Tuesday, February 05, 2008

In typically weird form, Bobby Knight, the winningest men’s coach in college basketball history, has resigned as coach of Texas Tech, effective immediately. Say what you want about the guy (and a lot of people have), but he sure was entertaining.  And Season on the Brink is still my favorite sports book (by far) of all-time. Highly recommended.

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/05/08 at 07:42 AM
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Monday, February 04, 2008

Michael Chabon had an editorial in the Washington Post today. It’s quite good and spot on:

There are many reasons not to support Barack Obama’s candidacy for president, but every one of them is bad for the same reason.

Because I have come out publicly for the senator from Illinois, I am often called upon to listen as people offer up—with wistfulness and regret, or with a pundit’s show of certainty, or with a well-earned but useless skepticism—their bad reasons for not giving Obama their support. For a long time now, I have listened to these people with forbearance and with a sense of duty—not to some principle of open debate or of the inherent merit in the free exchange of even meritless ideas, but rather out of obligation to the candidate whose cause I champion.

Because Obama appears to be a patient, forbearing man with a gift for listening, I figured I owed it to him to play the thing his way. So I have nodded and looked into their eyes and hummed sympathetically as people gave their reasons and made their excuses and generally offered up, as if they were golden ingots of profound wisdom, the handful of two-penny nails with which they plan to board up the windows of their hopes for themselves, their families, their country and the world.

Read it all. (hat tip: hopemonger in comments)

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/04/08 at 03:06 PM
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Sunday, February 03, 2008

The severely abbreviated Super Bowl Sunday edition*...

“Yes We Can” song (hi res version here, info here)

According to some of the commenters over at Atrios’ place, this is just more all-flash, no-substance gruel for the starry-eyed hope junkies who blindly support Prince Obama. They’re right.  Dems need to nominate a thoroughly uninspiring policy wonk if we’re going to beat St. Maverick in the general election.  It’s worked so well for us in the past.  Someone get Dukakis or Mondale on the phone and see if they’re available for the veep spot.

* Go Giants!

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/03/08 at 08:40 AM
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Saturday, February 02, 2008

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/02/08 at 08:27 AM
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Jeffrey Goldberg is a self-described “erstwhile optimist” regarding the future of the Middle East and he’s penned a well-laid-out and even-keeled nutsheller for The Atlantic about the many different ways that region can head after we threw a stink bomb into the middle of it.  It’s highly recommended if you need to get your head around that mess and amidst all of that good learnin’, he’s managed to tuck in a few gems like this:

Nor were neoconservative ideologues—who had the most-elaborate visions of a liberal, democratic Iraq—interested in the Kurdish cause, or even particularly knowledgeable about its history. Just before the “Mission Accomplished” phase of the war, I spoke about Kurd­istan to an audience that included Norman Podhoretz, the vicariously martial neoconservative who is now a Middle East adviser to Rudolph Giuliani. After the event, Podhoretz seemed authentically bewildered. “What’s a Kurd, anyway?” he asked me.

Neowrong, time and time again.  I don’t think history will ever forgive us for turning our foreign policy over to those wrong-headed fucktards.

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/02/08 at 07:42 AM
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Friday, February 01, 2008

U.S. Democratic presidential candidates Senator Barack Obama (D-IL) (L) and US Senator Hillary Clinton (D-NY) wait to go onstage for the CNN/Los Angeles Times Democratic presidential debate in Hollywood, California January 31, 2008.

Barack Obama is such a sore loser!!!  I can’t believe HE SNUBBED HILLARY AGAIN!!! Look at how he refuses to maintain eye contact with her and pretends to be having a conversation with someone to his left.  You can clearly see that he ISN’T talking to the man in the right of the photo.  I’d like to see this smug POS spin this. What a phony. He is clearly intimidated by a powerful and dignified woman and acts like a CHILD as a result.  Hopefully The View will bring up his disrespectful and misogynistic behavior today! This immature and oh-so-smug man (LOOK at his face ... it radiates SMUGNESS) is NOT ready for the presidency!!!  SHAMEFUL!

Posted by Kevin K. on 02/01/08 at 08:32 AM
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Thursday, January 31, 2008

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/31/08 at 09:08 AM
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Someone put raving anti-Obama lunatic Mushy, who’s now snuggling up to Inside Edition and “Fox ‘News’” (she really did use quotes around “News” without the slightest hint of irony) to help bolster her gal pal Hill, on suicide watch. It didn’t take a genius to figure out that stuff like this was going to start dripping out about the Clintons:

Late on Sept. 6, 2005, a private plane carrying the Canadian mining financier Frank Giustra touched down in Almaty, a ruggedly picturesque city in southeast Kazakhstan. Several hundred miles to the west a fortune awaited: highly coveted deposits of uranium that could fuel nuclear reactors around the world. And Mr. Giustra was in hot pursuit of an exclusive deal to tap them.

Unlike more established competitors, Mr. Giustra was a newcomer to uranium mining in Kazakhstan, a former Soviet republic. But what his fledgling company lacked in experience, it made up for in connections. Accompanying Mr. Giustra on his luxuriously appointed MD-87 jet that day was a former president of the United States, Bill Clinton.

Upon landing on the first stop of a three-country philanthropic tour, the two men were whisked off to share a sumptuous midnight banquet with Kazakhstan’s president, Nursultan A. Nazarbayev, whose 19-year stranglehold on the country has all but quashed political dissent.

Mr. Nazarbayev walked away from the table with a propaganda coup, after Mr. Clinton expressed enthusiastic support for the Kazakh leader’s bid to head an international organization that monitors elections and supports democracy. Mr. Clinton’s public declaration undercut both American foreign policy and sharp criticism of Kazakhstan’s poor human rights record by, among others, Mr. Clinton’s wife, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York.

Within two days, corporate records show that Mr. Giustra also came up a winner when his company signed preliminary agreements giving it the right to buy into three uranium projects controlled by Kazakhstan’s state-owned uranium agency, Kazatomprom.

The monster deal stunned the mining industry, turning an unknown shell company into one of the world’s largest uranium producers in a transaction ultimately worth tens of millions of dollars to Mr. Giustra, analysts said.

Just months after the Kazakh pact was finalized, Mr. Clinton’s charitable foundation received its own windfall: a $31.3 million donation from Mr. Giustra that had remained a secret until he acknowledged it last month. The gift, combined with Mr. Giustra’s more recent and public pledge to give the William J. Clinton Foundation an additional $100 million, secured Mr. Giustra a place in Mr. Clinton’s inner circle, an exclusive club of wealthy entrepreneurs in which friendship with the former president has its privileges.

(Password-free link to the NY Times article here.)

I wasn’t going to watch the debate tonight because a) I already know who I’m voting for and b) I’m a total loser and the season premiere of Lost is on, but I may DVR it just to see if Anderson Cooper brings this up. Of course, after he hits on super important stuff like “The Snub.”

p.s. This will be my one and only post during the primary cycle highlighting potential shady $$$ dealings by the Clintons.  Consider it a friendly reminder to the Hillshills that Obama’s “boneheaded” (his description) interactions with Rezco is relatively small potatoes compared to what reporters might find in the Billary bin. You may want to reconsider your Freeper-like dancing-in-your-own-feces routine when it comes to digging through Obama’s underpants drawer. Instant karma’s going to get you.

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/31/08 at 08:24 AM
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Betty Cracker on John Edwards dropping out of the presidential race:

Notice how [Hillary Clinton] appeals to Edwards’ supporters, not to Edwards himself. Edwards will endorse Obama—soon—and probably in exchange for the AG spot should Obama win the presidency. The only question is, will it matter.

I believe Betty’s right about the endorsement and I agree that Obama will probably offer him a plum role in his admin (if he hasn’t already), but I think telling Edwards he’ll empower him to be the most influential and important Secretary of Labor ever might be the best angle for both of them. I mean that with all sincerity.  Edwards could turn that mostly ceremonial and lackluster position into something monumental. It seems like a logical fit to me.

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/31/08 at 12:20 AM
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Wednesday, January 30, 2008

You’ll realize political lamesmanship has reached a level of stupidity (and inexplicable desperation) that is mind-boggling after you check out the rabid anti-Obama Hillshills, including the normally thoughtful Tom Watson, analyzing (and reanalyzing) Barack’s alleged “snub” of Hillary before the State of the Union address.  This guy sums up how I feel about this slap-fight-at-recess immaturity in a pretty funny way:

I thought the grownups were going to be in charge again. Now excuse me while I get back to drawing the REO Speedwagon logo on my notebook before homeroom is over…

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/30/08 at 07:45 AM
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Tuesday, January 29, 2008

Well, it looks like a lot of people in Florida took their broke votes home. The 50-state strategy that became the one-state strategy is now officially THE DUMBEST FUCKING STRATEGY IN THE WORLD:

Sen. John McCain won Florida’s Republican primary on Tuesday, driving Rudy Giuliani from the race and taking a critical victory over Mitt Romney in the battle for momentum before the race for the GOP presidential nomination turns to Super Tuesday.

Giuliani will end his campaign and endorse McCain on Wednesday at the Reagan library in Simi Valley, Calif., a senior member of his campaign told NBC News late Tuesday.

The terrorists’ was against us, as Rudy likes to call it, just took its latest victim.  Never forget ... the laughter.

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/29/08 at 10:10 PM
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You can’t spell REFUSE without R-U-D-Y!!!

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/29/08 at 07:43 PM
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Nobody! They should rename them Giulianis!!!

(click hotness for more boner-making!!!)

It increases his handsomeness. Manly and homo-making!! Resuscitate Podhoretz! He faints from the sexy!!!

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/29/08 at 01:15 PM
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He’s money! He’s like cash, cold and hard. If you ain’t down with Rudy, take yo’broke vote home!!! 9/!!

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/29/08 at 11:29 AM
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You know cops and firemen fucking love love LOVE Rudy to death, but did you know that bus drivers love love LOVE the fucking shit out of him, too?  They do!!! And he loves them, too!!!

Posted by Kevin K. on 01/29/08 at 09:59 AM
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