My favorite team

I'm a sports fan who doesn't care which team wins or loses. When a game is over my regret is not that a particular team didn't win. Rather, I'm sorry that the game is over. After a team wins the Super Bowl or championship I regret that the season is over.

Some people don't believe me when I say this but I mean it. I have been watching football and basketball for so long that I now just enjoy the sport for what they are. I don't remember who won last year's Super Bowl, or any of them since about 1989.

That has now changed! My favorite team? The Philadelphia Eagles! I've always been a Donavan McNabb fan. And now, they have signed Michael Vick off the Ex-Convict list.

Vick is one of the few players I enjoy watching play. I have followed his career since he was in high school. I had just arrived in Virginia when there were news reports about him and a high school superstud, Ronald Curry.

Vick is the only player I would go out of my way to watch whenever his team was playing. After he got caught in the dog-fighting ring I hoped he would be able to get out on weekend furlough and still play football. After all, if a murderer like Willie Horton could get out of jail on weekend furloughs, why not Michael Vick, who would only be a menace to dogs? Clearly, those dogs would be in more danger around me than Vick.

The Eagles were the team willing to step up and take the public relations hit for signing Vick. So they've got my support as long as he is playing for them.

I'm not surprised that one of the 26 teams that said they weren't interested in Vick signed him. There was no reason for a team to admit they wanted Vick before they signed him. The Eagles have the excuse that another quarterback got injured. So many quarterbacks get injured during the year, of course Vick was just a knee injury or bad day by a backup from getting signed. Some reporters may congratulate themselves for calling every team to find out if they were interested in signing Vick, but clearly they were just going through the motions.

CJL

"Yoegi Anjuseyo!"

* I have a short reflection in today's Korea Times about an encounter with an unfriendly looking Korean man on the subway. It was a reminder not to be too quick in judging people in Korea. 09-13-2011 16:47 'Yeogi Anjeuseyo!' By Casey Lartigue Jr. The recent incident in which an American English teacher bullied an elderly Korean man and other passengers on the bus reminded me of a more pleasing incident from years ago. I was on the subway, taking the train outside of Seoul for a work assignment. I have the habit of standing on the subway to strategically position myself near the doors in case my stop magically appears. On that particular day, there was a Korean man STARING at me. Not just looking at me, but intensely staring at me. He had an incredible frown on his face. Not just for one stop, but for several stops the guy just kept staring at me. If I had known more Korean then I would have been able to curse him ...

Manufactured cases

My former Cato Institute colleague Bob Levy is profiled by the Associated Press for his role in the challenge to the DC gun ban. One great thing about Levy is that he tells it like it is. As the article quotes: And Levy freely admits the case is manufactured, not one that bubbled up by chance from the district's steady flow of criminal cases involving guns. He wanted presentable plaintiffs to make a case for gun rights, not criminals. "We didn't want crack heads and bank robbers to be poster boys for the Second Amendment," he said. Is there a problem with this case being manufactured? I heard a talking head on the radio complaining a while ago that this case wasn't from real DC residents, that it was from outsiders. What's wrong with that? There may be some times that it takes an outsider to challenge an injustice or bad law. Did DC residents claim that Martin Luther King Jr. was an outsider who should have minded his own business? And about the case being ...

Rich talking back

The rich are talked about very often in negative terms, but how often do the rich respond in kind? Australian billionaire Gina Rinehart, who inherited most of her money but apparently has also done very well with it, recently railed against class warfare and had some advice for the non-rich : "There is no monopoly on becoming a millionaire," she writes. "If you're jealous of those with more money, don't just sit there and complain. Do something to make more money yourself - spend less time drinking, or smoking and socializing and more time working." She complained about politicians raising taxes, regulations that slow investment, and other anti-business policies that harm the poor. "If you want to help the poor and our next generation, make investment, reinvenstment and businesses welcome."

2014-02-14 Yeon-Mi Park`s debut

Yeonmi Park, February 14, 2014, making her debut! Yesterday I was one of the speakers at a special session on North Korean refugees at the Canadian Maple International School. Wow, it was a wonderful time! * Yeon-Mi Park delivered her first major speech in English. She was wonderful! She told her story (35 minute speech without notes), discussed different aspects of North Korea, and then handled questions from students for more than an hour. She did seem to be nervous at the beginning-she took a deep breath just as she started, looked at me, then told her story from her heart. * Returning from the speech, I told Yeonmi that she had star potential. She told me that she didn't believe it, but I told her that the way she handled Q&A and told her story, I would be lucky to have her still returning my phone calls within a year. * The students had many questions. They have been learning about North Korea. They are now reading "Escape from Camp 14" featuring Shin Dong-h...

Get rid of that watermelon!

Part 1: When I was a youngster I used to collect Confederate money, posters and photographs with caricatures of blacks, and "No blacks allowed signs." I loved the money because it was a reminder of how far the sorry Confederacy had fallen. I had one poster of a dark-skinned black boy munching on a watermelon. I would look at that small poster and wonder, "What in the world is wrong with anyone wanting to eat watermelon?" Yes, white people, I'm talking to you. Your parents, grandparents, and other ancestors who thought making fun of blacks for eating watermelon were crazy ! Even people who say that nothing has changed in race relations must acknowledge that the many stereotypes of blacks are no longer prevalent. But then, there are also some ready to remind us of days-gone-by by debunking stuff that doesn't need to be debunked today. According to the Washington Post: The sound you just heard was yet another racial stereotype going kersplat ! Some ...

The Casey Lartigue Show!

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