Day at the office

When I said I'd bore you with more pictures later, later means now. You were warned. So here's a typical day at the office.

Here's the front of the office. Have an appointment? Take a seat and someone will be out shortly.



My desk. Where all the magic happens. Look closely and you can see my phone, notepad and tape dispener. Fascinating, isn't it?



I also have a view of 15th street. The White House is directly behind those buildings.



In case we ever forget which part of the office we work in, I guess...



Barbara laughing at Patrick, Patrick being goofy...a pretty typical scene. Notice how much work is getting done in this picture.



That's Olivia, the other intern...not working either. Friday's are cool.

Guess who got a camera...

So I got a new digital camera over the weekend, which means that, at least until the novelty of it wears off, you're going to be subjected to my shutterbug tendencies. Below you'll find my first adventure around the city armed with 5 megapixels and a 1.0 GB memory card. I find the city is much more photogenic at night, but maybe that's just me.

Here's the obligatory picture of the White House:




And here's quite possibly my favorite view in D.C. right now. It's the view of the Capitol from Pennsylvania Avenue. If it looks like the picture was taken in the middle of the street, well, it was.



The World War II memorial...pretty cool.



Cool picture of the Capitol



That's enough for now. I'll bore you with more later.

The Prez takes a mulligan

Whew. That was close. For a second there, I thought Harriet Miers was actually going to have to testify before the Judiciary Committee, and that wasn’t going to be pretty. If her answers to the questionnaire she was given were any indication as to how she would fare when people like Chuck Schumer and Ted Kennedy start asking her questions, she’s much better off having withdrawn.

It’s going to be reported that it was Harriet Miers’ idea to withdraw herself, but that’s crap. Odds are that some of the senators on the Judiciary Committee told the President ‘Look, it’s just not looking good for her. So, she can either withdraw now, or be made a fool of at the hearings and get voted down. It’s your choice.’

Knowing that a withdrawal would save much more face than an outright ‘no vote,’ the President likely figured that the former would be a much better option. So, Harriet Miers took one for the team. And for that, she should be commended.

I’m not exactly ecstatic at Miers’ withdrawal for a couple of reasons. First of all, it’s sad that it had to come to this. I’m sure Ms. Miers is a lovely, bright, decent woman. She just wasn’t ready to sit on the Supreme Court. All of the criticisms about her (lack of) qualifications were brutal and maybe a little unfair, but they were also necessary. If she couldn’t handle the process, she likely couldn’t handle the position. So it’s probably better this way.

Another reason I’m not ecstatic about the Miers withdrawal is that it puts Republicans in a precarious political situation. Democrats were largely silent on Harriet Miers, and that was a rather deft political move on their part. Now there’s the illusion that Harriet Miers was derailed because she wasn’t conservative enough (which isn’t necessarily true. It was more that she wasn’t intellectual enough…). So now no matter whom the President nominates to replace Miers, they’re going to be absolutely lambasted by the left for being a right-winged kook. This, however, won’t be that big of a problem if the Senate Republicans could get enough backbone to put down any potential Democrat filibusters.

Of course, this is all assuming that the President nominates someone that conservatives approve. He could very well serve up another dud, or — God help us — someone even worse. Time will tell, I suppose.

It is, somehow, still satisfying that conservatives can rally together — even when it’s rallying against a Republican president. This unity is going to come in handy in the coming weeks, especially if the President nominates a staunch conservative that requires steadfast support from his base.

For what it’s worth, I think Janice Rogers Brown would be a good choice. Not only is she conservative, but she’s also brilliant, as well as a black woman. She’s the Condi Rice of judges. She’d be unstoppable. If not her, then maybe Edith Jones, or Edith Clement, in as much as I think a woman nominee is a given at this point.

See? This is exactly what I was talking about...

At least he comes by it honest. So...can we blow his country up yet?

Concessions lead to...terrorism?

To all those who think that if we're just nice to terrorists that they won't want to hurt us anymore, I want to know what it's going to take before they realize that it's not going to happen. Terrorists don't want us to be nice. They want us to convert to Islam. And if we won't convert to Islam, they want us to die.

I was never a supporter or Israel's plan to remove settlements from the West Bank and Gaza, and today's news is exactly why. After all the concessions made by Israel in the effort of peace, this is the result.

So long as the Palestinian (and all other Arabs for that matter) are taught to hate Israel and to long for its destruction, there will not be peace. I don't understand why people won't admit that.

Rambling wreck from Georgia Tech and a hell of a...nevermind

What do you expect? You get that many Y chromosomes in one place, and something is bound to go down, pardon the pun.

Saw this on an old friend's profile, and it almost brought a tear to my eye. Probably going to offend several of you, but when has that ever stopped me?

After Phil Fulmer's death, he arrives in Heaven and God shows him to his house. It's a small cottage with a few faded Tennessee flags and a little Tennessee football memorabilia. Phil Fulmer is quite content with this until he looks down the street and sees a massive mansion extravagantly decorated with UGA flags and memorabilia.

Fulmer gets a little jealous and says to God "Hey wait a minute...why do I get a small cottage with only a few things to remember my time on Earth by, and Mark Richt gets a mansion with all that extravagant stuff?"

God laughed and said to Phil Fulmer "That's not Mark Richt's mansion. It's mine."

Who's afraid of the big, bad New York liberal?

Ah yes, the joys of blogging from 30,000 feet.** I'm what the industry calls a 'white knuckle flyer.' I am absolutely loath to do it. While I know intellectually that it's as safe a mode of travel as any and that it's generally faster, there's still a small part of me that thinks "it's not natural for man to be miles above the ground. If God had intended for us to fly, we would have wings." But such is the nature of technological advancement, I suppose. So long as I can think about something else, I'm usually ok.

At any rate, buzz has already started picking up in D.C. about 2008. Who will run, who will win, how it could hasten Armageddon, etc.

On the Democrat side, it’s pretty much a given that Hillary Clinton is running. She’s repeatedly denied it, but she’s full of crap and she’s lying. She’s running. The primary is likely to come down to two -- Hillary, and what I’ve heard described as the ‘anti-Hillary.’ That is to say, someone who will try to play the ‘electability’ card against what the Republicans are sure to portray as a carpet-bagging, Northeast, Manhattan liberal with questionable morals and an unpleasant past. If I had to guess, this ‘anti-Hillary’ figure is likely to be John Edwards or someone very similar.

Although, whoever it is, it’s probably not going to matter, as Hillary Clinton has a fundraising apparatus the likes of which have never been seen in this universe. She’s probably going to raise an absolutely obscene amount of money and crush whatever measly opponent dare try to challenge her in the primary.

For whatever reason, the thought of a Hillary Clinton presidential campaign has many conservatives lying awake at night clutching their pillow. I am not one of these conservatives. Hillary Clinton is indeed one of the left’s favorite representatives. But she’s also one of the right’s most vilified targets. She’s every bit as divisive as George W. Bush, and the odds of her picking up any states that John Kerry didn’t in 2004 are pretty slim.

This isn’t to say that Republicans shouldn’t worry about a Clinton campaign, but all this fear and despair are, as yet, unfounded. Hillary Clinton has only managed to win state wide election in New York as a Democrat. What’s so frigging impressive about that? Seriously, what’s so shocking about a pro-abortion, pro-entitlement, pro-gun control liberal getting elected in New York? If she’d gotten elected in Alabama, I’d be impressed. I’d even be impressed if she’d defeated a formidable Republican opponent, but she hasn’t done that either.

She’s certainly never had to compete on a national level, and as far as I’m concerned, once she hits "prime time" she's not going to look like the brilliant woman everyone seems to think she is. She's not invincible. And the whole argument that every woman in the country will vote for her is asinine. If all the women in the country vote for her simply because she's a woman, that's the strongest argument yet that women shouldn't be able to vote. No one should vote for a political candidate based on genetic traits. That's not democracy. Replace 'woman' with 'black' or 'white' or 'man,' and it sounds just as stupid. But I digress.

On the Republican side, there's a lot of wishful thinking that Condi Rice will take the nomination. She's adamantly been denying this, and I'd believe her before I would Hillary Clinton, but it's still a possibility. I think she'd be more primed for a run after the next President, whoever it may be, but that's just a guess.

Several conservatives, most notably Dick Morris, seem to believe that a Condi Rice campaign is the only way Republicans can derail a potential Hillary Clinton campaign. Now, a Condi Rice campaign would certainly be effective in derailing a Clinton campaign, but it's not the only way. It would work, but it's not the only way.

Early money seems to be on Virginia senator George Allen, and I honestly can't complain. He's been described as having the charisma of Bill Clinton, the convictions of Ronald Reagan, and the common likeability of George W. Bush (before he was turned into a piñata but the left, that is.) And as a conservative, I can say that could be just what we need. As much as I think George W. Bush is a decent man, he’s not done a good job of representing the cause as of late.

George Allen is also like 6’5”, and as much as people like to pretend physical appearance doesn’t matter, it does. Sure, John Kerry was tall, but he was also gangly, wrinkly, and with a droning voice. George Allen is much more fresh-faced and charismatic. And I think if put up against a shorter, (slightly) less masculine, less aesthetically pleasing Hillary Clinton, Allen certainly wouldn’t let Hillary walk away with it like people seem to think she would.

Of course, sitting here in 2005 trying to predict what’s going to happen in 2008 is a little silly, but I’m a dork like that, and that’s what people in this town do.

**The majority of this post was written on a plane between Washington and Atlanta, en route to Ft. Walton Beach.

Elitism and sexism and nepotism, oh my!

I haven’t yet said much about the Harriet Miers nomination for the Supreme Court, as I was hoping to wait and see how her confirmation hearings panned out. But since the White House has decided this week to ‘re-launch’ her nomination — that is to say, put more spin on it — I thought this was as good of a time as any to give my $0.02.

First off, unless Harriet Miers has, in the last two weeks, suddenly become a top-tier graduate of a top-tier law school, gotten extensive judicial experience, or has become an expert in Constitutional Law — this ‘re-launching’ is going to be not only fruitless, but pointless.

Now, that isn’t to say that Ms. Miers would have to possess all of these things to sit on the court, but at least ONE would be nice. Chief Justice Rehnquist did not have extensive judicial experience, but he graduated at the top of his law class at Stanford and served as a law clerk for a Justice Robert Jackson. If Harriet Miers had any such experience, there would be much less of an uproar...but she doesn't.

I’ve heard many people argue that maybe it’s time for people who don’t have an Ivy League education or an elite background to have some representation on the Supreme Court. No, no it’s not. That’s stupid. The Supreme Court is not a representative branch of government. If you want to be represented by a blue collar, academically mediocre person, vote for one. The Supreme Court, however, is meant to be a group of egghead pencil pushers locked in a room arguing over the intricacies of Constitutional Law. Some people might call this opinion elitist. To them I say: Yes it is. That’s what the Supreme Court is for.

After the onslaught of criticisms of Miers’ academic accomplishments (or, more accurately, the lack thereof) advocates of the Bush administration sought to inoculate further criticisms, first by vouching for her conservatism. Saying that, if nothing else, ‘she’ll vote the right way.’ Ok, so she’ll vote to overturn Roe v. Wade. Whopee. But what about all the other obscure cases that no one hears about? Or the other monumental cases that haven’t yet been brought before the court? This is a lifetime appointment, after all. Odds are, issues other than abortion will come before the court.

If all President Bush wanted was someone to vote with Clarence Thomas and Antonin Scalia, he could’ve nominated me. I’ve got the same judicial and Constitutional Law experience as Harriet Miers (which is none) and I’ve even got longer paper trail so as to assure conservatives that I too am a conservative.

When Bush’s conservative base didn’t seem to be calmed by the assurance that Harriet Miers is ‘one of us,’ he trotted the First Lady out to accuse Miers’ critics of sexism. Now, Mrs. Bush, I’m a big fan of yours and have a great deal of respect for you, but don’t insult my intelligence.

I've not heard one critic oppose the Miers nomination on the basis of her being a woman. Contrary to what some liberals would have us believe, we have not regressed to 1910 during the Bush administration. As I recall, conservatives have been the ones calling for appointments based on merit rather than 'affirmative action' quotas.

If anyone is being sexist, it’s those touting Ms. Miers for being the ‘first woman’ to be the head of the Texas Bar Association and ‘the first woman’ to be the head of the Texas lottery. If President Bush had nominated the former head of the Texas Bar association, the former head of the Texas lottery and his personal lawyer — whose name was Henry Miers instead of Harriet Miers — the nomination would have been more laughable than it already is. Simply because Ms. Miers’ lacks a Y chromosome, that should make her accomplishments more impressive? Is that not patronizing to women? Even more patronizing is the fact that plenty of more qualified women — Edith Jones, Janice Rogers Brown, Edith Clement, just to name a few — were passed over for the mediocrity of the President’s buddy.

Democrats and liberals (pardon the redundancy) have been gleeful over the ‘split’ between conservatives over the Miers nomination, but what the Miers nomination has actually exposed is the rift between ‘Establishment conservatives’ — or those that will abandon the cause in order to put one of your friends on the court — and ‘Movement Conservatives,’ or those that will not tolerate the abandonment of the cause and will rebel against the ‘Establishment’ when it happens.

The President may not be so popular amongst true conservatives at the moment, but that makes little difference, as he is not up for reelection. But it seems that liberals are mistaking disunity with the President for disunity within the conservative movement, and that simply isn’t the case. Conservatives are more united than they’ve been in a long time, say, since the 1970’s. And we all know what happened after that.

Which is why, I believe, the administration can repackage the Miers nomination all they want, but conservatives aren't going to be any more supportive without empirical evidence that they should be. Viva la Reagan Revolucion.









On a bit of a side note, I think the White House’s campaign to prove Harriet Miers’ conservative credentials and her propensity to overturn Roe v. Wade could actually end up backfiring. Couple the ire that is sure to draw from the left with the already existing ire of conservatives, and Harriet Miers could very well not be confirmed.

A pet peeve of mine

During my part-taking in my aforementioned guilty pleasure of "Real Time with Bill Maher," there was something that made me laugh and pissed me off at the same time.

When talking about the situation in Iraq, Former Senator Max Cleland made a comment about securing a country the size of California. Then Bill made a snide remark in a typical attempt to make the Bush administration look bad by saying 'Huh huh...I like how at the beginning of the war, they said Iraq was the size of Texas, but when things started going south, they changed it to California...huh huh...'

Thus trying to say that when it started looking bad, they tried to make Iraq sound bigger. But apparently in all those books that Bill Maher reads, he somehow missed out on one about Geography.

You see Bill, if the administration had wanted to make Iraq sound bigger than Texas, there's only one way to go with that -- Alaska. California is actually quite a bit SMALLER than Texas, but only by about oh...112,000 square miles, give or take. It's only 42% smaller...close enough.

And on top of all that, I don't ever remember Iraq being compared to Texas anyway. So not only was Bill Maher wrong about the Bush administration trying to make itself look better...he might've been making the whole thing up to begin with. But I guess we should expect something less.

Call me anal retentive, but if you're going to accuse someone of lying to make themselves look better, at least gets your facts straight.

And for the record, Iraq is bigger than California, but smaller than Texas.

This blog post has not been vetted

See, this is what happens when I don’t blog for almost two weeks. Everything gets backed up and comes out all at once.

About this ‘staged’ press conference with the President and a group of soldiers in Iraq…

I’m going to let you in on a little secret of the media — EVERYTHING INVOLVING THE PRESIDENT AND A CAMERA IS STAGED WHENEVER POSSIBLE.

In fact, everything involving most high-profile politicians and cameras is staged. That’s just how politics work in America. You think Hillary Clinton just goes on TV cold turkey and takes her chances with what questions she might be asked? Not likely. Why do you think questions must be submitted ahead of time at ‘town hall’ meetings? Why do you think the protesting hippies were put inside razor wire pens at the Democrat and Republic National conventions? Why do you think most politicians avoid Bill O’Reilly like the plague? Politicians don’t like confrontation.

Regarding the press conference with the troops in Iraq, they were not told what to say. They were told what the President wanted to talk about, and then decided who was going to answer what question. I mean, he’s the President. He’s got a lot of stuff to do. He needs things like this to go as smooth and efficiently as possible.

Now, I’m not a fan of these sort of sanitized, softball question news conferences, but that’s just the way it is, and the President isn’t the only person that does them. If people are all pissed off about this press conference, they should be pissed off about every other press conference, town hall meeting, and national convention of the last 40 years.

Or, you know, we could ignore all that and just use it to bash Bush. That's pretty much standard procedure these days.

I'm on a roll today...

Came across these gems of PeTA tellin' it like it is to today's youth. My kids will know full well that their daddy kills animals, and they will also know that they're delicious, as well as make lovely shoes, jackets, luggage, and carseats.

There's a strange feeling of irony in that most PeTA supporters are also abortion supporters. "Hurt an animal or a fish and we'll burn your house down — but puncture and baby's skull and vacuum out its brain? Eh, no biggie."

Worst President ever! Worst President ever!

A lot of people (read: liberals) have been making a huge deal about recent poll numbers regarding President Bush's approval rating. Granted, it's not very good, hovering right around 40%, but comparatively, it's really not so bad.

Bill Clinton, everyone's favorite President (by everyone I mean aging hippies, Hollywood, Europe, and one of my aunts) had approval ratings of 37%.

Jimmy Carter — who really is, by most accounts, the worst president ever — went all the way down to 28%. That's only a few points higher than Richard Nixon — and he had Watergate!

Truth of the matter is, the American people are fickle. After about 5 or 6 years of something, we tire of it and want something new.

People are also touting the low number of Americans (28%) that believe America is going in the 'right direction.' Why, it hasn't been that low in 10 years! George W. Bush is the worst president ever!

10 years ago, it was 1995. Anyone who can tell me who was President in 1995 gets a cookie. And just what is the 'right direction' anyway? What a loaded question that is.

And honestly, polls don't really matter anyway. As I've said before, most people only answer polls with what they think they're supposed to say. The only polls that really count are the ones in November, and we can see how those have been going.

I fast, therefore I am...a moron

In keeping with some of my more masochistic tendencies — and mostly because I’m such a political dork — a guilty pleasure of mine is watching ‘Real Time with Bill Maher’ on HBO. I absolutely despise Bill Maher and most of the people he brings on the show, but I watch it anyway. ‘Know thy enemy,’ I suppose.

For those of you who haven’t seen it, the modus operandi of the show is along these lines:

Bill comes out, does a little monologue, makes fun of Bush and conservatives. Then he usually does a via satellite interview, usually with a flaming liberal, and they both proceed to make fun of Bush and conservatives, much to the delight of the studio audience. On the off chance that the interview is with a conservative, the audience usually boos anything the conservative says, and wildly cheer with Bill Maher makes fun of the conservative, Bush, and other conservatives.

Then there’s the panel discussion, which consists of three people — usually two flaming liberals and a moderate-to-weak conservative. The most conservative person I’ve seen on the panel thus far is either (one of my favorite) author(s) P.J. O’Rourke, or maybe Maryland Lt. Governor Michael Steele. Sometimes they don’t even pretend and just invite 3 liberals on.

But I can handle all of that. I can handle the majority of the show being dedicated to making fun of Bush. It’s been happening for almost 5 years now. He’s a dumbass, a bumbling idiot, evil, a warmonger, yata yata yata… Ok. I get it. It’s been done.

I can handle conservatives being made fun of as well, as it’s been happening for even longer than Bush has been in office. We hate poor people, black people, women, ‘ferners,’ gays, but we love money and guns. Fine. Whatever.

There’s one thing on the show, however, that still makes me yell and throw stuff at the T.V. And that’s Bill Maher’s disdain for religion, or more specifically, what he sees as religious people. There’s an undertone, or perhaps an overtone ($10 to anyone who can explain the difference to me) on this show that people who believe in God are inherently stupid.

To be fair, religion isn’t the most logical thought process on the planet. I read a quote the other day that said ‘Christianity isn’t simply the religion that makes the most sense, it’s the only religion that makes any sense at all.’ I laughed for a few seconds at the sheer audacity of the claim, but the more I thought about it, the more it pissed me off.

The only religion that makes sense? Oh, ok. So, a supreme, omnipotent being impregnated a virgin human, who then gave birth to a male child. Said child then proceeds to perform miracles throughout his life such as healing people of blindness and paralysis, and even bring people back to life. He didn’t eat or drink for more than a month, and was eventually executed as a sacrifice for the wrongdoings of all mankind, only to come back to life 3 days later and hang around for a while before ascending to Heaven. What’s not to make sense?

And don’t even get me started on the celebrations of his birth and death…

Not to say that people who believe such are stupid, but you’d be hard-pressed to justify it as logical. But whoever said everything people did had to be logical? Firemen run into burning buildings — that’s pretty frigging illogical, but is it stupid?

This snobbery toward people of faith is a major problem among the left, and has added to the polarization in the country. Those who do not believe in evolution are looked down upon as ignorant rednecks that ignore science. But the fact of the matter is, evolution does not provide any more answers than creationism. Sure, evolution and natural selection can account for some aspects of adaptation and species survival, but there are several variables that it cannot answer, such as when life began, how there are so many vastly different forms, and how everything is so complex yet works together.

Religious people are also seen as too 'stupid' so as to not support things like abortion, gay marriage or sex and violence in media. There's this air that if you don't support those things you're not 'modern' enough. Well, if 'modernity' means abortion on demand, the abandonment of marriage and the constant bombardment of vulgarity, I better start building my time machine now.

Granted, there are people that use religion to do things like strap explosives to children, make themselves rich and molest their followers, but there are also people that use religion to help the poor, care for children and give sick people hope and comfort.

Bottom line, belief in God or some other higher power is not readily provable. Nor is it, however, disprovable. There is every bit as much proof that God exists that there is that he/she/it doesn't. There are just too many things in this universe that cannot be proven or explained by science. Admitting that there might be something else at work is not stupid. And being condescending to such people only serves to further polarize us.

You don't call me stupid for not eating pork and fasting occasionally and I won't call you stupid for believing that the government can solve problems or that communism 'sounds good on paper.'

Fuzzy math

So I was reading this article today that referred to the war in Iraq as 'the bloodiest conflict for the U.S. since Vietnam.' Now, while this is technically accurate, it is wildly misleading.

True, this is the most deaths in the U.S. military since Vietnam, but it's also the most involved they've been since Vietnam. Not to mention that the final death toll in Vietnam was more than 58,000. At this rate, we'd have to be in Iraq for more than 25 more years for it to get close to that.

Saying that Iraq is the bloodiest conflict since Vietnam is like driving from New York to California and back, sitting at home for a week, then driving to the grocery store and being like 'Wow, this is the most I've driven since I went to California.'

Anyway...things like that really irritate me. I'm working on a real post, I promise. Hopefully it'll be up later.

Far be it for me to make light of a serious situation, but until we know otherwise, I'm just going to assume some nerd was pissed off that he failed a science test.

Oh yeah, my blog

So I haven't posted in a while. Partly because I've been busy, but mostly because I just haven't had anything to say. So, if you have anything you'd like me to make fun of/comment on, just let me know.

Otherwise, I've been mulling over the following topics:

-The dumbing of America
-Why I've decided to become a Muslim

Maybe I'll get to them eventually.

Early judicial predictions

Earlier this morning, President Bush nominated Harriet Miers to take Sandra Day O'Connor's place on the Supreme Court. Surprisingly, the reaction from both the left and the right has been in agreement -- that Harriet Miers in an awful choice.

I can't help but agree. I've always said that I'm more of an ideologue than I am a partisan, which means that I'll more staunchly defend conservatism than I will the Republican party. And in this case, I'm going to have to do the former.

There are several things that President Bush has done that has really ruffled the feathers of the conservative movement in America. Massive federal spending, a gigantic prescription drug benefit, generally ineffective energy policy, and a horribly ineffective education bill. And now you can go ahead and add the nomination of Harriet Miers to the list.

Likewise, liberals are likely to scream 'cronyism' because Miers has such close personal connections to the administration. And for once, they may be right. Normally, I'm not bothered by nepotism. As far as I'm concerned, the most qualified person should get the job, and if that person happens to be the employer's friend, brother, uncle, former roommate, whatever -- that should be fine. But that doesn't seem to be the case with Miers. She simply does not seem to be the most qualified person for this job.

So this got me thinking. I have a feeling that Harriet Miers may very well be a 'sacrificial lamb.' I wouldn't be surprised at all if Bush submitted her knowing that she wouldn't get confirmed, but at the same time allowing the Democrats to empty their cannons on her. Then, once she gets shot down, he nominates a staunch conservative, putting the Democrats in a precarious predicament in that they wouldn't want to look like obstructionists.

But we'll see. Maybe it's just wishful thinking on my part.

Way to Idolize, America

A single mother, a high school drop out, and now we find out she's illiterate.

Now, I'm not here to make fun of someone for being illiterate, but I will say that she has no business being an 'American Idol.' In my humble (albeit accurate) opinion, American Idol(s) should be poster-children for things Americans, especially young Americans, should actually aspire to -- not avoid.