Curious Mojo

Worst Movies Ever

2012-01-26T23:00:00.000-07:00

This will be a running list of the worst movies I've ever seen. In no particular order.
***UPDATE*** In the spirit of positive over negative, in addition to identifying some of the worst movies ever, I will also try and offer up a better alternative.

9. Midnight in Paris (2011) - This franco-masturbatory pile of self indulgent excrement must have been underwritten by the French Chamber of Commerce. I realize that Woody Allen has turned his neurotic stalking from NYC to Europe but this is ridiculous. It's one thing to be nostalgic for the past but to be nostalgic for a past that never existed is pathetic. I refuse to believe that Owen Wilson would find the magic wormhole that allowed him to travel back in time just so he can get Hemmingway to give him notes on his crappy book. I also refuse to believe that the Rachel McAdams character exists in real life. Women this bitchy yet still desired only exist in movies so that we feel sorry for a lead character that we would otherwise wish a horrible, horrible death on. Not this time Woody. TRY INSTEAD: Un Prophete (2009); OSS 117: Lost in Rio (2009); OSS 117: Cairo, Nest of Spies (2006).

8. What Dreams May Come (1998) - Sweet Jesus what a mess. Whatever hope this movie had was quickly destroyed in a massive bout of overacting and scenery chewing by Robin Williams and Cuba Gooding Jr. right before he made that movie with Horatio Sanz on the gay cruise. The real crime here though is that not only did they make a god awful movie (pun intended), they obliterated the memory of a pretty readable book. And seriously, Max von Sydow should just pretend to be dead next time Patch Adams comes callin'. TRY INSTEAD: Drag Me To Hell (2009).

7. The Baader-Meinhof Complex (2008) - A grueling, 2 hour plus communist/terrorist lovefest that could only be loved by all those jackasses wearing Che t-shirts. One good part was the nude loving German RAF terrorists trying to explain to the PLO that sex and revolution are one in the same. Bet they got a lot of mileage out of that one. TRY INSTEAD: Munich (2005).

6. Marie Antoinette (2006) - The mystery of Sofia Coppola continues. Avoid this movie at all costs. Gay porn would be a serious upgrade in both acting and plot. TRY INSTEAD: Girl With A Pearl Earring (2003).

5. Drillbit Taylor (2008) - Owen Wilson's veins didn't just spontaneously burst from massive pride and accomplishment you know. TRY INSTEAD: Battle Royale (2000).

4. The Fourth Kind (2009) - The movie starts with Milla Jovovich warning the audience that many of the scenes in the movie are real footage from police files and that the story is essentially true. That would in fact make the movie better if that weren't a complete lie. Not only did they make a fictional movie, they opened it with a fictional PSA to try and make you think it might be true. I already bought your ridiculous premise when I bought the ticket. Stop trying to trick me a second time. And then try making a good movie. TRY INSTEAD: Barbarella: Queen of the Galaxy (1968) or Predator (1987).

2 & 3. Lady in the Water/The Happening (2006/2008) - Maybe The Last Airbender will be M. Nights big comeback movie. What's that? Oh. TRY INSTEAD: The Abyss (1989)/The Signal (2007).

1. Sphere (1998) - If Sharon Stone plays a major role that doesn't include coked-out whoring or sex crazed murdering, there's a good chance that movie sucked. Exhibit A. TRY INSTEAD: Event Horizon (1997).

Stupidity Turns One

2012-01-25T21:02:00.004-07:00

Erik Trager took the thankless task of offering the liberals view of world events to the world by penning a lamentation of the current state of the Egyptian revolution. An event that Trager claims was and still is the most inspiring thing he had ever witnessed.

Mixed in this tripe is Trager's sadness that he was apparently duped into believing that the Egyptian protesters were somehow liberal democrats just waiting for their own Society to make Great. Sprinkled in this woe-is-me tale is mild criticism of Obama and the administration for failing to have any idea of how to influence this situation in a positive manner. The administration has capitulated everywhere and is currently hoping to work some kind of deal with the Muslim Brotherhood, who themselves are trying to find legal ways to invade Israel.

The sad part of this pathetic mess is that Trager is no doubt is shocked by the events that have transpired in Egypt and everywhere else in the Arab Spring.

The problem is how liberals view revolutionaries. To the leftist all revolutionaries are freedom fighters hoping to relieve the nation of oppression by killing the tyrant and installing socialist governments. In this respect liberals are half right. These revolutions are usually in response to overthrowing a authoritarian tyrant. Mubarak was to Egypt what Fulgencio Batista was to Cuba, a monster.

The problem lies in the solution. Liberals seem incapable of believing that revolutionaries would overthrow a murderous tyrant just to replace him with a murderous tyrant. Yet this regularly happens. Batista was replaced by Castro a Guevara who were monsters in their own right and Egypt is now in the hands of a quasi-military, theocratic totalitarian regime that hates Jews.

What evidence exists in the middle east that would support a spontaneous liberal revolution? The history of that region is one of murderous thug replaced by murderous thug. The only thing that ever changes is what subsection of Islam (Sunni, Shiite, etc.) is going to be in charge of the killing. Outside of Israel the only recently changed country that has even a shred of western democracy in it is Iraq. And that is a tenuous situation at best. If the world can barely get a modernized country like Iraq to accept the slightest democracy after a decade of military presence and a trillion dollars then what hope can we have for a spontaneous coup d'etat executed by religious fanatics?

I'll never understand how liberals can convince themselves that the same people who take to the streets to riot and overthrow the state can be relied on to be good-natured in the aftermath. This is the same tragic logic that results in Laura Logan standing alone around the back of a 72 Pinto hatchback in the middle of this antisemitic, anti-American, misogynistic free for all. Did that tragedy even slow down liberals enthusiasm for the Arab Spring? Nope, full speed ahead. Light has come to the dark, Obama is freeing the Egyptians, let the post Bush world rejoice.

Now Trager has come to the sad realization that most of us knew a year ago. This is a scam. The new guys are worse than the old. People like Trager were just deluded by their own world view. They saw what they wanted to see despite all evidence to the contrary. I hope that these same people slowly coming to this conclusion on Egypt will not make the same mistake in dealing with Iran. I suspect that I'm living in my own delusion on that matter.

Booze, Baseball and Silkwood Showers

2012-01-19T21:52:00.003-07:00

Sampler packs seem like a great idea. In theory.

Logically speaking if a product has many variations that you would like to try a little of before committing to a full run, then a sampler is the way to go. This has traditionally been the case with booze. Especially with beer.

This line of thinking led me straight into the jaws of the Jim Beam X-mas 4 pack.

Things started off so well. A nice airplane sized bottle of regular Jim Beam on the rocks. Delicious. Pour number two was the livelier Jim Beam Black. I'm my humble opinion, a better drink than the original.

Then it happened.

Understand that by this point that I'm in free drinking mode. Not drunk mind you, those bottles don't hold tons, but I could see a decent buzz just around the corner provided I could get the last two bottles working in me quick enough.

Bottle number 3. Red Stag. I have no idea what this is but I pour it on ice, let it chill a bit, then swigged a big mouthful of despair.

I felt like I was being waterboarded with a combination of cherry NyQuil, Mineral Ice and kerosene. It was awful. So awful I had another drink just to prove to myself that I didn't just have a stroke during the last drink. The cumulative effect was worse than the first drink alone! I seriously could not even begin to imagine what flavor was trying to be achieved here. If date rape had a flavor this was it. So after I tricked my wife into tasting this catastrophe (she wasn't pleased), I finished it off then went to examine the bottle to see just what had happened.

I should have known. Black Cherry Bourbon. Just great. It recalled the same disgusted feeling I had after taking a shot of Jack Daniels Honey Assault. I never thought I could have anything worse than that honey sludge in my mouth until the Red Stag came along. Turns out I was wrong. This Black Cherry WMD is worse than JD Honey, lengua and a weekend at Burning Man combined.

Make no mistake, I'm not against a blend per se. I quite favor the Jeremiah Weed Cherry Mash Bourbon but we've gone to far in trying to flavor booze. From Smirnoff Ice, to honey whiskey to strawberry vodka to Red Stag it just seems like booze manufacturers are solely focused on ways to make it easier for women and gay guys to get drunk. I know I'm not the only one who sees this trend happening. Otherwise, Michael Imperioli wouldn't be questioning my manhood over a shot of Tequila every third commercial during the playoffs.

Luckily, the good folks at Jim Beam closed out the sampler with the very enjoyable Devils Cut. My brain would like me to believe that going 3 for 4 in anything is admirable. Damn near a spectacular night in baseball. My heart tells me the truth though. Not all 3 for 4's are the same. Sometimes you get 3 singles and a weak pop to short. Sometime you hit a double, two homers and fly out to the track. Then sometimes you get a couple doubles, a hard single off the wall then you beat the umpire to death before you defecate in his goalies mask.

Red Stag is closer to ump murdering than a flyout. I still love me some JB but like a jilted lover I'm gonna need to take a little break after this breach of trust. Spend a little quality time with the Wild Turkey until I can get the stink of this episode off of me and learn to love again.

Series Movie Review: Punisher

2012-01-16T20:50:00.004-07:00

Today we're reviewing a classic set of revenge movies:

Punisher (1989)

The Punisher (2004)

Punisher: War Zone (2008)

Bad Azz Mutha: Black Punisher (1998)

Punisher (R 1989) - It's hard to believe this classic Dolph Lundgren pic was a straight to VHS effort. Apparently New World Pictures went bankrupt before it was released here. Anyway, copies of the movie are hard to find and by hard to find I mean I refuse to watch a VHS and it isn't on Netflix. From what I remember when I saw it in 1989 though, it was friggin awesome. Seems like tons of violence, bad dialogue and Lou Gossett Jr. doing stuff. Since it was 1986, I'm betting there was a terrible soundtrack, frequent shots of stripper/hooker related nudity and mild to moderately racist things said about all the Japanese gangster and LGJr. All the stuff a 9 year old boy needs in a film. Good times. FINAL SCORE: B-

The Punisher (R 2004) - Holy god what a mess. Thomas Jane seems like a guy who needs a Prozac and a good nap instead of a guy hellbent on revenge. He literally has dinner with the neighbors in the middle of his rampage. Not good. And everyone seems to know exactly who he is. Isn't he supposed to have a costume and alter ego for a reason? Jane seems like a real firecracker compared to Travolta though. I know Battlefield Earth is the big joke but is it really worse than this? Travolta's "villain" seems manic, alternately ordering people killed the switching to completely disinterested with the fate of the whole plot. Guess what Johnny boy, me too. I would also like to complain that the Punisher family killing scenario is a simple one that should be set up in the first 15 minutes of the movie. This one goes all the way out to foreign islands with family reunions and a long drawn, draaaaaawn out shooting scene just to kill a kid and his mom. Jane wasn't even the Punisher until minute 40 of this wreck. Kill the family, shed the tears, start the rampage. And for God's sake do it with a little life and snap to it.

FINAL SCORE: D-

Punisher:War Zone (R 2008) - Not a bad movie. Ray Stevenson is by far the best Punisher yet and the movie doesn't spend a lot of time before they get to the punishing. There are a couple of those "dinner with neighbors" moments but not many. I do wonder what happened to Dominic West though. He's a great actor and even though he is an English actor he played an Irish guy from Baltimore perfectly in The Wire. I cannot fathom what accent or speech pattern he is going for but it failed miserably. I sounds like Jimmy McNulty had an aneurysm while being raped by a Newsie. Otherwise the Jigsaw effects were obvious but effective enough. I must admit I'm still not sure I can remember the plot. Who cares.

FINAL SCORE: B+

Bad Azz Mutha: Black Punisher (NR 1998) - I have no idea what was going on. Fred Williamson is playing the gritty Lt. Malone from the Black Cobra series but there seems to be a strange divergence of plot. Some of it is Malone chasing bad guys and some of it has to do with freedom fighters and the UN. Worse, for a supposed blaxploitation film, there's very little blaxpolitatin going on. Williamson might be the only black guy in the movie and he seems like a real team player. Hell, he even teams up with the UN at the end of the movie. I thought there would be a lot more of stiff white commissioners telling him to turn in his gun and shield. Maybe a few jive talkin ladies with afro's. If I wanted a lecture on freedom fighters and the UN I would watch Oliver Stone make love to Castro's corpse. What? Fidel is still alive? Who cares, time to go rent Shaft.

FINAL SCORE: Incomplete. I'm not sure this is an actual movie.

Yikes

2012-01-09T21:43:00.003-07:00

A recent CBS News poll shows just how badly off President Obama is. Here are the results in the hypothetical election matchups:

Romney 47 Obama 45

Paul 45 Obama 46

Gingrich 41 Obama 49

Huntsman 41 Obama 48

Perry 42 Obama 49

Santorum 43 Obama 47

Seriously? Not over 50 percent against any of them? Bad news considering the field.

Romney is a guy whose own party doesn't really want to be president, he's winning by default. Paul is a certifiable, tin hat wearing, quasi-racist lunatic. Gingrich seems shocked that negative ads have been used and has now decided to scorch the earth in an attempt to beat Romney. Huntsman is a little weasel who plotted to overthrow the very man who gave him a job while he was still on said job. Perry may be one of the worst campaigners in modern history and Santorum is Romney-esque big government, northeast Republican with more whine and snark.

The idea that Americans seem willing to turn over the country to one of these guys shows just how far he has fallen in the eyes of the American public. Maybe if he spent more time governing and less time trying to hide the extravagantly lame life he and his nutty wife live he wouldn't be in a position to a guy who is a 9/11 truther for crying out loud.

And just imagine how far ahead a good Republican candidate would be.

Backwards Through the Corn

2012-01-03T22:36:00.003-07:00

I generally believe that 123,000 people caucusing shouldn't be allowed to influence anything bigger than a school board election. Having said that, the Iowa caucus was tonight and people still insist that it is a big deal. This seems a bit like claiming that you can't have a beer festival unless Natural Light is represented but its a slow news day so I'll play along and break it down.

Rick Santorum 25%: Really Iowa? You were so confused by all the attack ads you just picked the guy you heard the least about? Its despicable that Santorum is getting traction running as some kind of fiscal conservative. If he were a pro-choice atheist he could easily be a Democrat. In case anyone thinks this means anything lets just remember that the good people of Pennsylvania decided Bob Casey would be a better senator than Santorum. One cycle before they chose Pat Toomey. If its down to this Rick or Romney, I'm going Romney.

Mitt Romney 25%: Can this guy get more than 25% of the vote anywhere? In his own house? In a format that basically encourages buying votes and shady deals the guy with the most money only pulls in a measly 25% and loses to a guy who was driving himself around in a pickup truck. E-gads.

Ron Paul 22%: These caucus allow anybody to participate regardless of party affiliation or place of residence. Word has it that all the Occupy Protesters and 9/11 truthers turned out in full force for the GOP's crazy great uncle. I'm sure that support will make it's way into New Hampshire and South Carolina. Nothing those states love more than dirty left-wing nut jobs. The only good thing about Paul is he correctly has labeled Santorum for the fraud he is and is calling him out for it.

Newt Gingrich 14%: Not bad considering that Newt didn't seem to realize he was in a serious campaign until tonight. Now that the Newt moratorium on negative campaigning has expired, expect the Newt fuse to be lit and the blood to flow freely. He really hates Mitt Romney.

Rick Perry 11%: That's a good enough showing for Perry to stay in it. A Southern governor shouldn't be resting their hopes on Iowa and N.H. anyway. Perry should at least be in the hunt for S.C., Florida and Nevada. This isn't 1960. The Southern states hold far more sway than they have in the past. If Perry gets out before he tests himself there, he's an idiot.

Michelle Bachmann 5%: Fringe candidates have to do well in fringe states to have a chance. Having Sarah Palin throw you under the bus probably didn't help much. Time to drop out.

Jon Huntsmen 1%: We should find the 742 people who voted for Huntsmen to see if it was some kind of ironic performance art. Maybe he just has a really big family. Either way, Jon has the distinction of being the second guy I'd rather have Romney over.

Herman Cain 58 votes: Way to keep that torch lit.

Summary: Who cares. The only real nugget of info is that Romney's 25% glass ceiling is made of steel. He should be really worried. Other than that I still think the race will come down to whoever survives between Perry and Gingrich. All the other minors should drop out shortly. The only question is how long Paul sticks around to screw up the math. Paul staying in is good for Romney. If Paul drops then Romney has to hope that his voters just stay home rather than go behind Newt or Perry. Romney can't grow his own voting base so he has to hope everyone else stays fractured.

Season in Review

2012-01-02T21:09:00.003-07:00

After the massive flame out performed by the 2011 Oakland Raiders, its time once again to examine the season to figure out what went wrong.

WINS! - The most surprising part of this is beating Houston when they still had Schaub. Truth be told though they were fueled by the death of Al Davis and were going to lose until Schaub threw an awful pick in the end zone to end the game.

EXCUSABLE LOSES: New England, Green Bay, Kansas City. Kansas City gets included because it was the first game of the Kyle Boller era, the start of the Carson Palmer on 4 days practice era and the McFadden gets hurt 3 plays into the game and disappears for the season. Perfect combination for an apocalypse.

INEXCUSABLE LOSES:

Buffalo 38-35. The emergence of Denarious Moore and a huge day for Jason Campbell couldn't prevent the awful Bresnahan defense from letting the Bills rally for the late win with a pathetic prevent defense effort. Seeing how bad the Bills turned out this one looks even worse.

Denver 38-24. Raiders were leading 24-14 before Willis McGahee and Tebow ran for 899 yds. in the second half to score 24 unanswered points.

Miami 34-14. For the second year in a row the Dolphins shred a Raiders defense that appeared not care one bit.

Detroit 28-27. After doing a good job on Calvin Johnson most of the day, Bresnahan decides to run a prevent defense that allowed Rolando McClain and free agent street signee Matt Giordano to cover Johnson on a sickenly easy and predictable game winning drive.

San Diego 38-26. With a chance to win the division the defense and special teams get shredded by the Chargers who were coming off a 28 point slaughtering by the Lions, wasting a great day by the offense.

The trend is clear. In 4 of these losses the team scored 24 or more points and had the lead. Say what you will about the Palmer interception-palooza but he didn't let the Broncos score 38 points. The same Broncos that lost 7-3 to the Chiefs on Sunday. This should come as no surprise to anyone. Bresnahan was terrible the first time he was in Oakland and he's terrible now.

ANY HOPE? There is some hope going forward in 2012, notably the injuries. When the Raiders fell apart is was coincidentally the same time Darren McFadden. Jacoby Ford, Denarious Moore and Taiwan Jones went out injured. Combine that with a new quarterback trying to learn on the fly and the offense was surprisingly competent. Another promising aspect is that the team is very young and has room to improve without adding personnel. At least on offense.

SPEAKING OF - At first the trade for Carson Palmer seemed ludicrous. But in a league that has Tavaris Jackson, John Skelton, Kevin Kolb, Tim Tebow, Kyle Orton, Matt Moore, Ryan Fitzpatrick, Colt McCoy, Tyler Palko, Charlie Batch, Mark Sanchez, Chad Henne throwing the ball, Carson Palmer seems damn near above average. Not worth a 1 and a 2 but way better than anyone on that list or Kyle Boller.

OFFSEASON GAME PLAN:

1. Fire Bresnahan, get a real defensive coordinator. Poor play on D was the single most glaring aspect of the team. Mostly in the secondary, especially safety.

2. Re-sign Michael Bush. McFadden is too fragile to be counted on for a full season.

3. With no draft picks it might be worth while to see what McFadden and Richard Seymour can get on the trade market.

4. No Samson Satele. Horrible run blocker. Team did much better with Wiz at center and someone else at guard.

5. Reward the fans. The fans sold out all 8 home games this year and were rewarded with 3 division losses and a heartbreaker to the Lions. Not a good way to sell those tickets.

History in Thin Air

2011-11-14T13:57:00.004-07:00

There has been a movement recently to demonize Michael Jordan's stance as a hard line owner in the NBA lockout. It seems he is in the group of owners who wants the players to take 47% of basketball related income and not the 50% that was offered or the 53% the players asked for.

Media pundits like Jason Whitlock and NBA'ers like Ron Artest and Stephon Marbury have accused Jordan of selling out the players. They seem to think that because they bought his shoes and idolized him that he should be more willing to give up his own share of the pie.

This is a delirious forgetting of who Jordan is. By all accounts Jordan is the most competitive athlete who ever lived. Anybody who needs reminding should find his Hall of Fame induction speech. For years all we heard was how Jordan was merciless in trying to beat opponents at everything. On the court, playing poker, golf, etc. all Jordan did was try and crush people. If you had the bad luck of being on his team and not helping him win then he would crush you too. Kwame Brown still hasn't recovered.

Yet now in a labor negotiation that will end with a clear winner and loser we expect Jordan to be charitable despite him never having shown any inclination to do so in the past. Right.

To look at this as Jordan selling out to join the owners is a mistake. Jordan plays for himself and always has. When he was a player he needed the team to win so he could be a winner. Now that he is an owner he needs the owners to win big so he can be a big winner too. Believe me if there was some third option that allowed Jordan to win bigger he'd choose that one in a heartbeat.

This isn't to say that Jordan is right or wrong, just that he's consistent. The character traits that made him the best on the court don't just disappear when he stops lacing them up. It's a pure delusion of the sellout chorus that it could ever be any other way. Now that the players have rejected the owners last 50/50 offer and are going to decertify, Jordan and his posse are going to dominate this thing. That's what really bothers Whitlock, Artest, et al. They can see what's coming. The owners are going to bury the players now that they've launched the decertification nuclear option and the idea of the evil rich owners winning again offends their sensibilities and makes the think less clearly. So they lash out at someone they think should be "with them" whether it's rational or not.

They can whine and complain all they want and at the end of this process, whether they lose a year playing or not, Jordan will be standing on top looking happily down at all the people he's just beaten down. Just like he's always done.

Buster Douglas or Just Another Buster?

2011-09-16T22:29:00.002-06:00

I really would like to find a way to justify believing that Victor Ortiz can beat Floyd Mayweather Jr. this Saturday.

The odds are against it, 7-1 last time I checked, and the styles don't seem to add up to a good fight for Ortiz.

Ortiz isn't near as fast as recent Mayweather conquests Shane Mosley, Juan Manuel Marquez or Oscar De la Hoya. By all accounts he isn't a great tactical fighter. What he does have going for him is that he's young and can destroy people in the ring, provided he can corner them and get off before they escape his reach.

Sadly, by fighting style alone he would remind you of a younger Ricky Hatton, who was obliterated by Mayweather in 2007.

So what can I latch on to for hope? First of all Mayweather is getting old. 34 years old and 41 fights can take a lot out of a fighter. Probably doesn't matter here though. Second, as decorated as Floyd is he doesn't have one shot KO power. Most of his fights last a long time unless you happen to be Angel Manfredy. In the last 5 years he hasn't ended a fight in less than 10 rounds. It stands to reason that if Andre Berto couldn't knockout Ortiz with those shots then Mayweather can't either. That gives Ortiz enough time to put in some work and maybe unload one perfect shot.

Maybe more importantly, Ortiz is fueled by shame. And shame can be a powerful motivator.

By an reasonable account somebody should have thrown in the towel for Ortiz in that Maidana fight. He was getting crushed and could've been hurt. By quitting though he branded himself as weak of both body and mind. That would've been the end of most fighters but Ortiz has battled back to win the belt and survived another brutal fight against Berto. It makes you wonder of Ortiz is just fueled by a desire to redeem himself that's greater than Mayweather's desire for more money.

Short of some combination of pure grit and the perfect punch though I fear we have to endure more of the Mayweather reign at the top. More sizzle, less steak and more excuses to dodge Pacquiao until their both so old no one cares.

Be Bold Good Fool

2011-09-15T17:42:00.004-06:00

James Carville got his panties in a knot today when a CNN "reporter" asked him what he would advise Obama to do in the face of political disaster. I know Carville talks all the time, never shuts up actually, but his advice to Obama makes him seem like more of a superfluous twat then normal.

Here are the steps he lined out:

1. Fire People - This certainly seems like a good idea, the people working in the White House are incompetent indeed and should be put out to pasture. The only problem is that Obama has canned a few people, Van Jones comes to mind, and has replaced them with equally incompetent know-nothings. Obama doesn't know any really talented people and even if he did he wouldn't have the sense to put them in power positions. He finds clones of himself and hires them. He's incompetent and so are they. Changing the names won't help unless you change who picks them.

2. Indict People - Carville is referring to Wall Street execs here because they of course are the scum of the earth and deserve to be lined up and shot for ruining the economy. Or so Carville thinks. The real truth is that any criminal investigation into bad economic practices would only lead back to Washington and hurt members of Congress. Chris Dodd and Barney Frank come to mind first but there is plenty of blame to go around, especially with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and Janet Reno threatening lenders over redlining. Carville thinks harassing execs who were responding to federal regulations will appease the people angry over the economy. Putting rich people in jail won't help poor people.

3. Make the Case Like A Democrat - Carville is saying that Obama should forcefully defend Keynesian economics, big spending liberal policy, instead of going along with Republican austerity programs. He cites some mythical world where we're doing worse now after spending cuts than we were doing during stimulus. The problem here is that we've never tried any austerity program here. Never. Big spending liberal policies have sadly ruled the day and everyone knows it. Even the Ryan plan was fairly timid in the face of the danger. The people know what we've been doing and O can't defend it with any credibility.

4. Hold Fast To An Explanation - This is a good idea. Flip flopping around on every issue looks weak and confuses the electorate. Unfortunately this is hard to do when you are actively trying to deceive people on topics you really know nothing about. None of his explanations work so he's just scattering shots hoping to hit something.

EXTRA - here are some of the attacks Carville wraps up the piece with, explaining his fear of a crazy person being elected:

creationism-loving: belief in God is mainstream.
global-warming denying: that's because its a lie.
immigration bashing: no, illegal immigration bashing.
Social Security cutting: would you rather tweak a program or have it become insolvent?
clean air hating: I assume he means greenhouse gases which are necessary for all life and quite different from smog.
Morally fascinating: I have no idea what this means. Pro-life maybe? Welfare reform? Standards at all?
Wall Street protecting: Have you seen who has been getting all of the stimulus money from Obama? Unions and Wall Street. All of it.

If conservatism can't flourish in the face of this kind of delusional incompetence then it never will.

Que Es Esto?

2011-08-30T22:30:00.003-06:00

Watching the Cincinnati Bengals is a like watching Mexican League baseball. It looks and sounds like something familiar but if a donkey show broke out you wouldn't be shocked.

The off season game plan has been ridiculous even for Mike Brown standards. Brown has done a lot of stubborn things during his tenure regarding player holdouts and Carson Palmer moves to the top of that list.

I understand not wanting to empower players by caving to every demand. The difference here is that Carson Palmer sucks. He's been through for about three years now. The idea that anyone would entertain giving the Bengals a first round pick for that spent round is amazing. If Brown had swindled the Seahawks out of that haul he would be lauded as the greatest executive mind in the game today. Instead, Brown does nothing and remains the sad man he is.

So what have they been doing while they blew a chance to unload dead weight? Let their best DB (Joseph) go for nothing, turned over the team to Danny Bonaduce (Andy Dalton) and spent more than five bucks resigning a RB that hit the wall two years ago and is going to miss three weeks of the season serving a short stint in the can (Benson) and let the only two playmakers walk away on offense (Ocho & TO).

I suppose Brown could have done worse things to try and compete with the Steelers, Ravens and Browns but it's hard to imagine what. If he had any dignity he pay off the rest of that stadium himself instead of raping taxpayers. Then he find out what the University of Cincinnati was charging for home tickets and match that for Bengal tickets. Then again, if he had any dignity he wouldn't run this team that was exciting about 5 years ago into the ground again. The Brown name diminishes every day that he ruins the team.

World Wide Leader of Duh

2011-08-29T21:21:00.007-06:00

Lord knows I'm no Tim Tebow apologist but good lord the caliber of people who feel entitled to tear him down is way down in the dregs.

It's bad enough to have talking heads like Jon Gruden and Ron Jaworski tearing apart QB's but how exactly did we come to the point where Merril Hoge, Mark Schlereth and Eric Mangini are somehow qualified to state without any doubt that Tebow should be taken out back and shot?

Hoge was a slightly above average fullback who suffered massive concussions and had to retire.

Schelerth was a offensive lineman best know for puking before games out of fear and smelling to holy hell.

Mangini was the genius behind the Jets debacle that was righted by one of the Ryans as well as the Brady Quinn, Derek Anderson nonsense in Cleveland.

Tebow is the classic example of losing your sponsor. He was drafted by Josh McDaniel knowing it would take 3 years to get him ready. McDaniel gets fired and suddenly everyone is shocked that Tebow can't beat out Orton right after a lockout.

If John Elway and John Fox don't want him, then fine. They didn't draft him. ESPN needs to have a little more dignity than to trot these 3 know nothings to pile on the criticism. It's like watching Herman Edwards rip someone elses coaching or seeing Rebecca Lobo rip someones lack of athleticism.

ESPN makes a bajillion dollars a minute, is some credible analysis to much to ask?

And On The Seventh Day . . . . . . .

2011-08-01T21:56:00.003-06:00

Thank God the Raiders announced today that they decided to give a former Browns castoff 29 million in guaranteed money.

Until Kamerion Wimbley inked his deal I thought somebody forgot to tell Al the lockout was over.

As far as I can tell that's the only significant move the Silver and Black have made so far. I realize that the team had a non-losing season for the first time in a decade but it seems to me that an 8-8 team that lost its best player (Nnamdi Asomough) and is working on losing its only good vertical threat (Zach Miller) can't afford to stand still.

When a team climbs the crap ladder all the way up to mediocre they can either take the next step up to competitive or fall back down just as easy. The way things stand now they are going into the season with DHB, Jacoby Ford, the Ghost of Chaz Scheilens and Johnnie Lee Higgins in the passing game and Stanford Routt, Mike Mitchell, Chris Johnson and Tyvon Branch in the defensive backfield.

To put it simply, they have an offense built for ground-and-pound and a defense that turns every opposing offense into the run-and-shoot. There was no way they could get Nnamdi back but they needed to strike quick to fill the spot. Nate Clements, one of the Cromarties, Carlos Rodgers could have all helped. Now the best DB on the market is maybe Asante Samuel who unfortunately is zone coverage artist and would be useless in Al's beloved press coverage.

The offense is even worse. The best WR option out there is Braylon Edwards for god's sake. We've seen DHB drop enough passes that hit him right in the face. Those two on the field together could be dangerous.

I hope some good players get cut in cap situations that Al can sneak in and snatch up. Otherwise, the teams been stuck in time for a whole year while everyone else got better.

Now For Something Really Useless

2011-06-28T22:37:00.008-06:00

Even in the limitless expanse that is the Internet it is still technically possible to waste valuable space.

The UK Independent is actually spending time and effort trying to analyze the political situation in Iran. Apparently the nut job little dictator over there has gotten himself in some hot water and is probably going to be replaced by some other nut job dictator.

The article goes into detail about the elections that brought Mahmoud into power, what his cabinet has been doing, yada, yada, yada.

What is the point of analyzing elections and polititions in a rigged system? The only people who can get elected there are people that the Ayatollah gives the ok to. One nut job religious psycho gives the big thumbs up to an army of little nut job politicians. They don't have any real power, can't really makes decisions and if they try they end up in a world of hurt. Only 13 unlucky virgins in paradise kind of hurt. That's why the coverage of Irans "protests" were so laughable. They acted like Mahmood stole that last "election" from the Persian MLK. Reform was just right around the corner if only Mir Hossein Moussavi had found a couple hanging chads somewhere.

We do all realize that he was a nut job too right? Seriously press, at what point do you guys just start running old stories from the 80's about Iran? They're all the same, just change the names; oil, oil, oil, Great Satan, Jews . . . . . . .

The best you can say about these things is that they're amusing. So desperate are the media to have a dictator to love that the just tie themselves into a knot trying to paint Raul Castro, Daniel Ortega, Hugo Chavez, etc. in a positive light. It's like watching a three-legged dog trying to catch his own tail. A little funny and a little sad all at the same time.

When they finally get around to lauding the lack of obesity in North Korea then I'll start paying attention again. Until then I'm just going to watch some Telemundo and see if I can figure out why the midget with the axe is chasing a girl in a bikini whose riding a pig in a tuxedo. Seems like a more productive usage of my time.

Concrete Nikes

2011-06-27T23:22:00.010-06:00

Sometimes even I hate the right-wing media machine.

It came out today that one of the things discussed for debt reduction is the military budget. Of course came the predictable nashing of teeth beating of chests.

What can the argument be that military funding is off the table? As far as I can tell, people who make this argument are pushing one of two theories. First, the military is efficient to the point where it operates without waste. Second, that even if there is waste, to eliminate it would somehow make them combat ineffective.

Nonsense. While the military is the military, it is also government. It is also bureaucracy. Millions and billions of dollars of waste and fraud and grist go hand in hand with those things. The defense budget should be looked over and have the fat cut from it, just like every other part of the national budget.

One thing these teeth nashers are right about though is that the GOP shouldn't agree to this just for the hell of it. If we are going to cut the military then we're going to cut food stamps, welfare, research grants, NEA grants, social security, MediCade/Care, foreign aid and every other thing that this country spends its money on.

If all of these things don't get cut then don't cut the defense either. If some strange sequence of events leads to real budget slashing then the defense budget will have to be on the block as well of course. No trading on faith alone.

Uh, Now What?

2011-06-23T21:51:00.004-06:00

The NBA draft has come and gone and the Orlando Magic haven't really done anything of note.

This is a bad sign for Magic fans everywhere. Despite the recent success of the team, the future looks none too bright and it starts with the salary cap.

For this past year it was right around 58 million and Orlando clocked in with a final payroll of 89 million. What pieces did this lavish spending buy?

Dwight Howard at 16.6 is as good a deal as you can get but the rest of the roster is scary.

Agent Zero - 17.7
Hedo - 10.2
Jameer - 7.8
JJ Redick - 7.2

That's 42.9 million dollars on guys you can't win a championship with if they're in your top 3 best players. Combine that with Dwight's 16.6 and your spending 59.5 million on a terrible team. Combine that awful financial statement with the fact that the cap is probably going to be go down after the new CBA and it seems impossible that Orlando can fix this thing.

They only have one hope and that is for the new CBA to have an Allen Houston rule where you can wipe one salary off the cap, even though you still have to pay it. If Otis Smith reaches the conclusion that Dwight has to be traded, which is likely, then he must strong arm some team into taking Gilbert Arenas too. You could make the case that Hedo would be good enough but if the team gives up Dwight they need the relief. It'd be better to let Dwight leave for nothing than to trade him alone.

If you can get Howard and Zero gone through trade and erase Hedo through the Allen Houston Rule you've trimmed 44.5 off the payroll. They should also let Reddick and Nelson go for as little in return as possible and that would save another 15 mil.

Of course that doesn't include what you take back. If the trade happened with the Lakers and Orlando got back 2 or 3 out of Gasol, Bynum and Odom, the salary back would be between 21-38 million, depending on who you get. That still leaves the team with a hefty payroll but if you can trade 44.5 million of Howard, Zero and Hedo and replace that with 38 million of Bynum, Odom and Gasol, not only do you still save money but you can actually win with that core. Depending on what Boston does, Orlando would either be the third or fourth best team in the east behind Chicago and Miami. Assuming the new lower cap doesn't force Miami to cut one of the 3 out.

The Bottom line is that Orlando needs to get younger, cheaper and better. They crapped out in the playoffs because nobody could score. If you keep Dwight you have to hold onto those bad contracts for another 2-3 years and you simply can't change the roster enough to make a run at winning. Better to lose you best player than lose four years of competitiveness.

New York, New York

2011-06-21T22:13:00.001-06:00

The Yankees have a few problems but one glaring one could be solved by the incompetence of the Mets.

As hard as it is to face, Derek Jeter has become a real liability. Bad enough where it needs to be addressed. The problem with The Captain isn't his lack of mobility in the field, it's on offense. He can't drive the ball anymore and his on base percentage is terrible. He can't be slotted in anywhere in the top 6 of the lineup and is probably best suited for the 9 hole in front of Gardner.

This is a real blow because if he can't hit, he can't be moved to the outfield or DH.

Luckily, the Mets have continued to suck and need to unload Jose Reyes. The Yankees need to make a serious play for him.

The only problem is whether or not the Mets would try and hijack the Yanks because of the cross town rivalry. In a reasonable world, a package of Nunez and prospect Jesus Montero should get the job done.

Many Yankee fans might see it as too high a cost considering the hype around Montero. The only problem is that Montero doesn't have a position. He can't catch and the Yankees also have Auatin Romine and Gary Sanchez in the catching pipeline. He could play 1B but only if you unload Texiera. He could also DH but the team needs that spot for its aging sluggers who can't play the field. It's only a matter of time before A-Rod becomes the full time DH anyway.

One thing the Yankees should not do is trade the young pitchers Banuelos or Betances. Maybe not even Noesi or Brackman. It's been so long since the Yankees had any respectable young pitching (Phil Hughes and Joba don't count) that they can't panic and dump them into a deal for a position player.

The bottom line is that the Yankees can't win consistently with Jeter playing everyday, hitting leadoff or second. The Mets are incompetent and desperate and if the Yankees can grab Reyes, they absolutely should. Jeter is going to have to face his Posada-esque revelation sooner or later. Might as well be sooner.

Seems Reasonable

2011-05-26T23:37:00.003-06:00

I'm not sure the UK Telegraph understands the meaning of the word paranoid.

They've written a story on how the pressure of the NATO bombings is starting to get to Gaddafi who has started moving from hospital to hospital in an attempt to save his life. The paper quotes unnamed diplomats who describe Gaddafi as "paranoid."

The Telegraph just keeps right on truckin with their story. Had it been me writing the story, I might have stopped for a sentence of two to explain to the reader that if a person sees NATO bombing everything of value in his country, including his own house, then being worried about being killed is a rather prudent concern and not "paranoia".

Wouldn't it be more ridiculous if he were acting differently? Bombs falling all around him and takes the dog for a walk or spends a quite day at home with one of his army of lady police?

I have no beef with NATO trying to take out Gaddafi, by and large he seems like something the world won't miss, but the media at least should give the guy the dignity of not branding him as a delusional paranoid for thinking we're trying to kill him when he's exactly right.

Speaking of Gaddafi, what's more ridiculous, the fact that he's still just a colonel or that he still insists that his army of surgically enhanced bodyguards are all virgins? The next dictator who shows restraint and decor around the ladies will be the first. besides, he's got 72 virgins waiting for him in the next life, no need to stockpile them in this one.

Use Your Head, Just Not That One

2011-05-18T21:24:00.003-06:00

The hyper leftists in San Francisco have moved one step closer to an electoral "victory."

In these bleak economic times, the City will get to decide in November whether or not circumcision should be banned as genital mutilation. Just like they do it in Africa!

Right. The fact that liberals want to have the government regulate and eliminate parental choices and religious practices (unless they're Muslim) is no great shocker but it seems as if nobody realizes the screaming contradiction here.

Outlawing circumcision in one of the most tranny friendly cities in America? How in the world can people with even the slightest hold on reality come to this position? That a parent deciding to circumcise his kid for hygienic or religious reasons is somehow a fanatic barbarian while some wispy eighteen year old who wants to have a doctor flay his junk into a sparkling new vagina is somehow not only sane but a hero for realizing that God mistakenly put Suzie into Steve? Good lord.

Don't get me wrong, if a tranny wants to go all the way, have at it. There shouldn't be laws against it but the people of San Francisco are drawing a very crooked line in the moral sand regarding what we can do with our genitalia. Now, it's possible to have a legitimate opposition to circumcision. But when a city has publicly declared that they are going to indulge such radical elective surgical procedures, they lose the ability to take a moral stand against one that is minuscule by comparison.

The silver lining to this is that San Francisco must have figured out how to escape both the national financial crisis and the financial stranglehold that California puts on its cities. There can be no other explanation for why a city would even entertain this kind of nonsense. When people talk about government waste, they are almost always talking about money spent for some project but what about the cost of time wasted? Some government hack had to type this up, compose it for print, print it up, etc., etc. I hope when all the down and out in that city are being told that there is no more money for government cheese, housing assistance or discounted heating oil that they remember that at some point their elected official had to sit down and make sure that the people got to vote on whether to allow circumcisions.

The Examined Life

2011-05-17T22:37:00.003-06:00

As a man moves into his 30's, he starts to reflect on aging and what it means. I'm no different and as I did some deep reflecting on my life and myself as a person, I came to the realization that the Raiders haven't had a franchise quarterback since I was born.

Surely this had to be a mistake, I said to myself, so I looked it up.

1980 - Jim Plunkett
1981 - Marc Wilson
1982 - Jim Plunkett
1983 - Jim Plunkett
1984 - Marc Wilson
1985 - Marc Wilson
1986 - Jim Plunkett
1987 - Marc Wilson
1988 - Jay Schroeder
1989 - Vince Evans, Steve Beuerlein, Jay Schroeder (none played enough to qualify for the passing title)
1990-1992 - Jay Schroeder
1993-1996 - Jeff Hostetler
1997 - Jeff George
1998 - Donald Hollas
1999-2003 - Rich Gannon
2004-2005 - Kerry Collins
2006 - Andrew Walter
2007 - Daunte Culpepper
2008 - JaMarcus Russell
2009 - JaMarcus Russell
2010 - Jason Campbell

Dear god that is awful. How on earth did they get to the AFC title game in 1991 riding the cannon of Jay Schroeder and the mind of Art Shell? Inconceivable. I would argue that there isn't one franchise guy on the list. Plunkett is good but there's a reason he was dumped by the Pats. If those Raider teams weren't loaded, he would've been terrible there too.

The Rich Gannon era is the only possible time the Raiders might have had a franchise QB. The stats back it up and the went to the Super Bowl once. But really, if a guy doesn't play until he's 36 and is successful mostly because Jon Gruden was a genius, can you really call him a franchise QB? I think as good as Gannon was, that was because we had a franchise coach, not a stud QB.

As sad as this list is, knowing that you can't win in the NFL without a QB, I choose to look at the Silver lining. No longer will I ask myself why we've sucked for the better part of two decades, I'll just look at this list and marvel that we even managed to win 4 games a year. With this level of ineptitude at the most important position, the team should have been disbanded or moved to Cleveland long ago. Seriously, Don Hollas? Jeff George? I didn't even have the heart to put in Todd Marinovich. Even the putrid Bengals got Boomer Esiason and Carson Palmer pre-knee explosion. As legendary a list of grade A suck this list is, the fact that they managed a few playoff appearances and a title game seems like an undeserved bounty.

Assuming there's football this year, it'll be refreshing to watch Jason Campbell take the field to hold the ball to long and know that this performance is historically near the top of the barrel. That and a 12 pack should take the edge right off.

The Last Frontier?

2011-05-16T17:18:00.007-06:00

I realize that the media is always looking for the next big story about overcoming societies prejudices and bias but the media is going overboard today.

Two stories broke today about gays in sports, one somewhat significant the other not really news at all.

The first one I saw was that Will Sheridan had come out as gay. For those who don't remember, Sheridan was a pretty good power forward for Villanova. His story is pretty straightforward, when he came out to his team, they were cool with it and most of the opposing crowds didn't make an issue of it except for the scholars at St. Joe's. Granted, it wasn't all easy, his father didn't speak to him for a year after he was told. Aside from that though, his revelation doesn't seem so traumatic. There will always be people who criticize you for something you are, especially in a sports arena.

Looking at it objectively, Sheridan's story seems like a victory for society. A visible athlete comes out of the closet as gay and is met with mostly acceptance and indifference. Isn't that what we are looking for as a society? Knowing that there is always that small percentile who will hate for no good reason, isn't indifference and acceptance what we should want? I think so.

That's what makes the next story so needlessly publicized.

Today Phoenix Suns President Rick Welts also came out of the closet as gay, believed to be the first high ranking sports official to come out of the closet. I understand how in the testosterone fueled world of pro sports that coming out as gay as an active player is treacherous business but are we supposed to believe that being a paper pushing office worker is so high stakes that being the first gay one to come out is groundbreaking because it's tangentially related to sports? This seems about as relative as the first gay beer vendor coming out of the closet.

This isn't to minimize the importance of the event for Welts however. I'm sure I don't have any idea what it's like to feel like you had to hide something like that, although I suspect being a Republican in college is a similar burden. My only question is why do we need a breaking news ticker to announce that a paper pushing bureaucrat is gay? Surely if the star athlete, black guy from the mean streets of Philly can get through being gay relatively unscathed, the lilly white executive in Tucson should be a yawner.

I know it goes against all the liberal sensibilities but we should really take a small victory lap here. Public acceptance of gays is pretty high these days. Nothing ever gets 100% accepted but when people shrug their shoulders at the news that you're gay, that's the sign of progress. If gay marriage is what's making this perception of intolerance persist then that's unfortunate. That's an issue that has become a political and religious wedge issue despite that fact that it has no practical impact on society these days.

I guess the last true frontier is for an openly gay, active major leaguer to come out. Even that is probably scarier in theory than in reality. Whenever these ex-players come out as gay, most of their teammates seem to have figured it out already. Hopefully the positive, non-reaction to today's dual outings will convince any gay that they can just be gay and that they have reached a level of acceptance where it is no longer required to hold a press conference for such a thing. I think most people are there already.

Here You Go Lefty

2011-04-18T22:51:00.003-06:00

It's about time to raise taxes.

That's right I said it. I'm fully in favor of raising taxes on the 50% of this country that have become goldbrickin freeloaders under our current policy.

In the interest of full disclosure, I'm pretty sure that with all the tax credits and deductions I get, I'm in that percentage of people who either pay no federal income tax or actually profit from it.

Truly absurd. How can a representative republic function when half the people feel no repercussions of the financial decisions of the country? They must think free market capitalism is the greatest thing since the Communist Manifesto. They pay taxes all year, then get a bigger check back at the end of the year. Just like Adam Smith drew it up.

The tragic part of our tax system is how easy it would be to fix. You could make it real easy and just impose a flat tax or some kind of national sales tax in place of the income tax but that doesn't seem politically feasible at this point. Even if we're tied to the idea of the progressive tax code, it's still easy to fix.

The only parameters that should be followed are that nobody gets screwed, everybody participates. Here's how I would set the brackets:

$1 - $25,000 = 5%
$25,001-$100,000 = 7%
$100,001 - $$700,000 = 14%
$700,001 - $infinity = 19%

See how easy that is? Nobody gets out of the teens in what gets taken from them, no deductions, exemptions, double taxation. You make money, you pay a small percent. No need for a massive IRS or tax preparers.

And what of business taxes you say? Here's the breakdown for that tax:
$1 - $infinity = 2%

Let's see how many people open factories in China when they get to keep the vast bulk of their money by keeping the business here.

This would probably be a policy that would have been in place already if liberals weren't so hell bent on punishing success so they can bride constituents with free rides. The only consolation at this point is that our current system where 50% of the people do nothing is economically unsustainable and heading for a collapse. it's unfortunate that we're going to take the world's economy down with us but if it allows us all to hit the reset button and set up a reasonable system maybe it'll be for the best.

How About A Staycation Instead?

2011-04-14T21:03:00.003-06:00

As sad as it is that the poor young man from Britain was beaten to death inside a Dubai prison, my first question isn't "oh my god, what happened?"

We know what happened. The Dubai police caught themselves a pale skin, threw him in jail and beat him to death for the hell of it. This is what's referred to as "standard operating procedure" in that part of the world. The only silver lining to this murdery cloud is that if he had lived longer, he probably would've been raped as well. You know, before he was murdered. Perhaps a quick end was a merciful thing.

The real question is, why do people keep vacationing in the Middle East? It never ceases to amaze me how many westerners get arrested over there while they were hiking. Really? Couldn't find a better trail than in Syria? Do they have a nice riverwalk in Pakistan? What's the deal? I'm starting to think that maybe all the paranoid mullahs over there are right and all these people are really CIA plants trying to start revolutions. It makes more sense than poor vacation choices.

I understand that Dubai is quite nice to look at but is there anything besides that? It seems like most people like to go to beach resorts so they can have some drinks, do a little partying and hopefully mingle with some scantily clad merrymakers of the opposite sex. Why would you go to a place where all of this is illegal? The Middle East is like the bizarro Tijuana. Tijuana is a hell hole where everything is legal while Dubai is a paradise where everything fun is punishable by death.

Seems like the government dropped the ball on this one too. Every other day I get a news alert that the State department is recommending not travelling to Texas or Mexico for fear of being decapitated by a drug cartel. Has there just been a blanket middle east warning in place since 1954 that the State department has forgotten to mention in a while? What kind of shame is it for Mexico that people would rather go to sharia controlled lands than step one foot in Acapulco.

I've got an answer for everyone who has vacation money but doesn't know where to go. Here's the list, just pick whichever one is closest or cheapest for you. Brazil - sure they have some rough spots but the government knows how to keep gringos from going to astray. Stay with the sexy ladies and trannys and you'll be fine. Australia - Far away but nobody beach parties like the Aussies. You snobs can go right to New Zealand and leave everyone else alone. Finally, Italy - The President of the country regularly throws bunga bunga parties staffed by a slew of hookers and the number one aspiration for college aged girls is to be TV eye candy. Their economy is also in the toilet so they're desperate for your money. Bottom line, you can do whatever you want then head to the Vatican to look for forgiveness. You're welcome merrymakers and nature enthusiasts. Now stop going to places that have a vested interest in killing you. Knowledge is power!

Where Were You?

2011-04-12T22:06:00.010-06:00

Where were you when The Resurrection happened?

Where were you when a once great but broken man, rose from the fiery ashes, stormed onto the hallowed ground that had once been his kingdom? Where were you when he steeled his gaze, gripped his armaments and laid waste to all those opposed. Where were you when a man, ne God looked out upon the battlefield and brought down fury from the heavens, destroying all those who had opposed him before riding off in a golden chariot pulled by winged horses made of pure fire and awesomeness!?

Where were you when that same guy got the yips, choked and finished fourth behind three guys whose own mothers didn't bother to tune in? That's right, I'm sick of all the Tiger slurping going on. (note to readers - do not google "tiger slurping". carry on.)

If you were to only listen to the coverage of The Masters or read Bill Simmons ridiculous article on Tiger, you would have thought he had won or actually achieved something. Apparently golf is so pathetic that having Tiger play 3 good rounds over a tournament is cause for celebration. Apparently just having Tiger back to talk about is enough to fall to our knees and thank the almighty (Nike, I assume) that "The Gift" has returned to us all.

Nothing that happened over the weekend is going to make me forget that Tiger hasn't won anything, anything, since getting flattened by a broke knee and a river of skanks. It did prove to me that while Tiger still has the talent, he longer has the nerve. He's no longer feared either.

There was a time when as soon as Tiger came back and tied up for the lead, all the other contenders would have fallen apart. Especially the no name younguns he was in the mix with. While putting has never been Tiger's strongest suit, you could bank on him nailing the birdie or eagle that he needed, especially in a major, especially at The Masters. He had numerous chances on Sunday to drive the nail into the coffin of the field, most notably the 4 foot eagle attempt which he completely bricked. Chuck Knoblauch thinks he choked. And how great was Tiger anyway, in the pressure?

Let's check the last 7 holes of the leaderboard:

Woods - 1 birdie, 1 bogey, 5 pars (E)
Scwartzel - 4 birdies, 3 pars (-4)
Scott - 2 birdies, 5 pars (-2)
Day - 4 birdies, 3 pars (-4)
Donald - 4 birdies, 2 bogeys, 1 par (-2)
Ogilvy - 5 birdies, 2 pars (-5)
McElroy - 1 double, 1 bogey, 5 par (+3) (sorry, had to include him)

What I see here is that the supposedly "back" Tiger Woods climbed back into contention because McElroy pulled the pin on his own personal grenade, then he got outclassed. Tiger didn't even play as well as the people he was tied for fourth with, not even close. Don't people realize that this was his best course? What do we expect to happen at the far less forgiving US or British Open? -10 in Augusta is a +28 at Bethpage or St. Andrews.

All this was, was the same Tiger we've seen since the comeback. Flashes of greatness, terrible putting, no aura and an inability to play four solid rounds in a row. He can't even play one round without some horrible gaff. When Eilen hit him upside his dome all those months ago, she turned him into Phil Mickleson before all the majors when he was just Hefty out there trying to "tin cup" his way around the course.

All these media people should be ashamed at how in the bag they are for Tiger. They're further in the bag for Tiger than Chris Mathhews is for Obama. I personally have no gripe with Tiger either way I just happen to have this crazy notion that people should actually accomplish something before the get the spoils of achievement. And I expect the media to not act like a bunch of junior high boys who just noticed girls for the first time. Crazy I know. You all owe this Schwartzel guy an apology. He actually won something and people could give a crap. Be sure and get Tiger's permission first though, wouldn't want to upset the MealTicket.

Next Up, Wilt!

2011-04-04T21:50:00.003-06:00

Rather than watch that debacle of a national title game, I decided to watch some hockey.

It has been a pretty good game so far, if you're a Sharks fan, and San Jose is up 6-1 at the second intermission.

What isn't good is the deification of Joe Thornton. Apparently Joe's goal in the second gave him 999 points for the career, almost at the mythical 1,000.

After listening to how great a feat it was for half a period I could only ask myself one question. "Has anyone done more meaningless scoring than Joe Thornton outside of Hugh Hefner?"

Seriously, the highlight reel of big Joe goals in December is long. The highlight reel of Joe's playoff heroics is actually a snuff film that someone is trying to hide behind a fake label.

San Jose has been one of the most disappointing teams in recent playoff memory, melting down repeatedly as a high seed. Bringing Joe over from the Bruins was supposed to solve all that. Turns out San Jose made a mark on Joe, not the other way around.

I put this milestone in the same category as Drew Bledsoe being 9th on the all time passer list, Steve DeBerg being high on the wins/TD list or sabermetrics in general. Yes I see your numbers. They lie. My eyes tell me all I need to know and I'd happily trade all 999 of those points for one decent play in the finals.

Number Two Is Right

2011-03-30T20:46:00.003-06:00

On the eve of Opening Day, a great day where hundreds of people gather to watch a summer game in the snow, I have some concerns about my beloved Yankees.

The first regards The Captain, Derek Jeter. All I've been hearing all training camp is about how he has removed the slide step from his hitting style in an attempt to play catch up to the fastball. What I haven't been hearing is how he has been tearing the cover off the ball this spring. All that can mean is that last year wasn't a fluke. When a 36 year old decides to start tinkering with his mechanics to hit the most common pitch in the game, it just screams "I'm washed up!" Changing positions isn't going to help either if he can't hit anymore.

Speaking of bad mechanics and being washed up, A.J. Burnett has now gone 34 consecutive years of life looking for a way to get a consistent delivery and release point. I guess he has adjusted his leg kick in an effort to keep his pitches from randomly turning into BP balls in the middle of games. Shouldn't a pitcher who has made it to the bigs ironed out the delivery for about a decade now? How many examples do we have of a pitcher changing his windup, then skyrocketing off to success? All the talk about the rotation has been about the 4 & 5 spots but we all do realize what it means to have AJ as the two right? He needs to win at least 16 games and have a sub 4 ERA for the Yanks to be competitive for the playoffs. I'm not sure you can count on 18 from Hughes again and the Nova/Garcia/Colon/Milwood pupu platter probably has the over/under set at about 25 wins and I'm not sure I would go with the over on that one.

I realize that being overly nervous is a Yankee tradition but how good should anyone feel when two key cogs to the machine have decided to redo the mechanics of the job? I would also point out that any bullpen that has both Joba and Pedro Feliciano in it is ripe for destruction.

Having said all that, I do think the Yanks take the wildcard. The Red Sox are not going to be near as good as people think they will be. A lot of what Crawford is good at is negated by the goofy dimensions of that ballpark and Dice-K, Beckett and Lackey are just about done. The real reason the Yanks should still be in the playoffs is that the Rays are significantly worse. No Soriano and the everyday lineup features Johnny Damon and ManRam. Plus, they think Kyle Farnsworth can close. I guess every team in the league has to make that mistake once.

The Chosen One Spoketh, Then A Black Hole Consumed All That Was

2011-03-28T20:42:00.008-06:00

It really is my own fault. I joined in the chorus of people that were calling for President Obama to explain himself in his actions regarding Libya.

Today he did.

Basically his speech said that the United States had to intervene in Libya because "it was in the national interest", "to prevent a humanitarian catastrophe" and because not acting would "have been a betrayal of who we are." Awesome. That explanation is so high minded and convoluted that if you were to take it literally, the United States would be morally obligated to throw up a no-fly zone over about 60% of the globe.

Rather than just admire in it's childlike nature, it's best to tackle it head on. Libya is is no way the United States national interest. Sure they have oil but so do lots of people. George Bush scared them into abandoning their nuke program and they are not at the top of the terrorist sponsor countries. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq, Pakistan and Afghanistan are all more important to the national interest than Libya. And that's just the Middle East. China, Russia, N. Korea, Mexico and Japan are all much higher priority than Libya. So who does care about Libya? Europeans. For reasons I haven't fully researched, Europe seems to have a lot of money and resources tied up in Libya. By that I mean oil. Maybe they thought Qaddafi was easier to deal with than some of the other nutjob dictators. Who knows. But they are in deep and that's why anyone cares. Obama got himself roped into this because he couldn't withstand the pressure from the French.

Prevent the humanitarian catastrophe. Please. Sure, the government was killing people but to be fair there was a fully armed opposition that was trying to instigate a revolution. Nobody likes dictators but you have to expect them to defend themselves. How can Obama even mention the "humanitarian catastrophe" while Darfur and North Korea still get to operate as they please? How many Africans and Bosnians, etc. have been allowed to massacre each other without NATO, the UN or people like Obama batting an eye? You could stage an invasion of North Korea any day of the week and be completely justified. Why don't we? Well, we gave them nukes so that's a problem. Besides, they don't have oil and Europe doesn't care about starving Koreans. Obama is just trying to find cover to appease his Kucinichesque cadre of bleeding heart pacifists that can't understand why gitmo is still open and Obama is killing more Muslims.

How would Obama even know who Americans are? He has spent most of life community organizing which has as it's primary goal the destruction of the traditional American free market capitalist system of economics. Like it or not, the United States was founded because of money and the desire for people to get their hands on it. The idea being that if you could get your hands on it, you could keep it. Obama's whole ideology believes that if you have money, it should be forcibly taken away from you and given to those who didn't earn it. It's awful presumptuous for Obama to try and project American values overseas when all he tries to do is undermine them at home. That's what all that hope and change was about. The values Obama is truly projecting overseas are European ones. He shares far more common ground with their way of thinking than traditional American political thought. Even for liberals he's out there.

Maybe it's better when Obama just doesn't talk about stuff. Maybe his advisers knew that too and that's why he's been so quiet lately. Deafening silence is better than what we got today. That speech today was so patently a contrived speech intended to mollify critics that it was embarrassing. He knows it wasn't true. We know, everyone knows. To actually say that crap makes him either a liar or a fool. Better to just keep quite after all.

200 Million Dollar Question

2011-03-24T22:19:00.002-06:00

It's hard to believe but spring training is nearly done and Opening Day is exactly one week away.

This revelation sent me into a predictable, early panic. Did i have enough bacon, ground beef and sharp cheddar? Should I go with brauts instead? Ribs? Is it really ethical for me to drink tall boys and barbecue all day when technically it's my "work from home day"? Heady questions indeed. For the record, I think I might go with burgers and ribs and just skip the potato salad all together.

A bigger panic though came shortly thereafter when I realized I had no idea who was gonna be pitching for the Yanks. People have been writing for weeks about the battle for the number 4 & 5 slots in the rotation. That assumes of course that AJ Burnett can hold on to the number 2 spot. I personally think AJ is a couple of bad outings from hanging out with Kaz Igawa and Fat Toad Hideki Irabu.

Ignoring that disturbing fact though still leaves the bottom of the rotation. By all accounts Ivan Nova has been awesome in the spring and has locked up the number 4 spot. I must say it's nice to finally have a pitcher under 30 to develop that isn't Phil Hughes. I think I can rest easy there.

What'll keep me up at nights, metaphorically anyway, is that the number 5 spot has seen the legendary Sergio Mitre and Freddy Garcia beaten out by . . . . Bartolo Colon. You might remember him from his Cy Young season of 1984. He's been throwing great, there's no doubt about it but good lord look at him. It looks like all the fat C.C. Sabathia lost hooked up with Rich "El Guapo" Garces and their unholy progeny turned into this iteration of Bartolo.

I realize that you don't have to be the picture of health. The Babe plowed through hookers and booze at a Lawrence Taylor-esque rate and that was just in between innings. But there's fat and then there's unhealthily fat. David Wells was a big fat jackass but he never looked like he was going to die in the middle of a pitch. Hell, El Guapo looked damn near childlike on the mound. Every time I see Colon throw a pitch I'm convinced he's just keep on going through his follow through right into the grave. And this at the end of spring training! He's supposedly in game shape.

I hope I'm wrong but I can't see him lasting all year taking the bump regularly. They should just have him and Garcia split every fifth game. One week Bartolo gets 5 innings and Garcia 4, then switch the next time through. That's gotta be better than trying to get 200 relief innings out of Joba and Pedro Feliciano every time Bartolo throws 115 pitches through 4 1/3 and has to be yanked.

That Was Fast

2011-03-23T22:42:00.002-06:00

So . . . . . . are we done with Libya already?

It seems like only days ago that the French were kicking ass and taking names. The Brits were on board, the Germans were finally on the good side of a conflict and we all got to see footage of Tomahawk missiles being shot off of naval ships. Awesome, awesome, awesome.

Now what? Nobody in NATO will even admit we're in a conflict, the Germans took their ball and went home, the French disappeared (did they surrender to Libya?) and Obama's just gonna try and get past the whole thing.

I have a sneaking suspicion that the reason we seemed to have bailed on this hastily organized cluster f is that we realized at some point that we were helping Al-Qaeda overthrow Mommar. What other reason could there be? Surly the good Colonel is a ruthless enough dictator that killing him would surly be a blessing for the world. The only way you wouldn't want that was if bin Laden was hiding in a hummus barrel somewhere in Tripoli just waiting for the chance to strike.

One thing's for sure though, we need to stop all these world leaders from declaring that we're not at war with Libya. Unless Obama has some serious Clintonian mojo, I'm betting all those Tomahawks did more than blow up thousands and thousands of aspirin factories. I can assume the only reason we haven't seen video of the all the corpses is that all the "freedom fighters" are too busy sexually assaulting journalists to do any actual muckraking. If only these people knew that that the key to any good revolution was the effective implementation of Twitter and Facebook on the battlefield. Not that I'm judging any culture. We're all exactly the same, all great, all equal, no judging. Some are just a little more rapey than others.

I don't even know what to make of this situation anymore. I guess Japan is fine too? Seems like two days ago the entire country was going to melt and today I read that Japan has had a 9% jump in exports because China's been buying more stuff. Really? Growing that trade business while dealing with an earthquake, tsunami and nuclear meltdown? Yet when I look at the classified there's just a big hand giving me the finger. Awesome. Maybe if we start and ill-conceived bombing campaign against another middle eastern country I can get a job welding fins to missiles or something.

Time For A New Phrase

2011-03-22T22:11:00.009-06:00

Maybe now we can all stop being forced to watch those insufferable Chevrolet ads that try and remind all of us that Detroit is the home of the American auto industry.

Why ad execs would want to remind us that our most prestigious car manufacturers operate out of a dying pit of a city that and are only able to do so because they are so pitiful that our government threw them billions of dollars. The land of Motown and Kronk gym is now known for 8-Mile, Kid Rock, Melee at the Palace and now, finally, Black Flight. Another race riot would be a vast improvement, only if to show there's any life left there at all.

That's right, African Americans have now figured out that the best way to deal with the pressure of a crumbling urban infrastructure is to simply leave.

The new census data is slowly being released and it's grim for Detroit. The former fifth largest city in the States now has a meager 713,000 residents. That figure puts it squarely behind the cultural epicenters of Indianapolis and LeBronville aka Columbus, OH. I've been to both of those places and, no offense to any loyal readers there, they both suck. I remember Indianapolis because I was truly amazed that such a big city could still manage to smell like cow shit. It actually permeated the Arby's beef and cheddar to the point where I was tempted to liberally apply that poisonous "horsey sauce". I only remember Columbus because I remember thinking that if it weren't for Cleveland, the residents of Columbus would have nobody to feel superior to.

Back to the Black Flight. In the ten years between census's, 237,000 residents escaped from Detroit. A whopping 185,000 of them were black and 41,000 were white. Now I'm shocked that there were still 41,000 white people in Detroit but that's not the point. The only other city seeing this kind of flight is New Orleans and they got hit by a hurricane. If it weren't for the influx of Hispanics into the unimaginatively named "Mexicantown" neighborhood, Detroit might fall off the map completely.

Despite the clamorings of Michigan's politicians and the mouth-breathers running GM's ad division, this is actually a good thing. First of all, we can stop using "White Flight" as a racist term of abandonment concerning big city America. Flight is now equal opportunity. Second, cities like Detroit should be abandoned as quick as possible. For years it seems like the black population was just trapped in these decaying ruins. They should be escaping and now it seems they are, at least in one city. In most cases, the same group of people have been running these slums for decades. They only stay in power because they are tied to the population somehow. If that population leaves town and is replaced by a bunch of Mexicans, then the whole snow globe gets shook and maybe some changes will be made. At the very least there are less people to drain the state resources which might help to ease the financial pressure on city officials.

So maybe Chevy should modify those ads and instead of reminding us that they're built in Detroit, maybe they can just say made in America. No need to point that your product comes from decay. It'll like reminding people that mushrooms are a fungus. Technically true but not good for the bottom line. Now before people claim that I'm just a Motor City hater, let me end on a high note. One of the great things about Detroit was its boxing and for my money, it didn't get any better than the Motor City Cobra Thomas Hearns. Detractors always say how he lost to both Hagler and Leonard but I disagree. He fought the good fight against Hagler despite breaking his hand in the first round and Hearns was clearly beating Leonard before he ran out of gas in the 14th and got TKO'd. Either way, here's a clip of the best Hitman knockouts. Keep a close eye around minute 3 where Hearns absolutely dislocates Roberto Duran from all time and space. Then compare it to Ron Artest knocking out that fat Mexican in the Pistons jersey. They're both awesome.

The Hitman:

Melee at the Palace

Oh Crap

2011-03-21T22:35:00.008-06:00

I don't think Barack Obama understands how to use military action to distract people from serious scandals.

Usually you invade a country that most of your people find particularly loathsome (Iraq, Afghanistan) to cover up a personal scandal (Clinton) or because it fits ideologically with your power base (Bush II). What Obama is doing satisfies neither.

First of all, launching an offensive in Libya doesn't do anything but enrage Obama's leftist base. They were already fuming over the decision not to close Gitmo and the continuation of the debacle in Afghanistan. On top of that was the decision to back down on civilian trials for all held terrorists which have been dropped in favor of the military tribunal. Bottom line is that this is going to cost him support from Democrats and not gain him anything with Republicans.

Up until yesterday, he didn't have a major scandal to cover either. While conservatives view his policy decisions as disastrous, passing ObamaCare gives him a pass with libs. Other than that, the worst people were publicly calling him was absentee for not addressing any substantive issue in the world. That's been the Obama way for years, I can't see this minor criticism bothering him into action. I would argue that entering into a military action under pressure from the French and Brits just makes Obama look like he entered into a quasi-war to pacify Europeans. Not good.

If that wasn't bad enough, now Obama has a serious scandal that just makes military action look worse. The German papers have released photos of an American Army "death squad" that has apparently been roaming Afghanistan targeting and killing civilians for fun. And like most psychopaths, they felt the need to document their project with photos. 4,000 of said photos are now in the possession of German media. Yikes.

This type of thing make Abu Gharib look like a mincing little walk in the park. At least that was a bad policy decision leveled against people dragged off the battlefield. Mostly scumbags. There is going to be riots due to the actions of the United States military in the middle east from Tehran to Cairo. How exactly is the rest of that area going to view us bombing Libya to a pile of rubble in light of this revelation? Especially when you consider that we have no real reason to be in Libya. Sure they have a serious dictator problem but who doesn't over there? Libya is old news. Reagan tried to fix that problem in the 80's and we passed. We don't even know if the guys we're helping out are terrorists or not. They sure did organize a fighting force quickly, that can't be good.

If Obama were even aware of public relations he would have announced some kind of massive withdrawal right before these kill squad monsters came to light. Now it just looks like all we do is kill Muslims for no real reason.

I'm not sure if Obama is insensitive to how this looks or if he's just in over his head but he's acting like a guy who sees a fire and thinks that it could use a little gasoline. The rudderless Obama foreign policy apparatus makes the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld nation building process look like a highly tuned scientific process. I certainly hope that Obama can break out from his funk/incompetence in time to handle this massacre thing. The world has serious problems and it would be nice if the leader of the free world could exert a little influence. Have we all taken note of how the French seem to have eagerly tried to fill the leadership void internationally? How does that usually work out for the world? I'm not sure if the executions of all the people involved in the killings will satisfy anyone around the world but it would be a good place to start just to restore a little bit our own dignity. It's one of the worst things that our military has been involved with since Vietnam and it needs to be handled head on and moved past quick. Lord knows there's more trouble on the way.

Oh Bother

2011-03-16T21:35:00.002-06:00

I wonder if there has been a time in modern history where the President of the United States mattered less than he does right now. For whatever reason, Barack Obama has decided to take a pass on all issues, foreign and domestic. The thing in Egypt? Meh. Libya? Nada. Japan? Time to golf! Crushing debt at home? Crickets.

Don't get me wrong, I think the only thing worse than a disengaged Obama is an engaged one but it's truly an odd situation in the world now. I certainly hope we all realize that the Germans have dug in as pacifists and that the French President is agitating for military action in Libya. Hell, Sarkozy seems to have even talked the Brits into action.

Sadly, his efforts seem to have fallen on deaf ears, proving once again that intergovernmental organizations are complete frauds. France can't get any traction on a no-fly zone because the European Union wants no part of it. NATO has pretended that it has no idea what's going on and given how things are going in Afghanistan, maybe that's for the best. The United Nations has continued it's unblemished record of allowing dictators to slaughter their own people so long as they keep it in-house.

I've started to hear rumblings as to why this is the situation. Why nobody wants to help the Libyan rebels oust a monstrous dictator. These people fundamentally misunderstand the mission of these groups. Most people think that these groups were created and designed to prevent the kinds of genocide and atrocities seen in WWI & WWII. The exact opposite is true. These groups were created so that all nations could give each other a collective pass for not doing anything.

We know this is true because every time something awful starts happening, all of these groups get bogged down in terminology or bureaucracy. Either finding convenient legal reasons that tie their hands or waiting so long to do anything that it no longer matters. If they really cared, they would have rapid response teams ready to go at all times, instead they find any excuse to sit it out until somebody needs to count the bodies.

Barack Obama is the perfect President to work with these groups. Most leaders have to answer questions as to why they are ignoring the world aflame. Obama somehow just does nothing and the nobody gives him any grief over it. It's truly amazing how much of a world afterthought he has become. It'd be even funnier if that didn't mean the toughest leader in the Western World was a french guy.

Beware of RINO's

2011-03-15T22:33:00.003-06:00

It's hard to fathom why the new Republican majority thinks they were swept into power in a landslide vote.

They seem to think they all ran on some moderate platform of compromise and Obama rehabilitation. I suppose if that were true their actions might be defensible right now. As it is, most Republicans ran on a big platform of nothing or on a heated anti-Obamacare/anti-deficit platform.

That makes it all the more baffling that the Republican leadership refused to allow a vote on removing $105 billion dollars of ObamaCare implementation money slipped into the idiotic continuing resolution.

They claim it's because you can only address discretionary spending in the CR, not allocated funds. Ridiculous. This country has a 14+ trillion dollar debt and you're quibbling over the rules that both party routinely vote to circumvent? Pathetic. The real reason is that Republicans are for some reason terrified that there will be a non-essential governmental shutdown. Why they have turned cowardly in the face of an easy budget choice when the people sent them there to make hard budget choices is beyond me. But, in the spirit of helpful unity, I'll offer the following justification for defunding ObamaCare that the Leadership pillow biters can offer up to the American people.

Congress' first obligation is to the Constitution. That obligation trumps everything else, including House rules. As such, Congress is not in any way obligated to fund a law that violates the Constitution. As of right now, ObamaCare is unconstitutional pending appeal. I know leftists love to point out that a couple of judges upheld ObamaCare but the way he law works is that if any court rules something unconstitutional, it is held to be so until a higher court can make a ruling resolving the conflicting the lower court rulings.

Judge Vinson made it clear in his opinion that the States were exempt for continuing to implement the law until the issue was resolved so why should Congress continue to blindly fund something that seems destined to be repealed or at least heard by the Supreme Court?

Just imagine leftists if Congress passed a law requiring all gays in the military to out themselves so that they could be trained in all gay units and live in all gay barracks, for the mental peace of mind of the straight soldiers. Now, this law is clearly unconstitutional, that kind of segregation has long been held unconstitutional. Once the inevitable lawsuit occurred, the District Court would void the law as unconstitutional. Now, in the time between the District Court holding it unconstitutional and the Court of Appeals hearing the appeal, should Congress continue to fund the military's effort to build the new facilities used to segregate the gays? Of course not.

It'd be nice if Congressional Republicans could recognize when they were on the right side of an issue and act appropriately. I suppose it's not shocking that they've gone weak kneed in the face of actual responsibility. If it weren't for the Tea Party and other fiscal conservatives kicking them in the ass, most of these people never would have been elected or even known what message to run on. If they screw this one up they deserve as serious steel-toe shot in the back.

Simple Plans

2011-03-09T22:52:00.002-07:00

I've repeatedly stated my opposition to most labor unions because they are simply a legalized version of mob activity.

However, I occasionally find a labor issue where I side with the union. One such case is in the NFL labor dispute.

Now I understand the owners desire for more money. It's the reason anyone engages in any business. But the idea of adding 2 more games to the schedule is insane and the union has a right to fight back against it. The players bodies simply can't take any more abuse. Players brains are literally being blown out on the field. The science is pretty sound on the issue but if anyone needed any anecdotal evidence, a retired NFL'er recently donated his brain to science so they could study repetitive trauma injuries. Then he shot himself in the heart, Creepy. Really creepy.

The answer is so simple though. The owners want more weeks and the players want more health. Fine. Add another week or two to the season but make them bye weeks. This is good for he players since they could rest some of those injuries and space out those head shots over the year. The owners wouldn't get any money in the stadium in this case but they could easily make a ton of money on the TV deals. They could conceivably fill two more weeks of the highest rated shows on the tube. Two more weeks of beer commercials, NFL Network, etc. Seems to me that providing that much more programming for the networks would be worth quite a bit. Maybe not the billion that the owners are after but it would still be substantial. The bonus for the owners is that the players wouldn't be entitled to any of the new money. They haven't performed any extra work and they're getting some of the health concessions they've been looking for. Unless one side or the other is a lying hypocrite, then everybody wins.

Of course that's not the only issue to be negotiated but it seems that the owners would be easier to deal with on the other issue of they knew they had a fresh cash infusion waiting for them to pay off those stadium costs.

Simplify

2011-03-08T23:08:00.001-07:00

Colorado appears to gearing up for another one of its never ending beer sales fights over who can sell what, where and when.

On the docket this time is a fight over 3.2% beer. Convenience stores and grocerys are complaining that some new regulation will allow restaurants and liquor stores to sell 3.2% as well, in violation of state law.

Apparently some groups think our new microbrewing Governor is tweaking the rules behind the legislatures back, some don't. The bottom line is "who cares?" This is a problem that is purely the creation of government.

The only reason there is this division is because some other government stooge decided some stores couldn't sell booze. So those stores, rather than loose that money, came up with "weak booze" and sold that and the state said cool. Very soon after that, both groups had lobbyists trying to protect their market shares. How anyone can feel dignified screaming to the hills for the right to sell 3.2% I'll never know but that's what they do.

Now all these new politicians are looking for political ways to solve a political problem. Did anyone think of just removing government? Let any store with a liquor license sell whatever they want. The first thing that would happen is that 3.2% would disappear. Nobody actually likes that crap, people only sell it when they have too. Once that was removed, you'd see genuine competition. Liquor stores would have certain advantages, as would grocery stores and 7-11s. They all serve different people with different needs. You might not see any more liquor stores being built right next to Safeways anymore but other than that, nothing much would change. People who want some brew or wine with dinner could get it at the grocery store, people like me who just want a good selection of booze and no waiting behind soccer moms getting the milk can still go to the liquor stores while high school kids can still pay drifters to go into the 7-11s for a twelve pack of Natty Light. We all win.

Except for government stooges. If everyone can get what they want and compete on the market, I guess lobbyists don't need to kiss your rings anymore. I'll drink to that.

Colorado Springs finest! - (will trade ad space for beer.)

Shameless Self-Promotion

2011-03-08T22:45:00.002-07:00

Far be it for me to self aggrandize but I have also started writing for the Yahoo! Contributor Network. Should anyone care to read other stuff of mine, they can find me at:

http://contributor.yahoo.com/user/985890/patrick_mcgarry.html

The good news is that it'll be all new stuff. The bad news is that it'll still be written by me.

PTM

Still Satisfying

2011-03-07T22:22:00.003-07:00

It feels nice whenever President Obama is forced to expose himself as the weak hypocrite that he is. It'd be nicer if I thought the man had enough conscious to blink twice about it but I'll take what I can get.

The Audacious One announced today that military trials will start up again at the Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

That's right, the one Obama pledged would be shut down within his first one hundred days. The very first executive order he signed when he took office.

Not willing to let the issue pass without comment, Obama told the press how "strongly opposed" to the military trials he was. If I were a liberal, I would find this line of thinking infuriating. Shutting down Gitmo was one of the things the President had total control over. He could close it down, move the prisoners and have civil trials whenever he wants. How do his supporters reconcile this? He can't blame Congress, they can't stop him, besides, he had his own own Congress for two years and did nothing.

This situation really just shows two things. The first is just how over his head Obama is. The idea that you could close Gitmo and just have the trials somewhere in Illinois farm country is ridiculous. Only a fool drunk on himself would think that was a feasible plan. The second thing it shows is what a shameless political opportunist he is. His number one photo op when he took office is just a throw away the next day. If all the anti-war nuts are feeling depressed, they can go cry on the shoulders of all the gays that Obama strung along, promising marriage and ending Don't Ask, Don't Tell. They got the shaft until Bama needed himself a boost in the polls, then he came out against DADT. Pathetic.

The real winner in all of this is the United States. These animals should be tried in Cuba. Keeping them there, being interrogated by the Army/CIA, is the absolute best way to deal with these people. Hopefully, some of these guys will be found guilty and sent to a deep dark hole. Literally, in some cases. Either way, American wins and Obama is again exposed as a fraud. Happy Days!

Photocopy Quality

2011-02-21T10:32:00.003-07:00

I recently watched Let Me In, the American remake of the Swedish vampire film, Let The Right One In. I watched it with some hesitation as the original Swedish movie was outstanding and American remakes of foreign films have a sketchy track record at best.

As far as film quality goes, I was pleasantly surprised. Let Me In is quite a good movie, which isn't that surprising since it's almost exactly the same as the original. The only differences i could remember was that the American version had more graphic killings and made Abby(Eli) much more monstrous. I would also complain that some of the originals subtlety was removed such as a scene (minor spoilers) was changed from a suicide in the original to an accidental death in the American version.

That's small potatoes in the big picture though. If Let The Right One In was a 9.5 then Let Me In is an 8.5. The real issue is why was the movie made at all? Aside from it being in English, it's essentially the same movie. Is that change really enough of a reason to remake an entire movie? I realize that Americans have far less reason to see subtitles movies as Hollywood churns out enough films to keep moviegoers satisfied. From what I understand subtitling and dubbed movies are far more common in Europe where they have a greater diversity of languages and less movies being made.

Maybe we should adapt the same idea of dubbing here. Rather than waste the great performances of the Swedish actors, why not just hire Chloe Moretz, Richard Jenkins, Elias Koteas, etc. to do a really good voice over for the Swedish version and release that in theaters? The movie only made $12 million in its theater run, it seems reasonable that a dubbed version of that could've made just as much without all the cost of actually making the movie, which was around $20 million.

Hollywood is set to deluge the public with a flood of sequels and remakes this year because they know that those films will make money. If they got a little more creative with movies and dubbed an outstanding foreign film for the public rather than blow $20 million on a completely unneeded remake they would have more financial flexibility to make more creative movies instead of just making surefire moneymaking sequels of dubious quality. This would be devastating to the Michael Bays of the world but might be better for the rest of us.

Treasonous Disgrace

2011-02-18T21:45:00.004-07:00

Now we know exactly how much fake civility a dead 9 year old and and a Congresswoman's blown out brain is worth.

Not even two months.

Rep. Giffords and others were shot on January 8, 2011, copious lectures by liberals about civility and how mean spirited politics caused it ensued and a month + 10 days later, it's all over. The despicable demonstrations in Madison, WI proved once and for all how little liberals actually care about they things they say or the democratic process. It's hard to know where to begin analyzing the Carnival of the Macabre going on in cheeseland. Is it the disregard for democratic principles? The absolutely unwarranted hate speech or the elitism? As always, we'll do our best.

ELITISM - One of the common refrains during all of this is how the new government in WI sprang this on the unions without even talking to them. First of all, labor unions are not the elected representatives of the people and the government isn't obligated to talk to them about anything. In this case, that reasoning is even more absurd. In Wisconsin, there is a constitutional requirement to balance the budget. Every Republican who ran an election said one way they were going to do that was to make unions pay more of their benefits package, up to a whopping 12%, and that they would do away with many of the contractual binds that have been in place. Everyone knew this. I live in Colorado and I knew exactly what Gov. Walker and the new Congress was going to do. So did the unions. So did the voters when they sent a republican wave to Congress so they could do just as they said. All of these outraged protesters are either the stupidest people in politics or liars. I suspect liars but I guess they can choose for themselves.

DEMOCRACY OF HATE - The most sickening thing about all this is the hate. Protesters calling Walker a dictator. Calling him a Nazi, fascist, murderer. Putting up signs with him in the cross hairs, a more threatening thing than Sara Palin's map, given that her map wasn't accompanied by a mob. Some of these shameless hate profiteers have been equating themselves with the Cairo demonstraters. Yes, the gay bashing, female raping Cairo protesters. The only way the comparison makes any sense is if these Wisconsin liberals are comparing themselves to the authoritarian loving Muslim Brotherhood, then it's spot on. They way this legislation came about is the definition of how our system is supposed to work. Going into an election, there was a huge budget problem the state was legally obligated to fix. Democrats presented their ideas, Republicans presented theirs which included a cut to public union powers and costs. Never mind that the union members would still be way better off than their employers, the people, a cut is still a cut. The people, the people who pay for everything, considered both proposals and the deep blue Wisconsin sent a wave of conservatives forth to enact their plan. Which they did. The House drafted and passed a bill, the Senate was about to do the same and send it to the Governor when all those cowards on the left, fled town. The ran away from democracy. Because they hate it. Liberals hate nothing more than the people trying to control the actions of government. This is no different when those cowardly Texan liberals ran to New Mexico rather than vote on a redistricting bill. Now we hear all this nonsense about how it was courageous. I'm sure if all the Republicans fled the country rather than vote on Obamacare, I'm sure liberals would have been disappointed but impressed with their principles. Yeah right. It's not principled, it's disgraceful. The people rejected the Democrats now the Democrats are rejecting the people. Everyone should be ashamed that this is how our system works now. Apparently, working hard to win people over with your ideas is too hard. No we just take our ball and go home. Pathetic.

UNION BUSTER - So, is this an attempt to destroy unions? Hardly. Sure, they are going to lose the ability to collectively bargain some aspects of their contract. Want to guess what they still get to negotiate? THEIR SALARY. Yep, they can still make twice as much a civilians. They can still get paid $38 an hr. for a job that's only worth $18. They still get way better medical benefits than you are I will on the outside. They also get way better pensions than the private sector gets. Or doesn't get since most companies no longer offer pensions anymore. All the bill asks is that they pay for some of these perks themselves. No matter how it all shakes out, all these union members will be better off than the people that pay them. They just want to be really, really better off, instead of just really better off.

CONCLUSION - This bill will eventually pass, it's just a matter of time. The Dems just don't have the numbers in government to stop it. These union members are also working against the will of the people. Democrats nationwide are always under the impression that most Americans are just dying to unionize. Unfortunately for them, union membership is the lowest it's ever been and it's by choice. States across the country are sending members to Congress to cut costs starting with union contracts. Deep blue Wisconsin, deep blue New Jersey and deep blue Massachusetts have all had to tackle this problem because the citizens demanded it.

And what do we make of these teacher/protesters? All along they've told us they are worth special treatment because they sacrifice their lives to educate children. They tell us that every teacher is a hero. That teaching is the most important job you can have. I'm sure that's a matter of opinion that varies depending on the fire conditions in your house, criminal rate in your neighborhood or your need for utilities. The sad fact is that reality doesn't back this up. Every year these heroes churn out dumber and dumber students. They refuse to let us fire the worst of them or promote the best. The try to kill any alternative education opportunities. They abandon their students to fight for their undeserved freebies. They demand more and more money and prestige for their subpar performance while redirecting any all blame away from themselves.

They are selfish and self interested. In many respects they are the educational version of the NRA. The NRA has taken a stance that no matter how reasonable the proposal, they will not agree to any alteration in their right to arms. The NEA is the same way, just replacing guns with high salaries, free pensions, cheap healthcare and jobs for life with no expectation of performance. Worst of all, these Big Education operatives have monopolized the system and process so that the truly wonderful teachers and reformers cannot be heard or exert any influence.

I hope that Gov. Walker and the Legislature have been paying attention to New Jersey. Gov. Christie has been fighting this fight for months now. By sticking to his guns, confident in the knowledge that he had the public's support, he has broken these union machines and put Jersey back on the path to fiscal stability. The new government has the same support too. If they hold on, they can break the logjam as well, to the benefit of us all.

Say Wha?

2011-02-08T22:19:00.002-07:00

I read the story about the Nuggets trading Melo to the Lakers and I am confused.

Not so much that they Nugs are gonna move him somewhere besides the Knicks. Really, is Wilson Chandler, Corey Brewer and a 1 enough to get anyone excited? No way.

But why, why does anybody think Andrew Bynum is worth anything at all?

The man cannot play basketball without getting hurt. He runs like Ralph Sampson with the blown out knees. He is the love child of Greg Oden and Yao Ming.

I defy anybody to actually watch him run up and down the court and tell me he can man the middle for the next five years.

I know Denver feels like they need to get some kind of name to replace Melo while the team rebuilds but Bynum isn't going to placate angry fans. He's gonna play 3 games, tear a quad and the fans will turn on him. Denver would be far better off getting nothing but expirings and draft picks than taking back Bynum and hoping to build around him.

Maybe the best deal you can get is a rent a year offer from the Mavericks, maybe it's Wilson Chandler. That seems like a sad commentary on the situation Melo has put Denver in but that's the reality. If the Nugs are smart, they take it and go and hope for a lockout.

Your Move, Genocide

2011-02-08T21:58:00.005-07:00

I guess the Hollywood elite can find new T-shirts to wear.

Now that South Sudan has voted 99% in favor of separating from the rest of Sudan, the assumption seems to be that all that ethnic clashing is a thing of the past.

Sure. Because in Africa more government means more stability, right? Right.

I can see why the southerners in the country would want to do this, after all, that part of the country has all the oil while the north has all the what exactly? Poverty? Machete factories? God only knows.

We do know one thing though and that's what happens when an oil rich little state is right next to a hell hole looking for a boost. Iraq invaded Kuwait for that sweet black oil and Iraq already had tons of their own oil. This was in the face of the American army and the fact that they just got brutalized for a decade by Iran. Sooner or later, North Sudan is going to realize that they are the ugly chick in a group that includes Ethiopia for gods sake and when they do, it's gonna get ugly.

When you think about it, splitting things in two doesn't really solve problems. Some Americans tried it and we got the Civil War. Ireland? No peace. Korea? Nope. John and Kate? Nope. That divorce just turned one collective, bitchy douche bag into two insufferable cancers. Maybe we should just focus on solving one problem before we turn it into two.

Eeeeeeh, Not Quite

2011-02-02T19:32:00.002-07:00

There has been much speculation concerning the violence in Egypt. What kind of uprising is this? A yearning for Democracy? A hostile, Taliban-esque takeover? Should Obama support the action, why is their still violence if Mubarak is leaving, will Drakar be able to stay in business without the large middle eastern nation in full buying effect? They questions make your head spin.

Today however, one of those questions was answered by the pro-Mubarak faction who stormed Cairo riding camels and wielding whips.

Riding camels. Wielding whips.

This revolt may be a lot of things but a popular movement for democracy it isn't. I'm sorry but riding around on camels whipping people like some bizarro Paul Revere just screams "Not Ready for Freedom" Unfortunately, it also signals to people like the Muslim Brotherhood that Sharia law might have finally won the day.

History shows us that this is the case. Revolution in Rwanda done with machetes. No liberty. French revolution, all guillotine, all terrifying. Spanish Civil War? Yikes. It's the same as if the American Revolution was completely conducted by the people responsible for the Salem Witch Trials.

The only question left is just how kooky this thing is going to get.

Oh, That's Where I Left My Petard!

2011-01-25T22:26:00.003-07:00

It's amusing to see the media go into hyper analysis mode over Jay Cutler now that we know he had a partially torn MCL that kept him from finishing Sunday's game. It's really much more simple than what people make it out to be. It really only has two facets.

The first one os the injury itself. Yes a partial tear of the MCL isn't good. Yet we've seen numerous QB's play with debilitating leg injuries. We've all seen Elway, Marino, Montana, Leftwich, etc. finish games where they could barely move. That's not figuratively either. Post Achilles injury, Marino literally could not move. All these guys just put on a brace that locked the knee into place, got in the shotgun and let er rip. Lovie Smith said that the instability of the knee was why they took him out. Unless the trainers forgot knee braces, that excuse just doesn't cut it.

The second issue is Jay Cutler's attitude. He is a surely, ego maniacal, Jeff George/Ryan Leaf hybrid. He seems to always be trying to convince everyone of how great he is, how stupid they are or pouting over some perceived slight. Pouting seemed to be what he was doing while injured. My informal poll as to what was really wrong with him showed that most people thought he had a concussion given his detachment from the team. Now we know it was a one man pity party. For him to cry because his peers aren't showing him enough respect? Are you kidding? How many media members and players have you made it your goal to make their life miserable? You just can't treat people like they are unworthy to be around you then ask surprised when they give you a flaming tire at the first chance.

The bottom line is simple. Cutler may have a great arm but he is a world class douchebag and he came up small where the greats came up big. All while trying to tell us that he belonged in that upper echelon of all time QB's. You made your bed now lie in. He just needs to suck it up and quit pouting. If he has any guts at all, he'll come back big whenever the next season is.

Close the Borders

2011-01-14T20:02:00.004-07:00

I've frequently complained about the influx of Californians fleeing their ruined home state to come to our beautiful state (Colorado) so they can destroy it as well.

Usually my complaint is the nutty left wing politics they bring with them and try to get implemented. Sure, why wouldn't they? They worked so well in California.

Apparently, in addition to failed political policies, they've been bringing civil law enforcement procedures as well. I was unaware until today but apparently the Denver Police Department is getting a reputation for beating the living shit out of people on a regular basis.

To confirm this I googled "denver police brutality". My computer literally slapped me, then stuffed a bag of coke into my pocket.

Before the processor exploded though, I read this story about a poor guy who took an illegal left turn and ended up looking like Mickey Rourke on a really bad night.

Now I'm no PhD in public administration, maybe my theory that the LAPD's Rampart Division quietly infiltrated the DPD in an attempt to punish minorities in a different state is way off base, but even I know that a guy who gets pulled over for an illegal left and has enough sense to ask for a search warrant doesn't just blindly grab a cops gun.

I realize that it can be difficult for the police to differentiate between 19 year old community college students and MS-13 members but you'd think the police would show a tad bit more restraint after they got in trouble for beating the holy hell out of Michael DeHerrera.

Now, I realize John Hickenlooper didn't feel the need to do anything about this when he was Denver's mayor but maybe he'll feel like exerting some pressure now that he's our Governor. Somebody sure as hell as better because I don't really want our state to corrode any further. Colorado is one of the good places left in this country to live, where would I go if it turned in Cali East? Wyoming, Nebraska, New Mexico? I guess if the time comes when I have to flea incompetent government and abusive police I'll just flip a coin; heads and I'll go live the Mormons in Utah, tails and it's North Dakota and Canadians.

Life, Illuminated

2011-01-13T20:45:00.003-07:00

Since the New Year began, I've been walking around at night wondering why things looked/felt odd. I assumed that it was simply a lingering hard cider hangover from New Year's eve. As the 13th day came and went and I still couldn't figure out what was wrong so I naturally assumed that I was suffering from some kind of palsy or the effects of a mild stroke.

Luckily, I went to check the mail before calling my doctor. Finally, I found out why the world was suddenly altered in my perceptions.

The street lights are back on!

For those not familiar with the local politics of Colorado Springs (why would you be), a quick recap. During the worst of the depression, the conservative city's conservative City Council decided to turn off 33% of the city's street lights in an effort to save money. This was the same measure that removed city funded park watering and trash removal.

The reaction from the liberal comrades in Denver, Boulder and CNN was predictable. They all laughed hysterically at our backwards ways, predicting massive spikes in rapes and other violent crimes, parks teeming with sewage and generally a city full of blight.

This included nearly all of the lights on my street. After reading a few pages of the Denver Post, I went and bought myself a rifle, told my wife I loved her, then stood guard at my front door, waiting for my formerly civil neighbors to succumb to the dark and transform into a bunch a gang raping, covenant ignoring sociopaths. Anyone who wanted to drop me off a Christmas card past 3:00 P.M. was in serious trouble.

Then nothing happened. Of course.

Only the very stupid or elitist would honestly believe that our city would turn into a stage for Escape From New York because a few street lights were turned off. I assume the Big Panic industry in Denver and Boulder is chock full of both since I still haven't heard or read any analysis of our city's successful budget maneuvering. Apparently the Sky Is Falling Crowd is better at baseless accusations and fear mongering than dealing with actual facts. I bet if we had turned off those lights for a green initiative, we would've been praised from coast to coast.

Either way, the lights are back and I'm glad for that. Even if the crime didn't skyrocket in the dark, the city does look better illuminated. Now all the visitors to our city will be able to see both the beautiful natural scenery as well as the smug look on all our faces that we have from proving our noisy detractors wrong.

Day or night.

Arizona

2011-01-11T21:40:00.003-07:00

Good to see the national media and Democratic Party aren't letting a tragedy go to waste.

It's been a couple days since that lunatic starting shooting up a meet and greet and liberals have continued to somehow try and paint this marijuana currency advocate, mind control believer, skull shrine worshipper as some kind of tea party nut. I don't recall Reagan or Milton Friedman pushing to give up the gold standard for the green standard.

This is of course absurd, this guy is just crazy, not partisan. Even if he was though, heated political debate doesn't drive people to kill. We know this because if hate speech caused killings then liberals would have instigated a genocide with all of their evil rhetoric about conservatives and President Bush for the last 10 years.

All of this blame has turned into the nanny staters trotting out all the gun statistics that show that the US has more gun related deaths than other countries. They must have pulled that from the Big Book of Obvious Stats. More people, more guns, close to Mexico = more gun deaths. I would point out that other parts of the world do far more killing without guns than we do with them. I'm pretty sure Rwanda killed a million people by hacking them to death with machetes.

All of that misses the point though. The only issue is whether or not we should give up more rights to the government in exchange for a sliver more security. The answer is no. Will this result in more deaths? Probably. I'm betting there aren't many gun related deaths in North Korea. At least that don't involve the government. Freedom is a risky proposition in some ways. The same freedom that sane people use to achieve the highest levels of excellence can also be exploited by nuts to kill innocent people. Unfortunately, you can't just restrict the freedom of the nuts, they often don't expose themselves until the shots are fired. Liberals can only restrict everyone in hopes that it'll catch the kooks. Nor can liberals claim this is some isolated case where the government needs to regulate something for the common good. Liberals advocate government regulation of everything. It's gun control now but rest assured, once they get that under wraps they'll find another freedom people enjoy and take that away too. It's just what they do.

By giving the people a wide array of freedoms you do run the risk of these types of incident but they are rare. When you give too much power to governments it always ends in disaster. Knowing, despite the best efforts of liberals, that you can't legislate away death, I say society should just take their chances with the public at large. I'd rather take my chances against a random loon than an institutionalized totalitarian state any day.

History Illuminated

2011-01-11T15:16:00.002-07:00

I certainly hope that Colts coach Jim Caldwell is a student of history.

Not ancient history either, just recent history. As in the Oakland Raiders of the early 2000's. If he looks closely, he'll see a close image of his own team.

Not a good thing.

Those Raiders had been built into a title contender by John Gruden, mostly because Rich Gannon was playing at MVP level. Just like Tony Dungy built up a championship team with Peyton Manning.

The year following Gruden's departure, first year head coach Bill Callahan leads the Raiders to the Super Bowl and loses. Just like first year coach Caldwell led the Colts to a Super Bowl and lost in his first year.

In Callahan's second year, NFL MVP Gannon breaks his neck and ends his career. The aging team plummets to the bottom of the league and would remain there for a decade. Almost like the Colts. This years Colts team was really old and awful and only won the games it did because of Manning. Had Manning gotten hurt like Gannon did, there is no doubt that the Colts were a 2-14 team.

Most troubling for Caldwell is that after the Raiders plunged into craptitude, Al Davis realized that Callahan wasn't a good head coach and that he only got to the SB because Gruden left so much behind. Davis promptly fired him. I don't know what the Colts owner sees, or doesn't see, in Caldwell but Manning is nearing the end of his time as the dominant NFL QB, even if he didn't get hurt. Given the Colts rapidly closing window of contention, if Irsay gets it in his head that Caldwell is just riding on Dungy's fumes, then his tenure could follow the same two year arc that Callahan's did.

A Curious Book Review

2011-01-08T23:48:00.003-07:00

***contains spoilers for A Brave New World***

Having recently finished Aldous Huxley's classic A Brave New World, I find myself liking the book quite a bit but am bothered by one facet of the work that gnaws at my mind.

Upon reflection, I'm not sure that John the Savage was worthy as a character to carry the message of individual dignity and liberty in the face of The World State. To quickly summarize John, he was an 18 year old who was born on an Indian reservation in New Mexico after his mother, a World State resident, was stranded their on vacation and presumed dead. Discovered by the vacationing Bernard and Lenina, John and his mother are brought back to London and the World State.

Almost immediately John reacts negatively against the World State's lack of personal nobility, struggle, achievement and dignity. He correctly notes that by removing art, science, religion, curiosity, etc. from daily life, life itself has no real meaning. He himself yearns for the opportunity to overcome an obstacle, to prove himself worthy both to Lenina and to himself.

This is where the trouble lies for me. John, having been excluded from society when living with the Indians, hopes to be able to find self worth in London. After making some futile attempts to explain his way of thinking and the concept of liberty and dignity, John first tries to live like a hermit and punish himself in a deserted part of England, then, when he gets discovered flagellating himself, crowds of World Staters come to view and mock him in his ritual. One of these onlookers is Lenina, who despite the fact that she was sad and crying for John, whose presence sends John into a rage where he beats the living shit out of her which also triggers a blood orgy among the gathered crowd. The next day after John realizes what he did, he promptly kills himself. This causes two problems for me the reader.

PROBLEM ONE
John validates everything the World Staters think he is. He may talk eloquently about art, music, science, etc. and how they help man excel but when confronted with the scorn of the new world, John reacts with explosive emotion, beating Lenina on multiple occasions, antagonizing the more mindless of new world citizens and hiding in various places. The World Staters created their society to solve the very problems John was causing, i.e. explosive emotional reactions that lead to war and unhappiness. Rather than be the torchbearer of liberty, it's as if the character exists to prove the Controllers right.

PROBLEM TWO
John complains frequently about having a chance to be heroic, about having an obstacle to overcome. Yet, when confronted with the challenge of fighting the World State's lack of humanity, he chooses to kill himself after a relatively few setbacks. Being the student of Shakespeare he appears to be, he should realize how large a role perseverance and failure plays in ultimate success. Especially when you consider that he had already made some progress. Bernard and Helmholtz were already discovering the things John already knew. Lenina, in an infantile way, was feeling the same emotions (love) that he wanted her to feel, she just didn't know what to do with them. Finally, Mustapha Mond admitted to John that people who desire freedom and liberty are frequent occurrences in the World State and that they are simply removed from sight. There have been movements in real life that started with less foundation than that. It seems plausible that if John, not being banished to an island and still free to talk openly about his beliefs, was truly worthy of the hero status he sought, he could've at least fought in the face of all that adversity, especially with the child like love of Lenina so ready to be exploited. Instead, he killed himself, proving the Indians right in their assumptions that he wasn't worthy of their inclusions while simultaneously proving that the Controller's view that heroism only causes instability correct as well.

All together, the book is still a masterpiece of dystopian totalitarianism but the portrayal of John will always strike me as odd given how Huxley was trying to expose this communal/communistic lifestyle as a fraud. I'm sure more knowledgeable scholars than myself can try and find meaning in the subtext that explains John's failings. Perhaps his admission of failure and ultimate decision was the ultimate act of freedom in an oppressive world, I don't know. All I know is that if liberty, dignity and freedom are worthy enough that all people should be granted them unconditionally, then it seems that John should have been worthy enough to execute them as well.

Short Lived Euphoria

2011-01-06T19:59:00.003-07:00

Hurricane Al sure knows how to dampen a good time.

Mere days after the Raiders completed a demolition of the AFC West and completed their first non-losing season since 2002, Kim Jong Davis decides to can the only coach who has found a way to success since Jon Gruden roamed the sidelines.

Why would Al do such a thing? Tough to say. There is some rumour out there that Al has it in his head that he can somehow lure prettiest-girl-at-the-party Jim Harbaugh to Oakland. This seems to be delusional since Miami is poised to offer the moon for Jim while Big Al usually offers about $27/hr. plus partial benefits to his coaches. OC Hue Jackson seems like the logical choice to replace Cable but he's not under contract, is interviewing with the 49ers and isn't a sure thing anyway. God only knows what Al saw in an untested OC that made him dump Cable.

What exactly is plan C if both Harbaugh and Jackson head for greener pastures? Can't bring Cable back, that's for sure. Steve Sarkisian? Josh McDaniels? Perry Fewell? That's a frightening proposition. If that nightmare actually becomes reality, I say bring on the lockout.

Huxley Shrugged

2011-01-05T18:31:00.005-07:00

History is bunk indeed.

For years, distopian writers have made the connection between controlling history as a means to help dictate the past. Even Plato's Republic was based on the Noble Lie, which created a false history to justify a segregated, oppressive utopia. Most, if not all, dictatorships and totalitarians construct some kind of mythology that elevates themselves to all knowing leader for the good of the people. Kim Jong Il is probably the best example of this today. The neat thing about this trick is if you can keep it going long enough, everyone who knows better will die or be executed. Then all your society has is the lie upon which tyranny flourishes.

The Political Correctness Police the United States is hard at work facilitating this process as we speak. NewSouth Books is planning on releasing an "updated" version of Mark Twain's classic Huckleberry Finn where the many instances of the word n****r have been replaced with slave.

This is an atrocity. Only the PC, leftist cowards that populate good portions of the western world could look at Twain's honest portrayal of Southern culture in the 1850's, then look at themselves and decide that the book is what needs changing.

From a literary standpoint the change is ridiculous enough as the two words are not interchangeable. Slave is a specific condition in which a person could be in. It isn't tied to any race in particular and has universal meaning. N****r on the other hand is a social word that goes to portray the attitudes of Southern whites, whites in general maybe, towards African Americans. The word has a deeply rooted and debated history that continues today and applies uniquely to the situations depicted in the book. Replacing it with the super generic "slave" removes the depth and understanding of the mentality of America at that time.

Some dim witted media members have compared this to editing movies for television. This goes to show just how out of touch some people are. Historical books are really the only way we can get a clear picture of where this country was in the past. We need these accurate portrayals so we can accurately analyze the present and future. If all of the pasts classic books, and documents get sanitized so that they don't offend some 4th graders sissy parents, eventually people in this country will have no real scope about the trials and tribulations that this country has experienced in it's development. Hero's of past struggles will fade away into the homogeneity of a whitewashed history. American exceptionalism will cease to have any meaning at all and the Constitution, far older than Huck Finn, will be a curious historical writing instead of the greatest political document ever conceived. People will have no idea just how special their freedom is.

And to all of you talking heads comparing this to movie editing. You're right and wrong. It's much like editing movies for content but that doesn't make it ok. We shouldn't be censoring and chopping up movies either to dumb down and soften the reality of life to make it more palatable for 5 & 10 o'clock. The only reason it isn't as big a deal is that we have tons of digital content since the advent of film and video that will preserve for future generations. What do we have from the 17 & 1800's? Some books, some political documents and few pictures. That's it. TV shouldn't be censored either. The rarity that we see true 9/11 footage anymore is a crime. People see the smoke and they see the towers come down but that doesn't do that day any justice. The true horror in that day was the sights and sounds of people jumping from burning buildings to their deaths; the carnage strewn about Ground Zero when the buildings came down.

You don't hide things like this, you show them more. The world is a complicated and sometimes extremely violent place both now and in the past and certainly in the future. These PC crybaby's who claim to be doing this to save the innocent children are doing them the greatest disservice of their lives by pretending that the world isn't complex and evolving ecosystem that contains truly ugly times and people. You sheltering from the world just stunts their growth intellectually so that they become shocked when thrust into the cold light of reality. We as a people should have for more respect for our past and ourselves to let this kind of asinine historical modification take place. We're big boys and girls, we can handle the truth.

Bay City Rollin

2011-01-03T22:01:00.003-07:00

Week 17 of the NFL season was pretty much putrid in terms of quality of play. It's hard to fathom how New England and Pittsburgh managed to destroy their opponents while having absolutely no incentive to play the game. Lost in this sea of putrid viscera however, was the upbeat note the season ended on for four teams in proximity to the gentle waters, mostly but not entirely enclosed by land.

In Green Bay, near the aptly named Bay of Green Bay, the Packers did us all a national favor by beating the Bears. The possibility of both the horrible Giants and Seahawks in the playoffs would be too much to handle. As good a weekend as the Pack had, they are still an enigma. They could well be the best team in the NFC but they managed a win with a performance reminiscent of their loss to the Lions not the demolition of the Giants. They could also lose to the Eagles by 50, you never know with this team. Even still, for one Sunday, the Mettwurst was sliced freely by joyful (drunken) hands while cheap beer was swilled by all.

The Tampa Bay Buccaneers (who incidentally play under the moniker of the Bay itself not the city that the Bay is in located in, Tampa) managed to end a magical season by beating the Saints in a game that meant something to both teams. Some preseason projections had the Bucs being the worst team in the league, yet they finished with 10 wins and could easily have had 12 had they not choked away some winnable games. Their underdog success, rising star QB and Doogie Howserish head coach are enough to make you forget that their best RB is a world class asshole who's most famous for sucker punching another player on live TV then challenging the crowd to a fight. Even frequently troubled Bucs rookie WR Mike Williams think Blount was out of line. Maybe we didn't all forget.

Oakland, located in that blighted area of San Fransisco Bay known as East Bay, wrapped up a confounding resurrection to respectability by sweeping the AFC West, going 2-2 in the NFC West and 0-6 against everyone else. How nice it is for all us Silver and Blackers that the bulk of Raider wins came against hated foes, demolishing the Broncos twice, costing the Chiefs the 3 seed in the playoffs and breaking the decade long string of futility against the Chargers. Add to that the long awaited dominance of Darren McFadden, the lusted after departure from the JaMarcus Era and everything tastes a little sweeter today. Even Tom Cable made it through Black Monday with a job. Everyone rejoice!

Even the much roiled San Fransisco 49ers, inhabitants of the shining, parade loving West Bay, had reason to celebrate. The interm head coach, whose name I can't remember and don't want to google, won his first and probably only game as head coach. Why should anyone care? This guy was literally living out of his car for a chance to volunteer to coach. Volunteer! And this wasn't Keifer Sutherland living out of his Ferrari while it was parked on his dad's estate, this guy was a vagrant, through and through. When asked why he would do that all he said was "I love football and I love to coach." The meek may inherit the Earth but the passionately persistent can evidently climb the ladder to the top of Bill Walsh's team. Feel good all around for a team that was a mess all year.

Easy There Icarus

2010-12-15T22:54:00.002-07:00

I think all of Boston needs to cool down a tad in the aftermath of the big Adrian Gonzalez and Carl Crawford signings. Are they really that impressive?

Gonzalez could be but he's been playing in a zero pressure environment in what is essentially a quadruple A baseball. It vaguely reminds me of the Giambi signing by the Yankees. He may hit a lot of homers but I seriously doubt he goes into the pantheon of hitters. They didn't sign Pujols.

Crawford is also an above average player but should the Yankees care much that he plays for Boston? They've had to deal with him for years in TB, when he was in a better lineup. His biggest attribute is wrecking the base paths but Posada can't throw anybody out, fast or slow.

Let's break down the team and see if we can pencil in a 100 wins a World Series trip:

OF- Ellsbury, Crawford and Drew. Good defensively, fast, not tons of power, nobody that scares you at the plate. I'm still not sure Ellsbury doesn't suck out loud.

IF-Gonzalez, Youk, Scutaro and Pedroia. pretty good, not great. Scutaro sucks, Pedroia is ok but injury prone and ripe for flash in the pan status. Gonzo should love the short porch in right and Youk has seen better days. Put it this way, would you rather have these four or A-Rod, Jeter, Cano and Tex?

C-Holy god, Saltalamacchia and Varitek. Neither one should be starting in the AL.

SP-Lester and Buchholz are solid but Beckett, Dice-K and Lackey are serious question marks. lackey would love to be a question mark instead of washed up.

RP-Thank god they didn't trade Papelbon! Otherwise the far superior Bard would have been closing games and been unhittable. Paps gives everyone a chance.

DH-Did Ortiz get those "Dominican Vitamins" in the mail yet? Seriously.

Overall, the Red Sox should be really good but you'd think Dunkin Donuts was having a 2 for 1 sale with how excited Bostonians are. Lets not forget that it's the same team that finished third in the AL East with a faster outfielder and more power at first. That's an upgrade but that O is still weak and one injury puts them right back into the pathetic mode they were in last year.

Meh & Double Meh

2010-12-15T22:48:00.005-07:00

I'm actually kind of glad that the Yankees didn't sign Cliff Lee.

Signing a 33 yr. old pitcher for seven years is an iffy proposition. After all, lee has only had 3 real good years and a couple horrific ones. Last year, he lost 2 games in the World Series and was generally hittable by everyone except the Yankees. Why pay 138 million for a guy who's 2 years away from being Andy Pettitte?

Furthermore, the Yankees are old. Real old. At some point they need to try and get some exciting young blood in there. Zack Greinke fits that bill but I'm not sure they should trade a real catching prospect for a guy who was being treated for personality disorders in Kansas City. I'm guessing there might be a wee bit more pressure in the Bronx than there was in KC. Guy might just have a Charles Whitman-esque breakdown and start picking people off from Monument Park.

Besides, do you really want a guy on your team that is "really excited" to be going to Philadelphia? No way.

Reason #1,287,043

2010-12-15T22:30:00.003-07:00

As if we needed any more proof that the West's philanthropic efforts in Africa go largely unrewarded, Sudan rounded up a bunch of women protesting the government.

Arresting protesters and limiting free speech is bad enough but the fact that they were protesting the very public flogging of a woman being punished for wearing pants is far worse.
Gotta love that sharia law. Feel free to read up here then take a rape shower.

How long do we continue this charade regarding Africa? Rather than actually try and correct the political, social and economic problems they have over there, we just keep dropping off bags of food and mosquito nets.

Thank god everybody is well fed and malaria free. Can you imagine how hard it is to rape and ethnic cleanse without three solid a day? Rough sledding.

We need to stop this middle of the road nonsense and go to one of the extremes. Option one would be to just do nothing and let this mix of poverty, ignorance and intolerance destroy itself. That may sound extreme but it would be extremely effective and cheap. The second path would be to organize a massive, UN approved, world wide participated military campaign to go in, clean out (kill) all of the people who think wearing pants is a floggable offense for women. Or anyone who thinks public flogging is a good idea. We should do a similar thing here, incidentally. Whenever they do a Turn in Your Guns for Raider Tickets event, they should just arrest everyone who shows up.

Whatever way we pick would be sufficient. All the world is doing now by dropping off food and medicine but no security is making sure that the rapists and death squads have an extra spring in their step. No need to continue down that path.

Politically Nuts and Retard Strong

2010-12-08T22:10:00.002-07:00

Thank god we have lame duck Congressional sessions. Otherwise we wouldn't get to witness the spectacle taking place now.

It's been amusing to watch the reaction to the supposed "compromise" on the tax rates that has been revealed this week. Republicans are in danger of dislocating some elbows if they keep patting themselves on the back. I'm sure they hope no one notices that all they achieved was keeping income taxes level for the next 2 years while agreeing to only a 35% increase in the death tax and another extension of government sponsored vacation time. Maybe once all the conservatives who won elections this year get to Congress, we can talk about more tax cuts and an across the board slashing of the budget. Dreams do occasionally happen.

Liberals have gone absolutely bat shit loco, proving themselves to be liars and hypocrites in the process. I realize that sticking it to small business owners and relatively successful people is a liberal tradition but is it really worth all this strife? Besides, after screwing people with money, the second most popular liberal pastime is getting people on/keeping people on welfare. With another extension some people will be able to be on government sponsored sabbatical for nearly three years. After that long not working, I'm sure their brains will just be mushy enough to vote democrat. I think more liberals need to focus on the death tax. If they were honest enough to admit/intelligent enough to understand, they would realize that the death tax is the pinnacle of liberal belief. Multiple taxation! The money is taxed when it's first earned, then numerous times as it's invested routinely in the process of wealth creation, then one more big tax just because you happen to die before you could blow it all in Vegas on working girls and buffets. The same dollars are taxed a minimum of 3 times and possibly many more. Liberals rejoice!

Either way, we have been told that the best thing to come from this tax plan was that it would stabilize the economy as people and business owners would know what to expect. After being given this dose of political Xanex, it's believed that business may try and grow finally as they can make some reasonable plans for the future. This growth would conceivably help the fed start to dig out of its massive debt-hole, as low taxes increase government receipts.

How did liberals in Congress decide to celebrate this nerve calming, responsibility restoring move? By trying to pass the DREAM Act baby! Yeah!

What is the DREAM Act, you ask? Simple. If you're an illegal alien (or de facto Americans as leftists now call them) and you volunteer for the military or enroll in college, you get a clear path to citizenship. Leftists somehow claim this isn't amnesty. This is laughable since their are schools out there (and there will be more is this passes) that anybody with a credit card can get into. And really, how expensive is one class? Especially with all the minority scholarships and student aid available, there is going to be a flood of illegals entering diploma factories if this takes effect. If this bill covers junior colleges we might as well just grant amnesty immediately and save the farce of going to school, most JC's are glorified High Schools, the 13th grade.

Just as a side bar, with all this focus on getting illegals into school, there must be some provision to learn English right? Nope. I guess speaking English isn't needed for attending college in the United States. Awesome.

Back to Congress. It's nice of them to show exactly why we are in financial Armageddon. The biggest reason we're broke is entitlement programs. After reaching a deal that will save people money through income tax rates but that doesn't fundamentally alter the entitlement payout to collection ratio, Congress immediately tries to pass a bill to allow millions of new people to take advantage of American entitlement programs. Brilliant. Why not just lower the retirement age to 50 and up the MediCaid threshold to families making less than $ 200,000. Clearly Congressional liberals (and 8 Republicans, including Delaware "moderate" Mike Castle) didn't get the message during the election. Hopefully the Senate was listening more clearly.

Maybe when the new Congress gets sworn in, we can pass a bill doing away with lame duck sessions altogether.

Ditch the Bucket, Grab A Lifejacket

2010-11-30T20:31:00.003-07:00

The Good Ship Lolly-Bron is a sinkin in Miami.

The Heat are only 9-8, Wade has sucked all year, non-hype machine roll players like Udonis Haslem and Mike Miller are hurt, Juwan Howard got himself into a fight against the horrible Wizards and LeBron is bumping into the coach all over the place while his crew let it be known how unhappy Bron-Bron is with Coach Spolestra.

Right, like the Coach had anything to do with this debacle. This abortion was orchestrated by Wade, approved by LeBron and date raped by Chris Bosh. Everyone seemed to think that the Heat would be able to outscore everybody and that their nonexistent inside game and defense wouldn't be an issue. Actually, calling any defense that features Joel Anthony in the middle is worse than nonexistent. It's actually worse than just playing with only four guys.

While everyone saw the frontline as being junior college level, nobody saw Dwayne Wade turning into a matador. He's been getting torched all year by scrubs. The only way you can cover up Joel Anthony is to keep guys from getting to the paint. So far, the Miami paint has been more crowded than the Gold Club on two-for-one night. Easier to score in too.

All of this might not be a problem except that Wade and LeBron can't play together. Everybody thinks that trading Bosh is the way to go to get things back on track but that doesn't help the Wade/Bron problem. What they need to do is see if they can turn Wade into an Anderson Varejo type player. Hell, Cleveland might even take Wade for Varejo and Williams. Wouldn't that be ironic.

Miami is going to have to do something quick because LeBron's tit bump of the Coach was just a shot across the bow of the organization. The days of the Do Anything for the Team/Organization LeBron are gone. He's gone full heel, sacrificed his reputation and historical legacy. He's not interested in being a team player. If he's going to not be winning a championship (or seven) then he's going to want to be a stat machine and own that team. Coach Spo was just the first guy to be thrown overboard the Good Ship. Next comes Wade, blaming injuries, the media and finally Riley.

Should be good times for the rest of us, especially if you live in Los Angeles, Boston or Orlando.

More Fake Outrage

2010-11-29T22:42:00.003-07:00

Liberals are in a mighty uproar these days about the WikiLeaks document dump releasing memos that are embarrassing to Obama and his minions.

The response has been nothing short of ridiculous as many Congressmen have called for criminal charges to be brought against the website or even to have them be labeled a "Terrorist Organization". Clearly we've lost sight of what terrorism is. Good to know that the Saudi's want us to bomb Iran and that the Communist Chinese are terrified of Pelosi's economic plan. Now I agree with the Saudi royal family and the Red China Politburo. Only in Obama's America. I'm officially in a cold sweat.

One guy who isn't sweating the release is free swinging Italian leader Silvio Burlesconi. All the release did was alert the world that the 70 year old media billionaire likes to hire the upper crust of hookers to throw lavish sex parties glorifying himself. I think the Italian Constitution institutes you King for Life if the world collectively recognizes you as orgy throwing king of industry.

Anyway, liberals have no reason to be upset about this as they are the ones who paved the road for this. We all remember the Pentagon Papers, yes? That was certainly an intel leak of larger proportions. The leaks about Gitmo, CIA black cites or anything against Bush? Yes we all remember those. Attacks organized by the left, leaking sensitive intel for the sole purpose of hurting Republicans. Now you want to cry foul because your getting bit by your own snake? Tough. You made this bed, now you can lie in it.

Just make sure Burlesconi isn't around.

Peace, Love and Holy Sh*t!

2010-11-19T15:52:00.003-07:00

Long time hippie legend and one time Dylan love receptacle Joan Baez has made her way into the news again.

It had been a while since I had heard anything from the former Blowin in the Winder and I had assumed she had mosied on up to heaven to check the environmental protection reports in Paradise. Apparently, she's still here on our glorious blue marble trying her best to get me to do a spit take on my keyboard at work.

It seems as if Mrs. Baez has spent the time since her 60's heyday and the present whipping together a masterful, wall-less treehouse, 20 plus feet above the ground somewhere on her property. Why wall-less you would ask? So she can sleep with "real birds" of course.

While I can appreciate the allure of sleeping with nature sounds (I myself enjoy a soothing wave machine) I must question the architectural and psychological decision to build something that high off the ground without walls, if it was to be slept in. Nevertheless, I'm not rich, have never done acid and don't much give a crap about communing with nature so perhaps I'm not in the right to judge how a person chooses to show their love of the great outdoors.

Sadly, nature herself chose not to reciprocate that love today.

It seems that Mrs. Baez was up in her Walden-esque hideaway, attempting to soak in the great outdoors when she somehow managed to fall from her perch where only the ground, as cold and as hard as only a callous lover can be, greeted her with a thud, causing minor injuries.

Thankfully, she seems to have made it out without any major pain. Not a bad feat for a 69 year old whose ridden some hard miles. The fact that she didn't hurt herself also takes a story from potentially tragic to absolutely hysterical. You would think that a person so committed to the environment might generate a little good will from Mother Earth. Those big ravens from Dumbo should've been around to catch her on the descent. Maybe the grass could've grown a bit plusher. Maybe the Irony Gods just wouldn't allow it.

Sadly, I'm sure the tumultuous fall gathered as much notice by the Earth as a duck feather landing on an elephant. Let not there be a lesson lost however. All you young hippies in California should take notice at this possible calamity. You can commune with squirrels as easy as you can birds. Lets build those tree forts a little closer to the ground next time or were going to have send the Agriculture Departments Rural Development squad out there to write you people up.

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

2010-11-18T21:39:00.003-07:00

I hope when the baseball takes its place next to boxing and horse racing as historical national pastimes that whoever writes the obituary mentions how sabermetrics and moneyball helped speed the process along.

Felix Hernandez won the AL Cy Young Award today despite have -3 wins for a terrible Mariners team. Stat geeks crowed with pride about how the most useless of stats, wins, was finally overlooked in favor of their geek ball stats, such as xwins. They claimed that such a thing would never have happened in the 80's as the voters focused on wins and meaningful games pitched.

Before I trash sabermetrics in general, let me take on the idea of King Felix's win. He absolutely deserved it and everyone, everyone, knows it. The infuriating part is that you don't need sabermetrics to know it. All of the conventional stats show he was dominant and his run support explained the wins. And, should that fail, you could trust your own lying eyes, which made it plain as day that Felix dominated every time out while CC Sabathia was lucky to get his fat ass through 6 innings most nights and that David Price was extremely hittable. If the writers back in the 80's wouldn't have noticed that then that's a condemnation of them and their stupidity and laziness. Don't try and use the shortcoming of your journalistic forefathers to justify your love of useless statistics.

This is the basic problem with these geeks though, they need a number to tell them what anybody who knows the sport can see with their own eyes. Sometimes the numbers can also be used to try and convince themselves that what they see isn't what they see. Take this years Yankees. Once again, the stat heads like to use tons of pie charts and Venn diagrams to prove that Jeter isn't a very good defensive shortstop. Anybody who saw him moving around like a chilled corpse could've told you that. There are a number of stats that show how badly Jorge Posada is defensively and is now falling apart offensively as well. We all know that anyway since when Francisco Cervelli was behind the plate, teams magically didn't steal every base in sight and AJ Burnett was even able to locate the plate from time to time. What is A-Rod's VORP (Value Over Replacement Player)? Since the replacement player is Roberto Pena, I'm gonna say "a shitload". Want examples of advanced stats deluding the mind? Look no further than Nick Johnson and Javy Vassquez. Cashman was enamored with the idea of putting Johnsons ridiculously high OBP. Which would've been fine except everybody on earth knew that his one year of relative health was a fluke and that he'd spend 100 games on the DL. And he did. Javy Vasquez had himself a comeback of sorts by pitching in the pitcher friendly NL in the super crappy NL East. All the numbers looked like he could be a decent #3 or 4 and at least chew up innings. Luckily, the Yanks already had Javy for a few years and saw first hand that he was a mental midget and couldn't handle the pressure of playing in NY. Surely this first hand experience would deter them from such a stupid move. Nope, they loved the numbers and signed him anyway and history repeated itself. He couldn't even get any playoff innings. I guess there isn't a stat yet for being a mental case.

Basically, only two kinds of people need sabermetrics. The first one is people who don't really follow the sport, haven't played it, but are for some reason (fantasy league, journalist) need to find a way to develop an opinion. Fine, let the babies have their bottle. The second type of person is the worst though. These are the people, mostly in the media, who have been watching the sport for years, know the history, played it at some point in their life and are very familiar with every aspect of the game. These people use sabermetrics for one of two reasons. The first reason is that they are out of things to write/talk about and they use these goofy stats to try and stay relevant. Bush league. The second reason is that they're cowards. For whatever reason, they are so insecure about developing, expressing and defending an opinion about a player/team based solely on what their very capable eyes and traditional stats tell them, that have to try and invent all these convoluted stats to lend an aura of legitimacy to their opinions. They can bank on the fact that if they are in some kind of debate and start referencing VORP, PECOTA, PW/BFW or UZR, that whoever they are talking to will probably concede the point since the don't have their formula sheet and abacus handy.

The whole thing is a cop out. I know Sergio Mitre sucks because he sucks every time I turn the game on. I know A-Rod is better than Roberto Pena because he's clearly better every time I turn the game on. They only way these stats might be helpful is if you're trying to differentiate between two guys that suck. Comparing John Buck with Ronny Paulino or something like that. Is all this math really worth it for that? if that decision is vital to a team, they aren't making the playoffs anyway. It's time for all you stat geeks to grow up, grow a pair and stop trying to take the easy way out when it comes to forming an opinion. Do the hard work yourself and watch the games or don't get involved in the process at all. If people like you get any more sway, we won't even need to play the games anymore, we can just simulate them through a supercomputer in Bristol. That'll be exciting.

Focus On Next Year

2010-11-17T22:36:00.003-07:00

It's just about time for us to initiate the mercy rule, call this game and get ready for camp next year because Al Qaeda has officially clinched this one.

The Mighty Obama Justice Department finally got a chance to flex it's muscles in court and prove once and for all that civilian trials of terrorists would ensure a satisfying justice for the American people. All summer during the KSM trial/tribunal debate we heard from Obama and his lackey Eric Holder how trials for terrorists were slam dunk affairs, Obama even opined that KSM would be executed. They call the idea of military tribunals unAmerican and provocative. Clearly the good people in Justice have been working hard on these cases since they haven't been prosecuting any illegal immigration or voting suppression cases. What could possibly go wrong when the might of the American legal system sets out to get one crummy terrorist the chair or life in prison?

Well, if your Ahmed Ghailani, you can get yourself acquitted of over 280 counts of murder and murder conspiracy and only get convicted of one count of non-murderous conspiracy. Sentence? 20 to life. Who are we kidding. This guy is going to be a non-violent offender in the American penal system. He's not serving life and we'll be lucky if he stays in the hole for 20. He'll probably get 10 years in the clink, 10 on probation/work release.

I'm sure Obama and Holder can somehow explain to the families of the 224 people killed in the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania why this terrorist sociopath has a good chance of breathing free air while he still has meaningful life to live (he's only 36). Maybe they can explain how getting embarrassed by this guy improves our national image to the world community.

Maybe after they get done consoling the shocked and devastated families why the guy who helped plan and execute a plot to blow their family to pieces is not a footnote to history they can start explaining why they themselves are to blame for this outcome. After all, the only reason this guy gets the golden ticket is because the judge disallowed some witnesses because they were held in facilities where waterboarding took place. You remember waterboarding, the non-torture torture? The tactic that is so harsh that Christopher Hitchens asked to have it done to him a second time because he was embarrassed by his poor showing the first time he was waterboarded while researching a story? Yeah, that's the reason this guy is free. Liberals tried so hard to get Bush arrested for war crimes that they made up this idea that waterboarding is torture just to undermine him, now that same rationale is going to be used to free or reduce the punishment for Al Qaeda members.

Should any of you liberals still try and remove your guilt in this matter by still holding on to the idea that waterboarding is torture, just remember ol Chris Hitchens asking for a second go around. I'm pretty sure if someone ripped out his fingernail, raped him or threw acid in his wife's face, he wouldn't ask for a second go around to try and restore some of his manly image. You don't ask for mulligans in torture, ever. Maybe then you can properly contemplate the disastrous consequences of your actions.

Blight of the Irish

2010-11-16T22:36:00.003-07:00

After a short period of false hope, it turns out the Greeks were lying, the Irish were about to start lying and Portugal and Spain and trying to figure out what lie they can tell in the coming months.

This is of course in reference to the collapse of the European Union, the Euro and the restoration of bailout fever.

It seems as if the Irish have managed to bankrupt their country by buying up tons of troubled banks when they had no money. Turns out after you buy bad banks, they remain bad banks. This was good news for the Greeks who had to admit (for the second or third time now) that their debt projections are massively flawed and that they are in fact, even more in debt than was originally known or planned for. The Greeks did a nice job of sneaking their own incompetent accounting announcement in behind the Irish admission that they were in it up to their necks. Took some of the heat off. This was not so good news for Portugal and Spain, who now have to flip a coin to see who goes bankrupt next.

A reasonable person would see these developments as proof that the collective bailout model that the EU has been trying to force everyone into isn't a feasible course of action to take. Germany has recognized this and rather than throw all their money into a deep, dark pit, they have tried to force the deadbeat EU members to actually improve their budgets or get cut off from German money. Why should the Germans be punished for keeping a sound house, after all.

This predictably has enraged other EU nations who have accused the Germans of being selfish and focused only on saving their own economy. Gee, why would the German chancellor be more interested in saving Germans that Greeks, Irish or Spanish? Science may one day crack that mystery.

What this scenario does is once again put on display the problem with social welfare programs, which is what the EU is, no doubt about it. In any welfare arrangement you have two parties, the guys with the money and the guys without the money. The idea being that if the guy with the money helps out the guy without, eventually the guy without money will be able to get the ball rolling on some kind of path to independence. This is a lovely fairy tale but a fairy tale nonetheless because the hoped for transition is impossible the way these programs, the EU included, are constructed.

To get the welfare money, the guy without (in this case Greece or Ireland) must simply promise to alter a behavior that has led to their demise. The problem is that there is never any enforcement mechanism that is actually enforced. Sure, the EU had debt limits that were supposed to be adhered to but the Greeks lied to the EU, cooked the books and went straight into destitution. Were they punished? Nope, they were given a big stack of money and forced to make more worthless promises, which we now know were more lies. This is a good deal for the guy without money. He only has to promise to change, not actually change and he still gets all the money he was promised even in the face of flat out criminal behavior. Their is no incentive for the guy with no money to change the scenario and every reason for him to fight to maintain the status quo.

And what of the guy with money, in this case Germany (or France, or the Netherlands, etc.)? First of all, they never really have as much money as they say, just a fact of life that money flows out faster than you think and that government projections are notoriously rosy. The big problem is that from their end, welfare money isn't just wasted, it's actually becomes an exponential negative investment. In the simplest terms possible, what Germany has been doing is buying poverty. Wise investors like to buy assets that will increase in value over time. Property, cars, art, gold, stocks, etc. are all bought with the idea that when you want to sell them, they will be worth more than when you bought them. The difference between the price you paid and the price you sell is profit. Simple. If prices deflate for some reason and you can only sell for less than you paid, you either have to keep the asset or take a loss. Again, simple. So what is Germany buying in bailing out the Greeks and probably Irish? Just poverty. The best case scenario results in these countries becoming self sufficient. Even in that case, Germany will never get paid back the money they loaned. No country ever does. This makes the best case scenario a total loss for Germany.

Far more likely (and what is actually happening) is that the guy with money has to take an accelerated loss. Since the guy with no money isn't trying to become self sufficient (why should he when you pay for everything?) the guy with money's obligation to that country only increases because they have pledged financial support until the recipient becomes self sufficient. This never happens. What happens is that the country lending the money simply goes broke, then joins with the original country looking for a bailout of their own. You paying attention France? After all, if Germany goes broke trying to help Greece, don't they deserve bailouts more than anyone? The cycle never ends. Making matters worse is that no matter how many bailouts there are, there still isn't any tangible assets to be had. The guy who buys cars, stocks, etc. always has the option of keeping his assets and waiting for a brighter day. This isn't so bad, even if you can't sell them at least you have some houses or a couple Lambo's in the garage. What does Germany have to hold onto for a better day? Greek poverty? Given the rules in place, that's an investment that will never see a brighter day. Germany would be better of burning Euro's for heat than investing in bailouts. At least you would gain the warmth and then end the transaction rather than adopt a ward of the State that does nothing but ungratefully devour money.

What the EU is learning, far to slowly, is that any situation where the poor bleed the rich for nothing in return only ends with everybody being poor. It's like having a massive tapeworm in your stomach. Even if you want to help the tapeworm, have no grudge against the tapeworm and are willing to try and eat enough for both of you, eventually that tapeworm will strip you of the resources you need to survive leaving both of you helpless or dead. The only way this scenario can be corrected is to either get something tangible for the money you invest; or to simply disengage yourself from the process altogether. Germany is trying to institute option A by forcing the Greeks, etc. to stiffer rules for bailout money. If the rest of the EU balks to loudly at the one country with the money to help them, I suspect Germany will move to option B and close the bank doors. Germans will be fine but all the European tapeworms will be in a serious bind.

Miami Lukewarm's

2010-11-11T22:28:00.003-07:00

Nine games into the NBA season and it's clear that the Miami Heat's recording breaking, seven title run is going to be a tough task. Breakdown!

Point Guard - Carlos Arroyo would be bad as your sixth/seventh man but if he's starting, I don't think you can win a title. After all Wade, Bron and Bosh need somebody to flow the offense. Otherwise it's way out of sync and hard for more than one guy to get involved. It looks like an international game when the US team never practiced together before the tournament started. In tonight's game, Bron goes off and D-Wade disappears.

Center - Joel Anthony. I hadn't heard of him until Miami signed him. He can't be playing meaningful minutes on any serious team. Sucks on offence, soft as Jell-O on defense. Serves no purpose other than to eat up space.

Chris Bosh - Had a pretty decent night tonight on offense but was awful on defense. You might be able to get away with this on certain teams (Nowitzki's Mav's, Stoudamire's Suns) but not when Joel Anthony is at C. This leaves the frontcourt nearly unguarded and completely outmanned on the glass. LeBron can be a lock down defender but he can't guard the whole baseline, especially when Arroyo is getting torched by opposing PG's off the dribble. Easy baskets abound. Bosh needs to do more than 15 and 7 to justify his matador D.

Chemistry - As of right now, LeBron and Wade can't play well together, especially without a real PG directing traffic. They can only really make shot opportunities for themselves, so when they try and get in the game, it has to come at the expense of the other. When one of them goes out, the team play gets far crisper. They should do line shifts like a hockey team.

Grit - Nobody on this team has any toughness. Maybe Udonis but he's a 6-7 PF who doesn't scare anybody. James, Wade and Bosh all lack any kind of rough edge. When you hear LeBron talking about how they need to be chippy, that's the sign that he can't do it. You never heard Laimbeer, Rambis, McHale or KG talking about the need to be "a little chippy" they just clotheslined people. I'm not sure other elite teams are afraid of or respect Miami at all right now.

Coaching - I didn't understand why Cleveland ran a slow offense when they had LeBron and I really don't get why Miami runs a slow O either. When you have skill guys like Wade and James who work best in open spaces and a guy like Bosh who only works at all in an up tempo game where he can focus on offense and not play so much half court D, you have to push it up the court every possession. Miami put themselves in this hole by signing human statute Ilgauskas, marginal Haslem, a washed up Eddie House and a PG who can't start or run the break. So far the result has been 2 losses to Boston where they trailed by 20.

I'm not sure what Miami can do to solve these problems. I don't think there's any way they can admit defeat and trade Bosh for size and rebounding and there isn't a pass oriented PG out there who can play any D. The only guards out there are Allen Iverson types who choke the life out of the ball, not what Miami needs. The Heat are still going to have a really good regular season record because James and Wade will feast on the plethora of awful teams in the NBA but come playoff time they won't be able hide these deficiencies, especially the horrendous D. Boston isn't exactly an offensive juggernaut and they dropped 112 on them tonight. On the road. Yikes. Miami reminds me of the Seattle Mariners in the late 90's. Good enough to win 90-100 games because they feasted on bad teams in the west but they always got trounded by the Yankees or Red Sox because they weren't dominant in any one area. Unless Wade or James really changes their game and become a magic-esque point guard/forward, I don't see how they get into the finals. They'll be like Orlando last year, sweep the hapless Atlanta Hawks then get outclassed by Boston.

FUN FACTS! - Here are some fun stat lines from tonights game(amazing it was even close):

Joel Anthony - 8 min, 0 pts., 0 reb., 0 ast., 1 pf. This guy was the starting C.

Carlos Arroyo - 10 min., 4 pts., 0 everything else. That includes assists. This guy started at PG.

D-Wade - 40 min.(!), 8 pts., 1 reb., 3 asts. James went off, so he couldn't.

Haslem - 33 min., 21 pts., 10 reb. Udonis can't be counted on to play 33 min at C. He's 6-8. KG, Dwight Howard, Big Baby will eat him up.

Z - 19 minutes, 6 pts., 6 rebs. There isn't a stat to quantify horrible D but if Z is in for 19 minutes and only giving you 6 & 6, you're screwed.

Eddie House - 13 pts., 0 asts. No assists for either PG. Nice. Rondo had 16.

Mario Chalmers - The supposed next Rondo played 5 min and racked up 1 whole rebound.

Brilliant

2010-11-09T21:20:00.003-07:00

Only the New York Times could really be this dense.

They've put out a story detailing test scores compared along racial lines showing that only 12% of black boys in 4th & 8th grade could read compared to 38% & 44% for whites.

More troubling to the Times was the fact that income didn't play a large factor in the scores as poor white boys scored as well as the wealthiest black boys. The Times is then forced to come to:

SHOCKING CONCLUSION #1 - Cultural factors such as parenting tactics play a far larger role in determining academic success than economic factors do.

What a shock! You mean if parents don't care about school or academic success then their kids won't either? Who could've guessed that? Oh yeah, everybody who isn't an NEA member.

Aside from the fact that the NY Times seems blindsided about the importance of home life, they also completely miss the most relevant part of the story.

Only 44% of 8th grade whites can read and that's the high water mark for comparison? 44%! That's absolutely absurd! Yes there's a cultural divide between white and black kids in how they respond to education but having only 44% of 8th graders being able to read is despicable even if was 44% of the entire population.

What the Times fails to note is that the entire education system (Big Education) is failing everybody. Comparing the horrible scores of blacks to the horrible scores of whites is like comparing deer shit to bear shit. Sure, one's more impressive but they're both shit. Thankfully the Times has zeroed in on the biggest factor, parenting. Kids who do poorly in school generally have parents who don't care if they do well or not. Combine that with Union driven education policies designed to maintain the status quo, rampant waste of money and you've got the recipe for disaster.

All isn't bleak though, if a left-wing rag like the NY Times can look past their preconceived economic biases and see the failings of the family in education, then anything is possible.

Poppers For Everyone!

2010-11-09T19:02:00.004-07:00

Now that the election is over we can all finally get back to our ridiculous debate over gay marriage.

Should it be legal, not, the same in every state or not, etc., etc.

It's all such a cluster F of hysteria that nobody can see the simplest answer of them all.

Should the government issue marriage licenses to gay couples? Of course not. They shouldn't be issued to any couples, gay or straight.

After all, marriage existed before government, it can manage just fine without it. Marriage was first a religious/societal institution that was mainly used to try and add some order and stability to society. It was a preexisting institution before the government latched onto it.

And why would the government latch onto marriage as it has and tried to regulate it?

REASON ONE: MONEY!
This is really a simple reason. Any activity that people get engaged in the government will try and regulate it for profit. When I got married the license cost $20. I'm sure some states are more, some less but no matter how you look at it, all those $20 licenses generate tons of money for the State. As does filing for divorce, divorce proceedings, premarriage blood tests, etc.

REASON TWO: PAPERWORK AND CONTROL
Marriage certificates are a great one stop shop for governmental information. It is the first piece in a long and convoluted paper trail that the government can use to keep track of what your up too. After all, the marriage license has your legal names and you need some sort of government issued ID to get one. Getting a marriage license funnels you into different tax categories, it puts a marker on you in every public database, it is the stepping stone for inheritance laws. If your SSN number announces to the government that the child you is now ready to be monitored and bureaucratized, then your marriage certificate announces the same for your adult self. In the olden days, it might be the only publicly documented paperwork a person would have attached to them in their adult lives. So government starting using it for their own reasons.

But why continue it? Whether we like it or not, (or unless we're illegal immigrants) the government tracks us from the day we are born. Our SSN's get issued in the first few weeks of birth, we have to use them constantly as ID at the Drs. office, public schools, etc. As we get older we use them for any kind of financial application, job application, college application, etc. What few things don't require your SSN, requires your drivers license. You have to submit ID everywhere you go except the voting booth. Combine that with electric record keeping and street cameras and the Gov. can find most of us at any given moment of any day. There is no legitimate reason to collect information from marriage certificates any longer, it's collected redundantly, all day, every day.

And what of the family, the keystone of the importance of the marriage certificate? There are a number of important laws regarding inheritance and estate law that hinge on the marital status. Luckily, the marriage certificate plays no part in that anymore either. All the information of that certificate is easily found on a birth certificate of any child of an adult union. The birth certificate creates the familial bond that the law sees as creating certain responsibilities on the parents, not the marriage certificate. As far as alimony, etc. goes, anybody who was unmarried or married with a mistressknows, the court can find you financially responsible for anothers lifestyle whether you have yourself a shiny certificate or not.

There isn't any one area where the government can claim that the issuance of marriage licenses is somehow necessary for State activities. The argument that they issue the certificates in the interest of promoting the family, any family, is highly suspect and hypocritical given the way the federal government has sought to destroy the family unit with destructive welfare and divorce laws. The Government cares about the family the same way a pimp cares about a whore, the only difference being that the pimp has to at least provide a work uniform.

Like most things the government horns itself into, their involvement in marriage is counterproductive and destructive. Let the churches handle it like they used to. People can get married in their own way and then get about judging everybody else for their "sham marriage". That's the way it is with all these things, there's always been churches that have "kooky" sacraments or ceremonies. People from other faiths just disregard it and move on. People only get hysterical when an official government body gets in the middle and proclaims on superior to another. Lets just end it and start fighting about legalizing weed again.

Stupid Is A Disease

2010-11-09T17:28:00.005-07:00

Something resembling an unexplained missile launched occurred off the coast of California this morning giving all the loonies a chance to wax poetic about conspiracy theories. All the rest of us naturally curious types took note of the incident and waited for some explanation from those "in the know."

Still waiting patiently.

This is one of those times where the government was just trying to be stealthy and hide their own black actions. Instead, we get a whole bunch of people from the Armed Forces saying "Wasn't ours!" and "We have no idea what that was" and finally, "Not detected by radar."

That's awesome. I'd rather Obama was secretly planning to nuke Guam and this was the training exercise for it. Apparently, the America we live in today would rather announce to the world that you can launch a missile 35 miles of our coast and we will be shocked or; that our military is so incompetent that it's firing off missiles willy-nilly. How reassuring. How are those nukes coming in North Korea and Iran? Yeah, that's what I thought.

This really is a symptom of society as a whole though. It's amazing how many supposed adults are so willing to just throw up their hands and admit to the world how incompetent they are. Everywhere you turn there seems to be some jackass staring stupidly at a flat tire, jammed copier, etc. waiting for somebody to come help them. Did they try and solve their problem and fail thus requiring help? Nope, they just packed it in at the start, saving themselves all that opportunity for learning or dignity.

I don't recall this when I was growing up. Back then I assumed being an adult meant you were prepared to display some level of resiliency and self sufficiency. I was led to believe this because all the adults acted that way. If the dryer broke, somebody would try for a week to fix it. Even if it was unfixable, they at least had the dignity to blame it on crappy Japanese workmanship before they called the Maytag man. It would have shamed them to their peers to just be helpless in the world they lived in. Now the world is full of these impotent morons in important positions leading to a situation where a missile could possibly have been launched outside the country's second largest city and the official response is "No clue guys! Sorry, just us dipshits here!" Something tells me MacArthur or Patton wouldn't have accepted that response.

Hopefully the recent elections signal some kind of return to sanity regarding government and society. What we need next is a return to shame. We need to start keeping score and calling out people for being horrible, horrible failures. If the rest of society doesn't let these people know that they are embarrassments, how will they ever know? If they were smart enough to figure it out on their own, they wouldn't be such losers in the first place. Once we get these lightweights away from anything with sharp corners, then we'll know where those missiles were coming or going.

see the video here.

Election Night Running Diary

2010-11-02T17:22:00.006-06:00

Oaklahoma and West Virginia SEN - Good for Tom Coburn, Yuck for Manchin. I guess the people of WV don't like mining coal. Glad there's such an abundance of jobs there.

Arkansas, Georgia, Alabama, North Carolina SEN - Nice job John Bozeman, Johnny Izakson, Richard Burr & Richard Shelby. I hope Blanche Lincoln fully realizes what a tool she is. I doubt it.
Deleware SEN - Bearded Marxist projected to win. 0% reported so far.

Maryland SEN - I can't imagine what Maryland is so happy with that they keep electing Barbara Mukulski. Maybe if Baltimore becomes completely unlivable they'll nominate her for President.

Florida SEN - Rubio thouroughly humiliates Crist. Awesome.

Ohio SEN - Portman Wins. Ohio is supposedly a swing state that splits the vote pretty evenly yet Portman gets the call before 1 percent of the votes are actually counted. Wave indeed.

Vermont SEN - Proving that Vermont is stickign with socialists and maple syrup no matter what the rest of us say, Pat Leahy gets reelected for his 100th Senate term.

Indiana, Kentucky and South Carolina SEN - Well that was quick. Coats, Paul and DeMint roll. I guess that Brad Ellsworth Leviathan was a myth.

A Week Out

2010-10-26T20:16:00.004-06:00

With only a week to go before election day polling has gone from being unreliable to full on propaganda. This isn't unusual, polls typically tighten up and fluctuate the closer it gets to election day as pollster either try and produce polls to help a particular candidate or they try and get their polls more accurate so that in the end they will look legitimate. Normally these polls are a good way to track momentum (even if the numbers themselves are wrong) but there are two reasons why these polls may be less helpful than usual this year.

The first one is the increase in popularity of early voting. A late breaking trend in the polls doesn't really matter if most of the ballots have already been cast. I heard that 75% of Colorado voters would participate in some kind of early voting. If this is true, it would clearly help Senate candidate Ken Buck who has been trying to beat back withering personal attacks from Bennett and his supporters. he needs the vote to happen ASAP before the attacks diminish his profile with the voters. On the other hand, the early voting phenomenon would seem bad news for Tom Tancredo, who has been gaining late traction as a third party candidate for Governor. He needs more time to get people to abandon Republican corpse Dan Maes and not just vote for him because he's on the top line. I don't know if that 75% will turn out to be accurate but if it is, it could swing two races in opposite directions.

The second reason is how the polls are taken. Specifically the samples. Most of the polls I've seen recently that show Democratic momentum have confusing samples. Mid term elections have traditionally shown much lower turnout than Presidential years yet these polls are showing Democratic turnout not only matching 2006 mid term elections but also matching the 2008 Presidential election turnout. Given the participation of minorities and first time voters in the historic Obama election, I find it very hard to believe that that is possible. There is no way there will be so many first time voters who get caught up in a midterm election. The same polling companies that are predicting this liberal turnout also have polls showing a massive enthusiasm gap between Republicans and Democrats with the GOP far more (60%-27% in one poll I saw) enthusiastic then the Dems. According to these polls, the youth army Obama relied on not only to vote but to work the campaigns seem to have packed up shop for this go around. One of the polls has to be wrong. If there is that wide an enthusiasm gap, then Democratic turnout can't possibly be as high the fervor in 2008 or even the turnout for the Foley/Pelosi elections in 2006.

Knowing the political leanings of the polling media, we can safely assume that the enthusiasm polls are right, making the sample sizes the culprit for fraudulent polls. Having said that, it's possible that the turnout does come in higher than anticipated. When Obama was elected, we were all told that he had motivated a new generation of young civic activists who would be involved in every election from here on out. If that's true and all the young, minority and first time voters come out to vote, then Obama can truly be called a transformational figure as the youth vote has been notoriously hard to keep motivated past any one election cycle. If the they don't come out though, that'll be the final proof needed to know that Obama the Transformational Liberal Icon is nothing but pure fantasy.

Truth In Advertising

2010-10-22T22:43:00.003-06:00

It probably seems strange to people in the other 49 states that liberal politicians from Denver don't seem to do very well in statewide elections in Colorado. After all, Denver is by far the largest metro area in the state, with by far the most money, yet all that built in advantage hasn't added up to much success in Gubernatorial or Senate races.

Denver Mayor and wannabe CO Governor John Hickenlooper was nice enough to show us all why. In an interview, Hick was asked why the Matthew Shepard Foundation has chosen to set up offices in Denver, even though the Shepards had no connection to the area. Hick responded by saying that Denver was an open and accepting city whereas the rest of Colorado and all of rural Montana, Wyoming, Montana and New Mexico was full of backward thinking people.

You know, backward thinking like it would be a good idea to tie a man to a barb wired fence and beat him to death because he was gay.

Nice job of alienating an entire region of people Hick, many of whom you seem to need to get your next job. I'm sure all the people in Pueblo, Grand Junction, Colorado Springs, Durango, Ft. Collins, Greeley, Alamosa, etc. are just pleased as punch for you to have grouped them in to murderous hate crimes. Seems like as good an idea as a West Virginian politician comparing all his constituents to the black hats in Deliverance.

While offensive, Hick's comments proved again that behind his aw-shucks, moron persona, he's just another hyper elitist at home in Denver and Boulder and nowhere else. I'm glad he finally got a little exposure, it seemed as if he would go through the whole election without any scrutiny as the Republicans just cannibalized themselves. Aside from that embarrassing environmentalist flip flopping incident, Hick has been invisible. Now all the voters have is one nasty stereotyping message from a man who wants the state house. Just in time for the elections! Nice timing.

In a related story, Magellan released a poll that showed Tancredo within 1 point of Hick, 44%-43%, with Maes falling to 8%. That poll was taken before Hicks comments hit the press.

You think they'll make a difference?

Then They Came For The Children

2010-10-21T21:53:00.003-06:00

Liberalism attacked both me and my kids during our nightly storytime this week, striking unprovoked, without warning or pretense, like lightning from a cloudless sky.

For our nightly story, we picked a new book that they found at the library. Everything proceeded smoothly as normal until one of the main characters got himself an idea.

And sweet Jesus what appeared over the little piggies head but a godforsaken compact fluorescent light bulb.

A COMPACT FLUORESCENT LIGHT BULB!!!

They've removed the universally known incandescent light bulb as the idea symbol. Before I continue, I must applaud the authors for authenticity, it took a full 10 pages before the idea was fully lit.

It's bad enough that we're going to have to put these stupid, ill-fitting lights in all our fixtures soon but now they are trying to convert kids to these pieces of crap. And what are they trying so hard to brainwash our kids into? A light bulb that takes a massive amount of energy to even construct? Yep. A light bulb chock full of mercury? Yep. (Apparently mercury is only a bad thing when fish absorb it. Having little grenades full of it all over your house is A-Ok.) A light bulb that is so toxic it needs special disposal so as to not pollute the soil? Yep. A light bulb that produces a massive amount of electromagnetic radiation? Yep. A light bulb that has resulted in the loss of American jobs as regular incandescent bulb plants are being shut down? You betcha. All for light bulbs that don't really use as little energy as they say? Of course.

This is exactly the reason liberals try and get kids into public schools as soon as possible, so that the NEA and their army of leftists "teachers" can start spreading ideological nonsense like this while the kids are young and influential. This particular book was for ages 2-5. If Republicans do in fact run the House and/or Senate soon, they need to stop the EPA from enforcing this nonsensical ban. The incandescent light bulb is one of histories greatest inventions, providing cheap, strong light to the masses. The CFL is a step back technologically, it's simply being pushed by a bunch of radical environmentalists that have weaseled their way into the bureaucracy and now that they're there, all they want to do is control you to whatever limit they can force down the people's throats. What better way for a new Congress to give the people a sign of good will than to allow them to maintain the quality of life they've come to enjoy in this small area?

Jefferson Shrugged

2010-10-20T21:54:00.004-06:00

Stupidity seems to share many of the same qualities as herpes in that they are both painful, irritating and worst of all, contagious. Oh yeah, there isn't a pill you can take for either one as well.

We see that in full effect these days regarding the separation of church and state principles as discussed by such luminaries as Chris Coons and Harry Reid who have been making good sport on the campaign trail about Christine O'Donnell's assertion that there is no such provision in the U.S. Constitution. Of course she's right, anybody with a cursory knowledge of American history knows that phrase was used by Thomas Jefferson in a letter to some Baptists in 1802 concerning the need for the government to leave them alone. Liberals seem to insist that it somehow is born in the First Amendment so I suppose we should analyze the possibility. Here is the First Amendment:

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

Supposedly this short passage creates an impenetrable wall that prevents any religion from entering public administration and vice versa. One way to examine this to examine all the rights in the amendment as a whole. They are:

Religion
Speech
Press
Assembly
Petition of Grievances

Now, no special language was used in the amendment signalling out religion as somehow being held to a different/higher standard than all the other rights. Therefore logic dictates that whatever wall of separation was created between State and Church must have also been created between State and the other rights.

This is of course, a ridiculous notion. The Government, fully supported by liberals, constantly interfere with free speech by restricting certain kinds of speech (campaign finance, fairness doctrine) while propping up others (NEA grants). Same goes for the press as government regularly tries to pressure media outlets to either kill stories or play up stories, depending on the desired outcome. If you think the government doesn't interfere with the freedom of assembly, try and stage a rally or protest and see the avalanche of red tape you have to maneuver just to be told no. Taking the government to court for a grievance results in the Justice Department unleashing its unlimited resources in an attempt to destroy your chances of a favorable outcome. If the State observes no wall of separation between themselves and Speech, Press, Assembly and Petition, then there isn't one between State and Religion either.

The reason liberals are so quick to mock Christine O'Donnell and others is found in two paths of reasoning. The first one is the nature of the Constitution. The First Amendment, like all the others, is not designed to limit the amount of interaction and influence the people can have on the government but is designed to limit the ability of the government to influence the people in certain areas deemed inalienable rights. Plainly put, Religions, the Press, the Courts, individuals Speaking Freely and Assembling can try and insert themselves into the affairs of the State as they wish, the State cannot do the same in return. Liberals despise being constrained in this manner. They would much rather have a founding document that forces them to do things to/for the people. Faced with these restrictions, they lash out as a child would denied access to its hearts desires. The second avenue of contention is that to liberals, government is a religion and the State is their God. Much like any other fundamentalists, liberals react angrily when any other religion/institution competes for supremacy in peoples hearts and minds. Liberals want the Ten Commandments removed from courthouses not because the Constitution commands it (it doesn't) but because they don't want any evidence that their might be an entity more supreme than themselves.

The ramifications of this mind set are appalling. The entire foundation of the United States is that humans are born with rights that are simply a birthright of existence and lie beyond the control of man or government. These are the Endowed By Our Creator rights. If liberals can succeed in removing this notion from public discourse, than the State becomes the Supreme right granting entity in existence, free to grant and remove them for whatever reasons they see fit. This the behavior that is seen in communist regimes and old feudal societies. Neither one of those entities recognizes any inherent rights of the individual. Because of that, you always see the monarch or politburo constantly changing what rights the people have based on personal relationships, monetary concerns or vendettas. No matter how these scenarios play out, they invariable lead to the terrible oppression of the people. By specifically enumerating rights that are beyond the control of government, the founding fathers attempted to prevent tyrannical government policies from being implemented. How could they imagine that the same government they created would reverse their reasoning for the First Amendment in an attempt to exclude a massive segment of society from the public arena.

If there is any doubt left, just imagine how absurd the argument would be in favor of an absolute Wall of Separation between the State and Press. If applied the same as the Church and State wall, the media would not be allowed to cover government functions, question government officials or provide any other watchdog service. The media and public in general would correctly be outraged, no doubt protesting about secrecy, police states and the nature of the representative republic. It is equally offensive the attempt to remove religion from the public sector. There is a wall of separation between Church and State but it's only one way. The government gets restricted, the religions (and the people that comprise them) get the freedom. Simple as that.

A Thousand Days Late, A Trillion Dollars Short

2010-10-18T22:11:00.005-06:00

German Chancellor Merkel came out recently and declared that the German effort to force a multicultural society have "utterly failed".

I can only imagine the pain this admission caused the German leader along with all the other leftists who pray at the I'm Ok, You're Ok Cathedral. All these disappointed Utopians can take some measure of comfort in the fact that it's causing people on the other side pain as well, mostly from the trauma of beating our heads into the wall for all these years.

After all, any fool, but precious few Europeans, can see that offering unlimited immigration to various Muslims, Africans and Eastern Europeans who know nothing of Western European cultural values let alone the tangled mess of Germanic history is a recipe for disaster. The assumption seemed to be that once offered the full bounty of the massive EU welfare state, these immigrants would become productive European citizens, if not full blown German citizens. As is the case when governments just give out enough handouts to get by without asking for anything in return, you get poverty, isolation and unrest. You effectively import a massive new lower class that can't help to become disaffected isolationists voluntarily (sometimes not voluntarily, depending on the country) becoming segregated into ghettos that embody the worst characteristics of whatever country they were trying to escape. France's troubles with the Muslim/Algerian ghetto's are evidence of that. In addition, the natural born citizenry becomes agitated because they are forced to foot the massive welfare bill for all these new arrivals who really have no business being there in the first place.

The idea that German actually tried this nonsense is the most perplexing given the fact that they tried something similar before.

Germany had a unique position to view how hard integration is. The Berlin Wall created a divergent German culture from the construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961 to national reunification in 1990. People who shared the same cultural background, language, societal values split into two camps and took a 37 year hiatus from each other. During this hiatus, the principle changes were economic, changing from free market economics to a centrally planned economy. There were a number of cultural changes that went with that but East Germany still was filled with Germans. It wasn't colonized by Soviets and Cubans looking for more room to stretch their legs. Reintegrating two groups of people that shared a common heritage and culture should be pretty easy after a relatively short 37 year break from each other. We know in hindsight that the reintegration of East and West Germany has been a nightmare. East Germany had so little to offer in terms of jobs or education that they essentially became a massive welfare project for West Germany. This caused the exact same hostilities between the former East and West that is occurring between immigrants and natives today. Our historical example offers little hope for the future as the former East Germany still lags behind the former West in almost all areas of development. There is still a feel of two nations. How a country that can't successfully meld with a population of people who is exactly like them except for a 37 year split thought that they could just easily fuse with people with wildly different cultures, cultivated over thousands of years of history (which often includes a healthy distrust of Europe) is beyond all rational thought.

The only reasonable explanation is how liberals (European socialists) treat government like a religion. Religions tend to get murky and convoluted when you get down to the minute details and specifics of what the message is. The same thing happens in government. These massive socialist democracies operate under the principle that once people feel the warmth of the benevolent embrace of the State, everything will be okay. They always think that whatever problems arise will be hashed out by the proper bureaucratic institution. This ignores the fact that bureaucracies don't solve problems, the get rid of them. They are designed to address the needs of the majority of people. People who fall outside that mainstream need might get serviced through some appeal process but the system would just as easily eject them from the process. Done and done.

Once people who have been told that the system works for them realize that they've been scammed, the malaise/anger/depression sets in. They get the minimum from the State that they were promised such as crappy housing, bad health care, government cheese, etc. After that; nothing. The problem just festers and spreads until the population gets large enough to create violence on a level high enough to gain notice.

Germany didn't learn the lesson from reunification that it should have. Now that their attempt to welcome in the world has also failed, will they learn that lesson? Will the rest of Europe? Probably not. European dedication to multiculturalism is a devout as any religious fanatics is to his faith. German was always more pragmatic than the rest of Europe and they got sucked in all the way to the near collapse of the welfare state. It seems the rest of Europe will just keep going until they simply have nothing left to offer. The Dutch show signs that they might be trying to extricate themselves from this nightmare, the rest of the continent rolls along.

Ye of Little Faith

2010-10-04T21:33:00.002-06:00

The NFL RedZone channel is starting to become a real double edged sword.

On one hand, my remote thumb is getting some well deserved rest, on the other hand, I get to see all the knuckle headed play calling near the end zone.

After 4 weeks of action I've come to the conclusion that the end zone fade is the worst play in football. it used to be called when you had a decent quarterback and a tall receiver. I'm pretty sure Randy Moss made is popular and every team tried to find a 6'4'' plus receiver just for redzone possessions.

Now it seems to be the only play coaches are comfortable calling inside the 10. It's the most predictable play in the game now and most teams suck at it! I can't even count the times I've the Broncos try a fade from the 3, just to have Orton throw it into the luxury boxes. I can't even remember the last time I saw a quick slant or TE delay. The only other play that gets as much redzone action is the abominable bubble screen.

I can only chalk this disturbing trend up to two things. First, maybe quarterbacks just suck so bad now that they can't be given the responsibility of finding the open man in close quarters. Either that or they just don't have the arm strength to do it. If it's not a physical/mental deficiency on the part of the QB's it has to be an ego trip by the coaches. I can totally believe that it gets called all the time just so the coach can dictate how, and to who, the ball will be thrown. Who do you think Josh McDaniel's trusts more, Kyle Orton or himself? Neither one should be trusted, truth be told.

No matter who's to blame, it's got to stop. It disrupts the flow of the game and makes for some seriously ugly football that leaves kickers kicking a lot of 19 yd. FG's. First coach who shows some cajones and fakes the fade and throws a hard in route gets e to officially carry the teams water for the rest of the year.

Retards, Meet Doorknob. Start F'in*

2010-09-28T20:11:00.005-06:00

What started out as a compelling race quickly turned into a laugher but once again has changed direction is now become a real head scratcher/conundrum for Republicans.

I'm talking about the Colorado Governors race, of course.

A new poll came out this week with a stunning surge/collapse showing the Gov. nobody wants (Hickenlooper) pulling in only 44% while American Constitution Party carpetbagger Tom Tancredo pulling in a whopping 34% leaving disgraced Dan Maes pulling in a pathetic 15% for the GOP.

When both Maes and Tanc were long shots, it was easy to just write the race off but now conservatives are faced with the proposition of dumping a bad Maes for an infuriating Tancredo. Pragmatically, Tancredo shouldn't be rewarded for his blatant attempt to torpedo the GOP candidate. With the rest of the country getting ready to enjoy a conservative wave in November however, Colorado has to make a tough choice between the lib, the bad and the ugly.

As hard as it is to do, the only responsible thing to do is to back Tancredo. Colorado can't afford to be one of the few states getting an absolute kook liberal infusion while the rest of the country gets a recovery. Many arguments can be made about Tancredo but at least he's a conservative. A major asshole maybe but a conservative one.

The odds of Maes dropping out of this thing seem almost nil at this point but the GOP Gov. Ass'n needs to put some cash into this thing for Tanc, call donors and get them to ask Maes for their money back and send him out to pasture. I haven't seen many polls where Hickenlooper pols more than the low to mid 40's despite huge name recognition in Denver and the delirious backing of some establishment Republican businessmen. That tells me that the people are just dying for a Hick alternative. Many have already joined Tank but we need to push the last 15% that Maes is holding into Tanc's corner as well. It'd be hard to believe that any of his supporters would bail on Maes and head to Hick.

This is a sad tale of a perpetually dysfunctional CO GOP but it could have a happy ending. Colorado may have gotten the ugly date to the prom but it's better to jump on that grenade for the good of the squad rather than man that foxhole alone. Best to just bite the bullet and do it.

Go Tanc.

***The title of this post is an homage to the late Patches O'Houlihan who had an uncanny knack for describing both untrained dodgeball players as well as the CO GOP in one quick quote.***

Have Style, Will Travel

2010-09-27T21:17:00.003-06:00

At the rate things are going, the flood of Mexicans coming across the border won't be called illegal aliens, they'll be called refugees.

Over the weekend the mayor of the west Mexico town of Tancitaro was found dead in the bed of a flat bed pickup, stoned to death. There apparently wasn't any immediate connection to the drug violence that has been destroying that country for more than a decade. No other theories have been presented.

I, for one, hope like hell it was drug related. Otherwise, Mexicans from other walks of life have decided that the legal process is so flawed that they need to resort to barbaric forms of capital punishment to settle whatever issues they have. That's truly frightening considering the free reign these people have getting into the United States.

Meanwhile, the United States continues to do nothing while our friendly neighbors to the South have decided to combine the worst parts of Afghanistan/Pakistan (violent drug trade) with the worst parts of Iran/Saudi Arabia (stoning) just to see how it plays out. If that combo somehow doesn't produce a utopia, the next step will be to pirate the Russian/Filipino sex trade market and start kidnapping kids into a life of prostitution. Although that may actually already be happening in some parts.

Of all the things in the world that actually need some kind of governmental response, a border country turning into a complete anarchic state should be at the top of the list. Apparently, our government has decided that they would rather harass us themselves before everything goes to hell completely.

At this pace though, Mexico is going to turn into a Somalia-esque calamity of warlords and genocide. If Obama cares at all about trying to keep a flood of war displaced refugees from flooding into our southland, he might want to start pulling some strings and taking some decisive action against these cartels. Things are bad now but brother, when this thing pops, I don't want to be anywhere near the misery that will come with it.

Tale of the Tape

2010-09-21T21:47:00.006-06:00

Breaking it down!

Pinball Wizard (PW) vs. The Jukebox Hero (JH)

AGE:

41 / 29

space

HOMETOWN:

London, UK / New York, NY

space

HIGHEST RANK:

#19 USA, #4UK / #26 US

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BREAKDOWN:

Competition - PW had to go into the arena nightly to take on the likes of the Street Fighting Man and the less violent but more skilled Piano Man. JH had a relatively easier path to greatness as much of the competition was either falling prey to the rampant drug culture (Mr. Brownstone) or was a cheap asian knockoff (Mr. Roboto). EDGE: Pinball Wizard.

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Groupies - Being deaf, dumb and blind, PW was at the mercy of his handlers who may not have worked as diligently in procuring premium groupies or worse, may have kept the cream of the crop themselves. On the other hand, sans senses the PW had no embarrassing morning afters or beer goggle regrets. The JH may have been able to enjoy the groupies on a different level than the PW but at what cost? Awkward mornings, the payoffs, must have been horrible. Close category. . . . . TIEBREAKER: While the JH may have to deal more directly with the consequences of groupie culture, the ability to see and hear leaves him nearly impossible to trick into the random post-op tranny that makes their way into the groupie line. PW is defenseless. EDGE: Jukebox Hero.

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Posse - Not strong for either to be honest. The JH is languishing with Brits on the means streets of NYC with an aging Mick Jones and an ex-King Crimson crooner Ian McDonald. Yikes. You'd think PW would be rolling heavy with Roger Daltry, Pete Townsend and Keith Moon in pocket until we realized Daltry was a waify 5'5", Pete Townsend was a pedophile and Keith Moon was dead. EDGE: Gotta call this a PUSH.

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Lasting Legacy - I'm not sure any two people have done more to hurt the karaoke industry since Billy Squier packed off for the lab. Today's generation regards both these warriors the same way they view white basketball players from the 50's. The only question left is who is George Mikan and who is Dolph Schayes? I was going to call this a push until I was recently explaining to my daughter at the mall about the "dumb" kid and why he was moving his hands that way. 5 seconds later I was being arrested for a hate crime as a group of vocally challenged mall walkers silently projected their hate at me. EDGE: Jukebox Hero.

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GREATEST ACHIEVEMENT - PW-While smoking Peyote during Woodstock, Pinball Wizard claims that Joan Baez gave him a secret pagan/satanic verse to recite that would allow him to take on a spectral form to posses anyone he wished. PW then proceeded to posses Pete Townsend and club Abbie Hofmann with a guitar. Sadly, the sacrifice given for this gift was Sly Stone's sanity and career. JH-Foresight. Even in the age of iPods, streaming audio and satellite radio, jukebox's are a lasting legacy, known to everyone, thereby making the Jukebox Hero culturally relevant and rich, due to a crafty trademarking in the early 80's. Pat Riley has nothing on JH. While authentic juke's are a pricey and highly sought after commodity, you think any kid is just yearning to put down the XBOX controller and go play some pinball? Hell, you can do that on the Wii. JH was also rumoured to have had a steamy tryst with Cyndi Lauper and Pat Benatar (was Lita Ford busy or something?) but I think at this point that can only be counted as a negative. EDGE: Pinball Wizard.

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WINNER - The results end up in a tie, 2-2 with on push. Too bad ties are for communists and soccer moms. Therefore, the slight edge has to be given, along with the belt, to the Pinball Wizard. While I find his chosen career puzzling it can't be forgot that he headed into the arena with only his sense of smell and stared down legends like Mojo Risin. Figuratively stared down, of course. As good as the Jukebox Hero was, he's destined to be the Larry Holmes of his generation, stuck in a talent dead spot. By the time Jeremy, Spoonman and Mr. Moustache came on the scene to provide a proper challenge, The Jukebox Hero had become the George Foreman of his generation, only without the comeback.

Yeah? What Now?

2010-09-20T17:41:00.003-06:00

The stock market had itself quite a rally today after a so called group of economists claimed that the recession finally ended.

Who knew it was so simple to get Wall Street back on track? Simply declare that everything is hunky dory and presto, they get back to the business of creating and blowing cash. Awesome. No need to actually look at indicators to see if it's true. Not here.

Unfortunately, unless they meant the recession is over because were heading to another depression, they couldn't be more wrong. Wages still down, houses still underwater, debt still skyrocketing, unemployment still sky high. Otherwise life is fine.

So what could this group possibly mean by calling the recession over? What they mean is that they really need it to be over soon. There are elections coming up and this economic downturn is becoming less and less Bush's fault and more and more Obama's fault. Right now it's about evenly split at about 2 years each, although Obama was in the Senate for all of it while Bush retired. It's already going to be a bad enough November for libs even with much of the public still blaming Bush. They are going to get crushed this November and if they get to 2012 with no noticeable improvement, you're going to have 6 years of Obama handling the downturn (2 Senate, 4 Pres.) and it's going to be hard to blame the two years of Bush's spending, especially since Obama signed off on all of it and helped create the useless bailout legislation while he was the President elect.

In other words, Democrats know they have almost no way of explaining the poor economy in 2010 and they will nothing to say to explain it away in 2012. The next best option is to convene the experts, the same ones who are always stunned at every economic report, and just have them declare the recession over. Game, set, match, what's on TV. Too bad people still won't be able to get jobs or credit. Combine that with the massive tax increases coming up and something tells me screaming "All is WELL!!" like some new age Chip Diller isn't going to fool the electorate come voting time.

Roll the Chamber Nick, I'm Out

2010-09-17T20:17:00.005-06:00

There was a time when I assumed that the NRA was an organization that stood up for the Second Amendment rights of all Americans, members or not, and that in addition to the Second Amendment they were committed to individual liberties across the board as a matter of principle.

Now I know better.

The NRA has sealed the deal here in Colorado by following up their endorsement of Pelosi clone John Salazar in CO-3 by endorsing Pelosi clone/intellectual lightweight Betsy Markey in CO-4. By endorsing these two big-government socialist democrats, the NRA has made plain for all to see that they don't really care about individual rights at all, they only care about getting favorable gun legislation by paying off members of Congress. You could even argue that they don't really care about the Second Amendment either as some of the deals they have tried to cut in the past would make exemptions to tyrannical laws only for their paying members, leaving all gun owning non-NRA members under the thumb of oppressive government. In this regard, by trading actual principles for political favor, the NRA is no longer any different than Big Labor, Big Education, the ACLU, the NAACP, ACORN or any number of other liberal groups who try and buy political exemptions from the tyranny they help put into power.

There was once a time that I considered joining the NRA even (though I hunt my game at Safeway) but now such a thing sounds offensive to my ears and I would encourage everyone who does give the NRA money, to stop doing so unless they reverse this self destructive course of political hackery that started with them floating the idea of endorsing Harry Reid. Apparently they think once the Harry Reid's of the world are done telling you what kind of medicine you'll get, what you can eat and how warm your house can be that they'll just leave gun owners alone. It must be nice to live in a world of make believe. For the rest of us in the real world, it's very sad to see that once the new NRA leadership took the rifle from Heston's cold dead hand, they took it to the most famous whorehouse in the country and traded it away for the oldest trick ever turned; the fleeting promise of elite status and protection.

The Seventh Seal Opens, A Look Back

2010-09-15T17:39:00.005-06:00

The world is full of crucial moments that signal the transition between two distinct eras. After much contemplation, I've decided that the most important one in recent memory happened in 1978 when The B-52's released Rock Lobster which reached #56 on Billboard's Hot 100. Here are the lyrics, to refresh your memory. You go read, I'll wait.

. . . . .

Okey doke.

That song is complete nonsense with a synthesized crappy sound bed. A crucifix in a jar of piss has more artistic value than Rock Lobster. Who bakes potatoes at the beach? How did your ear lobe get into the deep? What does it mean to be fruggin, exactly? Why are you morons not able to properly identify a rock lobster, which in fact does not look much like a rock? Perhaps you simply went to a beach and with a child like sense of wonder started trying to find things that might possibly rhyme? That's what I think.

Unfortunately, this type of song wold become all to familiar of music "created" in the cultural dead zone known as the 80's, while it simultaneously signals the end of the 60's/70's. The two times couldn't be more different. Music in the 60's and 70's might not have always been good but for every crappy Carpenters song there was a little CCR, Doors, Van Morrison etc. to even it out. Even disco was clearly superior to manufactured 80's pop. The Bee Gee's get a lot of crap but lyrically the were fairly competent and the music had actual instruments and not just a Casio keyboard with low batteries.

Before Rock Lobster there was free love and bong loads, after Rock Lobster there was cocaine and AIDS. Not a great trade off unless being terrified during every sexual encounter was your particular fetish, then game on to you sir.

Ironically, this massive, decade long drop off in substantial artistic/cultural depth happened at the same time as the reverse was happening politically, as we traded the Nixon/Ford/Carter debacles for the return to prominence under Reagan.

Maybe that explains it. Politically speaking, the United States was a nightmare from Kennedy getting killed until Reagan was elected. Maybe all the tough times during the 60's/70's simply became too much for that generation (notoriously selfish and weak minded) to take and when they couldn't sing, sex or dance their problems away, they just gave up, brought Reagan in to clean up the nation's problems and went into a cultural void. Or died, in some cases.

And like all voids it had to be filled by something. In this case it was filled by Madness, Eddie Money, a seriously crappy Moody Blues, a seriously modern-rocked Chicago, John Hughes movies, the inexplicable rise of Paul Reiser and finally, the B-52's.

An absolute 180 cultural turn that can first be traced back to a crappy song from a crappy band. Who knew in that dark day in 1978 when that aural date rape first came on the air that it signaled an end of an era? Who knew it was the tip of a crappy spear? Probably nobody. It was just the new-fangled song that came on between Le Freak and You Don't Bring Me Flowers. Only time can provide the proper historical context for world changing moments. Much like the assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, Michael Jackson's Moonwalker the forward pass, we now know that the release of a little known song about a Cousteauian beach party gone wrong was in fact a massive transitional moment in history that would change the world forever.

Here comes a sting-ray
There goes a manta-ray
In walked a jellyfish
There goes a dogfish
Chased by a catfish
In flew a sea robin
Watch out for that piranha
There goes a narwhale
Here comes a bikini whale

ROCK LOBSTER!

Ring the Bell!

2010-09-14T22:08:00.003-06:00

Man, establishment Republicans are getting seriously housed this year and I couldn't be happier.

The primary season has mercifully reached its last day and New England, of all places, seems caught up in the Conservative tide. In Delaware, long time RINO Mike Castle's attack filled campaign against super unknown Christine O'Donnell flamed out big time and he lost 53-46. A 7 point loss in a race Castle was once leading by about 40. Amazing. In New York, what conservatives there are stood up and booted out the well intentioned/probably outmatched Rick Lazio in favor of tea party candidate Carl Paladino. Finally, in NH, long time front runner Kelly Ayotte is tied with unknown Tea Partier Ovid Lamontagne at 38% with about half the vote counted. God only knows why it's taking so long to count the NH votes, the closed the polls at 7 for crying out loud. (Ovid LaMontagne wins the Best Name in a Primary Award hands down. sounds so New Englany that Sean Penn and Clint Eastwood are writing a shitty movie about it as we speak. c'mon, you know Mystic River is way overrated.)

The best part of this is the predictable reaction from the liberal media. Politico has headlined tonight a "Republican Nightmare". I guess because the party is actually electing conservatives to run. This is all just a projection of fear. Media members know full well that even in New England, these conservatives have an even money shot to win the general election. If that wasn't wasn't the case then why would the media care who the Republicans nominated? They should be happy that these blue states are running conservatives so they could be crushed, dampening the entire Tea Party movement.

But no, the media seems intent on trying to scare Republicans into nominating Mike Castle, Sue Lowden, Jane Norton types. They are trying to hedge their bets against the liberal apocalypse in November by getting as many Lindsey Grahams and Lincoln Chaffee's into office under the radar. I don't blame them, these kind of RINO's are so spineless they could be cowed into voting like the liberals they are even in the face of overwhelming opposition. Those two kooks from Maine have been doing it in the Senate for years. Aside from the bad voting records, these "moderate Republicans" ruin the brand for real Republicans.

Shrewd move mainstream media, you almost had us. Just like you almost had us in Nevada, Wyoming, Colorado, Florida, . . . . . . . .

See you in November!

NFL Week 1 Review

2010-09-13T21:19:00.004-06:00

Wow, what a low scoring, semi-crappy opening weekend.

AFC EAST: Tough to tell if the Pats D is that good or if Carson Palmer is just toast but at this point the Bills, Fins and jets should be very afraid. NE scored 38 and the rest of the division managed 34. Monday night's game showed why the Jets were a very lucky 9-7 last year.

AFC SOUTH: Hey, the Texans won a game against the Colts, meaningful even for week one. Division could be the best in football if Texans, Colts and Titans (continuing last years strong finish) don't get hit with injuries. Jacksonville still sucks but high marks for not letting Tebow show them up in his hometown.

AFC NORTH: Ravens went to Revis Island and came away with a win, so Rex Ryan should be on full blast this week. Pitt and Cinci have no juice on offense and Cleveland is being Delhommed already. Mangini leads the pack for coaches who could be fired first.

AFC WEST: Jason Campbell is a serious upgrade over The Fat Dranker but Mario Henderson seems to want him to die, there's no other explanation for that showing. Nice to see D-Mac show up. Broncos look pass happy on O, crappy on D. The Chiefs look really feisty against the Chargers, up 14-7 as we speak. I guess losing your best linebacker, left tackle and wide receiver hurt a team.

NFC EAST:All these teams looked varying degrees of crappy except the Giants who played Carolina so the jury's still out. No way Andy Reid trades Donovan McNabb to play Kolb, then benches him after one bad quarter and a concussion. Why do we think Dallas is a Super Bowl contender again? Alex Barron wins the Mario Henderson Award of Crap for this week.

NFC SOUTH: Saints looked pretty good in the rematch. That running game must make the weak division cringe. Atlanta and Tampa Bay were pathetic on offense while Carolina was just pathetic. When you have to choose between Matt Moore or Jimmy Clausen are you rebuilding or do you just suck?

NFC NORTH: Chicago and Detroit solidified their season long battle for 3 & 4. I know the Bears won but they looked like crap while the Lions seemed to be hungry. Green Bay has got a lot going on but you've gotta worry about Aaron Rodgers. He was under fire all night from a pretty mediocre Eagles D. Favre looked pretty good with the Vikes but those receivers just suck. I know Favre hasn't had much time to work on his timing with them but it doesn't matter if they're not open. Berrian looked older than Favre.

NFC WEST: Sweet Jesus what an awful division. Suprise of the week was the Seahawks hanging a flaming tire around the 49ers but every single team looked just awful. I guess the week highlights would be the Seahawks and Sam Bradford because they offer a glimmer of hope for the future. Alex Smith is just stealing money at this point. Wonder what the Niners would look like with McNabb under center.

GAMBLING: I'm currently 8-6 in my Pigskin Pick'em Group (ESPN's Sports Guy's group) and my Chiefs +5.5 pick looks good as they are currently up 21-7.

Dueling Stupidity

2010-09-08T18:48:00.004-06:00

I swear it's hard to properly quantify how much I hate white people sometimes. It's like the dumbest of the dumb decide that they are going to step into the politically correct arena, pick ideological sides and have themselves a good old fashioned tard off. This weeks matchup pits the City Council of Honkeyville (Hartford, CT) vs. Who Gives A Shit, FL.

HARTFORD, CT
Apparently the Hartford City Council (HCC) decided to start opening every session in September with a Muslim prayer to show solidarity with Muslims everywhere in the face of "islamophobia" regarding the Ground Zero Mosque. First of all, nice job HCC to find a position that 70% of the people approve and go against it. Good election strategy. Second, who exactly do you think gives a crap about your meaningless gesture? Do you think Bin Laden got out his list of Important American Cities To Bomb, scrolled to number 1,106 and crossed you guys off? You know your standing side by side with a guy who supports Hamas right? I'm sure you guys will get a gold star in the White Guilt Olympics next time you and the rest of the leftists in the northeast have your semi-annual blame-in. In the meantime, sensible people everywhere else will just shake their heads at your stupidity and realize that we can't expect any better from a city that throws its full passion behind women's college basketball. Disgraceful. (see what you did Bettman? Fear the Whale!)

WHO GIVES A SHIT, FL
To bad the knee jerk liberalism in Connecticut couldn't go unbalanced. Now we've got some pastor in Florida (of course) trying to organize Koran burnings every 9/11. Awesome. Where to begin. This display will only serve to make whatever moderate Muslims there are out there keep quiet when faced with the arguments of their jihadist brothers. This won't have much impact on the jihadist movement since they think we burn them all day anyway. What Pastor I Hate Hadji doesn't realize is that this demonstration is just going to make Muslims richer by sending sales of the Koran through the roof! Now, I don't know who prints those things but if buying gasoline supports terrorism then causing a Koran shopping spree might as well. After all, there has to be at least one printing press owned by terrorist friendly organization (besides the New York Times), what if they get the contract to do additional runs of the book? One more IED in Kandahar, that's what. Lastly, do you really need to keep perpetuating this stereotype of Southerners? Wouldn't you rather be seen as laid back gentlemen and belles, sipping sweet tea on the porch? Why are you trying to make Neil Young's Southern Man relevant for the next generation?

WHO'S THE DUMBEST?
It can be hard to distinguish between the two types of stupid we got going on here. The Liberal White Guilt, Knee Jerker and the Intolerant Southern hate monger. The book burners inadvertently lost this competition however, with their own hatred. A while back, these supposed islamophobes also tried to start a campaign to burn all non King James bibles because they weren't properly Christian. Hmm. Burning Korans and Bibles side by side. Know what that makes you friends? Diverse! Equal Opportunity! I'm afraid this egalitarian view of book burning shows a sophistication not shown by the disgustingly weak actions by the HCC, who have made themselves look worse by "possibly reconsidering" their decision to have Islamic prayers before meetings.

CONGRATULATIONS CITY COUNCIL OF HARTFORD, CT! YOU HAVE WON THIS WEEKS TARD OFF! PLEASE COLLECT YOUR COMPLIMENTARY MOUNTAIN DEW AND KE$HA CD'S IN THE OFFICE WITH THE PADDED CORNERS. BUS TOKENS AVAILABLE.

Coen Brothers 14 DVD Set Review, 8-14+1

2010-09-08T17:42:00.004-06:00

8. The Hudsucker Proxy - C+ - This movie revolves entirely around two odd plot conventions, the God from the Machine and the Magic Negro. Conveniently enough, they actually combine both of these conventions into one character (the clock master, blech) saving the audience the time of having to forget two separate people. Now don't get me wrong, the movie is funny. Tim Robbins, pre-Sarandon stick up his ass, is quite funny as the imbecile and Paul Newman does devious board member better than anyone. Many of the bit players are recognizable Coen brothers favorites and do good work. Three scenes just ruin it though. First, about 45 minutes in, the female lead essentially stops the movie and recaps the entire plot up to that point for the crowd. She might as well have been writing the script. Second, the God in the Negro character appears and explains to the audience how he controls the clock and everything the clock controls. The scene serves no purpose other than to green light problem scene 3 where Tim Robbins falls off the roof and is the suspended in mid-air just a few feet from the ground because the Negro God in the Magic Clocktower put a mop handle in the gears. I swear the Magic Negro is always a caddie or a janitor. Maybe the NAACP can look into that. Anyway, Robbins was saved only so that scene 3 could continue with the appearance of an angel who explains the entire plot of the movie up until that point, then reveals a letter that renders the entire film up until that point completely pointless. 10 more minutes of a sappy ending and voila! Done.

9. Barton Fink - B- - I found myself oddly entertained by this movie which is surprising considering it didn't have a discernible point. Struggling screen writer clashes heads with studio execs, producers and satanish mass murders? Interesting? Yes. Entertaining? Yes. Meaningful? Nope. It's possible that the whole movie was a critique of the movie making process (an accurate one no doubt) but even if that's the case it's still unfulfilled. I don't care about the struggles of screen writers, I don't care how the sausage is made I just want the sandwich, understand? That John Goodman is a damn fine actor though.

10. Miller's Crossing - A - This movie is awesome. It always amazes when someone makes a Road to Perdition (solid movie) or Gangs of New York (P.O.S.) and all the movie reviewers talk about it being the pinnacle if Irish gangster movies As an Irish guy I can confidently say "We already have one!!" Not only is it a good Irish mob movie, it manages to include Jewish underworld figures as well, although the anti-Defamation league can't be happy about all the use of the slur sheeny. While there are a number of good performances, the best belongs to Gabriel Byrne. Anybody who has been poisoned off Byrne by the god awful "In Treatment" or "Madigan Men" should be forced to watch this movie Clockwork Orange style.

11. Raising Arizona - D+ - Clearly I missed the boat on this one. People talk about this movie like it's some kind of timeless comedic classic but I ask anyone who watches it for the first time today, where's the laughs? The big problem is that it was made in the culturally defrauded 80's, 1987 to be exact. Hard to believe it was made when Reagan still had some good time left in his second term. I'm sure in an era where Moonstruck, Ironweed and Throw Momma From the Train were all gathering Oscar nods (seriously, Anne Ramsey nominated for Throw Momma), Raising Arizona might have seemed edgy and hysterical. Much like the Cold War though, that time is gone and were all better off for it. The ungodly accents also rear their ugly heads, luckily to be counterbalanced by a better than you think Nic Cage, with his original hair.

12. Blood Simple - A - This is a great movie that somehow survived being made in the 80's. I had never heard of it until Netflix recommended it to me but it's easily one of the darkest and least appreciated pics in the set. One of the great things about it is how quite the movie is One of my frequent complaints is that the characters spend too much time yammering away to properly set the mood. Not so here, the silence sets the mood and the movie paces along quite nicely. I was never bored and never checked my watch. Good signs.

13. No Country for Old Men - A+ - After repeat viewings, this movie deserved to win the Oscar for best picture. It's just really good. Surprisingly, it is actually better than the book it was based on. Cormac McCarthy's book is almost exactly the same but it reads a little dry while the movie is compelling the whole way through. All you people complaining about not seeing Brolin's death or the whereabouts of the money, get over and use your mind a little.

14. Burn After Reading - B - I just don't understand the hate this movie gets (Ragu). Since when did a trainer blackmailing a CIA agent for a new rack while dating a Treasury officer whose building a manic looking sex chair while screwing the CIA agent's wife on the side get to low brow for America? I didn't realize the movie going public was turning up their collective nose for anything less than The Crying Game or The Pianist. You elitests sicken me. You go watch Eat Pray Love and pretend it's meaningful and I'll go laugh my ass off at George Clooney's highly affordable relaxation device.

***BONUS REVIEW***
A Serious Man - D- - This movie is many things; a examination of Jewish culture and religious tradition, a retelling of the Book of Job, a metaphysical journey into life and karma. One thing it most certainly is not though is funny. I've seen it described as a dark comedy but there is no comedy, it's all black. I realize that the marketing campaign isn't the fault of the filmmakers but this things is comically misrepresented. I felt like choking myself to death with a yarmulke when it was over. I understand making a movie as way of furthering an idea or concept put forth in other media but at the end of the film I should think that I would somehow have greater insight into the meaning of Job instead of feeling a bit like Job himself and hoping that the mighty wind would knock down the theater instead of poor Larry Gopnik house.

State of the State

2010-08-27T18:11:00.002-06:00

New polls means it's time to look at November's matchups.

CO - 1, 2, 5,6: The incumbents all roll. (D-DeGette, D-Polis, R-Lamborn, R-Coffman)

CO -3: A poll commissioned by Republican challenger Scott Tipton showed him with a 4 point lead over incumbent John Salazar. I realize this is a poll commissioned by Tipton but I'm still surprised at the result. He got thrashed by Salazar in 2006 and most people thought it was a shoe in again. I'll feel more comfortable if I see some independent polling on it but my eyes are now open to the possibility of a Tipton win. Cook Political has had this race as lean Dem for a while now but I could never figure out why, I though Salazar was well liked. Mistakenly I guess. One thing about the poll is that it showed low support for both candidates (43-39, I believe). If Salazar is really only pulling 39% being as well known as he is, he's in big trouble.

CO - 4: Incumbent Betsy Markey seems to be doing her best to hide from everyone in hopes that people will forget shes a Pelosi clone. Recent clips show her trying to flip flop on big ticket issues to please whoever shes talking too. Cory Gardner hasn't exactly been lighting it up but given the state mood polls, he should still be the favorite.

CO - 7: Magellan Strategies released a poll showing incumbent D-Ed Perlmutter trailing Ryan Frazier 40-39. More low numbers for both guys is better for Frazier as he is a former City Councilman with low name recognition while Perlmutter is well known. Perlmutter's strategy of stockpiling a billion dollar war chest and not doing anything in public seems to not be working. I guess the good people in CO-7 are looking for some answers about the state of the country and Perlmutter has been so off the map he makes Markey look like a leftist Sarah Palin barnstorming the country.

GOV: A new Rasmussen poll shows Hickenlooper leading tea party candidate Dan Maes by only 8, 41-33 with spoiled baby spoiler Tom Tancredo stealing 16 percent. A two way race between Hick and Maes is tied at 45. Maes seems to have the big mo but if Tancredo stays in the race, he can't win. It's amazing he's got within 8 and it shows how vulnerable Hick is. Hick spent this last week pissing off almost everybody by backtracking on liberal talking points while saying taxes are as low as they can go. Democrat enthusiasm is already low, Hick can't afford to depress them even further by distancing himself from traditional left wing positions on taxes, energy and the environment.

SEN - Ken Buck is up by 6-9 depending on the poll and is clearly in front as Bennett seems to be drawing the ire of liberals for saying the trillion dollar stimulus hasn't shown any results. Hard to see how a zero like Bennett can reverse the trend here.

Republicans have a realistic show of carrying 5 of 7 Congressional seats (1&2 are lost) and the Senate seat. If Tancredo comes to his senses and drops out, Maes becomes a contender as well. Colorado GOP has a history of blowing momentum so it's way too early to be confident but the candidates seem way more competent than the state party so everything looking good. November can't get here fast enough.

Funk Chowder

2010-08-26T21:28:00.002-06:00

As I watch the the talking heads on ESPN dissect the Pats/Rams preseason tune-up, I waited and waited for the glaring story from the game.

We got roughly 74 hours worth of Tom Brady to Randy Moss analysis sprinkled with a healthy dose of Rob Gronkowski. Clearly the Pats put on a scoring display.

I guess I was the only one who noticed that every time NE scored they were still losing.

This is the 3rd preseason game where the starters and seconds play well into the second half. The Ram starters, minus Donnie Avery and with rookie Bradford, went into the half up 20-14 and went up 27-14 in the third before winning 36-35. Hell, the Pats even got a special teams TD and never went on top.

I've seen nothing that leads me to believe that NE is any different than last years frauds. Will the offense be good? Sure, except it won't have a running game and Brady is going to take a lotta hits. As we saw last year, you can't just outscore everyone playing in Foxboro, Buffalo and New York all year. You need a stout D and at least a little ability to play ball control. Right now they can't do either and the Rams spanked em.

NFL Preview - AFC East

2010-08-24T18:29:00.004-06:00

If Tom Brady feathers his hair anymore he's going to look like the post op tranny version of Farah Fawcett circa 1970. That doesn't have anything to do with football, I just don't like the guy. He was annoying at the beginning of his career with all that aw schucks/Belichek robot talk, then he was tolerable during the Bridget Moynihan Era and now he's just plain insufferable.

The Pats aren't going to be that great this year either. The average O-line already has injuries blocking for the Fred Taylor, Lawrence Maroney, Ben Jarvis Green Ellis, Sammy Morris pu pu platter. Yikes. Randy Moss is in a contract year, whatever that means, Wes Welker may or may not be back from his knee obliteration and you've never heard of any of the other WR's. The same D that got crotch chopped by the Ravens in last years playoff is the same except now Ty Warren is out for the year. Can anybody explain how these Pats are any better than the team that got blown out by Baltimore? Nope.

Oh you rascally Jets. It's hard not to like a fat blowhard like Rex Ryan. His team generally looks solid but there are significant red flags. First is at QB. Lost in all the Sanchize panty dropping was the fact that he threw 20 INTs last year and if the Colts and Bengals aren't mailing it in at the end of the year, the Jets don't even make the playoffs. Shonn Greene should be fine but the Curse of LT is scary as is the prospect of relying on Braylon Edwards and Santonio Holmes at WR. The defense should be fine because I expect Revis Island to be open for business on week one but if he's not, look out. Those other DB's suck and the aggressiveness of the D only works if Revis has locked down half the field. I would expect the Jets to take the division though.

I'm not sure what to make of the Henne love in Miami. I understand that they're high on Brandon Marshall but the Fins are a running team and the bulk of the work is going to come from Brown and Williams if they can stay healthy. The real addition was Karlos Dansby on D. You take him and a couple of stout rookies on the DL and you might just have a playmaking D to go with the ball control offense. Worry about the secondary though. Thank god 2 of the 3 QB's in this Division can't throw.

Has Buffalo moved to Toronto yet?

Really? They haven't? Hmmm. Wonder why not. Maybe it's because the Leaf doesn't want any part of the worst team in the league. No QB, 2 of 3 RB's on the shelf, no WR's (Lee Evans is a glorified #2 and you know it), less than no OL, No D, No ST. This team is a decade away from contending. Bad drafts, no free agents, lack of foresight. Think Oakland right after the Super Bowl loss.

PROJECT FINISH:
NY JETS
MIAMI
NEW ENGLAND
BUFFALO.

FANTASY KRYPTONITE - Tom Brady. I've seen him go in both round 1 and 2 in recent drafts. No way he should go this high. People only remember the 50 TD year. think half that and your good to go. Take M. Turner or S. Greene in round two and target Romo in 4 or Favre (6) or Kolb (8-10).

FANTASY SLEEPER - Greg Caramillo. In a PPR league he will play Henne's Welker option. Lots of catches, not huge yards, close to Marshall in production but you can get him 8 rounds later.

Uh, Anytime Guys

2010-08-23T16:48:00.003-06:00

It's been positively giddy in Raiderland these days. Jason Campbell actually looks like a professional quarterback, the defense has been feisty with Rolando McClain and Kamerion Wimbly added to the mix. Hell, we've even heard that DHB is finally blooming into something resembling a pro WR.

The only problem is, when it comes to DHB, we haven't seen it. Quite frankly, aside from seeing him drop a pass in the first preseason game, I haven't seen him at all. This is concerning. I've read on some websites that he's suffering from "fatigue" and that's why he hasn't been playing. If this were the 80's I'd be convinced he was doing massive amounts of coke. Since it's not, I can only assume that he still sucks or is hurt. Either way, I'm calling shenanigans on this one.

Come to think of it, you could say the same thing for Darren McFadden and Chaz Scheilens as well. D-Mac was supposed to finally be ready to stop being a injury prone fumble machine and get sick with Bush in the backfield. Chaz was supposed to be back from that foot injury and ready to be the No. 1 guy. As near as I can tell, these guys have the same amount of snaps I do.

I think they could live without D-Mac. Bush and Cartwright should be good enough and only having one back might actually make Cable give the bulk to Bush. I think Chaz is tougher to replace though. Lou Murphy is fine but Johnny Lee Higgens, Kevin Miller, Jacoby Ford, et al. are scary indeed.

Hell, DHB might start if he ever gets his rest.

Andy Dick Is Available

2010-08-19T22:31:00.003-06:00

Sweet Jesus I've now seen two independent reports about an upcoming Valerie Plame movie, wondering who will play the fraud, er, outed CIA agent.

Is the world fully gone insane? Even when the truth of that sordid situation came out did it not matter at all? I guess not, so let's recap some important facts.

#1 - Plame Wasn't A Classified Agent
Plame had been back in the US doing normal agency work. She wasn't in deep cover, nothing was blown, she wasn't put in any danger regarding her career or life. Most people in the media seemed to know she was in the CIA anyway. You can't be outed if your not in any kind of hiding.

#2 - Joe Wilson Is A Liar
Plame and Wilson claim they were outed as punishment for Wilson's report questioning the intel on Iraq trying to buy uranium from Niger. This is only partly true. Wilson went on the mission but never actually did any work. By his own recollection he spent most of his time drinking tea and bullshitting in local cafes. Some of what was in the report actually supported Bush's claims, the rest was just pap.

#3 - There Was No Conspiracy
This is the real reason the movie shouldn't be made. There simply wasn't any attempt to do Plame any harm. Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby, etc. had nothing to do with the situation at all. Plame's name and job made its way into the media because Richard Armitage is a big talking DC operative. He admitted it! He told Special Prosecutor Fitzgerald that it was him at the very beginning of the investigation, Fitz just kept going in case he could get anyone to forget what they said in an e-mail two years prior and misstate it on record. Scooter Libby fell into that trap and was thrown to the wolves. There is no story here. An out of service CIA agent's name was blabbed at a cocktail party by a notorious gabber. The only remarkable thing is that the agent happened to be a media whoring left winger who was married to another media whoring media member and they both wanted to get famous and screw over Bush. End of story. No victims.

MY SUGGESTION
Get the producers of Who's Nailin Palin back together to shoot this baby like it deserves. The plot could essentially be the same as what actually happened (not the NY Times fantasy) and cast a remarkably ghoulish looking Jenna Jameson as Plame. A little Ron Jeremy as Joe Wilson, Peter North as Scooter Libby and it essentially shoots itself, no pun intended. You could call it Deep Cover Blown, or EXXXPOSED! something schlocky like that. It may not have the je nais se quoi of a Streisand Hollywood flop but it would be more reflective of what the real motivations of the characters are. After all, whether you do it for money, fame, power or the fun of it, whoring is still whoring and we should treat all involved with the same amount of dignity.

Ok, maybe less for Plame. This is why Hollywood sucks. Here's a trailer for a movie that actually looks good.

Have We Learned Kiddies?

2010-08-18T22:53:00.004-06:00

It was announced today that the last combat brigade has left Iraq, leaving appx. 56,000 non-combat soldiers behind. This announcement startled me a bit not because the decision is so atrocious but because you don't really hear anything about Iraq in the news anymore as Afghanistan is getting worse and worse by the day.

This is a curious development and devastating to liberals.

Afghanistan was the good war. It was approved by the UN and it became a joint NATO operation. It had all the telltale signs of a liberal wet dream. A community of nations coming together in agreement and harmony to vanquish a common enemy.

Iraq was the savage war of choice, unilaterally spearheaded by cowboys in DC and London and looked down upon by most of the world.

Which one has been going better? If liberal world view ideology was correct, Afghanistan should be a Utopian example of what can be accomplished through a little peace, love and understanding. The only problem is that Afghanistan is sliding back into a hell hole because the liberal world view doesn't exist. The initial part of the war went well because the United States is so good at destroying the enemy. The UN and NATO were more than happy to step aside while we kicked ass and we were happy to do so. However, when the time came for the real work, the political and societal rebuilding combined with security, they pretty much took a pass there too. With the exception of the Brits, who have been solid of course. The rest though didn't want to fight, they didn't want to provide security, they didn't want to pay for anything. They wanted the US to act unilaterally only with there approval and under the umbrella of the idiotic NATO/UN rules of engagement which are designed to lose wars.

There were no such illusions in Iraq. That was the killing war, the Shock and Awe war. Now don't get me wrong, the aftermath of combat operations didn't go well and the insurgency that followed was a horribly bloody affair. The difference was that the Iraq war didn't have to follow the intergovernmental, bureaucratic nonsense that they did in Afghanistan. While the UN and NATO happily sat on their ass and watched Afghanistan crumble, the US/UK coalition in Iraq made the tough choice to increase troop levels and increase violence to end the insurgent threat. No meetings or UN resolutions but more bloodshed. That's what stabilized Iraq.

If Rwanda, Darfur, Bosnia, Somalia haven't taught the lesson, let Afghanistan do it. Intergovernmental agencies like the UN and NATO don't exist to get anything done. They exist to give all the nations of the world cover for doing nothing. It's an excuse to let bad things happen while world leaders talk endlessly about international law (which doesn't exist), treaties and the rights of mankind. It reflects most leftist programs on any level as they only give the appearance of compassion without the trouble of actually having to do anything.

I applaud what the coalition has been able to do in Iraq but it troubles me what is going on in Afghanistan. It would be far better to pull out of there now if it's only going to be fought on NATO terms. If the soldiers there aren't allowed to aggressively kill the enemy, they are simply providing life sized target practice for Taliban fighters which is an unacceptable situation to simply allow to exist in a war zone limbo. Let them do what they were trained to do or get the hell out of there and get ready for the next war, which will surely come after this particular display of weakness.

Gee Thanks

2010-08-18T14:39:00.004-06:00

GM announced today that they will go public soon, selling shares of their company to the public to help pay off the bailout money they received.

I wonder what kind of a gall it takes to sell someone a lie so publicly.

Last I heard, and saw on many commercials, was that GM had already paid back all the money, plus interest, ahead of schedule. We always knew that was complete BS but at least GM now admits it. That is hardly the most offensive aspect of the stock offering though.

The original bailout came from the taxpayers. Now, GM wants to sell stock to the same taxpayers in effort to pay off the original bill. "Congratulations! You now have the opportunity to finance your own swindling. In a related sale, can I interest you in an affordable grave? You have to dig it yourself but at least it's yours."

Essentially, the government extorted money from the people to bailout GM. Now, GM is going to swindle the people to give money back to the government, which will never give it back to the public. Final score, Taxpayers pay twice, GM gets paid twice, the Government collects money into eternity.

This is very reminiscent of the scene in Traffic where the couple in Mexico has their car stolen, then the police give them the number of the guy who has it so they can buy it back. The only difference is that in that deal the couple would get the car back if they paid. The American taxpayer just gets to keep paying and never gets the car back; unless they happen to be in the United Auto Workers Union.

Can I recommend a Ford to anyone who'll listen?

Testicular Gulag

2010-08-16T15:29:00.003-06:00

During a recent vacation, I came to the realization that the biggest enemy to my groin isn't my kids accuracy throwing baseballs or a swelling prostate but rather the animals at Old Navy and Levi.

First the Old Navy. Apparently at some point I bought some swim gear from there, promptly threw it in a drawer and never thought about it again. Fast forward to me in beautiful Chatfield State Park wondering why exactly this particular suit had two drawstrings on the same side of the suit and roughly 7 inches of Velcro where the fly would go. The drawstrings I got, they looped thru two rings on the other side. Stupid, yes. Evil, no. But the Velcro? Who really thought a piece of clothing meant to be worn over a mans pubic region, without boxers/underwear, should include Velcro? Unless the whole manscaping phenomenon has reached ridiculous levels and all men are now shaved like Brazilian trannys, I'm gonna go ahead and say Velcro plus hair equals intentionally mean spirited. Bomb squad technicians would have been impressed with the level of care I used securing that particular garment.

You might think that is the dumbest thing a clothing line could do to clothes in that area of the body. I sure did.

Until I was duped by some Nazi seamstress into purchasing a pair of button fly jeans.

Are you kidding me? How devious a plot is this! It seems safer than a zipper, having removed those unforgiving metal teeth, and once the pants are on they look just the same. So what's the problem? Functionality. Clearly the savage who patterned these was a man hating psycho or was just a guy who had never drunk anything in his life. Really, it can sometimes take a couple of beats to undue just one of those buttons. Try drinking a six pack, having your fine motor skills slightly impaired, then rush to the restroom to relieve yourself. No superior speed of the zipper, you now have 6 (6!) of these stupid eyelets to maneuver. Any good drunk will tell you, that kind of time may simply be torturous, if it's available at all.

Maybe these fashion styles work well on the waxed, anorexic models these jean companies use. Unfortunately, once most guys hit 30, the middle goes soft, gets a little wider and the shaving becomes nil. I'm not saying that to be ensnared in these traps is the same as being waterboarded, I'm saying it's worse. Terrorists at Guantanamo Bay didn't have to pay for the privilege to be waterboarded, I myself am out probably $70 for the honor of worrying nonstop about the condition of my junk.

I'm just gonna get one of those Muslim robes and call it a day.

Lies, Liars and Leftists

2010-08-05T18:02:00.004-06:00

LIES: The City of Denver, Leftist Pundits Everywhere
Here we are in beautiful Colorado Springs and the calendar has finally turned to August and we can see the summer impact of our collective decision not to raise taxes during the recession. As near as I can tell, crime is still low, the parks are still green and water/electricity continues to flow uninterrupted. In fact our budget and crime rate are far better than our friends to the north in Denver, who pointed us out as an example of right wing populism run amok, condemning us to a future of overflowing trash, lawless society and dead foliage everywhere. No offense to friends and family in the Mile High State but all elected officials in the capitol city can suck it. We have weathered the recession so far at least as well and probably better than you have while letting our citizens keep their money instead of throwing it down the drain of the nanny state. This alone should keep Denver's mayor/would be Governor from being elected in November but apparently the fake Conservative/real delusional grandstander Tom Tancredo is determined to not let Hick's complete ideological failures keep him from being elected. Last poll I saw had Hick around 43% with McInnis, Maes and Hickenlooper splitting the rest. Gee if Hick can only get 43% it seems either Republican would still be strong in November, scandals and all. Thanks to Tom though, there is no shot. Hopefully he realizes his insanity and drops out. I doubt it though.

LIARS: The Founding Fathers
It seems the State of California no longer gets to vote on anything any more. In recent years, voters have attempted to control the State government by passing Propositions to solve the issues of gay marriage, illegal immigration, welfare programs, etc. just to see them all overturned by activist judges at the District court level and the politburo-esque Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. The result? California is the most screwed up state in the country. Say what you want about Michigan but they have nothing to tap into to save their State, economy wise. California has agriculture, Hollywood and technology. They should be rolling in dough yet incompetent elected officials, dominated by leftists, and activist judges have thwarted any attempt by the suffering people to help their plight. Gay marriage is just the latest example of judicial tyranny. There is no right to limitless freedom of marriage in the Constitution. Separate but equal was referring to equality of State provided utilities, resources and legal standing. Marriage dos not deal with any of those things and is not an institution created by any government. It is a social institution that has existed since the beginning of time. The judiciary and the State don't get to overrule the people on this one.

LEFTISTS: Congress, White House spokesdouche Robert Gibbs
Let's see what Congress has been up to. Elena Kagen, who has exactly six more cases tried than I do, has been put on the Supreme Court, a 26 billion dollar State bailout is going to be passed, rumor has it that Obama is going to circumvent the legal process and order FANNIE MAE/FREDDIE MAC to simply forgive mortgage principle on mortgages that are underwater, the tax cuts will expire as planned raising taxes on everybody who pays them and Robert Gibbs calls Missouri's overwhelming rejection of ObamaCare at the polls (70%-30%) meaningless. So what exactly do average hard working Americans get out of this deal? Our mortgages cut? Nope. Better, cheaper healthcare? Nope. A voice in the process? Nope. Basic respect from elected officials? Nope. The bill for all this socialist redistribution of wealth? Absolutely. The only silver lining to all this is that it is being done so quickly only because leftists know the electoral apocalypse that will happen in November. The only question is how bad will it be by then and will Republicans have any tools left at their disposal to fix these problems? Considering the Social Security now officially pays out more than it collects, 6 years ahead of schedule, the prospects seem grim indeed. Republicans need to win big in the next three election cycles to have the time and caucus firepower to get things straightened out.

Prep the Silkwood Shower!

2010-08-04T18:04:00.003-06:00

I'm going to thoroughly disgust myself and defend Brett Favre from the media onslaught he's currently facing.

In the wake of any number of reports saying that Favre called it quits because of the bum ankle, there have been many talking head types either taking shots at Favre for being selfish or making fun of his flip flopping ways.

My questions is; how exactly did Brett Favre do anything wrong this time? He didn't hold a press conference, do an interview or send a fax to ESPN. As far as I can tell ESPN got word of some unsubstantiated e-mail and just went crazy with it. This after spiking a completely factual story about LeBron James because a reporter didn't appropriately identify himself. Whatever that means.

The entire sports media got bit by it's own snake on this one by jumping the gun big time. The only actual statement from Favre? "If my ankle feels ok I'll play." What a revelation! I hope Skip Bayless didn't explode with righteous indignation before that got cleared up.
. . . .

Speaking of unsubstantiated rumors, can I interest you in one where Favre texted pictures of his hog to a former college football pinup/current sideline pinup? Isn't that better than his crappy retirement speculation?

Jefferson Lives!

2010-08-02T19:37:00.003-06:00

Lady Gaga weighed in on the Arizona law at a concert recently, vowing to hold all Arizonans and to screech louder. Or something like that, who the hell knows.

While I find it laudable that Gag's would take a break from finding new and innovative ways to hide her screaming lack of talent and homely appearance, her yammerings are more uninformed than most.

The attorney general of Virginia ruled today that the state's police officers should feel free to try and determine the immigration status of detained individuals and act accordingly. Combine that with Arizona and Rhode Island, who also has local police enforce immigration laws, and it seems the tide of state opinion is decidedly against the ambulance chasing US AG Holder.

Not that public opinion matters to Obama but if State keep employing the same laws, eventually the situation will come to a head. I certainly hope so. I enjoy watching a little chaos inflicted on big brother by all the little brothers. Besides, we can't have a society where Gaga is studying and pontificating on the finer points of the federalist system instead of shrink wrapping her head in condoms while wearing the Popes robes.

If we lose that, then the terrorists have already won.

And Now For Something Useless

2010-07-30T19:10:00.005-06:00

Ahhh yes, it appears we've entered the time of the year where ESPN decides to completely fore go sports programming in the afternoon to bring us all the Stoner Olympics aka The X Games.

This is one of those subjects where every time I bring it up somebody calls me grandpa and tells me I'm just not with the new, hip sports; to which I call shenanigans!

Then I have to unleash the dark secret nobody talks about. The first X Games was in 1995 when I was the ripe old age of 15. I've seen em all baby and let me tell you, they've pretty much sucked the entire time. Sure the first couple were pretty cool since it was just going mainstream and the tricks were evolving fast. For quite a while now, all the stunts look just about the same. Can X stoner do a 970 a 1020 or a 1462? Who cares, it's just a guy spinning on four dollars of particle board with wheels. The BMX thing seems to me to be a contest to see who can land the first double backflip, which brings us to a bigger problem; it's not sports, it's a judged competition.

Hmmm, lets see. Competitors competing against themselves, doing tricks that are all very similar to most people that relies on a point based judging system. Hmmmm.

Congratulations X games you've become summer ice skating for dudes. Stop wasting valuable airtime on this nonsense, LeBron coverage, Favre coverage or anything having to do with Colin Cowherd. Good god, that Sports Nation show is a debacle. More canned laughter and faked excitement since the final season of Perfect Strangers.

If the NFL, MLB and NHL can find programming for 24 straight hours, every single day, you can find something better to do with your airtime than glorify D students and Brazilians whose brains have been pickled by too much ocean water and bong loads.

Tony Hawk is like 50 years old now, let's put this baby to rest for good.

Enough

2010-07-27T21:42:00.004-06:00

Well, I saw another one of those idiotic Miller Lite commercials and I finally snapped and have vowed to never drink another Miller Lite.

In case you've been lucky and missed these abominations, all the commercials follow a basic pattern. Schlub orders light beer from attractive bar-whore, bar-whore asks "Do you care how it tastes?", schlub goes "Nope!", bar-whore makes some snide comment meant to strip said douche of his masculinity and dignity. There's a guy with a tramp stamp, a guy with a purse and a guy wearing panties that do in fact, get in a bunch.

The first problem is the attempt to hide the trickery. Miller Lite is trying to get you to buy their more expensive, yet no better tasting lite beer by challenging your manhood. Like Miller Lite is so great you should skip the Coors Light on tap pitcher special. It's essentially the same plan Grey Poupon had in the eighties until someone realized that it was mustard and not precious jewels mined in the heart of Africa. Haven't seen one of those ads in years. Bottom line, if Miller is cheaper than buy it. If not, buy something else. The objective is getting drunk, not to show the boys at Hooters how sophisticated your pallet is.

Second problem is the entire dialogue. Clearly this was written by some gay PR guy who has never bought a beer in his life. Nobody orders a light beer. No waitress asks if you care how it tastes. Here's how that conversation works in real life, using the Miller Lite premise.

CUSTOMER: Let me get a light beer.
WAITRESS: Do you care how it tastes?
CUSTOMER: Do you care about tips?
WAITRESS: Uh, yeah.
CUSTOMER: Then shut the F*@k up and get me a beer before the game comes back.

Scene!

These commercials dishonor the time tested patron/waiter relationship. Patron buys something, server pretends to be interested in the customer, flirts a bit, customer pretends he doesn't know she is working him for tips and at the end of the day the waitress gets an obscene tip from a drunken football fan who can proudly proclaim on the way home that he was "this close!" to scoring. The good people in the Miller PR department would now have us believe that the person who is completely dependant on the customer liking them for their income is suddenly going to ridicule the hand that feeds them. Yeah right.

This leaves the American drinker at somewhat of a disadvantage though. Miller is boycotted because of these ads. I had to boycott Coors after they thought so little of my ability to sense temperature that they decided I needed a color changing can to help me. Then they cut out part of the box so I could see it easier. Thanks guys, I'm not a leper. I can still feel changes in temperature. Thanks anyway. Budweiser made the ultimate error by selling out America's beer to a bunch of Belgians. What to drink without supporting these atrocities?

If you want to stay American, pretty much all you have is the vast array of beer and malt liquor produced by the Pabst Brewing Company, the good people at Sam Adams and microbrews. That should be enough but if it's not, the good ol US of A makes a damn fine bourbon that doesn't think I'm a moron.

Sober anyway.

CP3 Ohhh!

2010-07-22T22:31:00.003-06:00

Chris Paul has made it quite clear that he wants out of the Big Easy and he wants out now. Where to? New York, Orlando, Portland and Dallas.

How does that sound to you New Orleans?

The Knicks have nothing but expiring contracts and Danilo Galinari.
Orlando has nothing really, Jameer Nelson, Rashad Lewis and some expirings?
Portland has some guys they can trade. If they're smart they try and unload Greg Oden as part of this travesty
Dallas don't have much either.

The real story though is the state of the franchise in New Orleans. If Paul goes, does the franchise even continue to exist in NO?

Probably not. There never should have been a team in New Orleans to begin with. I know that sounds awful since the team went there as a gift to the city to help them after Katrina but it never made any sense. NO has only ever been a football city, nothing more. For crying out loud the Jazz saw Salt Lake City as the savior from New Orleans apathy, that should tell you something. Combine that with the litany of stories about how NBA players just can't keep away from the nightlife in NO and it's just a bad idea all around.

I hope that CP3 does split and the franchise has to relocate. That way Seattle can get the team that David Stern allowed to be stolen from them back. That or Kansas City. Seems like KC is primed for a team.

Any Time Now

2010-07-21T15:15:00.002-06:00

It appears that the Tom Vilsack has reversed course and offered to hire Shirley Sherrod back to the USDA in some new capacity. Sherrod had recently been fired for making seemingly racist comments that turned out to be contained in a longer speech on her moment of clarity concerning race relations and the need not to discriminate.

If that's the case then good for her, she was judged far too quickly and deserves her apology.

I'm still here waiting for mine though.

As a Conservative, I've been labeled a racist for years by the same people who are jumping in line to apologize for taking this person's comments out of context. These same people who are dispicable hypocrites.

The same people that tell me that States Rights are code for Jim Crow laws,
The same people who say the Constitution is racist,
The same people that say wanting to cut the deficit is racist,
The same people that say if I'm against Obama, I'm racist
The same people that say if I want colorblind standards in educational or hiring, I'm racist and sexist,
The same people that told us welfare reform is racist,
The same people that tell me societal quotas aren't racist.

While I'm happy that Shirley Sherrod has her apology I doubt strongly that these same media hacks will abandon their context-less judgment of any and all conservatives. If Shirley Sherrod had been a known Republican instead of a minority female, she wouldn't have gotten hers either. As this is the case I will also continue to pre-judge all media heads/"journalists" as a bunch of lying, hypocritical, leftwing, mindless drone douchebags until me and mine get our apology.

I'll be here waiting.

Uh, Okay Then

2010-07-20T17:23:00.003-06:00

ESPN has announced that Jenni Finch is retiring after a 10 year career.

Now, if your wondering why ESPN announced the retirement of a 29 year old part time model, don't feel bad I had the same question.

Turns out they were referring to her softball career, which is even more confusing.

I vaguely remember her preempting real sports programming on ESPN back in the day during the College Softball World Series and then again sometimes with the United States national team. Surely there has to be more than that warrant an announcement right?

Nope.

To the best of my knowledge, there isn't a professional softball league in the world. As such, you can never stop being an amateur and that's the problem. You can't retire from being an amateur. Maybe you stop trying out for the national team but every time you pick up a bat at a family barbecue, technically you have retained amateur status. So why exactly has this non-story made front page headlines at ESPN.com? I don't recall them announcing the "retirements" of any other Olympic/amateur athletes?

I suspect it's ESPN trying to wring a little more blood out of Finch's stone. Bearing down on the ripe old age of 30, I'm guessing the swimsuit modeling jobs aren't in full effect and she probably was getting to be a long shot to make the national team anyway. Something tells me ESPN has big plans for her and the suddenly revamped and resigned Erin Andrews. However, wasting valuable web space on a nothing announcement does complete the time waste pentagram after The Decision, The ESPY's, Skip Bayless and Colin Cowherd. So that's a plus.

Self Reflection

2010-07-15T20:55:00.005-06:00

Now that The Boss is dead and the nation is seemingly overwhelmed by legions of Yankee bandwagon jumpers wearing pink or red Yankee hats, I must now examine my history with the beloved Yankees to see if I'm now a douchebag as well.

FACT #1 - It's true I'm from Colorado but we didn't have a team until 1993 so I can't be held accountable for having picked a team in the first 13 years of life. Most of the family is from NY so naturally I drifted towards one of their teams. Thank god it wasn't the Mets.

FACT #2 - As I was forming my connection with the team, it happened to be during the worst of the Steinbrenner years. I figure the years from about 4 years old (1984) to 13 years old (1993) were when I became locked in to the pinstripes. So was I bandwagon jumper? I hardly think so. To check those standings, in my most impressionable years, the Yanks didn't make the playoffs once, finished dead last once. Even if you add in the next two years, the Yanks lost a first place team to a strike and then lost that heartbreaking wildcard playoff to the Mariners.

1980: 103-59 (lost ALCS)
1981: 59-48 (won World Series)
1982: 79-83
1983: 91-71
1984: 87-75
1985: 97-64
1986: 90-72
1987: 89-73
1988: 85-76
1989: 74-87
1990: 67-95 (last in AL)
1991: 71-91
1992: 76-86
1993: 88-74
1994: 70-43 (strike cancelled season)
1995: 79-65 (lost 3-2 to Seattle in ALDS. E. Martinez walkoff, Jr. scores.)
1996: 92-70 (won World Series, start of the Jeter Era)

How was I supposed to know that things weren't always as bad as they were when I was growing up? We had no Internet back then kiddies. So far as I knew, we were the lovable losers.

FACT #3 - There wasn't just losing during this time period, it was Steinbrenner losing. Jay Buhner losing. That counts double.

CONCLUSION: I earned the right to be a Yankee fan. All of these bandwagon, Jeter groupies can suck it. You don't know what it's like to have Jim Abbott start on opening day or to have Steve Howe involved in your team in any way. Don't get me started on Gerald Williams or how Steiny wanted to trade Bernie Williams 10 minutes after he got to the bigs. We can all make fun of the late arriving Red Sox and Yankee fans wearing multi-colored gear or Yankee jerseys with the name on the back (!) but I'll continue to wear my blue hat high (so long as I can still get some kind of family discount . . .), secure in the fact that I'm better than all these other people that make people like me look bad and that I have not been living my life as an unaware douchebag. Not for this anyway.

EXTRA FACT #1 - I don't care that the Yanks have tons of money to spend. All of you "small market" teams in Los Angeles, Miami, Baltimore, Washington D.C., Boston, Queens, Texas and St. Louis just need to sack up a little bit and try to scrape a few more shekels out of your "small town America" fan bases. Not my problem that your team is broke because of a divorce (Dodgers), or that you can't get Hispanics to watch baseball (Miami), or that you're incompetent (Orioles, Nationals, Mets) or that it's just to hot to play late in the season (Texas). Also not my problem that spending 150 million still leaves you with Varitek, Papi, Wakefield, Dice - K and Lowell (Red Sox). It takes cash and brains my friends. In basketball they talk about getting one for the thumb but the classiest team in all of professional sports is almost half way through lap #2 of getting rings for all the digits, fingers and toes. On the way to 28!

SUCK ON IT FACT #1 - Had the Yankees traded for Cliff Lee, he might have only been the #3 pitcher, given the role Pettitte is on.

Curious Mojo

Worst Movies Ever

Stupidity Turns One

Booze, Baseball and Silkwood Showers

Series Movie Review: Punisher

Yikes

Backwards Through the Corn

Season in Review

History in Thin Air

Buster Douglas or Just Another Buster?

Be Bold Good Fool

Que Es Esto?

World Wide Leader of Duh

And On The Seventh Day . . . . . . .

Now For Something Really Useless

Concrete Nikes

Uh, Now What?

New York, New York

Seems Reasonable

Use Your Head, Just Not That One

The Examined Life

The Last Frontier?

Here You Go Lefty

How About A Staycation Instead?

Sponsored by Ambien

Where Were You?

Next Up, Wilt!

Number Two Is Right

The Chosen One Spoketh, Then A Black Hole Consumed All That Was

200 Million Dollar Question

That Was Fast

Time For A New Phrase

Oh Crap

Oh Bother

Beware of RINO's

Simple Plans

Simplify

Shameless Self-Promotion

Still Satisfying

Photocopy Quality

Treasonous Disgrace

Say Wha?

Your Move, Genocide

Eeeeeeh, Not Quite

Oh, That's Where I Left My Petard!

Close the Borders

Life, Illuminated

Arizona

History Illuminated

A Curious Book Review

Short Lived Euphoria

Huxley Shrugged

Bay City Rollin

Easy There Icarus

Meh & Double Meh

Reason #1,287,043

Politically Nuts and Retard Strong

Ditch the Bucket, Grab A Lifejacket

More Fake Outrage

Peace, Love and Holy Sh*t!

The Geek Shall Inherit the Earth

Focus On Next Year

Blight of the Irish

Miami Lukewarm's

Brilliant

Poppers For Everyone!

Stupid Is A Disease

Election Night Running Diary

A Week Out

Truth In Advertising

Then They Came For The Children

Jefferson Shrugged

A Thousand Days Late, A Trillion Dollars Short

Ye of Little Faith

Retards, Meet Doorknob. Start F'in*

Have Style, Will Travel

Tale of the Tape

Yeah? What Now?

Roll the Chamber Nick, I'm Out

The Seventh Seal Opens, A Look Back