As I click onto the front page of the Drudge Report today, I almost browned my trousers. The unfortunate headline was in reference to the fact that President Obama and Sarah "oooh ma gosh" Palin will be attending the Alfalfa Dinner this Saturday night in Washington. The problem is that this is being billed as a possible preview to the 2012 Election. Are you kidding me.
This completely unqualified woman was not even electable in a useless position the even Dan Quayle was able to get elected to. That's right, the same Dan Quayle who once said in reference to solar power that " (it's) time for the human race to enter the solar system." At least he was as pretty as she is.
I think this ridiculous crush the right wing has on her must stop. I think the main reason that she is still popular is that all of the repressed right wingers feel it's ok to " interrogate the prisoner " as long as they are thinking about everyone's favorite hockey mom. We have to understand that this country is waist deep in the turds left us by Georgie-Boy's playtime at President. And you thought your neighbors kid was spoiled. ( Hey Dad, I know what we can do today!!!! Let's start a war!!!! )
I always thought that the Republicans were shrewd and savvy operators. I have watched as they have allowed their party to be co-opted by religious zealots whose agenda has no place in government. I have watched while they, the party of fiscal responsibility, have spent us to record levels of debt while making government less efficient and less effective. I have looked on as they made torture an official part of American foreign policy and now they are maneuvering to put in place another useless figure-head that can be on television while their back-room operators steal the rest of what is left of our country.
If the vapid and woefully uninformed Sarah Palin is considered a viable candidate in any election outside of Alaska, I think that we have already begun the journey which ends only one place. That place is the future where an as yet unnamed scholar will pen his seminal masterpiece.
"The Rise and Fall of the American Empire"
God Save the Queen.....
Thursday, January 29, 2009
Sunday, January 18, 2009
…..PeTA keeps making it harder and harder to support anything that they do?
Anyone who knows me knows two things. First is that I love animals. I have two dogs and a cat and they run roughshod throughout my house. The second thing is that I have a pretty severe phobia involving vegetables. I eat corn, romaine lettuce (carefully trimmed), and cooked spinach. Tomatoes and a few fruits pretty much round out the entirety of my veggie intake.
I imagine at this point you can deduce how likely it is that I may become a vegetarian at any point in the near future considering my vegetable issues. I also must say that one of my finest talents is cooking flesh on a grill in the yard and that there are truly few things better than a fine steak or filet of fish and a great glass of wine.
Now as for my love of animals, I have had pets and always will. I also think that observing wildlife is a fantastic way to further education and to just get out and blow off some steam. I have never been a hunter and personally don’t see the thrill. I do however own guns and find many other things to shoot. I guess maybe I would feel differently if there were some more inherent risk to the participants. I have a lot of respect for the hunter who goes after bear with say, an archery rig. Most deer hunter’s biggest danger usually involves inebriation and either shooting another hunter or themselves.
I have a great deal of respect for the efforts of many groups such as the Humane Society, the ASPCA, and PeTA. But PeTA has been making this increasingly difficult as their stance becomes both more extreme and downright ridiculous. Take their latest campaign to try to get people to stop eating fish.
The gist of this campaign is that fish are being eaten not because they are a healthy source of protein and are an abundant food source. They are not being eaten because in many parts of the world they are the primary and in some cases only source of sustenance available. They are being eaten because they suffer from bad publicity. That’s right. A quote on the campaign page actually says
“Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here.”
Here is a link to the campaign home page. (click here)
Now that they have taken control of the public relations department for fish worldwide, what is their solution to this dilemma? They want to begin by “retiring the old name for good.” And what do they propose to call fish henceforth? “Sea Kittens.” Yes, that’s right. “Sea Kittens.” Their reasoning is that if fish were called sea kittens, nobody would want to hurt them. Other areas of their site include initiatives to ask the US Fish and Wildlife, oh sorry, the US Sea Kittens and Wildlife Service to stop promoting the hunting of, yep, you guessed it sea kittens.
I guess that nobody has bothered to mention to the fine folks at PeTA that though actual kittens are kept as pets in the United States and many other countries, they are just another food source in many other countries. They should also consider that many non-meat eaters will allow fish into their diets because their sensibilities allow for the fact that most fish barely have a developed nervous system and that means it likely that fish do not “feel” pain.
In the end, like many groups whose sole aim is to impose their radical positions on the public at large, they continue to marginalize themselves and make it harder for reasonable people to get on board with anything that they hope to accomplish. Campaigns like this one become insulting to your intelligence and that is one thing that we don’t need more of these days.
I imagine at this point you can deduce how likely it is that I may become a vegetarian at any point in the near future considering my vegetable issues. I also must say that one of my finest talents is cooking flesh on a grill in the yard and that there are truly few things better than a fine steak or filet of fish and a great glass of wine.
Now as for my love of animals, I have had pets and always will. I also think that observing wildlife is a fantastic way to further education and to just get out and blow off some steam. I have never been a hunter and personally don’t see the thrill. I do however own guns and find many other things to shoot. I guess maybe I would feel differently if there were some more inherent risk to the participants. I have a lot of respect for the hunter who goes after bear with say, an archery rig. Most deer hunter’s biggest danger usually involves inebriation and either shooting another hunter or themselves.
I have a great deal of respect for the efforts of many groups such as the Humane Society, the ASPCA, and PeTA. But PeTA has been making this increasingly difficult as their stance becomes both more extreme and downright ridiculous. Take their latest campaign to try to get people to stop eating fish.
The gist of this campaign is that fish are being eaten not because they are a healthy source of protein and are an abundant food source. They are not being eaten because in many parts of the world they are the primary and in some cases only source of sustenance available. They are being eaten because they suffer from bad publicity. That’s right. A quote on the campaign page actually says
“Of course, if you look at it another way, what all this really means is that fish need to fire their PR guy—stat. Whoever was in charge of creating a positive image for fish needs to go right back to working on the Britney Spears account and leave our scaly little friends alone. You've done enough damage, buddy. We've got it from here.”
Here is a link to the campaign home page. (click here)
Now that they have taken control of the public relations department for fish worldwide, what is their solution to this dilemma? They want to begin by “retiring the old name for good.” And what do they propose to call fish henceforth? “Sea Kittens.” Yes, that’s right. “Sea Kittens.” Their reasoning is that if fish were called sea kittens, nobody would want to hurt them. Other areas of their site include initiatives to ask the US Fish and Wildlife, oh sorry, the US Sea Kittens and Wildlife Service to stop promoting the hunting of, yep, you guessed it sea kittens.
I guess that nobody has bothered to mention to the fine folks at PeTA that though actual kittens are kept as pets in the United States and many other countries, they are just another food source in many other countries. They should also consider that many non-meat eaters will allow fish into their diets because their sensibilities allow for the fact that most fish barely have a developed nervous system and that means it likely that fish do not “feel” pain.
In the end, like many groups whose sole aim is to impose their radical positions on the public at large, they continue to marginalize themselves and make it harder for reasonable people to get on board with anything that they hope to accomplish. Campaigns like this one become insulting to your intelligence and that is one thing that we don’t need more of these days.
Sunday, January 11, 2009
.....Kyle Whittingham is one of the things to love about college football?
The games are great. Every Saturday in the late summer and through the Autumn, we tune in and watch as Universities and Colleges both large and small send out their weekend warriors, their crazy brave. And every year we have to endure the unsatisfying end to what is week-in and week-out one of the most engaging spectacles in sport.
I am firmly in the camp of one who longs for, desires, a satisfying and final champion to such a great exhibition. I would say that I am in the minority, but I don't know if that is true. I really don't think it matters. There are many arguments for and against and I did not come here to rehash these. I will mention the one argument against my wish for a playoff that always made sense to me. College football is the only major sport in which a large number of teams end their seasons on a high note. The NFL is the Pantheon of sports in America today and yet at the end of the season only one team and their fans end on a high note. Sure there are teams like the Falcons of 2008 that have a great deal of unexpected success, but without a Super Bowl Championship it is still a season short of a final victory. In the college bowl system, half of the teams that play in a bowl game end their season with a win. The boosters are happy, the administrations are happy, the coaches are happy, and most importantly, the players and students are happy.
Yes, I think I might be changing my mind. While college football always seems to leave many of us wanting more, so many others end the year so happy, who is to say. While I'll always be a fan of pro football I will say that college is just a different kind of game. It stands to reason that one of sports "different" people resides in this singular sport.
I think that Kyle Whittingham is the finest example of someone who knows the rules and decides that he should completely ignore them. His Utah Utes are in one of the have-not conferences. They are so unlikely to win a national title that the state attorney general of Utah has threatened to file anti-trust sanctions against the NCAA. While that might be a bit excessive, you have to admire the notion of defending one's own. Did I also mention that they made it through the entire 2008 football season without losing a game. It might stand to mention that they were the only Div1-A, I'm sorry, the only FBS school to not have a single loss. They also crushed Alabama in their bowl game. That is the same University of Alabama team that was the #1 team in the country for five weeks and only surrendered that ranking in a loss to eventual national champion Florida Gators. And this was in the SEC Championship Game. The Championship game of arguably the best conference in college football for the past decade.
But back to Coach Whittingham. The BCS rules state that all the coaches of the schools in the FBS will vote for the winner of the mythical BCS Championship Game as the national champion for college football. Coach Whittingham decided to skirt these rules. He and only he voted his Utah Utes as the National Champion of College Football. I am glad that he took the stand. To do otherwise would be to do a disservice to the men who worked so hard and beat everyone who came before them. Perhaps they might not beat USC, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, or even Penn State. But we'll never know. College football prides itself on the fact that though many of its participants do not go on to careers in football, they train their men to go on to be the best that they can in life. I think Coach Whittingham has set an example of leadership and loyalty that players, coaches and administrators should look to for guidance in the future.
I am firmly in the camp of one who longs for, desires, a satisfying and final champion to such a great exhibition. I would say that I am in the minority, but I don't know if that is true. I really don't think it matters. There are many arguments for and against and I did not come here to rehash these. I will mention the one argument against my wish for a playoff that always made sense to me. College football is the only major sport in which a large number of teams end their seasons on a high note. The NFL is the Pantheon of sports in America today and yet at the end of the season only one team and their fans end on a high note. Sure there are teams like the Falcons of 2008 that have a great deal of unexpected success, but without a Super Bowl Championship it is still a season short of a final victory. In the college bowl system, half of the teams that play in a bowl game end their season with a win. The boosters are happy, the administrations are happy, the coaches are happy, and most importantly, the players and students are happy.
Yes, I think I might be changing my mind. While college football always seems to leave many of us wanting more, so many others end the year so happy, who is to say. While I'll always be a fan of pro football I will say that college is just a different kind of game. It stands to reason that one of sports "different" people resides in this singular sport.
I think that Kyle Whittingham is the finest example of someone who knows the rules and decides that he should completely ignore them. His Utah Utes are in one of the have-not conferences. They are so unlikely to win a national title that the state attorney general of Utah has threatened to file anti-trust sanctions against the NCAA. While that might be a bit excessive, you have to admire the notion of defending one's own. Did I also mention that they made it through the entire 2008 football season without losing a game. It might stand to mention that they were the only Div1-A, I'm sorry, the only FBS school to not have a single loss. They also crushed Alabama in their bowl game. That is the same University of Alabama team that was the #1 team in the country for five weeks and only surrendered that ranking in a loss to eventual national champion Florida Gators. And this was in the SEC Championship Game. The Championship game of arguably the best conference in college football for the past decade.
But back to Coach Whittingham. The BCS rules state that all the coaches of the schools in the FBS will vote for the winner of the mythical BCS Championship Game as the national champion for college football. Coach Whittingham decided to skirt these rules. He and only he voted his Utah Utes as the National Champion of College Football. I am glad that he took the stand. To do otherwise would be to do a disservice to the men who worked so hard and beat everyone who came before them. Perhaps they might not beat USC, Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, or even Penn State. But we'll never know. College football prides itself on the fact that though many of its participants do not go on to careers in football, they train their men to go on to be the best that they can in life. I think Coach Whittingham has set an example of leadership and loyalty that players, coaches and administrators should look to for guidance in the future.
Thursday, January 8, 2009
......we should be through already with the regular guy myth?
I just finished watching an excerpt from an interview with former vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin. (click here for video and accompanying article) The interview is part of a forthcoming documentary in which John Ziegler examines the media coverage in the never-ending 2008 election. The entire point of the gushing tribute to Palin, although Ziegler admitted to being a fan even before she became the nominee, is how unfair the media coverage was in regard to Palin.
I have to admit that I'm getting tired of this story. The coverage was very much what you might expect. The "fair and balanced" channel loved everything about her and her good old down to earth, regular girl, hockey mom persona. The other news outlets followed from whatever angle their particular brand of bias would allow.
In this piece, Palin complains about getting hacked apart both personally and professionally. The unfortunate part for her was that much of it ended up being about her family. She seems to not realize however that when you are a virtually empty shell professionally there is not much left for a voracious media to plunder except your private life. I am not here to go into the private life of Palin, I think that for figures such as these those areas should be off-limits to certain degree. The problem is that she was so unqualified for the job that she was nominated for that it was almost surreal. They Republican machine that put her up to such scrutiny has truly had the wheels fall off in the waning years of the Bush Administration. She did so very few press conferences and q&a sessions that there was nothing to talk or write about. All of her speeches were little cheer leading rallies and were sure to include plenty of winking, maverick references, and generic America rah rah, they did not however contain anything about what she or they would actually do were they tapped to govern this country.
I know nothing about Sarah Palin as a person. She is probably a very nice woman and wife and mother. But I would love to know the answer to one question.
When did we start thinking that it is a problem to elect someone who is elite? That is smarter than everyone else in the room? That drinks fine wine instead of beer or Crown Royal?
The president of this country should be better than the average citizen. So should the vice-president. We are coming off of 8 years of being governed by a "regular guy." Our country is in the worst state since Hoover left office nearly 80 years ago. Let's stop pretending that we want to be governed by the guy we would like to have a beer with and admit that we will all be better off when we elect the people who wouldn't associate with most of us.
I have to admit that I'm getting tired of this story. The coverage was very much what you might expect. The "fair and balanced" channel loved everything about her and her good old down to earth, regular girl, hockey mom persona. The other news outlets followed from whatever angle their particular brand of bias would allow.
In this piece, Palin complains about getting hacked apart both personally and professionally. The unfortunate part for her was that much of it ended up being about her family. She seems to not realize however that when you are a virtually empty shell professionally there is not much left for a voracious media to plunder except your private life. I am not here to go into the private life of Palin, I think that for figures such as these those areas should be off-limits to certain degree. The problem is that she was so unqualified for the job that she was nominated for that it was almost surreal. They Republican machine that put her up to such scrutiny has truly had the wheels fall off in the waning years of the Bush Administration. She did so very few press conferences and q&a sessions that there was nothing to talk or write about. All of her speeches were little cheer leading rallies and were sure to include plenty of winking, maverick references, and generic America rah rah, they did not however contain anything about what she or they would actually do were they tapped to govern this country.
I know nothing about Sarah Palin as a person. She is probably a very nice woman and wife and mother. But I would love to know the answer to one question.
When did we start thinking that it is a problem to elect someone who is elite? That is smarter than everyone else in the room? That drinks fine wine instead of beer or Crown Royal?
The president of this country should be better than the average citizen. So should the vice-president. We are coming off of 8 years of being governed by a "regular guy." Our country is in the worst state since Hoover left office nearly 80 years ago. Let's stop pretending that we want to be governed by the guy we would like to have a beer with and admit that we will all be better off when we elect the people who wouldn't associate with most of us.
Sunday, January 4, 2009
No one should really care what I think but,
No one should really care what I think and I'm not sure anyone ever will. That being said this is now where you will find exactly what I think on a myriad of topics, but mostly about politics, sports, hypocrisy, which is unfortunately in no short short supply these days, and idiocy and stupidity in general. What makes me an expert? Absolutely nothing. That's what's so great about it. You may think I'm asshole or completely full of shit, but at least you are thinking......
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