Thursday, April 14, 2005
Monday, December 27, 2004
Minister of Defense
NFL great and former Tennessee Vol Reggie White died in his sleep last night. What a loss. White was a great player and a great human being. He cared deeply about people and you got that impression every time the big guy spoke about social problems. His comments got him in trouble every once in a while but none of his teammates ever complained about White's religious faith creeping into the locker room.
I'll never forget watching the Super Bowl that featured White's Packers against the New England Patriots. It was late in the game and the TV analysts were saying that White had been invisible for most of the game.
Well, White must have been listening because just at that moment he used his trademark forearm shiver move to blow past the Patriots lineman and sack quarterback Drew Bledsoe.
On the very next play White got another sack, taking the patriots out of scoring position and forcing a punt. It was a great moment.
White will be missed.
I'll never forget watching the Super Bowl that featured White's Packers against the New England Patriots. It was late in the game and the TV analysts were saying that White had been invisible for most of the game.
Well, White must have been listening because just at that moment he used his trademark forearm shiver move to blow past the Patriots lineman and sack quarterback Drew Bledsoe.
On the very next play White got another sack, taking the patriots out of scoring position and forcing a punt. It was a great moment.
White will be missed.
Unwavering
That one word describes wonderfully the men and women who fill the ranks of the U.S. Armed Forces. This poll shows overwhelming support from the troops for their mission in Iraq.
An excerpt:
Despite a year of ferocious combat, mounting casualties and frequent deployments, support for the war in Iraq remains very high among the active-duty military, according to a Military Times Poll.
Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting.
But the men and women in uniform are under no illusions about how long they will be fighting in Iraq; nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.
In addition, 87%% say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they'd leave the service.
An excerpt:
Despite a year of ferocious combat, mounting casualties and frequent deployments, support for the war in Iraq remains very high among the active-duty military, according to a Military Times Poll.
Sixty-three percent of respondents approve of the way President Bush is handling the war, and 60% remain convinced it is a war worth fighting. Support for the war is even greater among those who have served longest in the combat zone: Two-thirds of combat vets say the war is worth fighting.
But the men and women in uniform are under no illusions about how long they will be fighting in Iraq; nearly half say they expect to be there more than five years.
In addition, 87%% say they're satisfied with their jobs and, if given the choice today, only 25% say they'd leave the service.
Wednesday, December 22, 2004
It's beginning to look...
a lot like Christmas! I really hope it snows. My theory is that if it is going to be cold, it might as well snow so we have something pretty to look at. I love looking out my window at the snow. I hope it sticks.
Tuesday, December 21, 2004
Fire Coach Cal
The Tigers got blown out by Louisiana Tech last night, 55-64. This is as bad as it gets. They looked great in the frist half. When they came out for the second half they looked a totally different team. I've said it before and I'll say it again: Cal needs to go. I was at Saturday's game against Austin Peay. We tried in every possible way to give that game away. Twice in the closing minutes the Tigers fouled guys shooting three pointers. The atmosphere was stale. The players aren't having fun. And the fans definitely aren't having fun.
What we're up against
Election workers dragged from their cars and assassinated in broad daylight. This is what we are fighting. The Sunni Baathists, the minority religous and political group that dominated Iraq for decades, know they will no longer enjoy the prefered status bestowed upon them by Saddam. Their decades of iron fisted rule are over and they are doing everything in their power to bring it back.
This is the enemy we are fighting and we must... MUST... continue to capture or kill them when ever we can. Leaving is not an option. If we pulled out now a slaughter would ensue. An all out total war waged by the minority Sunnis would aim restore them to the power they enjoyed under Saddam. When US troops pulled out of VCitenam the Vietcong slaughtered millions of Cambodians. Leftists and retread hippies never mention the cost of the US not getting involved or wiuthdrawing from conflicts like Vietnam. They are comfortable in the knowledge that they helped remove troops from Vietnam. They don't want to be reminded of the genocide that followed. We cannot make the same mistake in Iraq.
This is the enemy we are fighting and we must... MUST... continue to capture or kill them when ever we can. Leaving is not an option. If we pulled out now a slaughter would ensue. An all out total war waged by the minority Sunnis would aim restore them to the power they enjoyed under Saddam. When US troops pulled out of VCitenam the Vietcong slaughtered millions of Cambodians. Leftists and retread hippies never mention the cost of the US not getting involved or wiuthdrawing from conflicts like Vietnam. They are comfortable in the knowledge that they helped remove troops from Vietnam. They don't want to be reminded of the genocide that followed. We cannot make the same mistake in Iraq.
Monday, December 20, 2004
Stupid Memphis Liberals
Gwen Williams of Memphis wrote a letter to the CA today. This woman must be an idiot. Look at this:
Now that the election is over, George W Bush is no longer concealing his plans to overhaul many public programs, social security, healthcare adn education among them.
I guess Gwen missed the year-long 2004 election campaign. The president mentioned his plans for overhauling Social Security for over a year. he mentioned them in every public debate with failed presidential candidate John Kerry. Was this woman living under a rock, or what? Wake up Miss Williams and smell the. change that is on the way
Now that the election is over, George W Bush is no longer concealing his plans to overhaul many public programs, social security, healthcare adn education among them.
I guess Gwen missed the year-long 2004 election campaign. The president mentioned his plans for overhauling Social Security for over a year. he mentioned them in every public debate with failed presidential candidate John Kerry. Was this woman living under a rock, or what? Wake up Miss Williams and smell the. change that is on the way
Thursday, December 09, 2004
This Just In!
It looks like th CAjust found out about Japnimation. Didn't any of these people watch Voltron when they were growing up?
What if?
What if all of the UN controversies were American controversies? Read This.
Excerpt:
Imagine if U.S. troops were accused of sexually exploiting children in impoverished nations. Imagine if a U.S. Cabinet secretary were accused of groping a female subordinate, whose complaint was then swatted aside by the president. Imagine if the head of a U.S. government agency and the president's own offspring stood accused of complicity in the biggest embezzlement racket in history.
Those would be pretty big stories, no? Above-the-fold, top-of-the-newscast stories. Yet the United Nations has been mired in all these scandals and until just recently hardly anybody outside the right-wing blogosphere has noticed. . . .
The U.N.'s friends are doing their favorite international institution no favors with this knee-jerk defense. Until it cleans up its act, the U.N. can never be as influential as its boosters would like. Even Annan recognizes this.
Excerpt:
Imagine if U.S. troops were accused of sexually exploiting children in impoverished nations. Imagine if a U.S. Cabinet secretary were accused of groping a female subordinate, whose complaint was then swatted aside by the president. Imagine if the head of a U.S. government agency and the president's own offspring stood accused of complicity in the biggest embezzlement racket in history.
Those would be pretty big stories, no? Above-the-fold, top-of-the-newscast stories. Yet the United Nations has been mired in all these scandals and until just recently hardly anybody outside the right-wing blogosphere has noticed. . . .
The U.N.'s friends are doing their favorite international institution no favors with this knee-jerk defense. Until it cleans up its act, the U.N. can never be as influential as its boosters would like. Even Annan recognizes this.
Wednesday, December 08, 2004
The Honeymoon is Over. Get rid of Cal.
It's official. My transition from loyal Memphis Tiger basketball fan to Grizzlies booster is complete. My dissatisfaction with the Tiger program has been growing since Coach Finch was fired. At first, I was happy to see Calipari land in Memphis. I thought he could recruit and that he would replay his UMASS days here in Memphis. I was wrong. He recruits the worst kind of players, guys more concerned about their box score than the final score. His teams are impossibly hard to root for. And last night it happened again: I found myself really rooting for the Grizz while I somewhat enjoyed watching Tigers get their cans kicked up and down the court. I grew up on Keith Lee, Andre "the little general" Turner, David Vaughn, Penny Hardaway, Elliot Perry, Chris Garner and others. I felt a real connection to those teams. One I wish I felt now.
The Gambler
This article gets it right about W and what people should expect over the next four years. Here's an excerpt;
Amid the campaign-year debate over the merits and flaws of the U.S.'s 43rd president, perhaps the least discussed of his attributes is his most important. He is a gambler, and plays for high stakes. For better or for worse, don't look for that to change, because his history suggests the characteristic is embedded in his personality.
"The guy does not think small," says Nicholas Calio, who handled relations with the U.S. Congress for the Bush White House for much of the first term. "This is part and parcel of his personality and his world view. ... The smart money is on him moving out fast and moving out big."
In practical terms, Mr. Bush has sketched out three giant projects for his second term: begin to privatize the Social Security system, overhaul the tax code to make it simpler and more efficient, and change the Middle East by forcing democracy into the heart of the region. Oh, and he'd like to put legal limits on lawsuits along the way. All this, of course, while taming a raging insurgency and holding an election in Iraq.
The betting already has begun on where Mr. Bush will have to cut back his ambitions, and how fast he'll be forced to do so. Don't count on it. Mr. Bush may fail, but failure is more likely than retreat.
In fact, the simple lesson learned from Mr. Bush's personal history is that he is an inveterate risk-taker, an attribute that makes him noticeably different from his father and more in line with Ronald Reagan. Simply scan his record:
He had no real business running for governor of Texas in 1993, with no experience in public office and a checkered business record. He had no more business running for president in 2000 with less than six years of government experience and against an incumbent vice president riding waves of peace and prosperity.
And who would have guessed that Mr. Bush, becoming president after failing to win the popular vote, would push through a $1.35 trillion tax cut, invade not one but two countries and push through the first-ever Medicare drug benefit at a cost of more than $500 billion over 10 years?
Of course, Mr. Bush also has overseen a federal budget deficit approaching $450 billion, and now must cope with a mess in Iraq that ties down more than 100,000 American troops and consumes more than $4 billion of taxpayer money a month. Ambitious isn't always the same as good.
But like it or not, there needs to be some rethinking of the way this president is viewed. He surely is a conservative in the way that term is used in today's political vernacular, meaning he loves lowering taxes and adheres to traditional values on social and religious questions. But his record suggests he isn't really a small-c conservative in the classic meaning of that term. No pure conservative would look to government to provide a drug benefit as large as the one Mr. Bush championed, or countenance budget deficits as big as today's. He surely doesn't like big government, but he doesn't mind activist government.
Like him or not, W will go down in history as one of the country's most consequential presidents. His ideas are big and he tends to pursue them with great zeal and determination. People know what he stands for and when he says he is going to do something he generally does it.
Amid the campaign-year debate over the merits and flaws of the U.S.'s 43rd president, perhaps the least discussed of his attributes is his most important. He is a gambler, and plays for high stakes. For better or for worse, don't look for that to change, because his history suggests the characteristic is embedded in his personality.
"The guy does not think small," says Nicholas Calio, who handled relations with the U.S. Congress for the Bush White House for much of the first term. "This is part and parcel of his personality and his world view. ... The smart money is on him moving out fast and moving out big."
In practical terms, Mr. Bush has sketched out three giant projects for his second term: begin to privatize the Social Security system, overhaul the tax code to make it simpler and more efficient, and change the Middle East by forcing democracy into the heart of the region. Oh, and he'd like to put legal limits on lawsuits along the way. All this, of course, while taming a raging insurgency and holding an election in Iraq.
The betting already has begun on where Mr. Bush will have to cut back his ambitions, and how fast he'll be forced to do so. Don't count on it. Mr. Bush may fail, but failure is more likely than retreat.
In fact, the simple lesson learned from Mr. Bush's personal history is that he is an inveterate risk-taker, an attribute that makes him noticeably different from his father and more in line with Ronald Reagan. Simply scan his record:
He had no real business running for governor of Texas in 1993, with no experience in public office and a checkered business record. He had no more business running for president in 2000 with less than six years of government experience and against an incumbent vice president riding waves of peace and prosperity.
And who would have guessed that Mr. Bush, becoming president after failing to win the popular vote, would push through a $1.35 trillion tax cut, invade not one but two countries and push through the first-ever Medicare drug benefit at a cost of more than $500 billion over 10 years?
Of course, Mr. Bush also has overseen a federal budget deficit approaching $450 billion, and now must cope with a mess in Iraq that ties down more than 100,000 American troops and consumes more than $4 billion of taxpayer money a month. Ambitious isn't always the same as good.
But like it or not, there needs to be some rethinking of the way this president is viewed. He surely is a conservative in the way that term is used in today's political vernacular, meaning he loves lowering taxes and adheres to traditional values on social and religious questions. But his record suggests he isn't really a small-c conservative in the classic meaning of that term. No pure conservative would look to government to provide a drug benefit as large as the one Mr. Bush championed, or countenance budget deficits as big as today's. He surely doesn't like big government, but he doesn't mind activist government.
Like him or not, W will go down in history as one of the country's most consequential presidents. His ideas are big and he tends to pursue them with great zeal and determination. People know what he stands for and when he says he is going to do something he generally does it.
