Now Ain't the Time for your Tears is the title Counterpunch gives to this Dave Marsh article on music industry chicanery. An excerpt:

[Fred] Wilhelms became former national director of the AFTRA Health and Retirement Funds because he refused to roll over and play dead about the record industry's deformed income reporting that deprived artists of benefits. Before that, Wilhelms worked as an auditor New Jersey construction trade unions. He says that compared to the record industry, those guys constitute a monument to scruples.

There's a lot more. And Marsh offers to send you his transcript of Wilhelms' testimony before the California State Senate if you e-mail him at the address on the bottom of the Counterpunch article.

Game Theories, Continued - The Millenium Challenge story continues to generate interesting reader mail. Eric Mauro, whom Unqualified Offerings hereby declares an Adjunct Fellow, writes

Wasn't Oakley playing the civilian leader of Blue country? [Red - UO.] (I'm guessing he's against the Iraq war strictly from his past behavior, he's always
seemed very multi-culti for a republican) Why do they have a civilian leader if not to explore the political possibilities. Somebody somewhere has to play all these moves out on the chessboard.

UO understands the points previously made by Bill Dowling and Mike Sullivan on this site about focusing wargame exercises and playing enemies "in character." At least in theory, their points provide answers to Eric's questions. However, UO thinks two things:

1. A hot item is that General Riper's tactics sank most of the Blue fleet in the Persian Gulf and it had to be "refloated" to continue the exercise. If the purpose of the exercise was really to play out, say, the post-landing portion of the invasion, why bother having free play during the pre-landing stage? Suspicion: the exercise really was pretty general and the invasion fleet was considered "fair game" until Riper started winning. Important nuance to suspicion: Let's say Red "won" the sea battle. It is probably still worthwhile, for the purposes of the exercise, to refloat the fleet to fight the land-forces battle so long as you don't pretend that Red's naval victory never happened.

2. As for Mike Sullivan's point about staying in character, UO concedes the general principle. However, it sees a huge potential for biased referees to use "You're not playing in character!" as an excuse for the other side's losing. And as Mike also knows, a good ruleset should preclude, as much as possible, behaviors that the designers consider to be beyond applicability. For instance, you can bet that the rules did not allow Red to attack blue with space-based lasers, or to convince Iceland to intervene decisively on the Carmine side. Apparently the rules did permit Riper to use motorcycle couriers instead of transparent radio communications. The question becomes, can we make a reasonable case, from the outside, that it would be out of character for "Red Leader" to do this? It seems hard. (How about, "he gassed his own people?" That's supposed to end all other discussions!)

Values Clarification - Wendy McElroy has an interesting item in McBlog about some writing she's done and is doing for Penthouse Magazine:

It would be indiscreet of me to mention the free speech organizations who stayed afloat for years only because of Penthouse's generous financial support. (Those orgs shy away from the association...just like the libertarian orgs who don't put their "porn donors" in fund-raising letters. Frankly, if I were those funders, I'd walk.)

Like I said...I don't get it. Those who criticise Penthouse (of my acquaintance, at least) are willing -- nay eager! -- to write for establishment 'zines that advocate bombing civilian populations (Iraq/Afghanistan/Palestine), violating civil liberties en masse (TIPS/feds after deadeat dads), and wreaking all manner of misery on human kind. But a 'zine that shows consensual sex between adults -- a travesty!

Well That Didn't Work and not because Offering Boy lasted a full half-hour into the first evening's fishing session before declaring that he didn't want us to fish any more. Suitably bribed with the prospect of regular visits to Funland at Deep Creek Lake if he bore the fishing trip's lengthy periods of fishing, somewhat gracefully, he got better and better over the next day. He even discovered his inner otter the next morning, having a good hour's fun sliding down a natural sluice on the North Branch of the Potomac at the Wallman area. (Note to anyone who finds this item with a search engine: No indeed, it would never be safe to let a six-year-old do this kind of thing on the North Branch below Jennings-Randolph Reservoir, a treacherous tailwater. Most times of the year it would not be safe above the reservoir either. It wouldn't have been safe in June, when Unqualified Offerings was last at Wallman and the North Branch was swollen with heavy rains. But this was the low-water days of August, under a watchful adult eye.)

Offering Boy actually held up better than UO could sensibly have expected. (He loves motels. Maybe he'll grow up to be a drifter!) It was the car that let down the side. At the very least, the overdrive is shot, and maybe the transmission generally. It's in a Cumberland, Maryland, transmission shop for research. La Familia Offering is back together in Silver Spring, thanks to the efforts of Mrs. Offering and the Littlest Offering at recovering the boys.

UO had just determined, by experience and the advice of a travel book, that there is no point fishing the North Branch or the Savage above their reservoirs in high summer, and was preparing to adapt its target list accordingly too.

So while we can't say "It's great to be back," back we nevertheless are.

"Gone" Fishing - It's time for Unqualified Offerings to make what will probably be its last expedition to the wilds of Western Maryland this summer, in search of government and free range trout. In the "Are you sure this is a good idea" category, this website will be accompanied by six-year-old Offering Boy, at the latter's insistence.

However, you need not necessarily fear a drought of (lower-case) unqualified offerings. And not just because most other bloggers and professional pundits are at least as unqualified as UO! No, it's because the way the whole fishing thing works, the middle of the day is largely wasted time. So this site expects to pop into the Oakland, MD public library during those stretches, from which it has blogged before. There's an outside chance that that won't happen, in which case, this site will be back in business sometime Sunday. But most likely: more tomorrow.

One Year Later - Unqualified Offerings is a softy, but this Dateline interview with Flight 93 widow Lyz Glick really got to it.

Lyz Glick: “It was difficult those first few weeks, because everything is a memory. You know I walk in and I go to the laundry and Jer had done a load of laundry before he left. And I take his T-shirts out of the dryer. And what am I going to do with them? Do I fold them? You know? So I folded them. So it was tough. And now I consider myself married to my house. Because I could never imagine selling it...

Whoah! Gene Healy on Iraq. Whoah!

Thought for the Day inspired by an e-mail from Radley Balko, aka The Agitator.

Hotel taxes: taxation without representation?

Data point: 17 Cities Sock It To Travelers To Pay For Stadiums, from the Travel Industry Association of America.

InstaSpank - Patrick Nielsen Hayden of the superb Electrolite blog breaks the previous Unqualified Offerings feedback speed record with an expression of displeasure regarding the item below on Brendan O'Neill, animal rights and the left:

Oh please. I flunked out of Left Loyalism 101 a long time ago, but still. I really don't think most people on the "left" have a problem with the incredibly pressing humans vs. animals question. Overheated quotes from college-age airheads are No Fair; we don't want those people, either. (Or people foolish enough to write outraged emails to Brendan O'Neill.)

Sometimes I think the "blogosphere" functions as a machine for reassuring righties that all left types are as crazy as the ditziest college lesbo-vegan, and reassuring lefties that all right-wingers are barely suppressed maniacs who live on ammunition and raw meat. Arguably, this is an everybody-happy outcome that qualifies as a "win-win." As Golden Age SF writer Arthur Leo "Von" Hayek foresaw, the market provides for every need. Quant suff!

But what does Patrick know? He's a liberal.

Higher Than Hegel Can Count - Okay, it was actually Marx's modification: First time as tragedy. Check. Second time as farce. Check. Now tell Unqualified Offerings one thing...

WHICH TIME IS IT WHEN MUAMAR GADAFFI GETS ELECTED TO HEAD THE UN COMMISION ON HUMAN RIGHTS????

(Link via Samizdata.) UO supposes that they're not even pretending any more. Love that outfit though. (See picture accompanying article.)

Gaming the System - Reader/Gaming Buddy Bill Dowling e-mails a provisionally kind word for the Joint Strike Force command. (See Heads I Win, Tails You Lose below.)

My understanding of government-run wargames is that they tend to exist in order to play out certain situations.

As an example, say you wanted to run a simulation to see what would happen if we invaded Iraq and fought a long ground war. Certain Iraqi counter-tactics would preclude that happening (such as chemical weapon strikes on Tel Aviv). If you allow the Iraqi player to use any weapons reasonably at his disposal, you won't learn what would happen if we invaded Iraq and fought a long ground war. You'll learn what the people running the simulation think Israel's response would be.

This take is plausible, and similar to Mike Sullivan's below. UO seems to recall that the outcome of Millenium Force 2002 was presented as validating new warfighting concepts, so it isn't so sure.

Bill was also not happy with UO's report of Radley Balko's proposal for DC Nonstatehood, writing, in a different e-mail:

As a District of Columbia resident, I enjoyed being characterized as someone who "will vote for Democrats," and is "largely poor and black."

As for the District's ideal of Taxation Without Representation and the commuter tax: How can you argue that the voters of Maryland and DC are not represented when their representatives have kept the commuter tax from becoming reality? Sure, the voters of Maryland and Virginia "can't vote District politicians out of office," but so what? It's the United States Congress which controls whether a commuter tax will ever be enacted. You even describe their efforts to enact one as agitating Congress.

Maryland and Virginia voters have plenty of representation in the government that has the power in this situation.

(On the other hand, I'm against the commuter tax)

In fact, Bill is white and fabulously wealthy, or at least he keeps up with the electric bill, as his home is always well-lit whenever Unqualified Offerings has been there. He's sandbagging us on the (not) voting for democrats thing though.

Bill's right that Maryland and Virginia have representation in Congress and that Congress would to approve any commuter tax - under the present system. But Unqualified Offerings wrote

"Taxation without Representation" is actually the District Government's ideal.

Under the present arrangement, Maryland and Virginia have a say, however diluted, in whether the District can pass a commuter tax. But the present arrangement is not of the District Government's choosing. DC's local political elite would like an end to Congressional oversight - true home rule in the form of statehood - and a commuter tax. Their ideal (there's that word) would be a system where they could tax commuters without the commuters having any say-so.

On the question of DC, local government and statehood, Eve Tushnet has excellent considerations in So Far From God, So Close To The United States and Washington, D.C.: District of Chaos (not an anti-DC piece, despite its title)

Cute as a Button - But enough about Unqualified Offerings. What about Janeane Garofalo? Unqualified Offerings adjunct fellow Kevin Maroney pronounces himself, via e-mail, "happy for her if she can get" the $50K Clear Channel lists as her performance fee. "[T]hat's 2.5x a night with Weird Al Yankovic..."

Kevin also suggests that "Black 47 for $3500 probably beats BR5-49 at $7500" for the Best Buy trophy, which would seem to mean that, like Unqualified Offerings, he thinks $300,000 for Shania Twain is on the steep side. (UO thinks that "We'll let you live if you attend this concert" is just slightly too much to pay.)

Which reminds this site. Last summer, UO's beloved sister and her nearly-as-beloved husband went to see Tim McGraw. Hey, it's a big ol' world! When this site's sister afterward declared that the laser light show was the best part of the concert, UO declared that a supposed country act having a laser light show was just wrong. Its sister consdered this very judgmental.

The Heart of Rock&Roll is Still Bleatin' (Sic) - Anent the Clear Channel starpimping item below, Chad Orzel writes

Presumably, $100K gets you the News, as well...

I'm not sure whether to be more or less boggled by this, having seen the Huey Lewis and the News episode of "Behind the Music" in a hotel, once. It may have been the lamest "Behind the Music" show ever-- nobody got kicked out of the band, nobody died of a drug overdose, they made a pile of money, and when their popularity waned in the late 80's, they handled it gracefully. They're all still friends, record occasionally, and play a few shows a year. Apparently for a hundred grand a pop.

If you're going to do the flash-in-the-pan pop stardom thing, that's the way to do it. But it's hardly compelling television...

Unqualified Offerings remembers a Rolling Stone profile of the News from the 1980s which found the group at - a golf course. Now, Unqualified Offerings has played golf in its life, and may play again sometime. And it believes in real diversity, which surely includes golfing rockers. At least in the 1980s, a rocker letting on he played golf took a serious cred hit. Which means that UO liked that about Lewis and his band way more than any of their music.

Chad's personal list of "perfect albums" is available on Uncertain Principles. Clearly UO is not the only one determined to be your unofficial substitute The Minor Fall, The Major Lift this week.

Meanwhile, Charles Dodgson thinks the Clear Channel price list betokens good economic news.

Quit Holding Out and Draw Another Breath - Joe Strummer just turned 50 today. You can sign his birthday card here. (Must...fight...cognitive...dissonance!) From Midnight-3AM you can join DJ John O's celebration on his Salvage&Recovery Radio show on WUSB, which still has a RealAudio feed, despite all the RIAA's machinations.

NOTE: Unqualified Offerings suspects the birthday card link will decay to the regular index page of strummernews.com within days, if not sooner. So if you come upon this in the archives, no promises.

(Link via the Elvis Costello Mailing List.)

Some Animals Are More Equal Than Others - In a demonstration of the sort of thing that is actually controversial on the left, Brendan O'Neill declares

This is the deal, folks (and I can't believe I have to say this): humans are superior to animals.

in response to cranky e-mails about his recent piece, "Of Frogs and Iraqis." (It turns out that that stuff about how, if you put an Iraqi in a pot of water and heat it to boiling slowly, he won't jump out, is a myth.)

Party Planner - ClearChannel may be evil, but they can take care of the music program for your next party. You can get anyone from Joan Baez to Jars of Clay - for a price. Not the records; the people. Do your shopping here. Unqualified Offerings awards its coveted Best Buy designation to BR5-49 ($7500). The What the Fuck Would Possess Anyone to Do THAT prize goes to

Huey Lewis $100K

Not a misprint. Not a hoax. Not an imaginary tale.

Apparently Yankees Manager Joe Torre will perform for $12.5K, but the price list doesn't say if that's with a band or solo.

It also offers

Natalie Merchant $35K

Well, I could certainly use $35K, but I'm not sure I'm willing to go through that.

Some readers may be comforted to know just how much money certain geezer acts can still command. Steve Miller will set you back $100K. Tracy Chapman will cost you twice that. That's 6 times what Ani deFranco commands ($35K), not that either one of them would dream of comparing themselves on those terms. Oh no! But Kansas is only $20K. Try not to have that much lying around, just in case.

(Link via Gene Healy, who likes me!)

It Takes a Gaming Blog - Mike "Epoch" Sullivan of Random Ruminations offers a theory about Saturday's item, Head's I Win, Tails You Lose, about the recently-concluded Millenium Challenge 2002 combined-force wargames. In that post, Unqualified Offerings noted that "Red Team" commander Paul Van Riper told colleagues he quit the exercise because he decided the rules were rigged to ensure a Blue victory.

Epoch wonders if there isn't another explanation. His letter is so intriguing that UO will reproduce it in full.:

As I was reading your post and the linked material, one thing which occurred to me as the possible source of the contention was whether or not Ret. General Van Riper was acting "in character."

As a gamer, you are, of course, very familiar with the concept that forces, PC or NPC, may well use non-optimal tactics in any given roleplayed conflict, because the characters (but not necessarily the players) are either lacking a crucial bit of knowledge or do not have the intellectual capacity or time to figure out the optimal tactics. And I'm sure you're also familiar with the style of play (call it low-Exploration gamism, to harken back to Ron Edwards' old lingo) in which the players use their knowledge of the Monster Manual or other sources of information about their opponents, despite the lack of in-character justification for using that knowledge. Now, I don't mean to trivialize the gravity of these games which, after all, are not escapism or art, but practice for the deadly serious business of killing other humans. Nor would I suggest that we should assume that enemy states are the functional equivalents of D&D
goblins -- disorganized and stupid. Still, the in-character/out-of-character distinction would seem to be relevent.

The question on my mind (which may or may not relate to the Millennium Challenge games) is what methodology the armed forces uses for what are essentially large-scale roleplaying games, and what methodology they SHOULD use.

I propose that, for the kinds of aggressive wars far from U.S. territory that we're considering here, where annexation of US soil is not really in the range of possibility, the goal should be achieval of the stated goals quickly and with minimum loss of life -- particularly the lives of our own forces, but also of foreign civilians. But that doesn't really tell us which methodology is better for that basic philosophy. It would initially seem that we should play the foreign forces as if they had the "book open" -- with functional knowledge of the US capabilities, if not our specific tactics. That's something of a worst-case scenario, where the enemy is being played as highly intelligent and perhaps unreasonably knowledgeable, and it would seem at first glance to offer our forces the most protection to assume such a formidable opponent. On the other hand, playing a conservative case on our side might cause us to dismiss tactics which would, realistically, be highly effective at bringing a conflict to an end.

I don't, in the end, have an answer, except that it might be best to try it both ways. Nor, of course, am I even addressing the larger question of when, if ever, it is appropriate for the US to engage in such aggressive, off-shore actions. But it is interesting to speculate as to whether the Pentagon is wrestling with the same kinds of issues, on a large scale, as we do when crafting combat encounters for our games, and whether they might be able to put to use some of the theories which I know you, among others, have thought a great deal about.

Hey, it could be true. Maybe Riper was just playing out of character, in which case he doubtless forfeited the role-playing bonus too.

Note: Mike's blog is down as of Monday night because of technical problems at Williams College. But it will be back.

UPDATE: Mike also writes

How terrifying would you find it if I told you that Unqualified Offerings was my major source of political news?

Unqualified Offerings doesn't find that terrifying at all. But its other readers may...

The Bazaar is Open - Mike also notes that Abu Nidal is dead in Baghdad, a possible suicide, if suicides involving what are apparently many, many bullet holes is possible. UO's thesis: This is Saddam's way of saying we can all still be friends. Well, everyone but Abu Nidal anyway.

UPDATE: Also from Mike: He points out that a legend has grown that Oliver North once testified before Congress on the danger posed by - Osama bin Laden. In fact, North testified about the menace of Abu Nidal. If Unqualified Offerings recollects rightly, North claimed that he was on Abu Nidal's hit list, which was why he bought his wife nylons on his government credit card. Or something.

Reprove It All Night - Reader/Gaming Buddy Mike Jacobs reports that Bruce Springsteen and Jon Bon Jovi are suing RPM's bar in Pittsburgh for playing their songs without paying the ASCAP royalty fee. From the Washington Post story:

The lawsuit, filed Friday by the ASCAP on behalf of Springsteen, Bon Jovi and Universal-Polygram International Publishing Inc., says RPM's in Bridgeville is not allowed to play music by ASCAP members without paying an annual $2,818 fee.

Unqualified Offerings doesn't have a huge problem with this. $2818 for an entire year of ASCAP replay rights doesn't seem exactly predatory. It has a bigger problem with playing Bon Jovi in the first place.

A Fanboy's Notes - Finally an answer to the question, "War, What Is It Good For?"

Sometimes when I get tired of the War, I think: at least all of my enemies are stuck doing this too.

—from the memoirs of Alice Mendel, Lady of the Thunder

—R. Sean Borgstrom, The Game of Powers: The Live-Action Supplement for Nobilis

Bossblog Bits - Chad Orzel of Uncertain Principles weighs in on The Rising in general and "Mary's Place" in particular. He finds another allusion in "Mary," to the Temptations classic, "I Wish It Would Rain." Recommended.

(Needless to say, the Temptations have a website now.)

David Lifton, on the Elvis Costello Mailing List suggested that the "Turn it up" refrain at the end of "Mary" alludes to "Caravan" by Van Morrison. Maybe so. You can decide for yourself by downloading this free liquid-music file of the song from Amazon.com. It's Van performing with the Band from The Last Waltz boxed set. UO was more inclined to think Springsteen was evoking numbers like "Shout," but so what? What's important is that you can get a free download of Van Morrison and the Band.

UPDATE: Added a named credit for David Lifton, with his permission. Early versions of this post read "A reader on the Elvis Costello Mailing List..."

How Bad It Really Is - Charles Dodgson has savage fun with Richard Perle's desperate attempt to get the Republican Party's burgeoning army of Iraq dissenters back into line, as well he should, but it seems to Unqualified Offerings that he misses an important aspect of the scuffle. Perle said

The failure to take on Saddam after what the president said would produce such a collapse in confidence in the president that it would set back the war on terrorism.

Here's the thing. Perle is not altogether wrong about the effect of demurring on the President's credibility. What's more, he knows perfectly well that this is the sort of argument that hits conservatives in their weak spot. To be right wing is to set an enormous store by "resolve" and "credibility" and "strength." Unqualified Offerings is not itself immune to concerns about "vacillation" and "appearing weak." So it's a strong tactical move for Perle to bring it up.

But. Because the targets of Perle's appeal are strong conservatives, and security-minded folks, you can be darn sure that Perle's concern occurred to them before Perle spoke. They already, because that's the sort of people they are, had to think, "But if we back out now, the President risks looking like a fool." And then they went public anyway.

That's the true measure of how bad an idea they think invading Iraq is.

How About Never? Is Never Good for You?

Israeli Foreign Minister Shimon Peres says Israel is not trying to pressure the Bush administration to speed up a military strike against Iraq's Saddam Hussein and the timing of such an assault is solely a U.S. decision.

from FoxNews.com, Israel: We're Not Pushing for Early Strike