Only thing worse...

What's the only thing worse than a democratically-elected, religious extremist, desperate government?

A democratically-elected, religious extremist, desperate, poor government.

Israel's not giving the Palestinian Authority any money, so the Palestinians are broke. They need almost $80 million by the first week of March to make payroll. Half of those employees...security forces. This just goes from bad to worse.

You don't have a country to speak of, you're poor, and your government wants Mohammed to solve all your problems. What would you do for cash and food?

They're being dared to walk into a pizza parlor loaded up with some sticks of dyna...what?

Gay/GOP Adoption.

From Politics1.com:

State Senator Robert Hagan (D-Ohio) says he will introduce legislation to ban Republican couples from adopting children.

According to Hagan, "credible research'' shows that adopted children raised in GOP households are more at risk for developing "emotional problems, social stigmas, inflated egos, and alarming lack of tolerance for others they deem different than themselves and an air of overconfidence to mask their insecurities."

Hagan agrees there is no scientific evidence backing his claims about Republican parents -- just, as Hagan notes, there is none backing State Representative Ron Hood's (R) bill banning gay parents from adopting.

Hood claims children purportedly suffer from emotional "harm" when they are adopted by gay couples. Hagen admits he created his proposal to mock Hood's proposed ban on gay adoption in a way that people would see the "blatantly discriminatory and extremely divisive" nature of the bill.

The GOP House leadership does not support Hood's proposal.

Lou Dobbs is Apoplectic

Dobbs' website has a poll that asks:

Do you believe the Bush administration puts commercial interest ahead of the national interest as a matter of general policy?

Results? 98 percent "Yes" to to 2 percent "No".

Beware, this also includes immigration policy that, Dobbs feels, allows too many illegal immigrants in the country. He feels that the Administration is kowtowing to business interests that take advantage of cheap labor from the south of the border.

My "Port Deal" Analysis

The port deal is not the beginning, nor the end of hypocrisy of United States policy. Most ideals expressed by Republicans are inherently hypocritical.

My point, that I did not make earlier, is looking beyond the human rights and government that the UAE has, coming down them for taking over our ports just because they are foreign, is bigoted. The fact is, ports all over the west coast are run by Chinese, Russian, Australian and British companies.

Even looking at it from a free-market standpoint, businesses that sanction terrorism in the United States will not be doing that business here for long. Dubai Ports World is a for-profit entity. UAE has already milked its country dry of oil. Of Middle Eastern countries they allow the most "Westernization" of their country, and that's relative. The country needs to broaden its economy. They will go down in flames for sanctioning terrorists. Don't underestimate the power of self-preservation.

I'm providing the other side's argument, not supporting it. Don't underestimate the power of religious fervor, either.

If we protest this deal, we've gotta protest all the other ports run by corporations not based in the United States. Not just the ones with skin darker than ours. The idea of spreading democracy to the Middle East is that they are not inherently evil, and can accept it. That was just one of the many assumptions prior to violating Iraq's sovereignty.

The ports were highlighted as one of the biggest weaknesses of our homeland security by the 9/11 Commission. Five percent of cargo is actually checked. The weak security of ports, or lack thereof thanks to a free-market Administration, has been known, this deal has just brought that weakness to light.

An Ugly Truth.

From a Washington Post article regarding an Indian scientist denied a visa because of his expertise in chemistry...as the president of an international scientific council.

"If you tell an American, 'If you want a visa to go to India, you have to go to Dallas, Chicago, L.A. or New York, and while you are there, you are going to be fingerprinted, photographed and asked about everything you have done in your research for the last 40 years,' we would find this procedure untenable as Americans."

Yum.

Just looking at the stuff on this site made me drool...a store for solely Tennessee-made products.

a.k.a. Conservative

"Traditions are group efforts to keep the unexpected from happening."
- Barber Tober

Pitchers and catchers report...

Get ready!

God's Politics.

I just finished Jim Wallis' book, God's Politics (only took me 4 months of reading on the El to work and back). This quote is from an article on the focus of television demographics, but quotes the book.

"The real theological problem in America today is no longer the religious right, but the nationalist religion of the Bush administration, one that confuses the identity of the nation with the church, and God's purposes with the mission of American empire. America's foreign policy is more than pre-emptive, it is theologically presumptuous; not only unilateral, but dangerously messianic; not just arrogant, but rather bordering on the idolatrous and blasphemous. ... This is a dangerous mix of bad foreign policy and bad theology." - Jim Wallis

It's definitely a book worth reading, if you've every been to church or voted.

"Vice Presidential Firearms Mishap Analyst"

From the Daily Show:

Jon Stewart: "I'm joined now by our own vice-presidential firearms mishap analyst, Rob Corddry. Rob, obviously a very unfortunate situation. How is the vice president handling it?

Rob Corddry: "Jon, tonight the vice president is standing by his decision to shoot Harry Wittington. According to the best intelligence available, there were quail hidden in the brush. Everyone believed at the time there were quail in the brush.

"And while the quail turned out to be a 78-year-old man, even knowing that today, Mr. Cheney insists he still would have shot Mr. Whittington in the face. He believes the world is a better place for his spreading buckshot throughout the entire region of Mr. Whittington's face."

Jon Stewart: "But why, Rob? If he had known Mr. Whittington was not a bird, why would he still have shot him?"

Rob Corddry: "Jon, in a post-9-11 world, the American people expect their leaders to be decisive. To not have shot his friend in the face would have sent a message to the quail that America is weak."

Guns don't kill people...or quail.

From the Idaho Statesman:

"I am sorry to say, but there's no such thing as an accident when it comes to firearms," Bob Lytle said. "You or someone has to pull the trigger; it doesn't go off by itself."

James Webb for Senate

From Webb for Senate:

James Webb's election will give Virginia and the country a Senator with a unique set of credentials. He is a Marine who knows first-hand the ferocity of infantry combat; a world-traveled, Emmy-Award winning journalist; the best-selling author of eight books including Fields of Fire, the classic novel of the Vietnam War, and Born Fighting, which Tom Wolfe characterized as the most important ethnography in recent American history; a film maker; an attorney who spent four years as a full committee counsel in the U.S. House of Representatives; and a high-level government executive with five years' experience in the Pentagon.

Not mentioned above, but included in his bio on Wikipedia:

Webb was the Secretary of the Navy (1987-1988) during the Reagan Administration. He resigned after refusing to agree to reduction of the Navy's force structure.

$20 won't kill you, here.

Three Vote No.

Three ex-Broncos that won two Super Bowls with the team have come out in opposition to the signing of wide receiver Terrell Owens. Shannon Sharpe, Terrell Davis and now John Elway have disapproved of the Broncos acquiring T.O. Said Elway:

"The Broncos have a great locker room right now; they have a lot of good leaders in there. To have somebody come in who's worried about himself and not worried about what the team is worried about, I wouldn't do it."

Can't do nuthin' bout it...

This is a USA Today article from December 2005, but this paragraph caught my attention. It's a great philosophy to have:

Charles Crawford, a historian at the University of Memphis, says "considerable racial prejudice" in Tennessee will hurt Ford despite his near-celebrity status. The candidate is philosophical. "Anyone that's not going to vote for me because of my race, bless their heart," he says. "I can't control it, so there's no need for me to even bother myself with it."

Cracked the Top 10!

From CNNSI.com:

According to the The Tennessean, Bruce Pearl ordered his Vols not to
celebrate on the floor after their 75-67 win at Kentucky on Tuesday, saying to
them, "Act like you've been here." Of course, once behind closed doors in the
locker room, he was back to trademark antics, removing his tangerine-coat ("We
were about to pour water on him," said guard Dane Bradshaw, "but he was like,
'Don't get it on the jacket'") and then tearing off his dress shirt in what the
paper described as "pro-wrestler style."

"Donovan McNabb of the Senate"

From the Philadelphia News-Inquirer, details of an exchange on Rush Limbaugh's talk show. What I love about Limbaugh, is he's not afraid of anything. Especially being wrong....more than once.

The caller said: "Barack Obama is the Donovan McNabb of the Senate. He's
overrated, and he's going to get a free pass by the media." He also said Obama -
in his words, "well-spoken" and "well-mannered" - is "like a Bill Clinton, but
just a different shade, that's all." Did Limbaugh take the caller to task for his racially tinged views? What do you think? "I kind of like that analogy that he is the Donovan McNabb of the U.S. Senate," Limbaugh enthused, adding, "in the sense that he is being propped up... because they want to see him do well."

Interesting bit of trivia...

From the truly-not-important-but-fun-to-bring-up-at-dinner parties file (I know, you're asking what sort of dinner parties do I go to):

"Boondock" is derived from the Tagalog word "bundok" which means "mountain". The word came into American use after the Filipino-American War (which followed the Spanish-American War) when returning military personnel used the term.

Guess...

Which men's college basketball team is ranked ahead of these teams?

Indiana
North Carolina
Michigan
Oklahoma
Iowa
North Carolina State
Georgetown
UCLA
Michigan State

That's right. The University of Tennessee.

**Update**
And congrats to #11 Tennessee for beating unranked Kentucky 75-67...watched the game at a pub under the El called "Stocks and Blondes" with a Florida alum.

P.S. - Who told the NC guy to go for two when they were down by three with less than 3 seconds to go?

Say what?

During questioning at hearing in front of the Senate Intelligence Committee, Alberto Gonzalez, the United States Attorney General, tried to defend the Administration's use of unwarranted wiretaps. He said:

President Washington, President Lincoln, President Wilson, President Roosevelt have all authorized electronic surveillance on a far broader scale.

I'd be real interested to see what sort of "electronic surveillance" that those presidents had, especially Washington and Lincoln. For the historic-timeline challenged, George Washington was president from 1789-1797. Abraham Lincoln was president from 1861 to 1865. The level of electronic surveillance during either of those time periods was probably pretty low.

While low-tech surveillance was probably on the order of following people in their horse-drawn carriages, electronic surveillance wasn't exactly invented yet. Therefore, it'd be hard to authorize it on a "far broader scale" than incoming phone wiretaps.

From bad to worse.

Aftet posting a 5-6 record, would you sign with them? Tennessee's recruiting class was listed as "discouraging" in Stewart Mandel's analysis of recruiting classes on signing day on CNNSI.com:

A year ago this time, the Vols were basking in the glow of landing the nation's top recruiting class, which included seven of Scout.com's top 100 players. How did Tennessee go from that to a borderline top-25 class with just one top-100 player (in-state offensive lineman Jacques McClendon) a year later?

Certainly last year's 5-6 debacle didn't help, but the seeds of a recruiting class begin well before that. For whatever reason, Phillip Fulmer's staff wasn't in on as many big names nationally this year, which begs the question whether last year's gem was an aberration.