From those wonderful folks who brought you street violence in Baghdad

Your friends at Blackwater came up with a clever scheme that allowed employees to train with AK-47s and other fully automatic weapons in its headquarters in sleepy Moyock, North Carolina: they bought 34 machine guns and "donated" them to the Camden County Sheriff's Department, which has all of nineteen deputies, none of whom has been trained with the Kalashnikovs or any other automatic weapon. According to the local paper, AK-47s are considered a poor choice for police work, even for SWAT teams, because they're "too powerful."You will probably not be surprised to learn that most of the weapons were stored not at the sheriff's office, but at Blckwater's headquarters. Note that Blackwater has more firepower in its headquarters than all of the state and municipal police departments in the State of North Carolina. I, for one, am not sure this is wise.

The Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (as P.J. O'Roarke says, "all my hobbies under one roof"), unpersuaded by the figleaf tale, seized all of the weapons.

Locally, the Blackwater story shared today's front page with District of Columbia v. Heller, a landmark case handed down yesterday in which the Supreme Court held that the Second Amendment right to bear arms is an individual right not tied to the need for a state militia. Ironically, since the AK-47 is entirely appropriate for a militia and is in fact the weapon of choice of militias world-wide, logically, it fits within the original intent of the drafters of the Second Amendment.

Justice Anton Scalia, asked for comment, drew a gun and shot the reporter.

Yet another reason for Mac users to act smug

From the "Satan complains about the temperature in Hell" department, click here for a link to a scathing e-mail sent by Bill Gates to senior Microsoft executives complaining bitterly about how hard it is to use Windows. (Scroll down through the string to see Bill's part.) In the end he gives up on trying to download software from his own web site. Your standard Windows experience--repetitive re-entry of personal information, machine code error messages, repeated re-boots, obscure patches loaded for no reason--it's all there. The only thing that would have enhance the e-schadenfreude would have been a last desperate attempt to fix the problem by calling Microsoft customer support only to have the call answered by an Urdu speaker with limited English skills who referred to him as "Bill" in every sentence.

Polycarp's Tentative Return to Irregular Horoscoping

Polycarp hasn't posted here for a while. Things have been stacking up--lawsuits to defend, cookbooks to write , packages to wrap. There was the important issue of waistcoat vs. cumberbund to sort through. The editor at Strangepup was also nice enough to ask Polycarp to contribute over there, and he has (click on either "Strangepup" or "Phil Martin" to the right to see). Now that the primary season is in full flower again, though, he just can't resist.

Click on the highlighted words and phrases for subtle clues as to what the stars might be saying to you.


Aquarius (January 20-February 18): Well, President Aquarius, after a bruising election campaign and a surprising and surprisingly public divorce in the last few months, you have chosen to concentrate not on the economy, which has problems, or the increasingly tricky problem of immigration, or on unemployment, which is at all-time highs, but on an extraordinarily attractive Italian pop singer. Your poll numbers are plummeting, but what the Hell? Does the fall in the numbers tell us that something about France is changing? And does the fact that you are almost the same age as Mike Huckabee tell us something about the USA?

Pisces (February 19-March 20): Your positions on conservative issues are slipperier than an eel in Astro-Glide, Pisces, but the big wallet and full-family press seem to be paying off. The main drawback from your own party seems to be your faith, which to Polycarp is inexplicable and sad. What's the Trinity among friends? Polycarp has a suggestion, though: since the Repubs don't seem to mind your conservative conversion experiences on abortion, gun rights, gay marriage, etc., and only seem to care that you're saying the right thing to them right now, why don't you see the light and become a Baptist until November? You've changed your position on every other core belief and value, so what's one more?

Aries (March 21-April 19): 2007 was a really good year for you, Aries. It's not often that you get two of the most coveted awards in the world in the space of a few months. You haven't voiced a public opinion about the current campaign, but Polycarp thinks that's because you understand that with the phrase "elder statesman" comes a certain amount of gravitas. Gravitas that would be lost, for example, if you were to engage in partisan scrabbling and cat-fighting out on the stump. The challenge for you is going to be to remain relevant to American politics while remaining above it all at the same time. Polycarp is therefore assigning homework to all Aries former vice presidents: pick up the phone and call any Leo former chief executive bosses in your Rolodex and tell them to look up the word "dignity" in the dictionary, and tell them that his wife got hammered in South Carolina because of a lack of it from the two most important campaigners out there. Time to be friends. Go after Cancer instead of each other. God knows the material is there.

Taurus (April 20-May 20): Last time your name came up at the Polycarp Security Council meeting it was right after you got appointed special envoy to the middle east and were going to run over there and sort through all this donnybrook once and for all. And then Cancer and Scorpio of State ran over there and were going to do the same thing in straightaway. Polycarp used to think you were the smart one of the Tweedledee and Tweedledum routine, but has re-read the star charts and has come to the conclusion that you suffer from the same intellectual limitations as Cancer, the Secretary of Scorpio, a former Cancer of Defense, the sharpshooting Vice-Aquarius in his undisclosed location, and above all, that idiot Paul Aquarius: you all expect Middle-Easterners, with their complex history of conflicts and tribes and heritage of intense identification with particular plots of land and exceptionally precise ethnic identities and millenia of struggle to act like the British and the Americans. You were just as bad as the rest of them, Taurus, albeit more articulate and appealing, but your narrow view of human behavoiur dooms your current portfolio to failure.

Gemini (May 21-June 20): The stars say it's over, Gemini, and in some ways that's too bad. You're sounding traditional Democratic themes, but people under stress tend to revert to what they know best, and you've turned back into a plaintiff's lawyer, manipulating jurors into voting for your client. But a long jury trial lasts three weeks, and we've been hearing that same speech since 2003. By now it sounds like what it is: plaintiff's closing argument in a med. mal. case. "Big corporations are bad and you know it. Let me fight them for you. Send them a message," etc. Polycarp has heard this closing in many courtrooms in many towns. It sometimes works with jurors, but on the stump it sounds facile and as real as Mitt Romney's conservatism. You're a good plaintiff's lawyer, so I know you righteously believe that what's best for you is the best for the world, but good intentions and don't get you any kind of job, much less the best one of all. You also developed a bad case of "do as I say, not as I do" with your hedge-fund pals and high-rolling ways (see also $400 haircut, 2004). So no White House for you this time. You do, though, qualify for a wonderful consolation prize. At a the astrologist's gathering Denver in August, the heavens predict 33% Scorpio (despite South Carolina), 30% Leo, 17% you. So in effect you pick the next president. It is traditional to negotiate a really good job in exchange for the vote. You could completely re-invent the Attorney General job. Put your legal skills back where they belong.

Cancer (June 21-July 22): Your deft touch with personnel matters continues, Cancer, showing us we have much for which to look forward over the next year. Presumably because of his immense success as Undersecretary of Defense (he was the one who convinced you to invade Iraq) and as Chairman of the World Bank (he was the one who left in disgrace over the scandal about his mistress being on the payroll) you have appointed this same Leo to chair the International Security Advisory Board, a high-level arms-control post that reports directly to the Scorpio of State. The stars say that he will succeed just as well in this post as did in his prior jobs, which is to say just as qualified as Harriett Meiers was for the Supreme Court, and as tempermentally suited for it as John Bolton was to be U.N. Ambassador, and as carefully screened as Bernard Kerik was to be Homeland Security chief, and excel as Michael Brown did as FEMA chief, and Donald Rumsfeld at Secretary of Defense, and ... oh, well.

Leo (July 23-August 22): The stars say that bickering like school-children on TV with Scorpios with lots of money in a state that allows you to marry your fourteen year-old cousin looked decidedly un-presidential and gavs the boyishly-handsome third-runner a rare chance to look like the only grown-up in the room, Leo. Polycarp says that thirty seconds of juvenile squabbling in public can erase months of talking about conciliation and unity and healing, and there you stood, and this is far too close a race to give the Scorpio in your life the jump. Nobody wants the finger on the button to have a surly temper. Congrats on the win, but knock it off. You have a chance here. Don't screw it up.

Virgo (August 23-September 22): Last summer, you were dead candidate walking (just scroll down, Gemini--Polycarp thought you were the Lindsay Lohan of politics) and now you're looking like if not quite yet the front-runner, at least a runner again. Congrats. And Polycarp thinks that having Pisces martial artists who dye their hair and routinely play parts far younger than they had any reasonable reason to play should keep their age-related remarks to themselves. Still and all, Polycarp's polling staff has staff has told him that the Republican turnout in every primary thus far this season has been lower than the Dem turnout. How do you get over that come November?

Libra (September 23-October 22): Bye, bye, wee Libra. Polycarp was sorry to see you pull out. It was kind of comforting having you on the stump, espousing traditional liberal values, earnestly campaigning with the candidates who actually have a chance, proposing hippie-ish ideas like a Secretary of Peace in the cabinet, and spotting UFOs over Shirley McClaine's house. Nutty as your presentation is, Polycarp thinks your heart is genuinely good and that if all politicians were as honest, earnest and well-intentioned as you, our world would be a better place. So now you'll just have to go back to Washington with your much younger and much taller smoking-hot wife and console yourself somehow.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21): The planets suggest that Leos are going to a big part of the next few months for you, Scorpio: suggesting romantic attachments to one, competition with another, international unrest caused by a third, folksy homespun humorous comments at your expense from a fourth. Despite the dismal results in South Carolina, Polycarp sees lots of votes and money in your future, but to have continued success in your chosen occupation, you have to appear to be in some way qualified for it, and constant bickering with the junior Leo from Illinois is about as far from being presidential as you could possibly be. After that debate in South Carolina, Gemini cracked that he "represented the grownup wing of the Democratic party" and all the pundits on NPR have been quoting him with relish. Keep this up and you'll let him back in the race.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): Hmmm. Sagittarius. You've been in your job for a little over two years and everybody's talking global recession. Your highly-respected predecessor held the job for twenty years through four different administrations and got along well with all of them. With dems and repubs alike He managed, through brilliance of perception and analysis, and force of personality, to convince the politicians to do the right thing, and kept the economy on its largest-ever sustained growth. Well, except for that nastiness about the dotcom burst. But that wasn't His fault. Maybe. Anyway, Polycarp has looked at the star charts and has two bits of advice for you. First, your Pisces predecessor told the politicians what to do and made them listen. Having politicians tell you what to do to help the Repubs stay in the White House is probably not fated to be such a successful strategy. Polycarp's also says that your predecessor has a phone number and that you have a phone book. Ponder these bits of information and think about their implications.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19): Polycarp gets most of his news from NPR and The New York Times so he doesn't hear much about football, although he is excruciatingly up to date on the African Nations Cup soccer tournament (Ivory Coast over Nigeria in a 1-0 hearbreaker) and Indian cricket scores (431 to 7 tonight) but the stars tell him that short-lived congratulations are in store for you, Aquarius, for recent athletic accomplishments. The stars also say that February 3 is an unlucky day for Aquarius New Yorkers traveling to Arizona to engage in competitions with annoying Roman numerals in their titles, especially if the contest is with people from Boston, but maybe now your big brother will stop teasing you about watching all the important games on TV.

Bush Nominates Mike Nifong to Replace Gonzalez

President Bush surprised supporters and critics alike today by nominating disgraced district attorney Mike Nifong to be the next Attorney General of the United States. "I know I'm gonna get some heat for this, but I think he's learned a lot from his mistakes," said Bush. "He's done a lot of soul-searching over the last few months, and he's also grown a goatee. We've been looking for someone with a goatee in this administration." In response to questions, Bush said that Nifong had qualities that he prized. "Mike's the kind of guy who can stick with a plan with determination, irregardless of criticism from the press and what some might call negative information. Alberto could do that, and Mike Nifong has demonstrated his ability to do that as well. He gets an idea and just sticks with it," said Bush, admiringly.

Reached at his home in Durham, North Carolina, Nifong said he was delighted at the prospect of returning to work. "I enjoy supervising lawyers," said Nifong, "and am glad to be considered for a job that might allow me to engage in retaliatory prosecutions of the members of the North Carolina State Bar Ethics Commission." Asked if he thought that the fact that he had been disbarred would be a hindrance in his new job, Nifong said not: "Was Bobby Kennedy admitted to practice? Ed Meece?" Informed that Kennedy had been a member of the Massachusetts bar and Meece of the California Bar, Nifong showed the stubbornness that made him famous: "Kennedy and Meece were both disbarred. That's my story and I'm sticking to it," said Nifong.

Asked for comment, Sen. Joe Biden, Judiciary Committee member and presidential candidate, threw his hands in the air and shook his head with mouth agape, struck mute for the first time since birth.

Parade's Lead Time

I have been trying for years to figure out exactly how much lead time Parade magazine needs for an event to be reflected in its content. They seem to prepare it about about a week before it's actually published. This leads to the occasional gaffe, such as when they reported that Derby-winner Barbero was alive and well in a pasture in Kentucky when in fact his death had been the biggest news story of the preceding week.

Yesterday's Parade had the following:

"Q In June, Lindsay Lohan signed on for extended care at Promises, a luxury rehab center in Malibu. Isn't that really just an extended vacation?

A No. Lohan, 21--who abused alcohol, pills and cocaine--seems committed to finally getting clean. ..."

A mug shot taken at Ms. Lohan's July 24 arrest is attached, so we can deduce that Parade's lead time is at least five days.

The day after they published the story about the decedent Barbero being alive Parade ran an apology on their website, but they haven't done so about this. Perhaps they didn't get around to reading the paper yesterday. I know I didn't.

Polycarp's Increasingly Sporadic Horoscope

Polycarp has spent the last month working on another project and regrets his absence. As always, click on the highlighted words to uncover veiled clues, or you could just Google the phrase "melt-down." If you'd like Polycarp's free-range, fair market staff to send you a note whenever there's a new post, drop him a note at Polycarpblog@gmail.com. Thanks for reading.

Aquarius (January 20-February 18): This has been a touchy, difficult period for Aquarians, especially if they're mayors of very large cities. On the other hand, at least one seems to have hit on a way to ensure he gets good press. And unlike the previous six or seven times when Mrs. Aquarius has thrown him out of the house for having affairs, this time she means it.

Pisces (February 19-March 20): Pisces, Polycarp recommends that you spend the next few weeks thinking about pederasty and money, and how indulging one leads to loss of the other. Because of an odd tangle of circumstances--mainly his indolent church-going habits--Polycarp may still be a member of a parish in your Archdiocese, and therefore you may be in a position to excommunicate him directly, Cardinal Pisces. Please don't--he swears he's going to go to church again some day soon. But. Ahem. Your eminence, isn't $660 million a lot to pay to avoid testifying? Polycarp gave you some of that money, and so did a lot of other good people with less to give. We hate to suggest it, but it's almost as though you're ... hiding something. Polycarp says papal aspirations are no longer in the stars. What else are you hiding? It won't be worse than this, but Polycarp is curious.

Aries (March 21-April 19): It's been a bad week for North Carolina Arieses, I'm afraid. It was sad that the judge rejected your suggestion that your punishment be limited to opening an eye care clinic for the poor, and instead sentenced you to five years and three months. It didn't help when your friend the president of the Christian Action League got busted for soliciting sex from a scary-looking prostitute. Polycarp predicts that the next 63 months will provide ample time to reflect on the path your life has taken over. And by the way, the poor called. They don't want you looking at their eyes, anyway.

Taurus (April 20-May 20): It occasionally happens that the stars dish out to us what we have previously dished out on others, Taurus. So, for example, if you happened to be a Republican congressman elected on a Christian values platform and raised your visibility by jumping on the "impeach Bill" bandwagon, harping salaciously on the impropriety of illicit oral sex with cooperative young interns, ten years later you may find yourself publicly humiliated by revelations that you frequent brothels and call madams to hire call girls from the Senate floor. Entertaining as this is, for your sake we hope your wife has softened in her approach to this kind of marital problem.

Gemini (May 21-June 20): Geminis are twins of course, and the stars say they're often two different things intertwined together. Competence and incompetence, for example, as in your case. Who does your hiring, Gemini? Somebody you lured away from FEMA? Your Southern Regional Campaign Manager just got outed in a sex scandal, and your South Carolina Chairman is now in rehab and will soon be in jail after getting busted for cocaine trafficking. Don't you do background checks up in New York?

Cancer (June 21-July 22): Polycarp suggests that all Cancers go immediately to a dictionary and look up the word "progress," so that next week if the phrase "progress in Iraq" is used in a press conference, it might bear some relationship to reality. The other big news last week-end was that you had a colonoscopy and Dick Cheney was back in charge while you were out, just like he was the whole first term. Polycarp just wishes he'd fired a certain Leo Attorney General before you woke up.

Leo (July 23-August 22): As you're out and about, Leo, listening to the birds sing and breathing the air of the free, looking at your pretty wife and not practicing law because you've been convicted of a felony involving moral turpitude, just thank your lucky stars for the loyalty of your friends. Of course, first they used you as a fall guy and threw you to the curb like yesterday's garbage, but it could have been worse. As Polycarp's friend Mark the opera critic said, "Who would have thought that Paris Hilton would do more jail time than Scooter Libby?"

Virgo (August 23-September 22): This last month has been a time of falling fortunes and depleted bank accounts for you, Virgo. You've performed the most dazzling front-runner collapse since Ed Muskie in 1972. Who's your campaign manager, Lindsay Lohan? You were a Naval aviator, for God's sake. Stop complaining about your sweaters in a whiny homophobic way and take command. Oh--and saying "Jeez, I really screwed up on this Iraq deal, didn't I?" might help.

Libra (September 23-October 22): This has been a week--no, a month--no a year--in which well-meaning Libra candidates have once again faded into the wallpaper. We're glad you're still out there, Libra, being honest, acting like a pre-Bush Democrat, running for president (yet again) and espousing tolerance and environmentalism. You're a good man and an honest public servant, so of course you have no chance at all of getting niminated. You're what Ralph Nader could have been, and you don't cause as much collateral damage. Keep it up, Libra. Polycarp is sure you're influencing the race somehow.

Scorpio (October 23-November 21): Scorpio, the stars say you are going through a phase of childish bickering and pointless sniping with a junior Leo from Illinois, and that you should both knock it off immediately. It is way too soon for the front runners to start tearing into each other like Voldemort and Harry Potter Nevertheless, Polycarp predicts that you two idiots will keep up this stupidity until neither one of you is a front runner, and then you'll go on bickering about whose fault that is. This won't be the worst thing in the world for the Democratic Party, of course, because once you've shredded each other it's possible that somebody with a chance to win the general election would then become the front-runner. A well-meaning Gemini, for example.

Sagittarius (November 22-December 21): Another drug-addled, limitedly talented young celebrity recently broke your record for shortest time between release from rehab to complete collapse into insane, slobbering drunkenness, Sagittarius, so it's time for you to step up to the plate and arrange a complete liquefaction of all sensibility and dignity in front of photographers and reporters, preferably involving expensive clothing that does not belong to you and a small, annoying dog.

Capricorn (December 22-January 19): So now your story is that not only did she kill herself with your gun minutes after she walked into your house, but that you were nowhere near her and the blood leapt across the room to spatter on your clothes? This is lunacy, but you always were a bullying loon, so this fits, in a homophonic way. Polycarp thinks a more subdued look may be in order for your next residence, where the walls are not of sound.

Happy Father's Day

It's Father's Day, and I'm a father, so I've been thinking about what makes a good one. I think I've figured it out and it's very simple: the secret to being a father is having great kids. My children are the two most accomplished, intelligent, perceptive, beautiful, engaging and talented young women in the world, and I think the credit for that is theirs, not mine. It's theirs individually, because they are bright and interesting and talented individuals, but also as a pair, because I think they raised each other as much as their mother and I raised them. Despite all of my mistakes, all of the things I forgot, all of the times I got mad when I shouldn't have, all of the things I didn't do that I should have, all of the times I was strict when I should have been lenient or slack when I should have been alert, there they are: the best pair of sisters in the world. So, like I said, the key to being a good father appears to me to be to arrange for your wife to have great children.

After that, all have to do is love them.

I do have some advice for young parents, but honestly I don't have any idea whether it matters a whit. I think mine might have done just fine no matter what I did. But here's the successful part of what I did.

The first thing is to start teaching manners early. As son as they can comprehend, teach them good table manners, not to interrupt, not to use the telephone late at night, to be nice to others, don't cut in line, do unto others, etc. If you're the father of girls, treat them the way you think young women should be treated from an early age, especially in public. If you're the father of boys, insist that they treat their mother and any other women and girls in their lives respectfully.

The second thing is to encourage them to have healthy interests. Don't try to select their interests for them, because it won't work. But for me, I would leave work early to get kids to soccer practice or play rehearsal or choir. It was a little harder if they wanted a ride to go hang out at the mall. This pays off in a lot of ways, by the way. When they get to be good at something it gives them a pride you can't teach, and the time spent doing healthy things won't be spent at the piercing parlor.

The next thing is to be honest. Pretty much always. You don't always have to be direct, though. There's a series of questions beginning with Santa Claus and ending with premarital sex that require honest, but not always direct, answers. But don't lie to them.

The fourth thing is to teach them what you know. You'll be surprised how far it goes--how it resonates as they grow. My dad taught me about machinery and how to use tools--he's an engineer and he knows this kind of thing in a very deep way. He showed me how things worked and then let me take them apart, and if I ran into trouble, he'd show me how it all fit back together. He was very patient and was never cross wit me for taking things apart or borrowing his tools. To this day, machinery--from clocks to diesel engines--makes sense to me. Broken things don't scare me.

In my family we've also always really liked food, for generations in all directions. So when my kids came along and expressed an interest we all started cooking together from a very early age. It wasn't just helpful, although it was--as a single dad the extra hands (when they didn't need to be studying) were a huge help, but kitchen and food form a family bond between my children and me that stretches back through my mother to my father's mother and to stories I've heard of her parents and siblings i never knew. Simple as it is, food and the kitchen root my daughters and me to a big family and a lot of tradition. All because they wanted to learn to cook. Plus, they're now both really good cooks.

Don't let your squabbles with your wife or ex wife spill over onto your kids. Ever. Under any circumstance. At any point in their lives. If you're divorced, work out your problems with the ex out of their hearing. If you're married, don't get mad at each other in front of the kids. If you hate your ex, don't ever, ever, under any circumstances complain about her or criticize her to her kids. No matter what she did to you, even if she ran off with your brother and left you with the mortgage, kids need to think well of their mom.

I also didn't hit my kids. I slapped my oldest on the wrist one time when she was doing something that might have hurt her sister, but I wish I hadn't done it. That was the only time I administered any corporal punishment at any point in my life. I think it's a bad idea. It causes pain you can't imagine, that will last a long time, and makes it hard for them to trust you. You really don't want your children to be afraid of you all the time.

Help them study, and give them a curfew, and all that, too.

But really, the main thing is to have good kids.

Happy Father's Day, and thanks to my wonderful daughters, visiting together in Pasadena.