifism and tranquility of nudism for you). She finally got a restraining order. Not much later he jumped her from behind when she opened the street door to her apartment building; he was waiting inside and clubbed her to death with a hammer. She had been out walking her dogs. The reporters point out that the dogs, found in a state of shock by the woman's body, immobile and trembling, were the only so-called irrational animals in this story. This, of course, is another case of premeditated murder with aggravating circumstances, including violating a restraining order and breaking and entering to get into her building. There's no insanity defense since he knew what he was doing and knew that it was wrong. Hang him. He's scum.

This is not insulting. This is news. These are social problems. I point out that the same problems exist in America. I also slam the hypocrisy of certain elements of the Spanish media on this question. Well?

One Spencer Tunick, a New York "artist", called upon the people of Barcelona to come out and get photographed nude en masse. 15,000 people signed up and 7000 actually came out--at four in the morning--to get naked and get photographed on Avenida María Cristina near Montjuic. They're saying it's the "greatest collective artistic nudity" in history, breaking the record of some 4000 naked leftovers from the Sixties set by Tunick himself in Melbourne. Anyway, at 6:20 AM, Tunick decided the light was correct and posed the crowd two different ways, lying on their backs and curled up in a fetal position. He was finished by 7:45.

Says our intrepid reporter, Justo Barranco, "The most generalized feeling was that it was strange that the situation didn't seem strange," "We, all together, feel surprisingly like brothers and sisters," "Blai, a young teacher who came with his boyfriend, said, 'I thought it would be like a dream in which you wake up and you're naked and everyone else is too'," "People began doing "the wave" and shouting 'No to the war'," and "(Tunick) reminded us of the paradox that in Barcelona his work is celebrated as an "artistic happening" while in his country, the United States, and in his city, New York, it would have been considered a crime."

Oh, geez, here it is again, that part of the American Black Legend that says we are puritanical philistines. Nobody would have said boo if Mr. Alleged Artist put on his show in Central Park as long as he had a municipal permit, which they would have given him in the holy name of Art. It's New York. They've seen everything. This would be no big deal there, certainly not front-page news in the local newspapers. If he'd tried to put this crap on in Central Park, though, the Great Unwashed would have stood around in enormous crouds hooting and hollering and generally making fun of the stupid assholes who get up at four in the morning and get naked in the chill dawn in order to promote the notoriety of (and make money for) a fraud calling himself an artist. Our New York volunteers would not have enjoyed themselves nearly as much as the collection of pseuds, wannabes, and phonies who make up our city's element of the Illustrated and the Enlightened and who showed up at Montjuic.

Is it not a good thing to make fun of these people? I mean, come on, standing around naked for almost four hours before dawn is not very smart.

Manuel Trallero, the Vangua's gadfly, blows the whistle in his column in today's edition in an article titled "Catalunya racista".

"One of the most extraordinary things that has happened recently is that the so-called Plataforma per Catalunya has managed to win City Council seats in several Catalan municipalities, among them Vic. The fact that a xenophobic and racist organization has obtained such a result has seemed to all of us the most normal and natural thing in the world. No one has been screaming to the heavens or rending his garments. As usual in Catalonia, nothing happens around here.There is a perverse logic according to which, if there are immigrants, the logical result is racism. Racism in Catalonia is no longer socially looked down upon, it's not politically incorrect anymore. The attempts of the media of communication to hide their heads under their wings have failed.It isn't just that Mr. Anglada has won his first council members--Mr. Le Pen started off in France in exactly the same way--it is that anything goes against the immigrants. From the president of the Generalitat (Jordi Pujol) who blames them for the possible disappearance of Catalan--blames them, precisely those who just got here-- and who minimizes the violence in Can Anglada over and over, to the (racist) public statements of his honorable wife (Marta Ferrusola), or those of the former leader of the (ultraCatalanist) Republican Left, Mr. Heribert Barrera, who still holds his well-deserved medal awarded by Parliament, or the evacuation of a few immigrants camped out in the Plaza Catalunya, decreed one summer by (Communist) vice-mayor Mrs. Inma Mayol ("Chemical Inma") while the real mayor was out of town, while the workers of the Sintel company, all white, of course, camp out on the Paseo de la Castellana in Madrid as long as they feel like it.We've accepted that all this is normal, habitual, everyday, and that it forms part of us, ourselves. That is why Mr. Llauradó has committed the offense of raising suspicions when he denounced that Mr. Bassat did not use his second surname in order to hide his Jewish origin. This is an attack of, pure and simple, anti-Semitism, which anywhere in Europe would have provoked an enormous scandal, but here has been unnoticed.We still have the consolation that, if the cases of woman-battering are higher in Catalonia than in the rest of Spain, it is not because we Catalans are stupider and more violent (más energúmenos) than the Spaniards, but because our women are braver in calling the police. We Catalans, according to some, are seen as racists because we admit it, while the Spaniards keep their mouths shut. All I can say is good for them."

That is pretty critical. Manuel Trallero wrote it, not me.

Can we pass a law forcing members of the Basque Nationalist Party to be those who clean up the blood and guts and human hands blasted onto rooftops that ETA leaves lying all around Spain? Yes, Mr. Zugazugatxoia, that's you. Please pick up that severed hand and carry it down, the coroner is waiting, and then use these paper towels to mop up the blood and collect the bone fragments. Now may we have your reaction towards the latest ETA atrocity? You still seeking to remedy the root causes of the discontent of the oppressed Basque people, who are as wealthy and privileged and free as any group of people in the Western world, before worrying about arresting murderers and breaking up their support groups? Don't puke all over that hand, we need it for evidence, and we hear the widow wants to bury it along with the rest of her husband later.

That was pretty critical of certain people. Anyone out there disagree with me? Anyone deny that this post shows I hate ETA and care about the people who are ETA's victims and who deserve to live?

(In my mother-in-law's village, Montoliu de Segarra, they shot the priest. He was apparently fingered by two locals who were in the POUM, and a POUM hit squad came down from Cervera. My mother-in-law really detests the POUM even though it was Franco who put her dad in prison. She kind of gets the point of the brutality of the Franco regime--she hates Franco, too, but in a different way--but she doesn't understand the seemingly random killing of the POUM. --JC)

That's history. And my mother-in-law's real feelings.

Here's part of a fisking of a piece from Slate. My comments are in parentheses.

The first wave of oppression followed the Carlist Wars of the 19th century, after the Basques supported the losing cause of the pretender Don Carlos. (Because the Basques were reactionary rural Catholics and so was Carlos. They lost a lot of their autonomy after the defeat of the Carlists, but "oppression" is a pretty loaded word.) Things got much worse under Generalissimo Francisco Franco, who came to power after the Spanish Civil War and outlawed the speaking of Euskara. (Franco's dictatorship was unpleasant but not horrible, and speaking Basque at home and in private, and at church or among friends was never outlawed, nor could it be. By the Fifties published works in Basque were appearing again and a network of ikastolas, schools that teach both the Basque language and nationalistic politics, had been founded.) This repression led to the creation of ETA (Euskadi Ta Askatasuna—"Basque Homeland and Liberty") in 1959. (The above is a pretty cheap-ass justification for turning loose a terrorist gang to kill as it pleases.) Though the Basque region was granted considerable autonomy after Franco's death, a small faction of separatists, (how about the T-word? Where's the T-word? The ETA are a bunch of Ts) who believe their culture is threatened, continues to fight for complete independence. There have been 839 people killed as a result of ETA attacks since 1968. (About 839 too many.)There are about 600,000 fluent Euskara speakers in Basque Country today, with the vast majority on the Spanish side, and another 400,000 speak Euskara as a second language—there has been a tremendous Euskara revival in Basque schools over the past two decades. (Still, most students in the Basque country study in Spanish, and most people who aren't born into a Basque-speaking family stay with Spanish. About a quarter of the Basques, maximum, can communicate in Basque.) A sign of the Basques' pride in their tongue is their word for themselves, Euskaldunak—"possessors of the Basque language." (That won't save you from getting murdered by the ETA, though, as José María Korta found out.)

Any complaints about my commentary? Any lies there? Any doubt that my sympathy is with Jose Maria Korta and the other ETA victims? Does anyone think I don't want to make Spain a better place? And have any of you done as much as I have to condemn terrorism? Remember, people around the world read this blog, 200 to 400 daily, and some of them are American and British journalists and diplomats and business people. I've affected their ideas. I've also received threats. Have you?

Andy Robinson in Tuesday's La Vanguardia: "Opinion and lack of rigor define new journalism in US". Methinks this is a case of that old cliché about people in glass houses and stones. Andy takes advantage of the opportunity to accuse the Bush administration of "poisoning the coverage of the war in Iraq by using anonymous sources."

We're getting better at doing things at the Spain Herald. I think if you follow the Herald's news coverage every day you'll have some kind of idea of what's going on in Spain, though of course our news stories are not neutral. They are, however, honest. I've never seen Herald management intentionally publish a lie.

The main problem with the Herald is now the same problem that exists in all aspects of Spanish politics: too damn much stress on symbolism. I think the stress on symbolism here comes from several sources:

1) Leftover behavior from the Franco regime, which marked both the right and the left before 1975; the majority of media bigwigs had their opinions formed before Franco's death. Under Franco (at least post-1955 or so) the press was semi-free; there were some things they could not do, like criticize Franco or the army or the Church, but they did have some liberty. One thing they were allowed to do was make a big deal out of symbolism, and so all kinds of ceremonies and flag-raisings and parades and official meetings got massive coverage, much more than they deserved, and they were interpreted by the Spanish press in the same way Kremlinologists used to look at photos of the Soviet leadership and base elaborate theories on who was standing next to Brezhnev. This has held over and won't go away until media outlets are run by people born after about 1965, too young to remember much about Franco.

2) There's not really a whole hell of a lot of major news in Spain. It's a country of 40 million people, and it's sort of comparable with California in population, size, GDP, lifestyle, and climate. And military power. Considerably less happens here than in California, though, because Spain doesn't have an international metropolis like Los Angeles. When you get past foreign policy, economics and business, and terrorism, not much happens around here except for your typical domestic politics stuff which is not of great interest to most people. The media therefore blows up little things of symbolic importance only in order to have something to write about.

3) The Spanish media is openly biased, with the biggest split between the right-wingers (the COPE) and the lefties (SER) on the radio; government-subsidized TV and radio, whether national or regional, are of course run by the government and say what the government wants them to say. This means every media outlet has a bone to pick with somebody, and when there's nothing important going on they'll inflate little things in order to have something to slam the other side with.

4) This is a country where one of the biggest political issues, regional nationalism, is mostly symbolism. Who gives a rat's patoot whether butcher shops have to label their merchandise in Catalan? Does it matter whether a bunch of old papers are archived in Salamanca or Barcelona? People to whom nationalism is important care a lot. Now, the regions have plenty of autonomy and anyway Spain is a democracy inside the EU, so there's nothing really important to complain about--so they make a big deal of whose flag should fly over the Manresa city hall or which politician didn't show up for whatever demonstration.

5) This is a country which is still deeply divided between right and left over historical issues, especially the Spanish Civil War and the Franco regime. People my age remember Franco and lots of people who are 75 or 80 remember the Civil War--and nobody is finished with the fight. Physically, yeah, it's all over, but ideologically it isn't, so big stinks are made over things like whether to remove old plaques on walls with references to the regime on them. Every time they get a chance to commemorate or not commemorate something, a big deal is of course made.

6) Spanish people love demonstrations. They'll organize a demo at the drop of a hat, and mostly for pretty dumb reasons. My favorites are the ones they hold when somebody gets stabbed, strangled, or shot in order to show they're against it. I mean, who's in favor of people getting murdered? This is not precisely a controversial issue. This means that they're willing to go out and march over the name of a street or whether a statue ought to be removed or whose national anthem ought to be played before a soccer game. Or, get this, whether Catalonia ought to have its own roller-hockey team. My attitude is that anybody who thinks roller-hockey is a real sport ought to be forced to go through one NFL practice, but that's just me.

Barcelona got beat fair and square by Real Madrid last night, 4-2, in another exciting game from our boys in blue and red. Unfortunately, the last few exciting games they've turned in have not had incredibly positive results: eliminated from the Champions League by Chelsea, held to a tie at home by Betis, and now a loss at Madrid. Not much to worry about, though, since Barcelona controls its own destiny. They have a six-point lead plus the goal-average, effectively seven points, since if Barça and Madrid end up tied for first place Barça wins out. There are 21 points, seven games, in play, and neither team faces a particularly difficult schedule for the rest of the year.

Barcelona started out very weak on defense again, and Zidane and Ronaldo scored on headers within the first twenty minutes. This is exactly what happened against Betis and Chelsea, allowing the other team to get ahead early. This two-goal lead allowed Madrid to play conservatively, strong on defense (Gravesen was particularly good, and Helguera had probably his best game of the season) and looking for the fast break. Barcelona had a lot of chances at goal but could not seem to score until Etoo recovered a loose ball and poked it in for 2-1. Madrid then scored on another fast break that Raul knocked in right before halftime for 3-1, and it looked like it was pretty much all over.

After the half, Barça came out fighting but just could not seem to score. They had at least eight or nine chances and muffed them all. Meanwhile, Owen, who had an excellent game, as did Beckham, scored 4-1. Barça did not give up, they never do, and had a couple more chances at goal; Ronaldinho scored 4-2 in minute 75 and it looked like Barça might have a chance to tie if a miracle happened, but it didn't and the game ended up 4-2. Fair win to Madrid. The Barcelona press didn't complain too much, the way they usually do when Madrid wins. There weren't really any incredibly questionable calls; the ref was prudent and let them play, and it never got too rough.

Silver lining: The team never gave up. None of the players are in bad form. Some are not on hot streaks, but nobody is looking really bad. There's no reason why they shouldn't win most of the rest of their games, and they ought to be able to get 15 points (five wins out of seven games, or four wins and two draws) in what's left of the season.

Dark cloud: Etoo got hurt and will miss four weeks. Puyol was not playing at 100% because he got hurt a week and a half ago. The defense didn't look good. They can't keep letting other teams score so much, and Valdes did not have a good game, either.

Yeah, but: The reason they got Maxi Lopez was in case Etoo got hurt or needed a rest. Give the kid a chance. He didn't look too good against Betis but last night he was just fine. Ronaldinho looked pretty good. He's not off form, he's coming off an unlucky streak. There's a difference. Deco couldn't play last night, and he'll be coming back for the rest of the season. Give Puyol another week of rest and he'll be 100% next weekend.

We'll see what happens. That's why they play the games.

Wacky Anti-American Crap of the Week:

Wim Wenders, in La Vanguardia April 8: "The US became paranoid and has been living in fear since September 11...the shock, the fear the Americans felt afterward, and how the US government created the conditions to propagate this paranoia in favor of its plans...The windmills (an American film character) has in his mind were created by television propaganda...The paranoid person is incapable of viewing himself objectively...The most tragic thing you have to understand about the US is the lack of information...The American Dream has been fiction for a long time...(Poverty) is a subject that isn't popular in the US because they don't want to know that the wealth of some comes from the poverty of many." Wenders also complains about the fact that nobody in America wants to distribute his new movie and he's had to do it himself.

Let's see, Wim. American people are paranoid and live in fear. The government creates TV propaganda to make them this way so it can stay in power and accomplish its plans, whatever they might be. If Americans complain they're not paranoid they must be wrong, because they can't see themselves objectively, and besides that they're badly-informed, probably because they believe all the government propaganda. Americans are fools who don't understand the American Dream, whatever that is, is dead, and besides, they exploit everybody else to gain their wealth.

Noam Chomsky couldn't have said it better himself. And then Winders wonders why the Americans aren't lining up to see his movie, which, if it's anything like Paris, Texas, or Wings over Berlin, is long and boring and doesn't make much sense.

Here's some crap from Hugh Hewitt published in the Weekly Standard. I must say Hewitt is not one of my favorite conservative commentators, but he really should have thought at least four times before writing this.

Non-Catholics are best advised to keep silent on matters of doctrine within the Church. It is, after all, no more the business of a non-Catholic what the Church commands on the celibacy of its priests than it is a non-Muslim to opine on the proper keeping of Ramadan.

This reminds me of an argument I once had in college with a black friend of mine named Frank, who was in sort of a militant phase, and he had a list of resolutions the Black Student Union had made, almost all of which I disagreed with (they did want the university to recruit more heavily among Kansas black students, and I thought that was a good idea, especially if they started early in high school). His response to my criticisms was "You don't know what it's like to be black."

Boom. It's kind of hard to respond to a blatant play of the race card like that. I shoulda said "You don't know what it's like to be white, so does this mean nobody has the right to have opinions?" but of course I didn't think of it then. He got over the militant stuff pretty soon, but not all his friends did. Frank and I continued getting along--we were partners on the final project in a Spanish class the next semester--but we never talked about the subject of race very much again, not that I was ever going to bring it up in the first place anyway. I haven't seen him for almost fifteen years now.*

My reaction to Hugh Hewitt is kind of similar. Non-Catholics and non-Muslims have every right to opine about both Catholicism and Islam and their internal doctrines. If nothing else, because what the Catholics and the Muslims do affects all the rest of us, and so if a bunch of extremist Catholics start a campaign to bomb abortion clinics or if a bunch of extremist Muslims decide to bomb commuter trains or if a bunch of Irish morons have spent the last god knows how many years killing one another over whether their kids should get buggered by single Catholic priests or married Protestant scoutmasters, then the rest of us have got something to say. If Islam in certain countries includes clitoridectomy as one of its matters of doctrine, or if in certain countries it countenances slavery, or if it won't let women visit doctors or drive cars, or if it promotes blowing up Jews, I think the rest of us have a right to complain, just as when we complained about suttee and thuggee and untouchability and the caste system in Hindu India. Or does Mr. Hewitt think sharia, integral to Islam, is something we all ought to live under? Or that anybody ought to have to live under?

I'm a hardline agnostic who is not prejudiced, as I think all religions are equally dumb. I think anybody who fasts for religious reasons is a dope, so that should take in both the Muslims and the Catholics. I think anyone who imagines that saying magic words somehow means anything is a dope, so that includes the Catholics and the Muslims. I think anyone who believes that food or drink can be sanctified is a dope, so that includes them both. Being such a dopey man that you won't let dopey women officially intercede with God as part of your magic rituals, too, is ridiculous, and that takes them both in, too. Now, I have no problem with honest dopes who interpret their magic beliefs to mean they have to help and love others, be kind to people's grandmas, don't steal anyone else's stuff, and the like. I actually admire them greatly if they live up to the standards their beliefs set for them, which in some individuals are very high standards. It's damned hard not to covet, for example, or not to be proud. And, of course, lots of people who are dopes on this particular question are very non-dopey on most other issues.

So I leave it open: Who's right, me or Hugh?

*Nice guy. Hell of an athlete--he had a football scholarship. He was the first person I actually saw dunk a basketball. He liked to party, and I was more laid-back, but I actually don't distinctly remember a couple of bashes he threw. Good-looking chicks, that I do remember. A surprising amount of the football jocks at KU back then were smart--a lot of them were history majors for some reason, and I was in several upper-division history classes with 300-pound defensive ends asking smarter questions than me. They lost all their games, though--Sports Illustrated called KU, K-State, and MU "the Bermuda Triangle of college football" one of those years when the three teams all went 1-10, with each team's only victory against one of the others. (Can't be a dope and play football unless you only do one thing, which is why the special teams units in the NFL tend to contain several real dopes who are good at running real fast and smashing into people and not much else. They played positions in college but couldn't remember any plays and their natural talent got them through, but that don't work in the No Fun League.)

Here's a fascinating piece (http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2005/0504.hirsh.html) by Michael Hirsh, who is a Senior Editor at Newsweek from the Washington Monthly (via Arts and Letters Daily) on why America's not so awful despite what the Old Europeans say about our barbarity, imperialism, aggressiveness, arrogance, ignorance, etc., etc. It's a review of a book by one Anatol Lievin. You'll want to go read it yourself, and I agree with a great deal of what Hirsh says at the very beginning and the very end, but I thought I'd point out a few disagreements I have and make a few comments of my own.

When it comes to grappling with the giant across the Atlantic, European thinkers of this generation tend to behave like Tolstoy's children. They toy intellectually with American power, lamenting its excesses, warning of its evils, advising endlessly on its better uses—usually without acknowledging that it is the very thing that has kept them free to have these discussions in the first place, and that today it continues to be the backbone of the international system that sustains them...On the whole the Europeans, having known three generations now without war—and earnestly desiring to become “postmodern states” that never again wage war—tend to forget that it is principally the U.S. defense umbrella that has made this dream possible.

Excellent point, and too many Old Europeans forget about this.

America spends more on defense than the rest of the industrialized world combined not because it is inherently belligerent or militaristic but mainly because America is today more than just the “lone superpower.” It is the stabilizer of the international system...With the exception of Iraq, this hidden infrastructure of U.S. power emerges into public view only occasionally, in tsunami relief or in America's unique ability to supply airlift and logistical support to hotspots from East Timor to Sudan...Yet, for too many post-Cold War Europeans, this stabilizing structure of American power has been so hidden as not to be worthy of note. Why exactly do they think their governments can afford to spend so little on defense (thereby subsidizing the European welfare state)?

Yep. I'm the first guy to say I'm not talking about closing down health care and pensions and the public schools and nursing homes and worker's compensation laws and the like. I do think there are about seven unnecessary levels in the bureaucracies that administer the social welfare programs here in Europe, and there's far too much unnecessary meddling by the state in the economy, which ought to be nearly as productive as America's instead of operating at 75-80%. I also understand that (if I may very broadly generalize) that, if allowed to make risk-benefit decisions, most Europeans will prefer greater security and less topside gain, while Americans tend to be willing to take bigger risks in order to win bigger should they succeed. I tend to think more like the stereotypical European than the stereotypical American in this regard; I'm not looking for the big money, or even the medium money. And I understand that Brits will accept smaller profits and demand more security than Yanks, as a rule, and this is a major difference between the two peoples. The Brits are more like the Continentals on this question than they are like us gringos.

Anyway, though, the review is going along great. So far. Now it's time to dive into the muck.

...in some respects Lieven's book, America Right or Wrong: An Anatomy of American Nationalism, is the most brilliant analysis of America's attitude toward the world to come along since 9/11...

Yo. Hold it. Wait a minute, dude. You be smokin crack. You just destroyed the book's thesis by undercutting the author's assumptions, and first you damn it with faint praise, OK, but calling this tripe "brilliant"? I guess you want him to still talk to you at Washington cocktail parties.

Like many in Europe—and many liberal Democrats here in the United States—Lieven allows his alarm at Bush's foreign policy to lead him to an excessively negative and sweeping critique of American culture and foreign policy...The book descends quickly to the level of diatribe and, despite much incisive analysis, never really manages to rise above it. In the end, the author's error is to confuse the pathology of the Bush administration with the alleged pathology of America.

Ah-hah. The problem isn't America, it's Bush! What's leading this author Lieven to slander America and us red-staters in particular is the Pathology of the Bush Administration. It's all Bush's fault! Blame Bush! The Old Europeans don't dislike us because they're ignorant and prejudiced, they just can't stand Bush. Yeah, right.

Lieven is at his best when he traces the lineage of this now-dominant strand of political culture. In three penetrating chapters that should be required reading for anyone seeking to understand Bush's election victory in 2004, he explains how this dominance has come in the form of a successful rebellion against the Eastern elites by the Southern/Frontier culture that has found its hero in Bush. Lieven describes how the “American Creed,” the exceptionalist “thesis” that traditionally defines the self-image of most Americans—of a people free, equal, and good—has become overpowered by the “antithesis” of America's “embittered heartland.” “While America keeps a splendid and welcoming house, it also keeps a family of demons in the cellar,” Lieven writes. “Usually kept under certain restraints, these demons were released by 9/11.”

oh my god it's the embittered demons they're flying out of the basement flapping their wings with big pointy fangs dripping with blood on their way down to the gun sale after church help help they're wearing white robes and pointy hoods and listening to merle haggard

What is Bush's tradition? Who are these demons?

Gee, I dunno, Mike. People who, like, believe in God and stuff?

In the most original part of his book, Lieven analyzes at length the influences of this “second strand” of American nationalism, which resides in a culture dating back to Andrew Jackson and Southern evangelical tradition. Building on the work of Walter Russell Mead, T.R. Fehrenbach, David Hackett Fischer, and Michael Lind, among others, he describes how the much-noted “Southernization” of Republican politics in recent decades has had a deeper impact on our foreign policy than many of us have realized.

Original? The demons are Jacksonian white Southerners? Even I've written about this subject.

The nation is now in the grip of a “radical nationalism” that traces its origins to the demographic makeup and mores of the South and of much of the West and Southern Midwest—in other words, what we know today as red America. As Lieven writes, this region was heavily settled by Scots-Irish immigrants whom King James I sent to Northern Ireland to clear out the native Celtic Catholics, which they did. Along with Anglo-Saxons, they then settled the American Frontier, moving westward from one piece of mean land to the next, suffering Indian raids and fighting for their lives every step of the way. The outcome was that a substantial portion of the new nation developed, over many generations, a rather savage set of mores. Thanks largely to this huge subpopulation, a quickness to fight and a dedication to total annihilation of any enemy has always been part of American culture. This tends to emerge in a “burst of chauvinist fury” and predominate during times of national crisis.

Let's see. Backwoods red-state Scotch-Irish and Anglo-Saxons have taken over America. They're mean people who were just terrible to everybody they met, from the Irish Catholics to the American Indians, while living in swinish poverty and cultureless deprivation. All this made them even meaner, and now they want to kill anybody who even looks at us funny. And they go to church too much.

"Original"? "Brilliant"? If this is Lieven "at his best", I could really have a lot of fun with his worst.

I will now state Chappell's Corollary to whoever's law it is that says, "In an argument, the first side to compare the other to Hitler loses." My corollary is, "The first side to call the other one racist loses."

Traditionally, it has also been balanced by a more diplomatic, communitarian Yankee sensibility from the Northeast and upper Midwest.

Oh, my ass. Texas=bad, Massachusetts=good, right? Please.

Perceptively, Lieven likens this Southern/Frontier nationalism to the more classic kind of radical nationalism that emerges from the cumulative frustration of defeat often found in nations, say of Germany in World War I (and which in that particular case helped buttress Hitler's rise to power half a generation later). In this case, however, the frustration of the South and Southern Midwest over the rise of godless modernity at the hands of the North and the Easterners built up over a century and a half during which Southerners were derided as “peckerwoods and rednecks,” as the former segregationist governor of Alabama, George Wallace, once put it. “The role of defeat in the genesis of nationalism resides not only in the defeat of a nation as a whole, but of classes, groups and indeed individuals within them,” Lieven writes.

This is "perceptive"? The embittered rednecks are all pissed off because they can't segregate against black people anymore and now, through the instrument of Bush, they're taking it out on all the rest of us? Chappell's Corollary goes into effect.

Bush is a Jacksonian pod person.

Huh? Whatever that is, it sounds pretty bad, though.

The coarsened sensibility that this now-dominant Southernism and Frontierism has brought to our politics is unmistakable...On foreign policy, the realism and internationalism of the Eastern elitist tradition once kept the Southern/Frontier warrior culture and Wilsonian messianism in check. Now the latter two, in toxic combination, have taken over our national dialogue...The only Easterners who are left are the neocons, whose grand global construct, a kind of Nietzschean will to power—Michael Lind once described the neocons as the brains of the Southern evangelicals—only feeds this out-of-control messianism and a deep-seated distaste for globalism that goes back to the “don't-tread-on-me” attitude of the Southern/Frontier tradition.

Oh, those coarse out-of-control messianic brainless Southerners, we just can't have them in the house, they'll do something frontiersy, and especially without the Eastern elites to watch over them, you never know what they might do, even let in those nasty grasping neocon Jews and their Nietzchean will to power!

The outcome (of the election) was far more about the fact that one side had a first-class campaigner and strategist (Bush and Karl Rove) while the other side put up rank incompetents (John Kerry and his masters of disaster, Bob Shrum and Tad Devine).

Well, now at least they admit Kerry was a loser. We didn't hear them saying this back in October.

If the Democrats can field a candidate only slightly more winning than Kerry, the Easterners will come down from the hills and rejoin the dialogue.

Let's hope they don't.

The new power centers in the country, meanwhile, will be forced to quell their Jacksonian furies when they come to understand the necessity of an international consensus in the age of globalization (in other words, it means their jobs). And that will inevitably shift American foreign policy back into balance.

I wouldn't take this for granted. Note that Mike thinks the only thing that will convince these coarse Jacksonians to be nice and moral like the Eastern elites and shift American foreign policy into balance is pressure on their pocketbooks. Pretty crude Marxism there, Mike.

All of which points out Lieven's central error: He does not account for the fact that vast numbers of Americans—including very many in red states—hate where Bush is leading their country and share Lieven's criticisms. Instead he attempts, lamely, to argue that Democrats or moderate Republicans would probably be taking the country in the same direction as Bush Republicans have.

Oh, what a tragedy for Mike's self-image when called upon to deal with the Europeans he meets in his daily line of work and they rip America a new asshole. The Europeans scorn us liberal Democrats just for being Americans, and they're wrong to do so, because we real Americans, the eastern elites, we who work at Newsweek, are NOT LIKE those coarse Southerners, but the Europeans won't admit us and they keep insulting us for being rednecks as if we were those frontiersmen who probably don't like black people.

But because he's decided to attack American nationalism in every form, Lieven attacks everybody.

And Mike just hates that. Lieven shouldn't be attacking him.

I like soccer, and I'm a fan of FC Barcelona (yes, I was really pissed off at them when they had the team come out with the "Barça for Peace" banner and when they rented the team to Qaddaffi's kid for a "friendly" match, price half a million bucks, and when their fans threw pig's heads and whiskey bottles at Luis Figo and when they racially baited Madrid's black players and when they hired Serbian fascist Radomir Antic as coach, but they did get rid of the board of directors that did all that crap and elected some people who seem to know what they're doing and hire Frank Rijkaard, Mr. Class, to run the team), so of course I went down to the bar with Remei and Murph to watch Barcelona play Betis at 5 PM. Big game. Barcelona came in leading the league by 11 points, they play Madrid on Sunday the 10th in the last showdown, and they needed at least a point at home against the third-place team, Betis of Seville.

Betis looks really good this year, though I'm afraid they'll disappoint next year in European play because they're going to lose a couple or three of their best players. They've got a comparatively small budget, and when the big money comes knocking on the door for one of their good players they take it. They're a club known for a potent youth squad, and this year they've got several young guys, including left winger Joaquin and central defender Juanito, who are on the Spanish national team, and three Brazilians. Damned good players, all of them. Rumor has it Madrid will buy Joaquin and Barça will buy Juanito. Betis is also a popular team, the team everybody likes. They've traditionally been Seville's working-class team (the other city team, Sevilla CF, is the richie club), and their following is known as never-say-die but nonviolent unless the game's with Seville. Caen simpatico.

So we get to the bar, which I will call Bar X, about ten minutes after five and they can't figure out how to get the pay-TV to work. Finally turns out that they were supposed to hit the "OK" button on their remote control and they were hitting first the O and then the K keys and so it wouldn't work. I am not making this up. Takes about ten more minutes before this gets figured out, and by then Joaquin has scored one for Betis and Etoo's equalized for Barça on a penalty. We can see the game now, they're off the phone with the pay-TV people. Betis backs up in their area and plays for the fast break, especially since they're down to ten players after somebody gets red-carded, and they catch Barça's defense with their pants down, Oliveira puts it in, and it's 1-2. Halftime comes along. We get more beer. Remei wants potato chips. Hell of a ballgame we got going so far. Barcelona's had about eight shots on goal and Betis has had three or four (very good for any team in any game and damned good for anyone playing in Barça's stadium) and scored on two of them. Barça's also had like six corner kicks, and they can't get anything to go in.

Barcelona comes back after halftime and they throw everything but the kitchen sink at Betis. They put in young Maxi Lopez, the 20-year-old star they got from River Plate for six million bucks, and he's all over the place but can't drive it home, and they pulled alleged defensive midfielder Gerard, who was stinking up the field. Their defense is even weaker, though, because stalwart central defender Carles "Clydesdale" Puyol got hurt on Wednesday playing with the national team against Serbia, and regular defensive midfielder Rafael "The Beast" Marquez, Mexico's best player, had to sit out because he'd piled up five yellow cards. Xavi and Deco had to be careful because they had four cards each, and didn't want to get one in this match and have to miss Madrid next week; Deco was unsuccessful and so will sit out.

Anyway, this is fun, Barça is banging on the door over and over, Betis has only ten men, and then, wouldn't you know it, Betis gets the ball to Joaquin on another fast break and he beats goalie Victor Valdes and it's 1-3 and it looks like it's all over, but these guys don't give up. They bang on the door about four more times, and on every single one either Deco is trying to blast it in from twenty meters or Maxi muffs it in the area. Then Belletti gets the ball (I thought this guy was like 31, but he's 26. No wonder he never seems to get tired) in the area and gets fouled, and he embellishes it just a bit and it's a penalty and Etoo drives it to the right and it's 2-3 with about eight minutes left. I actually believe it's going to happen and it does. The ref does not blow the whistle and about five minutes into extra time left-footed Giovanni van Bronckhorst gets the ball at the top of the area and bingo, tie score and game over. Barcelona 3-Betis 3. Barça gets out with a tie that tastes like a win, and the fans sure the hell got their money's worth.

We got home from the bar and I did tonight's translating for the Spain Herald, which is of course all about the Pope for obvious reasons. Then Remei was watching this silly program on TV, a Spanish sitcom, and I wandered in and watched it with her for about five minutes. The sitcom took place in a neighborhood bar-café, superficially a lot like the one we'd just been in. I did, however, note a few differences.

1) On TV, nobody was drunk. This was not true at Bar X.

2) On TV, no one was shouting "¡Penalti, coño, me cago en la leche!" This was not true at Bar X.

3) On TV, bar patrons made witty comments to one another. This was not true at Bar X.

4) On TV, there were attractive women patrons at the bar. This was only true at Bar X because Remei was there.

5) On TV, people spoke in complete sentences. This was not true at Bar X.

6) On TV, one of the characters was stereotypically gay. This was not true at Bar X. Fortunately. Most of the stereotypically gay people I have met would not enter Bar X under any circumstances.

7) On TV, no one yelled that Barça's Cameroonian forward Samuel Etoo "had put on a lot of shoe polish." This was not true at Bar X.

8) On TV, nobody ever pays the bill at the bar. This was most distinctly not true at Bar X. I'm not complaining, though, fourteen bucks for seven beers, a Coke, and a bag of potato chips is not out of line at all, especially when you're watching football illegally, since the bar's not allowed to show the game to an audience. Uh-huh, sure. On TV nobody breaks the law. This is probably never true at Bar X, since I figure at least one person in that place is up to something, even if it's as semi-innocuous as dealing hash, which I freely admit I've seen no signs of.

It looks like the Pope is actually going to die this time. I've had my problems with John Paul II; I can deal with all his positions, though, except for the ban on condoms. I can deal with being anti-abortion, anti-divorce, anti-chemical contraception, pro-having 10% of your priests being major freakazoids--no, wait, that's a major problem I've got with the American Church, the small percentage of priests who are weirdos and the hierarchy's coverup. But, still, you can't blame the Pope for that one, and the Protestants have had their share of freakoids, too, from Jimmy Swaggart to Jim Bakker to your local scoutmaster. Being against condoms, though, is dangerous. I don't see why the Church can't allow sinners to use condoms so their sins don't rebound upon other innocents. Allow the condom-user to be no more of a sinner than the fornicator. I mean, right, sin is bad, but if you're gonna do a sin no matter what, and having sex is something that people are going to do, shouldn't you at least do it the safe way so that nobody gets hurt? That's why fornication is merely a venial sin, because the Church knows people are going to do that. It's adultery, cheating on your spouse, that's mortal. And if you're committing adultery, it ought to be obligatory to wear a raincoat so you don't infect your innocent spouse later. The raincoat seems very minor compared to the breach of trust that adultery is. Getting drunk is a sin, I suppose, but if you are bound and determined to get loaded shouldn't the Church be in favor of your doing it safely at home rather than going out and driving to a bar and then risking a major wreck?

100 years from now, when historians are writing about the end of the 20th century, Pope John Paul II is going to be right up there with Reagan and Thatcher and Kohl as a key civilized leader who helped cause the fall of Communism. His stances on sex-related social problems will be forgotten, because they'll be no different from those of other Popes. What will be remembered is John Paul II's gutsy stand on the correct side of history even after the KGB, the Stasi, and the Bulgarians got together to murder him. He'll go down in history as a great man.

I think the Spain Herald is improving. I'm getting a lot better at translating and I'm especially improving as an editor; the first thing I do is cut excess verbiage, which shortens the average story by half. We're also selecting better stories, though we are of course the mouthpiece for the PP (something I don't mind being) and have to run one short a day on whatever the PP's latest complaint against Zap is. I complained about the number of stories we were running on our particular bete noire, Gregorio Peces Barba, who is merely a Socialist clown of no particular importance, and that's been cut down, and the number of stories bashing our media enemy, the Grupo Prisa, which runs the competition's radio station, the SER, and El Pais. (Our radio station is the COPE.) Those subjects have been cut back, though they still crop up occasionally.

I think the error we're making in the right-wing media and the PP is continually refighting the last election. It's the same mistake the Democrats made after 2000. The Dems could not accept that Bush won fair and square according to the law, and spent the next four years whimpering that Gore should be President instead. They never came up with any sort of reasons people should vote for them except for pure hate against Bush and they proceeded to get creamed in the 2002 midterms and then clobbered again in 2004. They had no message, they weren't in favor of anything, they gave no one hope for the future. No wonder they lost.

We, the PP, are in danger of doing the same thing. Look, Zap won fair and square according to the law. Yes, it was a freak victory that would never have happened if not for the bombings, and the behavior of the left-wing media and the PSOE was scandalous, but it was nonetheless a victory and we have to accept that. Now let's move on. Let's come up with an alternative program. Let's tell the people how we're going to improve the economy and keep taxes low and shrink the state and return to responsibility in foreign affairs and defeat the terrorists and cut down crime and improve education and reduce local government corruption and move away from the politics of symbolism, and let's stop whining about getting beat in 2004. What we need to do is concentrate our full attention on beating them in 2008. Everybody sympathetic to us has already heard our message on what a bunch of lying sacks of shit the Socialists and their pet media are, and they're convinced; everybody unsympathetic to us has already heard that message, too, and we're not going to convince any of them no matter if we prove that Bin Laden is Zap's personal dominatrix.

If you check in today over at the Herald you'll see a story on Zap's newest education reform, which is of course a pile of hippie crap. I thought I'd steal an old gag, though, and design the official

NEW SOCIALIST FINAL MATH EXAM

1. If we sell €1.3 billion worth of arms to one Latin American dictator in the name of peace and solidarity, and earn a profit of €400,000, how much money will we make if we sell the same amount of arms to five Third World dictators?

2. Koldo is an ETA terrorist. If he is sentenced to 1,762 years in prison for fourteen murders, but the maximum time served in Spain is thirty years, and Koldo gets twelve years off for good behavior, how many months in the slam will Koldo serve for each murder he committed?

3. If the government owns a heavily subsidized, obsolete failing shipyard that will go broke in two years, and gets an arms contract that will allow the shipyard to survive four more years, how many union votes will the government pick up and how much will each new Socialist vote cost the taxpayers?

4. If an average of ninety people live in each Barcelona apartment building, and an incompetently designed and built subway tunnel collapses destroying four buildings, how many people will be left homeless, how much money did the Socialists in the local regional and municipal governments scam off the top, how many of them will actually be tried and convicted for embezzlement and abuse of power, and how much will the taxpayers be hit up for when the government promises each homeless family an indemnization of eight bajillion euros in order to calm them down?

5. Jordi is in a coma at the Leganes hospital and the government-approved management decides to turn off the machines keeping him alive and give him an overdose of sedatives in order to permit him to die with dignity. What are the chances Jordi is conscious of his situation and, at the rate of one Jordi a week, how many other helpless people has the hospital management killed?

6. Mohammed is wanted by the Moroccan police though he is only fifteen years old, and so he fled to Spain. Mohammed commits on average one armed robbery and one mugging a week. How many people will he victimize before the cops arrest him, how many times will he be arrested before he gets put in jail, and how many hours will he serve before he is released? Extra credit: How many people will Mohammed have victimized before he turns 20, and how likely is he to ever get deported?

7. Pepa flunks reading, writing, and math in the ninth grade, but is neverless passed up to tenth because she can pass with three failing grades under the new education plan. How many classes will she fail during her entire high school career if we assume she flunks three a year, and how much of the teacher's and other students' time will be wasted in the course of trying to deal with her over an entire school year?

8. The Prime Minister insults the United States publicly twice a month. How long will it take before the United States does the Prime Minister any favors, and how many seconds will the next conversation between the President and the Prime Minister last?

9. The extreme regional nationalist Esquerra Republicana party has one seat in Parliament, but the government coalition is dependent upon them as well as the Communists. How long will they get away with making the administration kiss their asses in public in order to get anything done before the entire population of Spain gets pissed off at the country's being run by clowns, freaks, and psychotics?

10. The average issue of El Pais contains 28,359 words. If 98% of them are lies, how many true words does El Pais print a day?

An Open Letter to Brian Burns

Dear Brian Burns,

I'm sorry to say I haven't bought any of your CDs yet, but I do plan to buy all four next time I go to Amazon. I like your historical songs a lot; one particular reason is that you are a guy who's trying hard to be serious. It's hard to write songs in the first place, and it's much more difficult to be serious than it is to be funny; also, you choose first-rate cover songs. Also, you're quite obviously a good musician and singer, and you put together a quality project with first-class sidemen and production. You're a guy who doesn't rip off his fans. I also think it's great that you do shows at schools, and I'd recommend that any school hire you as a boost for their social studies program.

I must say I'm bothered by the lyrics to two of your songs, though, both of which KHYI plays quite a lot. One of them is the one that goes "I won't make a record if I ain't got nothing to say." That's kind of snotty. I understand you're irritated that people who are bigger names than you can put out what is comparatively crap and get richer and more famous, but that's always been the deal in showbiz and you know that. You don't need to proclaim you're better than other singers; that's perilously close to Vanilla Ice territory.

The other one is "Welcome to Texas". I hope the "I" in that song is a character rather than your real opinion, because it is distinctly unwelcoming, even disdainful, and standard anti-migrant nativist crap. We have enough difficulties assimilating people to life in the US--as you know, some 10% of Americans are immigrants from other countries--that we don't need some country singer stirring up anti-Yankee migrant sentiment. Yankees are, remember, your fellow Americans, and they don't mind Southern humor when it's good-natured. But I can tell you that bullying of Yankee kids happens in Texas schools, and much of it is carried out by the group that calls themselves "kickers" or "ropers". Country music ought to help outsiders join the group, not help keep them out. I'm sure you'd agree with me that's true for kids originally from China or Mexico or Vietnam. It's also true for kids from New Jersey and Chicago.

My father is a fifth-generation Texan on both sides; they came out of Kentucky and Tennessee about the time of the Civil War. My mother is fifth-generation on her mother's side--that's the bunch that came out of Alabama and Mississippi and was part-Cherokee, and when most of them took land in Oklahoma or got deported, however you want to look at it, our guy moved to Texas instead of going with the rest--and second-generation on her father's side, because her dad was an Austrian German from Kansas. How authentically Texan am I? Now consider that I was born in New York and grew up in several Northern suburbs, moved down to Richardson in the ninth grade, and regularly got the crap beat out of me by the local white trash (I didn't name them that, the students whose parents had jobs called them that) until finally losing an all-out bloody brawl with a much bigger kid, which brought me under the protection of some of the jocks since it was the third time I'd put up a fight. After that I was even allowed to play pickup football after school in the vacant lots under the high-power wires along straight-as-a-rod Meandering Way, and people stopped pissing in my gym locker and sabotaging my bicycle.

Sincerely yours,
John Chappell

Just got back from the pueblo. Lovely weather out there and it's now definitely spring. the almond trees are in bloom, white all over the place, and the wheat and barley have just come up so the fields all look like carefully mown lawns. The wildflowers aren't out yet, but just wait a couple of weeks. There are tiny lambs up at the sheep pen above the village, so small they're still nursing, and the songbirds are out in force. I took the dog up the hill a couple of times, once down the Guimerà road and once up the Segura road, and a good time was had by us both. It's Holy Week so they had the procession Friday night; it's a very small procession. I saw them pass by the house. A few of them were even dressed up like the Klan. It was especially peaceful since the electricity went out and there was no TV two nights in a row. I hate TV except for soccer. I read this book called An Army at Dawn by candlelight. It's a pretty good look at the 1942-3 North African campaign, and not too high on Ike; surprisingly sympathetic toward Fredendall, who does seem to have been a bit of a scapegoat. We brought home twenty liters of olive oil from the local cooperative and about 20 kilos of potatoes from Remei's potato field.

You guys want to do me a favor? I'm confused about what US states permit what. I've heard in the Spanish media over the last couple of days that a) Massachussetts allows gay marriage and b) California allows gay couples to adopt children. I am embarrassed to say I don't know whether either is true. So I have these questions: Who, if anyone, allows gay marriage? Gay adoption? Medical marijuana? Euthanasia? If so, under what circumstances? Have any states declared English the official language? Do immigrants receive different treatment in different states? What about welfare, disability, pensions, etc? Are there differences in the labor laws?

For you furriners, in the whole US abortion on demand is legal at least through the first trimester. Divorce is easily obtainable in every state. Gambling is legal in some and in different ways--e.g. Kansas has a state lottery, dog racing, and horse racing, but no casinos. Alcohol used to be different in different states, but now it's pretty much the same everywhere. Main thing--gotta be 21.

In Spain this is in the news because people are talking about all this stuff. Right now divorce is a difficult and costly process to go through, so most people who would be divorced in the States are "separated" here. The government wants to legalize gay marriage and gay adoption and that's under debate over here right now, with the usual suspects lined up on each side. Abortion is technically illegal except for rape, incest, danger to mother's health, etc., and so girls get some shrink to say they'll go nuts if they have the kid. No questions asked in London or Amsterdam, though, if you prefer that option. Cannabis and other "soft drugs", which I assume are shrooms and the like, are legal to possess in certain designated quantities and to use in certain designated places (e.g. your house). My impression is that buying and selling soft drugs is illegal, however. It is certainly not too furtive, though. Alcohol and gambling are of course rampant in Spain, and teenage binge drinking is becoming a major problem. It's got its own name, "el botellón".

This teenagers-getting-wasted-till-they-puke stuff is new. They used to drink, but not like this. Teenage drinking used to be five beers on Saturday night. Now it's getting trashed on half a liter of vodka two nights a week and smoking a bunch of dope as well, it's that easy to get and they smoke it openly. There's a major debate right now over euthanasia, especially after the Oscar-winning weeper movie The Sea Inside, based on a real case. Everybody in Spain has seen it.

Comment on drinking. Spain is a country where kids traditionally drank the local wine as part of the diet and so learned young whether they had a taste for it or not. They then learned to control themselves if they did. Enjoying alcohol was great, approved of, celebrated in song and story, but getting drunk was trashy. Half a liter of wine, brandy with your coffee, and if you were pretentious whiskey on the rocks after that, is still not unusual in Spain, and I know several specimens of the middle-aged macho type who can double that easily and only get in one car wreck or so a year. Neither is the morning carajillo or the lunchtime quinto. But you couldn't get loaded, at least more often than at New Year's, San Juan, and the local fiesta mayor, unless you were some hick or bum or town drunk. Now, though, public drunkenness is becoming more and more common. The old Spanish saying, which I subscribe to, is "Bebe poco pero bien." Drink good stuff, but don't drink too much. Enjoy a bottle of quality wine over dinner rather than slamming seven vodka-and-Cokes. Try traditional local prestige products like Mascaró or Torres brandy or Pujol rum, and if you dare, try a copita of Aromas de Montserrat, which tastes to me like eating grass with sugar. Do not try anis.

Careful on cannabis. You're not going to get in trouble with the law for buying the stuff, but you are likely to either get ripped off or robbed if you try to do it at the Plaza Real or on the Ramblas. Don't pay more than €30 for a die-sized chunk. They're making plenty of money on that deal, and it's likely to be wax anyway. It's hard to get them much lower than €30, from what I hear. A better source would be one of the cooler, cheaper discos, the more trashy ones, and the all-night bars. If you're one of that sort of people you'll have no trouble finding one. Just stand around and act fucked up and someone will approach you. But in most other European countries it's as illegal as it is in the States and you can get in real trouble. "Hard drugs", like cocaine, are also as illegal as they are in the US, and if you're idiot enough to be into that stuff you already know the risks you're running.

People interested in the reading habits of the US presidents will like this piece from the Weekly Standard. (http://www.weeklystandard.com/Utilities/printer_preview.asp?idArticle=5367&R=C49153E). Folk who think Bush is an idiot might look at this paragraph:

Married to a former librarian, Bush likes short speeches and, judging from a recent reading list (Ron Chernow's Alexander Hamilton, Joseph J. Ellis's His Excellency: George Washington), lengthy books. Early in its first term the Bush White House established an authors lecture series, which enabled the president to pick the brains of David McCullough, Edmund Morris, Martin Gilbert, Bernard Lewis, and Robert Kaplan, among others. Bush has publicly acknowledged his debt to Natan Sharansky's The Case for Democracy, which distinguishes between "free" and "fear" societies, and exalts Ronald Reagan's moral confrontation with Soviet tyranny. A recent New York Times story described his admiration for Alexis de Tocqueville's Democracy in America.

Bush's reading list looks a lot like mine, actually. Or Murph's, if I can ever talk him into reading one of the McCullough books I have. Except I don't actually think Tocqueville was particularly accurate, for want of a better word. Elegant in the mathematical sense, maybe. You can read just about anything you want to into him, sort of like Nostradamus. Or the Bible, for that matter. Or even the Constitution, if you try hard enough.

I posted this at a baseball message board called Baseball Fever. I'm reproducing it just in case anyone's interested.

Let me preface this by saying it's a wild, far-out suspicion based on no proof whatsoever. I came across an online book called In the Reign of Rothstein by a New York reporter named Donald Henderson Clarke, which came out in around 1930. It is about, of course, Arnold Rothstein, the gambler who fixed the 1919 World Series, and of interest to anyone who likes that period.Here's the link:http://www.hti.umich.edu/cgi/t/text...EV7523.0001.001I'm about halfway through the book, and some guy, one of Rothstein's buddies, testified that he lost some $35,000 to Rothstein betting on Pittsburgh in the NL and Cleveland in the AL to win the pennants sometime "in September 1921", and they seemed like pretty good bets because they were several games ahead. Both teams folded and the Giants won the NL and the Yankees won the AL. Rothstein was known around New York as "The Man Who Backs the Giants", which might mean betting on and might mean part-owning, since it looks like Horace Stoneham, the Giants' owner, was all mixed up in stinky stuff with AR.Were those teams, Pittsburgh and Cleveland, in the tank? I went back and took a quick look at the 1921 Pirates. They sure did fold up at the end of the season, and they lost five straight and then two out of three to the Giants. I'm going to do some more research on my own, of course, but I wondered if any of you were interested in this one.

I love Arts and Letters Daily; it's my homepage. It links to just about everything you might want to read, and the articles it calls to its readers attention are as good as anything on the Web. In case you're a furriner, the website is run by the Chronicle of Higher Education, which is the university teachers' trade journal. I just thought I'd go through a few issues discussed in the Nota Bene section.

Here's a piece on the relationship between Sartre and Camus (http://www.logosjournal.com/issue_4.1/aronson_postel.htm). My first reaction was who gives a crap. My reaction after reading the piece and being reminded of a few things is that Camus was by far the more attractive personality, a nice guy who behaved honorably, and that Sartre was a prick as well as being on the Wrong Side of history. Camus, in his liberal constitutionalism and his French patriotism, was on the Right Side. He opposed the Nazis, Vichy, the Communists, and the FLN, and he actually put his money where his mouth was. For the lowdown on Stalin-loving Sartre, read Paul Johnson's Intellectuals. Besides, Camus was a good writer and a bad but merely naive philosopher while Sartre was an awful writer and a philosopher of evil, of violence, of revolution, of nihilism. Camus is still read. Sartre, except for No Exit, is forgotten, and No Exit won't stand the test of time any more than, say, Marat / Sade.

Here's Timothy Noah bullshitting about the word "bullshit" (http://slate.msn.com/id/2114268). If I understand Noah, bullshit is when you say something without caring whether or not it's true. It's not lying: if you lie, then you are intentionally saying something false. Lies are always false. Bullshit could be either true or false, it doesn't matter. Noah's examples are the stuff that the Bush Administration said before the Iraq War, the stuff about Saddam's weapons of mass destruction and Saddam's trying to buy uranium in North Africa and Saddam's links to international terrorism. All that stuff turned out to be true, of course, but Noah maintains Bush was bullshitting anyway because Bush really didn't care whether it was true or not. Well, here's where Noah begins to bullshit himself. Noah's claim is IT DOESN'T MATTER whether the things Bush said about Saddam turned out to be true, because, assumes Noah, Bush didn't know or care that they were true when he said them. This, Mr. Noah, is bullshit, because you don't know what Bush knew or thought at that time any more than anyone else but Bush himself does. And it is cynical bullshit to label what is usually called "truth"--Saddam did have WMDs, Saddam was trying to buy uranium, Saddam was linked to international terrorists--as "bullshit".

By the way, I'd define "bullshitting" as "talking when you don't know what you're talking about." It's very dangerous to assume that Mr. Bush doesn't know what he's talking about. Several people have already misunderestimated him and look where they wound up.

Now, here's where bullshit hits Camus. Here is a piece by the guy interviewed in that first bit on Camus and Sartre (http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=20050301-054358-9493r). The author claims that Bush misquoted Camus when he stated, "Freedom is a long-distance race." Evidence: That particular quote comes from an internal monologue by a generally unattractive character. Bush took it out of context. Now, come on. Would you claim Bush was misquoting Shakespeare if, in order to illustrate a point, he took a line out of the mouth of such an unpleasant character as Macbeth or Othello or Shylock or Brutus or Antony or Hamlet, all of whom are murderers and half of whom are psychos? Of course you wouldn't. That's why that statement by the author is bullshit; he accuses Bush of ignorance when he actually doesn't know how deeply Bush has read into Camus. I would personally not be surprised if Bush actually has read a book or two by the guy, being married to a librarian and hanging out with all these intellectuals all the time. Camus isn't difficult at all to read, it's not like we're talking Milton or someone like that.

What really pissed me off is the precious line right at the beginning of the piece about how all the Europeans are laughing at us uncultured gringos now. First, a total of zero people until this guy came along knew exactly where that quote came from. Most Europeans are much more interested in soccer and car racing and TV variety shows starring slutty broads with plastic boobs and getting loaded and going to Cuba to screw twelve-year-olds for a dollar than they are in the fine points of analyzing Camus. Second, why should we care what the Europeans think about us anyway? My attitude is if they like us, fine, and if they don't like us, well, that's their problem. If they're determined not to like us nothing's going to change their minds anyway, not even if we find the cure for cancer. (Which we just might do.)

It's a beautiful sunny spring afternoon in Barcelona, and of course I went down to the Plaza Rovira for some coffee and the newspaper. Of course there were people all over the place, that's one of the attractive things about Barcelona. Lots of old folks walking their little old chubby dogs. Not so many kids playing with their dads watching them, but at least there are a couple. The Pakistanis banging on their orange butane tanks which they're carting around on a dolly in order to alert the customers they're out there. Teenagers wearing lots of makeup. Quite a few couples without kids.

Lots of people at the sidewalk cafes. Lots of people buying lottery tickets at the Bar Vall, since there's a drawing of the Primitiva. Folks either overdressed--leather jackets--or underdressed--tank tops--for the weather. I'm wearing blue jeans and a cotton sweater and am comfortable. Chat for a moment with Pedro the drunk guy, who's a friend of mine. He's a Communist but likes John Ford, Charlie Parker, and Dos Passos, so we get along just fine. Nobody in the pet store where I pick up the monthly huge bag of catfood, but they've got really cute baby gerbils. Can't get any, not with five cats. There's a crowd in the Bodega Manolo doing the traditional weekend pre-lunch "vermut", in which they drink either straight Martini red (yecch) or beer and eat salty snacks like anchovies and potato chips. At the Manolo they also have potatoes with allioli and steamed mussels with garlic and parsley.

They're widening the sidewalks on Torrente Flores, our main up-and-down street, but of course nobody's at work, it's Saturday, so there's a ditch along one side of the street that's just sitting there. I checked out the birds; we've got four main urban bird species, your plain old standard pigeon, your basic normal sparrow, ring-necked doves, and these green parakeets that supposedly are native to Argentina. I especially like the parakeets. We also have seagulls, but you don't see many up here three miles away from the harbor. The harbor is a lot cleaner than it used to be, by the way; there are several different kinds of fish living there now. They've also done at least something about dumping raw sewage into the sea, though they need to do a lot more work with water purification. Barcelona is flanked by two rivers, which are of course glorified streams, the Llobregat on the left and the Besos on the right. They used to be really filthy, the Besos was a dead river that could not support any life. Now they're a lot cleaner, and a fairly attractive park has been installed along the Besos. It ain't the Seine or even the Tiber, but it doesn't stink any more.

Anyway, I took my bike out and rode up and down the side streets for about half an hour. Lots of spring cleaning going on, all the balconies wide open. I look dorky in my helmet, but you really do need to wear one because there's no telling when you might get nailed by a butane truck or a sixteen-year-old on a moped. It's kind of a crappy old bike, but a friend of ours gave it to me and I've got a sentimental attachment to it. And, besides, it's not like I'm riding in the Tour de France or anything.

Oh, I got a new computer, it was about time. I bought the previous box secondhand in 2000, and all the other stuff, monitor, etc. was from 1996. The monitor barely worked, Internet was incredibly slow, and the damn thing kept crashing. Also, Murph bought this computer game that wouldn't even work on that computer, and that's when you know your setup is obsolete. This one's much nicer. Cost me €800, bottom-of-the-line laptop, and I got the latest Norton security thing as well, since I had a bunch of adware and junk on the old computer and I don't want to get any of that crap on this one.

The TV thing went OK, though there were too many people. The question was what we thought about the Zapatero administration, and I kept it short and sweet and said that Zap had jumped from being a US-UK ally to a France-Germany ally, and that France and Germany then abandoned Zap. leaving him with only Cuba and Venezuela for friends. I said the Iraq pullout was a bad idea and that Spain was now internationally isolated. I said Zap's error was putting Spain on the wrong side of history. Last thing I managed to say was that I didn't think Gonzalez and Fernandez Ordoñez would have carried out a foreign policy like that of Zap and Moratinos. The deal was they wanted people to comment on a variety of issues, and most of the invitees were critical from the left and there to talk about gay marriage or whatever. It would have been better if they'd spread it out over five days and given, say, 15 minutes each to family issues, religious issues, economic issues, foreign policy, and education / social services issues, for example, over the whole week, rather than jamming it all into 30 minutes on Friday.

Somebody decided "passion" was the cool word in advertising around here a year ago or so and now there isn't a single ad anywhere that doesn't use it. I mean, for Chrissake, there's this brand of shampoo going around advertising "Passion for healthy hair"....Tasteless ads are bigger over here than in the States. For example, there's this one ad over here for sore throat menthol candies that features the model sucking on one and then suddenly her boobs pop out to size 48 triple-D. Everybody knows this is tacky but it goes over....Here's one for local tastelessness. My wife's forty-fiveish female cousin told this joke in front of everyone, and acted it out too. You need to know that Lepe is the town in Spain where stupid people come from, rather like Polish jokes in the US or Irish jokes in the UK. It's a beauty contest. Miss Seville is ready to go down the catwalk. They tell her, "Pose." She poses. They say, "Smile." She smiles. They tell her, "Moisten your lips." She licks her lips. They say "Thank you," and she parades off. Here comes Miss Barcelona. Pose. She poses. Smile. She smiles. Moisten your lips. She licks her lips. Thank you. Next. Here comes Miss Lepe. Pose. She poses. Smile. She smiles. Moisten your lips. She looks confused for a moment, then the lightbulb in her head goes on. She licks her fingers good, sticks them inside her bikini bottom, and starts rubbing...Would people do that in the States in front of their mother-in law and three people they barely know?

I'm going to be on Cuni's show tomorrow, Friday the 18th, apparently as part of a debate on Zapatero's first year in office. TV3, about 11:45 AM or so. Tune in and see how it goes.

Here's a piece I submitted to the Spain Herald. We'll see what they think. I know it needs some editing.

Where are Spain's moderate leftists?

David Horowitz is a well-known conservative American writer and polemicist; Libertad Digital, the Spain Herald's Spanish-language mother ship, often publishes pieces by him in Spanish. Horowitz's most recent project is the Discover the Network website (http://www.discoverthenetwork.org/individual.asp), which documents the connections between various organizations and individuals on the Left, mostly in the United States .

Horowitz divides individual Leftists into five groups. The first two, Totalitarian Radicals (example: Fidel Castro or ETA) and Anti-American Radicals (example: Noam Chomsky) should be obvious. The two brands of Radicalism are often found within the same person. Unfortunately, it is all too common in Spain, among the comfortable "parlor pinkos" and "limousine leftists" whom Tom Wolfe so successfully skewered a generation ago, to actually give support to these enemies of freedom. American parlor pinkos tend to fall into what Horowitz calls "Affective Leftists", who really don't know what they think but feel that the Left is Good and the Right is Bad. Affective Leftists (example: Barbra Streisand) are mostly just goofy, though, and nobody really cares what they say. Affective Leftists are also not really serious about destroying liberal capitalist democracy, which has treated them so well. Totalitarian and Anti-American (or Anti-Spanish, over here) Radicals are. The United Left and Batasuna fall into the Radical categories, and Esquerra Republicana and the PNV are flirting dangerously with Anti-Spanishism, getting entirely too friendly with groups like ETA that practice violence.

Sometimes it's difficult to decide which celebrity or politician fits exactly into which group. Jane Fonda? I'd say Radical, she actually went to North Vietnam. Sean Penn? He's just a dope. Affective. Not that Jane Fonda is smart. Michael Moore is Radical. Everybody who signed the pro-Castro petition? Radical. Here in Spain? The Bardems are Radical. Almodovar is Affective. Zapatero and his bunch mostly strike me as Affective, though they're slightly tainted by Radicalism. All those boring Communist singers (Llach, Aute, Sabina, Victor Manuel, etc) are Radical. Most movie people like Penelope Cruz and that lot are Affective. Too many Radical bad writers, like Jose Saramago and Rosa Regas, get a lot of publicity from their politics.

Horowitz's two other classifications are a little less obvious. Just plain Leftists are democratic socialists. They are neither capitalist nor liberal, but at least they're constitutionalists and they generally oppose the use of violence. They are also generally not particularly patriotic, at least not pro-American or pro-Spanish. Most of the Spanish Socialist Party would fit in here, as would Jimmy Carter, Howard Dean, Jesse Jackson, Ted Kennedy, and John Kerry are Leftists.

Moderate Leftists are exemplified by Bill Clinton. He's not a socialist. He's not antipatriotic. He's not wholly anticapitalist. He's actually fairly liberal in the European sense of the word regarding the economy. His sympathies are with the ideals of the Left, but he's pragmatic enough to compromise his principles, something he does not have a lot of, by the way. Two other Americans who would fit in here are Joe Lieberman and Dick Gephardt, and I'd stick Hillary in with this lot.

Moderate Leftists are actually a good thing to have in a democratic system. Of course, we'd prefer for the conservative candidates to win most of the elections, but Moderate Leftists won't be a complete disaster if they take over, and they will probably stay out of the economy enough not to completely undermine the business sector. Moderate Leftists are a guarantee of constitutional stability, just like Moderate Rightists. They may not like to use the armed forces or the cops, but they will if they have to.

An excellent example of a Moderate Leftist is Tony Blair, who has been wrong on every single small issue but absolutely right on the one big one. I'd trust Tony Blair's moral and practical instincts almost blindly. Of course, one big advantage Blair has over Clinton is his personal integrity, but, hey, a Moderate Leftist who's honest is often not a bad thing at all. Look at Harry Truman or Franklin D. Roosevelt--or Teddy Roosevelt, who was considered a dangerous progressive at the time, or Lincoln, who pulled such socialist big-government stunts as instituting the permanent national debt, the income tax and the draft, not to mention organizing the single greatest army of the 19th century and all the centralization that involved, and who was the greatest individual agent for radical change in American history.

But who would fit in here in Spain? If Felipe Gonzalez had been more honest, he'd fit in here very well. He publicly renounced Marxism, instituted a sort of social democracy allowing business to operate more or less, allied with the United States and NATO, and fought ETA. Those are all major Moderate Leftist achievements, Sure, he spent a bunch of tax money on huge but arguably necessary projects, and sure, Socialist party hacks embezzled some of the cash, but worse things have happened. And though I'd have voted for either the AP or PP candidate against Felipe, especially if he was Aznar, Felipe's administration was not horrible. If you don't mind a little corruption and a death squad or two.

I can't think of any respectable Moderate Leftists in Spain today, though. Zapatero? He's so dumb he's an Affective, and his foreign policy is Anti-American Radical. He's not much of a Spanish patriot either. Moratinos? He sure acts like a Radical, what with all this love for Fidel Castro. Carod-Rovira? He's close to Totalitarian. The Basque left? They're crazy. The Communists? It makes me laugh.

About as close as I can come to a Moderate Leftist in Spain today is Jose Bono, the minister of defense. He's pro-Spanish and anti-terrorism, at least, and we don't know what he thinks about Spain's pullout of troops from Iraq, but he probably would have supported staying there. OK, Bono is a party hack, a regional boss. He runs Castilla-La Mancha the way Mayor Daley used to run Chicago, if you know what I mean and I'll bet you do. But, if you can stand a little corruption, you can at least trust Bono not to behave like a clown and to keep the country functioning. I am afraid that Zapatero has proven, in his first year in office, that he is no Moderate Leftist. Bono might be.

Sorry not to have posted for a while--I've been busy with the news side of the Spain Herald, and then we went out to the pueblo last weekend for the annual family calçotada.

I think I'm going to change the focus of this blog. Since I spend a couple of hours a night translating stuff to English, I don't particularly want to do even more of it here. The thing about the Spain Herald is that what it says in the news section is accurate to the best of my knowledge and to the best knowledge of the management, and they pretty well cover everything of importance that happens on the political side around here. Yeah, it's slanted, but they admit it--they don't pretend to be neutral--and their slant on the issues is pretty much mine too. If they ever asked me to translate something I found genuinely objectionable, I wouldn't do it. That hasn't happened yet and there's no reason for me to think it ever would.

Anyway, what we don't cover, our friends Trevor at Barcelona Reporter and John B. at Spain Media do, and for opinion our friends Franco Aleman at Barcepundit in English (y en español tambien) and the boys at HispaLibertas in Spanish pretty much write about everything of importance. Check with our man Robert Duncan in Madrid and on Catholic topics. Also, the Spain Herald's opinion section is excellent, with articles by such notables as economist Pedro Schwartz and my man Jorge Valin, a personal friend of Iberian Notes. And, of course, you'll want to look at all the other sites on the blogroll over on the left, too.

What I'm going to do is begin posting a bit more personally. I'm going to start writing more about society and culture and less about politics in general. We'll see how it works. Give me a month or so to hit a stride.

Here's an e-mail from my mom back in Kansas on all this stuff.

These are definitely the Shoemakes we know and love. Annie Bone is the “Eve” of our Indian ancestors as far as I know. #14v, John Wesley, #11i James and Sarah Tomlin Shoemake are Jim’s parents and #24 to 34 are Jim’s brothers and sisters and William #10 is a brothers of James #11i. June, Johnine & I went to Okla and found their graves very tidily maintained two summers ago. James #11i was the last of the brothers to die within a span of a few months and his grave did not have a marker, so John McDowell had made an aluminum one with the letters engraved on it (small enough for them to bring on the plane) and we installed it along with several stones from various locations (my grandfather’s grave in Marathon, our yards in KS and TX) since it is a Cherokee tradition to put stones of significance on graves. Anyway, I sent the e-mail on to Johnine who will be fascinated that you just ran across it. We knew most of the names, but not all the dates and locations which are indicated. Thanks!! We looked up the Indian files at the local library in the town where the graveyard is located (I can’t remember the name of the files, but they are extremely detailed.) There is a really interesting living history museum in that town as well which has young college Indians who illustrate all kinds of Cherokee traditions and myths, etc. And buildings and games, etc. LOVE MOM

How a French Aristocrat Gave His Surname to a Cherokee Cowboy (Maybe) (Part II)

Granddaddy Jim was born in Cotulla, Texas, down by the Rio Grande. As a young man, he went west to the Marathon area and got a job as a cowboy on a ranch, which in those days was a not a glamourous job at all. He held several different ranch jobs out there before he married Aunt Jennie in 1896 and sort of settled down, working as a clerk in one of the general stores, since he was literate and numerate and honest. Later on, though, when he was in his thirties, he joined up with the newly-established Mounted Border Patrol, which wasn't founded until 1904. Their main job, then as now, was catching illegal immigrants while using no violence unless attacked. During the Mexican Revolution, which began in 1910 and spiraled on with dizzying complexity, bandit gangs raiding across the river became common--these guys were mostly livestock rustlers--, and Jim was in more than one gunfight; his partner was shot dead beside him in one of these skirmishes.

Jim always said that he was part Indian, and everyone believed him, it's been family lore for decades that we're part-Cherokee, but we never had any real evidence. Jim didn't have too much to say about his family, and the story is that he left home young because his father mistreated him. Jim's father was named James Preston Shoemake, and he was born in 1826 in Jackson County, Alabama, which was Cherokee territory then. James Preston moved west, away from his family, down to the Rio Grande area sometime before 1860, since in that year he married a woman named Sarah Louisa Tomlin in Texas. We don't know anything about her family. James Preston died sometime after 1896 in Cotulla, Texas. James Preston had two brothers, William H. and John Wesley Shoemake (the name John Wesley indicates they were already Methodists, which the family has been since time immemorial), among other siblings, and he had two first cousins named Lula B. and Mary E. Shoemake.

I'm going to quickly jump back a generation. James Preston's father was John A. Shoemake, who might have been born around 1803, perhaps in Chesterfield County, South Carolina. John A. married a woman named Elizabeth, whom we know nothing about, in about 1824, and he was out in Jackson County, Alabama, part of the Cherokee lands, at that time. He died in a village called Crowtown in that region in 1855. Now, John A. had at least two other sons, James Preston's brothers William H. and John W., and William had two daughters, Lula and Mary. Here's where it gets interesting.

There is a document called the Dawes Roll, compiled in I believe 1893 in the Indian Territory, what is today Oklahoma, that lists all the members of the Cherokee Nation who were entitled to certain federal government rights. William H. Shoemake is number 32130 on the Dawes Roll, Lula B. is 32131, Mary E. is 32132, and John W. is 32133. James Preston would therefore have qualified, too, but he was down in Cotulla rather than in Oklahoma with everybody else. Why he chose to go to Texas while the rest of his relatives all went to Oklahoma, I do not know. What I do know is that all the Jackson County, Alabama, Shoemakes left there or died there before the 1850s.

Let's go back to John A. Shoemake, father of William, John, and James Preston. John A. was the son of Anna Thorn (or Anna Bone) and an unknown man, and he was probably born in 1803. We don't know whether Anna was married to the man or not; this is why we're not sure what her original surname was. But Anna, possibly recently widowed or possibly with an illegitimate child on her hands, married a man named John Shoemake, called "Balljack", sometime in the decade of 1800. Balljack adopted John A. as his stepson and gave him his surname. To repeat: Balljack was not John A.'s biological father, but Anna was his biological mother. This means that Anna is as far back as we can trace the bloodline, because Balljack and his ancestors are not related to my family by blood.

OK. Let's go through it again. My grandmother, Bonnie Shoemake (1910-1988), was the daughter of James Lafayette "Granddaddy Jim" Shoemake (1874-1960), who was the son of James Preston Shoemake (1826-1896?), who was the son of John A. Shoemake (1803?-1855?), who was the son of Anna Thorn or Anna Bone and the stepson of John "Balljack" Shoemake.

How a French Aristocrat Gave His Surname to a Cherokee Cowboy (Maybe) (Part I)

Bonnie Shoemake was my grandmother's name. I always associated her a little bit with Bonnie Parker because 1) obviously they have the same first name 2) they were both born in West Texas 3) in 1910 4) in the same sort of lower-middle upper-working class family 5) they were feisty, tough, and intelligent 6) they were very small (Parker four-foot-ten, "Granny" four-foot-eight) 7) they were both "flappers" in the Twenties, or what passed for it in that part of the world 8) they both knew how to use a gun 9) they even look a bit alike. (Photos to follow.) Of course, 10) Granny wasn't dumb or amoral enough to do any crimes or silly enough to fall in with a habitual criminal like Clyde Barrow was. She was a good woman and she married a good man. They weren't perfect, but they were good people, and we all loved them both.

Granny was born, as I said, in 1910 in Marathon, Texas, which you've never heard of because it's about as close to the middle of nowhere as it's possible to get. (You have probably seen Marathon in a movie; the deserty motel scenes in "Paris, Texas" were filmed there. I've stayed in that motel. It's not hard to find. It's the only one there.) Marathon is where you turn south off Highway 90 to get to Big Bend National Park. It's actually become a little foo-foo, there are a couple of art galleries and bed and breakfasts and stuff there now. In the old days, though, it was West Texas ranch country and nothing but. The Southern Pacific main line runs through there, and that's how John Frederick Aust met Granny.

Pappy, as we all called him, was a German. German was his first language, and he didn't learn English until he went to school. He was a skilled mechanic and worked on a series of railroads maintaining the signals; seems that he was particularly good with electricity, though he could fix or rig up about anything. He was working on the Southern Pacific in 1934 and that's where he met Granny and they got married and had my mom and my aunts and that is of course why I'm here.

Pappy was from Western Kansas; his grandfather and father had immigrated back in 1888 from a town called Illeschestic in a region called Bukovina that was then part of the Austrian Empire and now is in Romania. They were originally from Wurttemberg in southern Germany; what happened is that in the beginning of the 1700s the Austrians conquered a bunch of land in the Balkans from the Turks and, since it was vacant territory they needed to repopulate it. What they did was declare the area "the Military Frontier" and give free land to anybody with the guts to take it--you never knew when the Turks might come back. These Wurttembergers took the Emperor up on the deal and entire villages moved out east to Bukovina and similar places. Then, toward the end of the 1800s, word got to Bukovina that land was so cheap it was almost free in Kansas, and those entire villages packed up and moved again, this time to Ellis County and the high plains.

If you're European, you might be wondering why I know all this. The answer is paradoxical. We Americans are the descendents of people who moved, and our people often moved more than once, like Pappy's ancestors; you Europeans are descended from people who stayed home. Therefore, Europeans know where they come from, because their great-great-grandparents were from the same place as they are. Europeans don't make a big deal about finding roots because they just know automatically that they have them. Every American's roots, though, come from somewhere else and we don't always know where. This makes us curious, and it's why so many Americans are interested in genealogy.

Back to Granny. Granny's mother was named Virginia Alice Hovis, and everyone called her "Aunt Jennie". She lived until 1952, and my mother and aunts remember her very well. Aunt Jennie's family were poor white folk from the Mississippi hills, and we really don't know very much about them. Her father was a buck private in the Confederate Army, and he fought at Antietam, where he was wounded in the ankle and sent home from there. That's about all we know.

It's Granny's father's family that we know something about. Granny's father, Aunt Jennie's husband, was named James Lafayette Shoemake. He was very long-lived, born in 1875 and died in 1960; my mother and her sisters called him "Granddaddy Jim". Jim was a larger-than-life fellow, a guy who made an impression. People liked him, and they remembered him well. My mother's family still swaps Granddaddy Jim stories, and the fascinating thing is that every one I've been able to check out turns out to be true.

This looks like a good place to stop. The title's a bit of a teaser, isn't it?

Tasty comment by John Derbyshire in The Corner over at National Review; I like The Corner because it's generally pretty lighthearted, sort of a break from the normal fairly serious tone of National Review. I'm surprised at how often Derbyshire and I agree, though he's a social paleocon and I'm not. What we both are is pro-religion atheists and strong believers in the scientific method, if that makes sense. Big bang, yes. Evolution, yes. Global warming, dopey. Lomborg, yes. Ockham's razor, yes. God, no. But religion, at least the moderate kind, good.

I subscribe to this 100% and I rather wish I'd written it.

"Mr. Derbyshire---Your review of Simon Singh's book in the Feb. 28 issue of National Review included a general defense of the integrity of scientists. Singh, you say, 'gives the reader a valuable lesson in the progress of scientific inquiry, in the nature of scientific method and the means by which controversies in science are resolved. A great deal of nonsense is talked and written about this, particularly by anti-evolution propagandists. Singh's account shows plainly that the generality of scientists are neither passionless Mister Spocks, weighing evidence with cold, flawless objectivity, nor grim upholders of a pseudo-religious dogma determined to defend crumbling theories to the last ditch.'

"Would you be as comfortable with that quote were 'anti-evolution' replaced by 'anti-global-warming'? I'm afraid that I can't recall whether you have written anything about Bjorn Lomborg, but National Review has certainly had a lot to say about the scientific establishment's defense of the 'pseudo-religious dogmas' of environmentalism against Lomborg's skepticism.

"You say that scientists are 'reluctant to let go of the convictions of a lifetime, but usually willing to do so when faced with convincing evidence.' Do you believe that to be as true of environmental scientists as it is of physicists? What about evolutionary biologists?"

Reply: The key phrase there is "convincing evidence." Broadly speaking, when evidence is very sparse, the human side of scientists comes out, and there is much grandstanding, politicking, and ego-tripping. So it was with the Big Bang until the 1970s, when the weight of evidence began to make the anti-Big-Bangers look silly. When evidence reaches a critical mass, science at large swings behind the better theory. A few eccentrics like Hoyle might hold out; but science **at large** knows the difference between a theory that fits the evidence parsimoniously, and one that doesn't. Not only does it know it, in fact, it depends on that knowledge for its livelihood and reputation! I don't know any counterexamples to this rule. The problem, again, is that when the evidence is scanty, pretty much anything can be made to fit.

With global warming things are much worse than they were with Big Bang because there are more political points to be made (Rich countries BAD! Poor countries GOOD!) and more gummint money to be spent. The fundamental problem is the same, though. The evidentiary database is just too sparse. You can make any sort of case from it. The earth is a large object: measuring its average temeperature is a tricky business. Trying to see whether that temperature has changed across decades is an order of magnitude harder. And then you have to try to figure out whether, if there *is* change, it's caused by human activity. (Followed, of course, by the question: If there is change, and it is human-caused, DOES IT MATTER?)

Evolutionary biology presents a different case. The origin of species by natural selection via mutated forms is the only theory we have. There isn't another one. ("God makes it happen!" isn't a scientific theory, only a metaphysical one.) There is no competition of theories here, of the type Big Bang vs. Steady State, or Global Warming vs. No Global Warming (or Man-Made Global Warming vs. Natural Global Warming). Nobody has an alternative theory. This may be just a failure of imagination on the part of biologists. Perhaps next week someone will come up with an alternative theory for the origin of species that will make Natural Selection via Mutations look silly. Until that happens, though, NSvM is the only game in town. And it looks pretty good. We don't have any observations that contradict it (e.g. a species of winged insects arising in a single generation from a species of un-winged ones). *And* the more we learn about the actual mechanisms of morphology & inheritance, the better the theory looks. Of course it might be all wrong -- it's just a theory; but at present there is no reason to think it's all wrong, and again, NO ALTERNATIVE THEORY.

Arts and Letters Daily links to a new very German website (in English) called Sight and Sign. Here's an excerpt from a piece by Gotz Aly on the Nazi origins of the German welfare state and why many Germans supported Hitler. My personal belief: The German Romantic movement, combined with virulent nationalism springing from the hundreds of years of German disunity and weakness, and combined with the German youth movement (Wandervogel) which fed on "blood and soil" ideology and the idea that pure, uncorrupted youth could and should overthrow the old ways, led to the cultural conditions that caused the First World War and then Naziism. I think it's fascinating that the radical Green environmental movement started in Germany; I honestly think the extreme Greens would fit very nicely into the naive wing of the Nazi Party. Just in case you were wondering, by the way, the Nazis were of all things animal-rights activists. One of the charges that '20s and '30s Nazi propaganda threw at the Jews was that kosher slaughtering was cruel and inhumane.

By the way, of course, most of the Spanish welfare state originated under Franco, and a lot of Spanish societal, legal, and political quirks spring from Francoism.

For the majority of young and by no means monstrous men, National Socialism meant freedom and adventure, a physical and mental anti-ageing program. They were looking for challenges, fun and the ultimate kick in the modern mobile war. They were in their early twenties, trying to find themselves, spurred on by feelings of omnipotence. They lacked the social skills to fit in. They created, in a destructive sense, the most successful generational project in modern history.

Hitler oriented himself to the mood of the population. He asked himself on an hourly basis how he could better satisfy the German majority. Playing a constant game of give and take, he established the redistributive state par excellence. The tax incentive for married couples, so vehemently defended by the conservatives in 2002, stems from 1934. The kilometre flat-rate so dear to today's Bavarian government dates back to the same tax reform law which stated: "It is a constitutional prerogative of National Socialism that citizens have their own homes in the open countryside ..." Since 1941, German pensioners have had a right to health insurance and are no longer dependent on public or church welfare. Under Hitler, the number of holidays was doubled.

Bonuses for working on Sundays, bank holidays and late shifts were taxed until October 2, 1940 at which point the Nazi government wrote them off with a flick of the wrist. Even the Reich's finance minister gave his approval "naturally, on condition that the war is over in 1940." And he rightly anticipated what a "strong impression" this good deed would make on the German public in the midst of a "gigantic war".

Anyone trying to understand the destructive success of National Socialism should look at the public face of the annihilation policy – the modern, cosy and obliging welfare state. During WWII, German soldiers' wives received twice as much family support as their British and American counterparts. They had more money than in peace times. The generosity of state benefits meant that women saw no reason to work. In 1942 it was suggested that state benefits be reduced and taxed but Hitler blocked the idea, fearing public opposition. Funk, the Reich's minister for economic affairs commented drily, "Our economic policy during the war was overly opulent. It is not easy to correct such a thing."

Until May 8, 1845, 80 percent of Germans paid no direct war taxes. The indirect taxes were limited to tobacco, brandy and beer. The Regime's cautious handling of the Volk was apparent in every last detail. In the so-called "South-Eastern German consumer region", the tax on a litre of beer (which Goebbels referred to as a "positive mood element") was 10 Reichspfennigs; in the North, it was about 30 more. There was no tax on wine because it would have affected wine producers who were "already struggling economically".

Protection against unfair dismissal, tenant protection regulations, protection from seizure under execution: hundreds of finely tuned laws were aimed at socio-political appeasement. Hitler ruled according to the principal of "I am the people", later to form the basis of the German Republic's welfare state. The Schröder/Fischer government now faces the historic task of bidding a prolonged farewell to the German community of the Volk.

Hitler gained overwhelming support with his policy of running up debts and explaining that it would be others that paid the price. He promised the Germans everything and asked little of them in return. The constant talk of "a people without living space", "international standing", "complementary economic areas" and "Jew purging" served a single purpose: to increase German prosperity without making Germans work for it themselves. This was the driving force behind his criminal politics: not the interests of industrialists and bankers such as Flick, Krupp and Abs. Economically, the Nazi state was a snowballing system of fraud. Politically, it was a monstrous bubble of speculation, inflated by the common party members.