Focusing on the real problems: keeping steroids out of t-ball

Its been a while so lets just clear the deck with a bunch of stuff.

1. It maybe a bit "inside bloggerball" for you all, but conservative/contrarian liberal/tenured law professor/nutjob Ann Althouse flipped out recently on blogger Garance Franke-Ruta during a bloggingheadsTV thing for daring to mention in passing something Althouse brought up. The original incident is referred to by several names but I prefer calling it the "feminist with breasts are hypocritical sluts" controversy. Former President Clinton met with a bunch of liberal bloggers and took photos with them afterwards. One of the bloggers was....gasp...A WOMAN and she STOOD NEXT TO CLINTON. Althouse wrote about Jessica Valenti:

Then, when she goes to meet Clinton, she wears a tight knit top that draws attention to her breasts and stands right in front of him and positions herself to make her breasts as obvious as possible?

It's obvious that you're bending over backwards -- figuratively and literally -- to keep the attention on your breasts.

Jessica should have worn a beret. Blue dress would have been good too.

Jessica's breasts are definitely a distraction…

Or she was standing next to him, wearing clothing. Same thing I guess. The link above is to Jessica's response, here's a link to my delicious bookmarks for more about the original incident (first time trying that!).

Knowing this context makes Althouse's explosion even more crazed. I'm posting this because it really is a perfect example of the arcs of right wing smears: replace actual discussion about the points of policy/political view with ungrounded personal attacks; when called out for your attack, claim to be the victim of unfair attacks by those who can't respond to your logic on the points. Also blaming the "liberal media" or "PC thugs" works as well.

2. This post by Glenn Greenwald now of Salon, The most revealing three-minute YouTube clip ever, is great. Watching the clip and reading what he says is way better than me just rewording it all here, but it really hits what is so depressing about our NATIONAL news media. "US Attorney scandal? Boring!!! The Dems just want to get Karl Rove because he's like Darth Vader to them! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA! Who will stand for the genius Karl Rove? I! But the Dems better watch out, because the people will think they are just picking on that Hispanic Gonzalez! Hey...Gore! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!" Okay, that's kind of a rewording.

3. Okay, it is from a hack party site, but this blog post most clearly highlights how nonsensical McCain is on Iraq. Pretty much he's now arguing the Bush administration is divorced from reality for saying things might look different in a few months....something McCain has been saying consistently for the past few years. Ja?

4. This is funny:

But this is still better:

Back from hiatus

Watching the "Making of the Island"

and sick in a Macau hotel room. Ugh. But this article is in the Nation about NCAA Division 1 Men's basketball is great. Particularly the ending:

6. Last Shot

"College basketball is genuine." -- Duke Coach Mike Krzyzewski to Jeremy Schaap of ESPN

Six years ago, Sonny Vaccaro said to me, ''The kids these days know what's going on. They also know they're the only ones not getting big dough. If the kids had a plan, they could cut themselves in. All you need is one kid who can rouse the posse.''

That seemed like an invitation to tell him my longtime Final Four fantasy: Just before the title game, the opposing captains demand $50,000 per player from the TV producer. No cash, no game.

The devil chortled at my innocence.

''Almost been there,'' he said. ''Some years ago, one of the Final Four teams had T-shirts and statements ready. The team leader was a terrific spokesman -- he's playing pro now--but they were upset in the semifinals. But that's their story to tell, not mine."

Read the whole thing. Who do you think the team leader was???

Hong Kong in your face!

This is great and all, but let's get to the really important stuff: Kobe scores 50+ in four straight games! There is no way he can beat Chamberlain's record of seven straight games...unless he does it until I get back to the States. Do it for me Kobe! Now I got to go and watch the Spurs game in Mandarian. Well, not really. More like the Aussie v. South Africa World Cricket Match...

Leaving on a jet plane

But I know when I'll be back again. Soon. Anyway, till then I thought I would revel in Barbara Boxer obviously (obviously!) reading this blog by referencing a previous post. Mostly watch the clip to see how much of a jackass Inhofe is: actually asking questions that attack Gore personally, but then telling him he'll have to respond back in writing cause his answer will "take too long"!

Also, this is good for the argument over "executive privilege", a model of honest and honorable debate. What's even more funny than the total transparency of what Snow is now saying is his claim Rove and Meirs can't testify under oath because it would taint the advice the President is given....in a case (the firing of US attorneys) the President claims he had no involvement in. Okay.

And, let's all hope the Edwards press conference tomorrow is horrible, horrible news.

I guess the original Donald and I will see you on the other side.

What part of "you lost" do you not understand?

There is much to say about Bush's latest temper tantrum about keeping his advisers, mainly Karl "Walking Douche" Rove and Harriet "Brian Trust" Miers, from testifying under oath to Congress about the fired US attorney controversy. As has often been true in the past, what is most noteworthy is the vaunted Bush administration's inability to recognize a new reality that doesn't conform to their perceptions of what reality should be. On Sunday, Pat Leahy, the FUCKING CHAIRMAN of the Senate Judiciary Committee, said:

“I do not believe in this, ‘we’ll have a private briefing for you where we’ll tell you everything,’ and they don’t,” Mr. Leahy said on the ABC News program “This Week.” adding: “I want testimony under oath. I am sick and tired of getting half-truths on this.”

Later in the same article though we read:

In response to Mr. Leahy’s comments today, Tony Snow, the White House press secretary, said the Bush administration was standing by its earlier promise that Mr. Fielding would give Democrats an answer on Tuesday.

“Fred has been talking with folks on Capitol Hill, analyzing various statements and conversations with folks on the Hill, and we will get back to them,” Mr. Snow said in a brief telephone interview.

We'll get back to them? This isn't Frist or Santorum or Cornyn or McCain or some other GOP Senator who doesn't talk to his or her mother before getting talking points from the White House. This is the oppositional party that is IN CONTROL OF A CO-EQUAL BRANCH OF GOVERNMENT WITH SUBPOENA POWER. That means if they say you have to come testify, YOU HAVE TO COME TESTIFY. Not that they are asking you, pretty please, if you have time. It is more like: don't come, go to jail.

Well, what did the White House come back with? From the first link:

Under growing political pressure, the White House offered to allow members of Congressional committees to hold private interviews with Karl Rove, the president’s senior adviser and deputy chief of staff; Harriet E. Miers, the former White House counsel; and two other officials. It also offered to provide access to e-mail messages and other communications about the dismissals, but not those between White House officials.

Except for the fact this is the exact opposite of what Leahy was demanding, he was totally happy with this situation. Oh, wait:

“I don’t accept his offer. It is not constructive and it is not helpful to be telling the Senate how to do our investigation, or to prejudge its outcome.

"Instead of freely and fully providing relevant documents to the investigating committees, they have only selectively sent documents, after erasing large portions that they do not want to see the light of day. Testimony should be on the record, and under oath. That’s the formula for true accountability.“I hope the President will agree to be forthcoming. The straighter the path to the truth, the sooner we will finally know the facts.”

The President stood up for his decent, always truth-telling staff:

“We will not go along with a partisan fishing expedition aimed at honorable public servants,” the president told reporters in a brief and hastily convened appearance in the Diplomatic Reception Room of the White House.

Bush is right though. How dare the Democratic Congress turn a controversy over non-partisan political appointees possibly being fired for not prosecuting Democratic officials (an interpretation that arose after the repeated attempts to explain the "real" reason for their dismissals have been prove to be lies) in to a "show trial" with "sworn testimony". OH DARE YOU SIR!

How surprising is this really though? This is what is going to happen with the oppositional power in office, it is pretty basic 12 grade civics stuff. Plus, we live in a post-Lewinsky world where various Clinton administration officials were compelled to testify about the president's sex life. I don't know if people are going to buy the separation of powers has a liberal, pre-9/11 bias. Especially when no one believes a single word you say.

Let the conversation BEGIN!

You might have already seen this Hillary Clinton = IBM = Big Brother circa 1984 ad, but if you haven't check it out. While I agree it's not really fair to compare HRC to Big Brother, this fake, apparently untraceable, ad does a real good job visualizing the utter blandness of her political leadership and vision. People, especially Dem primary voters, are sick of the mendacity and double talk of the Bush administration (see above), and she announces her campaign by calling for a conversation. Apparently it's a conversation that doesn't include anything about Iraq, and if you think invading Iraq was something you should apologize for, well you can go vote for someone else you goddamn dirty hippie.

“If the most important thing to any of you is choosing someone who did not cast that vote or has said his vote was a mistake, then there are others to choose from,” Mrs. Clinton told an audience in Dover, N.H., in a veiled reference to two rivals for the nomination, Senator Barack Obama of Illinois and former Senator John Edwards of North Carolina.

She's right. If you are so short sighted as make some minor vote about invading some foreign country and has lead our nation down a dark, endless tunnel full of blood, oil, and hard currency, well, you can go ahead and vote for someone else. She doesn't need you loser!

What she does support is a woman's right to choose! Um...actually...as long as we can find a "middle ground", i.e. abortion is legal (for the non-poor), but shameful and disgusting.

At least she didn't do something crazy like SPONSORING a flag burning law by comparing it to the KKK burning crosses! .... What, really? Wow, she does suck!

This War Will Destabilize The Entire Mideast Region And Set Off A Global Shockwave Of Anti-Americanism

No it won't It just won't. None of that will happen.
-The Onion, March 26, 2003.

Fuck this illegal war

Not cheering

However, it might not be as simple as that.

Consider what happened in Basra last Saturday when there were air raids. The Qatari television channel al-Jazeera had a team in the city and it sent back graphic pictures of dead and wounded civilians which were widely shown in the Arab world.

But these images were all but ignored in the West, which seemed more interested in pictures of the American prisoners of war.

Pictures used in the West tend to be sanitised. The photograph with this story, taken after an air raid in Basra on Saturday, shows a wounded girl. What it doesn't show is that her foot has been blown off.

People do not take kindly to being bombed, even by "friendly forces".

Bush's Top Ten Mistakes in Iraq during the Past 4 Years

Saddam Hussein down, next...Gandhi!

Former Senator and Law & Order DA Fred Thompson has launched his not yet launched 2008 Presidential campaign with a stirring radio address exposing the truth about Mahatma Gandhi. Seriously.

Besides coolers and mattresses, protesters have brought along a giant paper mache statue of Mahatma Gandhi, who is pretty much the symbol of the anti-war movement. Code Pink was founded on his birthday, and when Saddam Hussein was being given a last chance to open Iraq to U.N. weapons inspectors, posters appeared around America asking “What would Gandhi do?”
And that’s a pretty good question. At what point is it okay to fight dictators like Saddam or the al Qaeda terrorists who want to take his place?

It turns out that the answer, according to Gandhi, is NEVER.

Okay, first of all Saddam Hussein had OPEN IRAQ TO UN INSPECTORS DURING HIS "LAST CHANCE". THEY WERE FINDING NOTHING WHEN BUSH REFUSED TO WAIT TO BOMB/INVADE. How can conservatives still point to the decision to attack Iraq as some proud, visionary moment for our glorious leader? I guess I answered my own question.

Gandhi's call for the British and Jews to "surrender willingly" to the Nazis during WWII is easy to demonize and it seems to be Thompson's whole point here. Saying Gandhi's views of non-violence is "unamerican" is both crazy (would it have REALLY been better if the US desegergated through armed insurrection?) and meaningless. Is this really what Thomspon is talking about, the removed tactical analysis more about Gandhi's political situation than the actual war in Europe over 60 years ago? This is what you are bringing? And as horrible as it sounds, as Chomsky describes in an interview, this is essentially a tactical suggestion.

Q: You know what he said to Lewis Fisher in 1938 about the Jews in Germany -- that German Jews ought to commit collective suicide, which would "have aroused the world and the people of Germany to Hitler's violence."

A: He was making a tactical proposal, not a principled one. He wasn't saying that they should have walked cheerfully into the gas chambers because that's what nonviolence dictates. He was saying, "if you do it, you may be better off."

If you divorce his proposal from any principled concern other than how many people's lives can be saved, it's conceivable that it would have aroused world concern in a way that the Nazi slaughter didn't. I don't believe it, but it's not literally impossible. On the other hand, there's nothing much that the European Jews could have done anyway under the prevailing circumstances, which were shameful everywhere.

The main point though, as Sepia Mutiny points out, Gandhi’s enemies aren’t America’s enemies. The protesters Thomspon is trying to smear with an association with GANDHI (?!) aren't advocating a "suicidal foreign policy", they are advocating a humane one. Gandhi was talking about social justice and equality, not how to maintain a global super power through arms.

But Thompson is right, you can't really learn anything through what some towel wearing freak had to say. The only visionaries are hack actors like Ronald Regan. And that guy who allowed Cole Trickle to race again at Dayton, and the dude who fired that gay ADA, but not for being gay, or that "actor" who played white supremacy huckster Knox Pooley on the 1987-90 TV show Wiseguy. Seriously.

Internet actualy is television, maybe

EV suggested blogging about this, and I'm totally doing it. So a group of six huge technology companies have delivered a device to the FCC that will be able to receive Internet access through unused television signals. A look of the six companies gives a hint at the kind of change a product like that could bring: Google, Microsoft, Dell, H-P, Intel, and Philips. Beaming the Internet as television signals would totally change how wireless connected devices work. It definitely wouldn't limit it to computers, broadband could be added to lots of smaller devices, all without hard wiring. As one of the FCC commissioners says in the Post article, Wi-Fi would be taken to the "next level". I think that's another way for saying, "BLOWING YOUR MIND"

What does this have to do with the Airbus A380 landing in the US for the first time at LAX and JFK Monday morning? As the LA Times :

"It's not going to be a revolution; it's going to be an evolution," said Bob van der Linden, chairman of the aeronautics division at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum. "You and I, and everybody else who flies, will determine whether this airplane is a hit or a flop."

To be sure, the A380, which is about 30% larger than Boeing's 747, is considered by many to be an engineering marvel. But it doesn't represent change on the scale its older cousin did. When the 747 came into service in the early 1970s, it was 2 1/2 times larger than the airplane it replaced.

The device the FCC will start testing could be the Internet's 747, forever changing individuals connection and access to the larger, mediated world. It will become TV.

Wikiworld

Friedman unit explained and demonstrated

My brackets are busted...screw the NCAA!

In retrospect, it probably wasn't a good idea to pick George Washington University to go to the Elite Eight. The first two days (so far) of the NCAA tournament have actually been kind of dull. There hasn't been any truly shocking upsets (VCU over Duke isn't exactly shocking) and only one OT game. Not so much Madness as Frazzle-ness.

Anyway, over at True Hoop Henry Abbott has a good post about the ambivalence of watching the tournament. On one hand it is undeniably fun to watch, and on the other hand its yet another showcase for the hypocrisy of the NCAA. The players aren't so much amateurs as unpaid semi-professionals, not students as much as a self-segregated group with (often) their own dorms, dining halls, courses, and grading schematics. Abbott talks about some of the common "defenses" for the NCAA, but I want to quickly mention two particularly lame aspects of college athletics:

1. The idea students are being paid through a free education at the school. Oh really? Cause I'm sure Nick Saban will understand that his starting left tackle has a paper due in class that week and won't be able to make it to practice: sorry coach! For some kids athletic scholarships are great opportunities, but in the pressure cooker of high level NCAA athletics, with the travel, the film study, the practices, the work out sessions, the games themselves, the student's educations often are dealt with as an afterthought. Think about the legions of stories that come out every year about college instructors, either willingly or through corrosion, giving athletes passing grades for lacking work. The bigger issue about this isn't the student athletes failing as it is the universities' willingness to cut corners and give breaks to insure a winning team. Often, kids aren't even getting the real college education they are supposedly getting for "free". Which leads to the second point:

2. MONEY MONEY MONEY
Everyone, EVERYONE, from the coaches, to the networks, to the merchandise sellers, to the shoe companies are literally making BILLIONS off these kids. CBS signed a 11-year, $6 billion contract for exclusive rights to the NCAA bball tournament in 1999. How much do you think that will be when the contract expires, less? Nike, Reebok, and Adidas sign contracts directly with college coaches for the exclusive right to dress their student players for 6 figures, possibly even more, but we don't know because these deals are SECRET. Ohio State this year isn't even wearing the Nike swoosh on their uniforms, but will be wearing Lebron James - Nike logo (James didn't actually attend Ohio State, but would have if he wanted to work for free). Meanwhile if Greg Oden gets a work study job or allows someone to BUY HIM LUNCH, the NCAA would launch an investigation.

The NCAA talks about greatness of amateurism and education, but most of us, athletes and viewers alike, are actually learning about the power of greed, exploitation, and corruption.

Well, I better go. If USC doesn't win this next game my chances of taking the money from the pool is gone!

Quick, before they put Friedman's incredibly wrong analysis behind a firewall again!

TimesSelect is allowing university professors and students to use the service for free. Sign up here. I think they just realized most universities have access to Lexis-Nexis and could read the selected TimesSelect article anyway if they wanted too. So, pretty much, sign up now for something that should have never been taken away from its free site, and that most of you could read any way for free!

Smush was probably updating his myspace

when he got ejected from the game on Sunday. There so much to say about Smush's myspace page, but I want to focus on three main things. One, his women "friends" scream "NBA groupie". Most of their pictures look like they double as ads in the back of the LA Weekly! Two, at the very bottom of the page he describes his time at Fordam as:

Major: Ball-ology
Minor: Women-ology

That's actually kind of funny. Third, couldn't he have found a better picture of his dad? It is kind of sweet, but there has to be a photo of his father that doesn't make him look like a drugged-out, hammer-threatening weirdo he met in the subway?

I'm sorry to say it because its not really fair, but Kobe's site is way, way, WAY better. The difference actually is akin to the difference in talent level! Realizing I could never get Kobe though, I should talk to Smush about his ideas for this blog. I can hear it now: "Blog-calade"

Willing to sell out

Television Without Pity is a great site. Its original, complete recaps of reality and serial shows lets you follow shows you don't actually want to watch (cough...24...cough) and geek out by READING over what you just WATCHED (or debate the latest dictates of the Laura Roslin administration). It was announced today that TWoP has been bought by Bravo:

"If Television Without Pity didn't exist, we would have built it," said Bravo exec VP Jason Klarman, who's at the center of Bravo's online strategy. Klarman said the purchase will change the Bravo digital suite services overnight by nearly doubling, to more than 2 million, the number of unique visitors to Bravo-owned online sites.

On one hand, good for TWoP. It's probably a lot of money, or at least to be secure and allow them to grow there site of retold primetime television and gossip about it. One the other, its kind of weird as a frequent visitor to a website that really delivers the promises of the brave new world of niche media be bought by a much larger, and often older, media entity. A similar thing happened about a month ago with the NBA blog Truehoop by sports writers Henry Abbott, another great site, bought by the "ESPN industrial media complex" (trademark pending!)

Its nearly a cliche to talk about the level of media consolidation these days, but when you read this in the Variety article about the TWoP purchase:

Bravo execs said the site will maintain complete editorial independence, despite now being a tiny division of General Electric.

It is hard not to reflect on the uniformity, reach, and pervasiveness of our current system. And how a couple of dorks on Blogger while watch BSG isn't going to change that anytime soon.

That being said, I am making plans to get THIS blog bought by a television network, cable or over the air. Top candidates include Verses, which apparently exists and covers the NHL, and Spike, which has reruns of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and those Japanese game shows with the horrible dubbing. Class all the way.

Stampy to get new, severly depressed friend

Its good to see the Mayor announce the "retirement" of the only female elephant left at the LA Zoo to a santuary in San Andreas, not unlike the one Stampy goes to at the end of episode 1F15 "Bart Gets an Elephant". While this is great news for the elephant, its important to mention how much time, effort, and suffering on the part of the animal it took to get to this point. Activists, like Bob Barker, had to pledge they would help put up the money for the transfer. Llyod Levine, an LA state rep, has a bill in the State house that would mandate every zoo have at least 5 acres of land for each elephant. Anything less then that is unnatural for the animals as it causes serious joint pains. Only one zoo in the state could qualify with those standards, and it ain't LA. Levine has a very unique view explaining why he even cares:

"I've said this about elephants repeatedly — nobody has an inherent right to see an elephant in the zoo. Nobody has an inherent right to see any animal in the zoo," said Levine, who is wading into the national controversy over whether zoos are humanely keeping elephants. "It's a privilege, and with the privilege of seeing an animal in the zoo comes the responsibility of providing it care that's appropriate."

That's a good way to put it, but I worry about State. Rep. Levine. You usually don't get far telling the American people they aren't entitled to something, unless its private phone calls and habeas corpus.

Why the Dems won't debate on Fox News

So with Edwards's withdrawal and Fox News President Roger Ailes again linking Obama with Osama (again, only as a joke!), the Nevada State Democratic Party is pulling out of their agreement with FOX News to co-sponsor a candidate debate in August. Over at Welcome to Pottersville they have gathered some of the hilarious, disturbing, and just bizarre moments that compelled Dem activists to push for this change. I had put one of the images labeling disgraced former-Congressman Mark Foley as a Democrat on this blog a few months ago.

My favorite from the Welcome to Pottersville collection is this one above. Why not just say "I want to kill those damn ragheads, I love talking about killing ragheads, but I don't want to kill ragheads"?

"We got broads out there who keep your kids from being run-over by some hard-on"

All it took was one particularly symbolically filled drive to work for this man to get the importance and necessity of unions, what will it take you!?

Daylight Saving Time's blues

Well, the Lakers lost. By 36. In a dramatic flip-flop, there no longer is even a shred of shred! Even if Lamar says he'll practice tomorrow and maybe even play in Denver on Thursday, the big worry is they don't embarrass themselves in the first round of the playoffs. If they drop lower in the West and play a Dallas-like team (or even...DALLAS!), it might turn ugly.

Still there is some good news: MY MAVERICKS ARE WINNING IT ALL BABY! With this win the Mavs tie the win streak of the 2000 Lakers, the year they won the first of three consecutive titles. Does this random connection really mean anything? Yes, yes it does.

BTW: Kwame could have started but didn't come on-time, AND didn't blame DTS? On the ESPN broadcast Jim Grey said he did blame DST AND the fact his birthday was last night. No worried if a $200 cake was destroyed during the festivities.

I hear you, Flea.

Flea has a blog on NBA.com, obviously. And in this post I think he has it right on, I guess the Lakers are not very good this year. Even the faintest bit of hope seems gone with Phil throwing some cold water on everyone by reminding us Pippen coming makes no sense and couldn't happen anyway.

Still, even with tomorrow being SELECTION SUNDAY (brought to you by the ESPN industrial complex), I'll still be watching the Lakers/Mavs game tomorrow(...which is brought by the same industrial complex). I got all week for the brackets, and, come on, Championship Week sucks. Seriously, the losing team in the Big East Final had 14 POINTS AT HALFTIME!!! Even though I have no hope, I also have to agree with Flea about empires, shreds, and such:

i honestly believed. earlier in the season, that they were at the same level with dallas and phoenix
but i was wrong
my shred of hope is nothing but a shred of hope
but great kingdoms have been built from a shred of hope

Preach on brother.

Something to get pumped for tomorrow's game: It's My Dirk in a Box

Iraq's children + basketball in the Holy Land = I needz my money!

Through my regular surfing I was directed to two amazing blog posts that demonstrate the appeal and promise of the form. The first was a post entitled Tears and Blood and Shit at Gorilla's Guides about the horrible suffering of Iraq's children today, right now. Its also a stirring denunciation of American's occupation, something that you don't see much in the newspapers or televisions in the US.

The second blog piece was about young Arab and Jewish kids playing together on a team called PeacePlayers entering the Old City of Jerusalem to play against another team. The NBA better get a hold of these guys quickly for their "Basketball without Borders" because they're doing it! As they explain:

The team walked bravely though the New Gate together and into unknown territory. For the Jewish children from Beit Shemesh it would be the first time they had ever entered an Arab dominated section of the Old City. For the Arab children they would be walking next to their Jewish teammates, not into a obscure gym, but right out in the open and in their own backyard. All this against the backdrop of the turmoil surrounding the excavation near the Temple Mount.

How hardcore are these kids? They court they played on in the Old City is walled in on two sides BY THE OLD CITY WALL!

While this is happening its nice to know others are working on how to monetize the blog form in the tried and tested way of getting people to sell out. But this is selling out with a twist: not just a few, but lots, and not with the large novelty check, but with small dollar amounts in secret, in the way that eats away at the soul. In the LA Times business section the story "Blogging for Dollars Raises Questions on Online Ethics" describes how company named PayPerPost pays bloggers to mention certain products in their blogs. It could be soap operas, wireless speakers, cruise vacations, whatever!

So it is in that spirit I ask: where's mine?! Can some pay me to hype their socially conscious media source? Not too big though, maybe something like Z Magazine. They'd pay someone like me big bucks, right? I guess I could figure out something with those sick and in danger Iraqi children. After all, our country gave them freedom and democracy, how about they do something for us (meaning me!) for once?

CBS convering the NBA....in 1975!

This is a few days old, but over on the AOL Sports blog NBA Fanhouse they dug up this amazing video of the opening of a Eastern Conference Final Game 7. Seriously a must watch, from the Schoolhouse Rock soundtrack to the warning after the opening that the NBA owns the announcers souls. On one hand its amazing how much more technologically advanced live sports coverage is today, on the other hand the music they used is way sicker than Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers.

Dick Cheney Resigns

At least before the end of this year. That's the prediction/future reporting from The Crackpot Times staff. And by staff, I mean me, my prediction, but saying stuff like staff or administration or regime makes it sound much more official and considered than some loser on a laptop.

Seriously, I'm coming back for realz post-2006 midterm elections with this vision: Dick Cheney will be gone before Dec. 31, 2007, if not much much sooner. With the dismissal of Rummy, the conviction of Libby, and his increasingly deranged views, he has entered the Willy Loman era of his tenure.

Sure this sounds ridiculous and really means nothing (Cheney's defeats actually doesn't mean Al-Quaeda wins). So what's the point of this? One, to give me something to write about in saying I'm starting this thing again (for the third time). Two, so I can shove it in your faces when I'm right! In your face blog reader!