Watching The Government Go Down The Rabbit Hole

I am someone who is very happy to live in the United States of America. This country has been my home for all 34 years that I have been in existence and, while having traveled to other countries, I have never really thought about moving somewhere else. While my party affiliation is labled as a Democrat, I would tend to see myself more as a moderate than the two dominant parties. My mind is in reality even though I am a fan of all kinds of fantasy related endevors.

All that being said, I am now stuck on a specific observation - I am deeply ashamed of the people currently serving in elective offices, especially the President and his aides.

The current regime has never been popular with me. It started at the bottom with the way that the 2000 election went and has gone downhill from there. Every chance the President and his sidekicks had to do the right and just thing has been ruined by either their inability or disinterest in what would actually benefit the people of the country they are supposed to represent.

As a child of the 80s, I lived through the Reagan and Bush Sr. years and nothing that they did come anywhere near the amount of destruction being brought upon this nation now. With the law that is on the verge of passing concerning the treatment of prisoners, the government is showing just how much they care about things like basic human rights. This bill will both allow for the President to decide what means of interrogation could be considered as torture and absolving him and the people who did the deed if a future group in office decides that what was done in the past now constitutes torture. What we have here is the biggest get-out-of-jail-free card ever.

Please don't think that I am what some people call a "tree hugging liberal" or anything like that. I was actually for the invasion of Afghanastan but that is the only thing that I have agreed with when it concerns the decisions of the current regime. It is my hope and prayer that the people of the rest of the world realize that there is a huge amount of people in this country that do not agree with the current government in any way. The people in power might not feel the need to recognize these things but I don't feel the need to lower myself into the muck and slime that they currently reside in.

Ohio car dealership blasted for jihad ad

COLUMBUS, Ohio - A car dealership's planned radio advertisement that declared "a jihad on the automotive market" has drawn sharp criticism for its content but will not be changed, the business said Saturday.

Several stations rejected the Dennis Mitsubishi spot, which says sales representatives wearing "burqas" — head-to-toe traditional dress for Islamic women — will sell vehicles that can "comfortably seat 12 jihadists in the back."

"Our prices are lower than the evildoers' every day. Just ask the pope!" the ad says. "Friday is fatwa Friday, with free rubber swords for the kiddies." A fatwa is a religious edict.

Dealership president Keith Dennis said the ad does not disrespect any religion or culture. He said it was "fair game" to poke "a little fun at radical extremists."

"It was our intention to craft something around some of the buzzwords of the day and give everyone a good chuckle and be a little bit of a tension reliever," he said.

The Columbus chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations decried the ad as disrespectful.

"Using that as a promotional pitch when so many are dying from the criminal activity of suicide bombers, that's not funny," chapter president Asma Mobin-Uddin said. "I don't think it's appropriate when it causes real pain. It exploits or promotes misunderstanding in terms already misunderstood or misused."

The ad, written and produced by the company, will begin airing next week, although he was uncertain of which radio stations had accepted the spot, Dennis said. (Click Here)

Mondays Are For Boredom

Being A Parental Male: There was something that bothered me last night when I watched the season premeire of Extreme Makeover: Home Edition. I even wound up calling my roommate about it during the show. For those of you that don't live here in the US (or the show isn't carried in your country), this is the show where a bunch of home designers build, with the help from local contractors and workers, a new house for a very deserving family. They've done hundreds of homes for many different reasons but this one had a catch that kind of caught my mind.

The family in question starts with a Mom and her 8 kids. Mix in her adoptive brother who had kidney failure and now get dialysis daily and his 3 kids. Take all of this and cram it all into a 900 square foot house. I'll wait for all of you to picture that in your head before I go on. Oh yeah... They live in the town of North Pole, Alaska and the house is full of holes. If that wasn't bad enough, the Mom says during the video that they submitted states that her husband decided to move in the previous year down to Idaho.

That was the only reference to the man for the entire episode so I don't know if he is paying child support or anything like that but I have to say that I have a problem with a father that leaves his extended family in that kind of situation. Even without the brother and his 3 kids, the house looked like it was beyond cramped. It was full of holes in the walls and windows that let all kinds of cold weather in during the winter months. That is no way to leave people that consider you as their father. Family is the most important thing and you don't walk out on your blood. That is just the way it is.

Songs Played While Writing This
1) Girls Talk - Dave Edmunds
2) Outshined - Soundgarden
3) Told You So - Barenaked Ladies
4) Getaway Car - Audioslave
5) Unchained Melody - U2
6) Sixteen Tons - Tennessee Ernie Ford

There Is No Crying In Football Pt. 1: Since I had nothing to do on Saturday night, I decided to watch the USC/Arizona State game on ABC. The actual game itself wasn't all that thrilling but the thing that caught my ears was something that the people calling the game kept saying. And when I say "kept saying", I do mean that I lost count of the number of times they threw out this topic. What could this possibly be? Instant replay.

After all the crap that they caught following the Oregon game where the replay booth operator was quoted as saying that he did not have any access to the ABC feeds to make his decision, you can kind of see how they might be a little defensive. That doesn't mean that they need to mention about how the replay person at the USC game had access to their feeds every single time something that could be looked at as reviewable happens. It got even worse later in the game when the color commentator guy felt the need to also mention that this was the same process that was in place in Oregon. In effect, this guy was calling the replay person from Oregon a liar multiple times to the entire country. That just starts to sound like they're getting pissy to me.

Reality In An Action Film World: I have always been one of those people that doesn't have a problem with shutting off my brain when I go into something like an action film or a silly comedy. There is always room for movies that are what I call "popcorn movies", where the film is there to entertain you and doesn't try to make it seem like they are trying to be overly artistic.

This leads me to the film that I watched on Friday night, 16 BLOCKS. At first, I was getting into the film and having an okay time but my level of enjoyment seemed to drop off as the story went along. The problem for me was the fact that film was just too full of lucky moments that allowed the heroes to escape. For every time that the leads came up with an idea to solve a problem, there were three lucky things that magically got them out of trouble. It got to the point that it just sucked me out of the whole movie.

There Is No Crying In Football Pt. 2: There are football players that complain when they get minor dings or hits. Then there are players like Chris Sims, quarterback of the Tampa Bay Bucaneers. Some time during the course of the game, Mr. Sims had his spleen rupture from a hit by the opposing team. No one is definately sure when it happened but, from reports by players who said that Sims seemed to be a little dizzy and having problems calling plays in the huddle in the first quater of the game, it is a good chance that he played a good portion of the game with a ruptured spleen. Think about how much that must have been hurting and then think if you would have been able to do anything constructive.

Wondering What Leftists Put In The Water

I've sort of had a bemused interest in the whole Hugo Chavez UN speech thing going on this week. It seems like everyone is totally surprised that he would say something bad though I have to say that the level of his comments upped the bitchy factor just a little bit. Hearing Democrats that spend most of their time harassing Bush over what he is doing even came out to defend against the big meanie from Venezuela. Calling the President "the devil" was creative though the whole "smells like sulfar" bit was pushing it a little bit.

My mind is a little confused on where I see this thing going when it comes to popularity. On one hand you have a duly elected President that has no problem with saber rattling whenever he feels like it to make the people back home happy... and then you have Mr. Chavez. But I digress... While it might play well at home, there doesn't seem to be any real benefit to making a statement like that. His friends in places like Cuba and Iran might be laughing under their breath but being that pissy in official comment form can only tend to lead to more countries seeing the man as more of a goofball and less as an actual leader of a country.

Word choice can come back and bite you hard. Just ask the Pope about his little problem lately and I'm sure that he'll be happy to fill you in on when it might not be good to make a certain statement...