Say Anything Blog

How do these guys keep their jobs:

LAS VEGAS – May 1, 2008 – The World Series of Poker® (WSOP) Presented by Milwaukee’s Best Light today announced a groundbreaking change that will more closely align the televised presentation of the world’s largest, richest and most prestigious poker tournament with other premier sports broadcasts.

The last nine players of the $10,000 World Championship of No-Limit Texas Hold’em, known as the Main Event, will compete on November 9-10 instead of the originally scheduled date of July 16.

“Our intent is to provide an even bigger stage for our players,” said Jeffrey Pollack, Commissioner of the World Series of Poker.  “Now fans and viewers will ask ‘who will win’ our coveted championship bracelet instead of ‘who won.’ The excitement and interest surrounding our final nine players will be unprecedented.”

ESPN is owned in large part by the American Broadcasting Company, the same group that made a disaster of the Olympic coverage in 2000 from Australia.

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Many of this nations hardest working and least blessed citizens are horrified by the constant derision of their religion and family values by the morally ambivalent “artists” who garner constant headline-grabbing attention with their expressions of free speech.

Yet this constitutionally guaranteed right is imperiled by politicians who, intending to end corruption, have squelched the collective voices of those same citizens.

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St. Mary’s college in Moraga California may lose its accreditation due to incivility.

Translation: They're uh…a little too a… well uh… white.

Accreditors threaten to sanction St. Mary’s if it doesn’t reduce incivility.

MORAGA—Concerned about “the appearance of racism and discrimination” at St. Mary’s College, accreditors have threatened to sanction the school if it does not reduce incivility on campus.

Accreditors were alarmed by the school’s lack of progress on racial issues, the president of the Western Association of Schools and Colleges said in a letter to St. Mary’s leaders made public this week. The commission first asked St. Mary’s to improve in 1990 and re-emphasized its concerns in 2004.

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Sadly, the answer is yes.

The Republican Party is in big trouble. While we have some young prospects on the horizon, they are far from having the experience and skill sets necessary for a run at the white house.

Look at the democrats. Forget the issues for now and think about their depth of field.

They have two individuals running for the white house in Obama and Clinton. But in the wings they have Kerry, Bayh, Fiengold, Schumer, and of course, Gore. All of whom have some experience, are respected within their ranks and have had enough national exposure that they should be recognized and cherished by the left.

Other than McCain, the republicans have… who?

One obvious choice would be the often vilified former White House Chief of Staff, former Secretary of Defense and current Vice President Richard B. Cheney. But the general consensus (among republicans) is he has served his country well and is finished with his nearly forty years of public service.

Senators Inhoff and Kyle both considered to being divisive. There is a cadre of people like Snowe and Collins who are at best conservative democrats. We have the old, emphasize old, guard in Warner and Lugar. We have some recent draft picks, in Governor Bobby Jindal of Louisiana and Missouri Governor and Naval Academy licentiate Matt Blunt, neither yet tested nor refined.

Then there are the prominent and former plenipotentiaries of the past decade: Newton Leroy Gingrich, who now has boarded the Climate Change express and will soon jet-off with Richard Branson and John Travolta to underscore the need for a reduction in carbon emissions.  The un-absolved and bitter Chester Trent Lott who was castigated by even his own party for inoffensive remarks made to pay homage to an all but deceased colleague and his successor William Harrison Frist whose blandness was only slightly improved upon by his outward pomposity.

Then there is litany of Governors, who remain obscure until they run for a national office: Governor Haley Barbour of Mississippi, native born Nebraskan and West Point graduate Governor Dave Heineman and the fiscally responsible South Carolina Governor Mark Sanford.

So the question remains. Who in the near future will the republicans have that can rally their base as effectively as the democrats have?

This speech on the senate floor by Byrd is a few years old...but if you want a good laugh…

Mr. BYRD. Mr. President, for more than a century now, national commentators of one type or another have stereotyped, mocked, and ridiculed the people of Appalachia.

-cut-

Television has certainly been a part of this Appalachian bashing. ``Green Acres’’ featured farming mountain folks conversing with a talking pig. The ``Dukes of Hazzard’’ featured stereotypical mountain folk jumping into and out of cars, without bothering to open doors, and a car horn that played Dixie.

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Saturday it was pointed out, in a back page blog here on SAB, that the three Democratic candidates are extreme liberal-socialist. Sounds fair. The definition of a socialist is pretty clear.

It was said, by another commentator, that no one holds ownership of the definition of conservatism. With some timorous I tended, at first, to agree, since the definition of conservatism is not as crisply defined.

But the I suppose the same could be true for the numerous (and sometimes misguided)interpretations of right and wrong.

To be sure I am a slow minded individual, but with time I realized the commentator was saying we can all define conservatism as we please. I don’t believe that is so.

Conservatism is caution; in a sense, the diametric party to socialism.

It is ownership versus the lack of ownership.

It is responsibility versus the lack of responsibility.

It is the market place determining when and which goods will be rendered, instead of goverment administering and distributing goods.

Conservatism isn’t defined by small goverment. It is less goverment intrusion that defines conservatism.

When it comes down to the choices we will have for the general election and if the Democrats offer up a socialist, then with what will the Republicans counter?

If a Republican candidate in their efforts to unite us agrees to comprimises which have socialist overtones, are they not then socialist enablers?

If a Republican candidate agrees to raise taxes, (or votes against lowering them), and places a higher percentage of burden on wealthy individuals, isn’t this the same socialist principle of reapportionment?

You can ascribe the word ‘poor’ to a number of individuals. Certainly many of us have characterized ourselves with that locution. Hell, I have.

We live out in the country in New Mexico, where the nearest town has a post office and a small store. It is one of the poorest areas in one of the poorest states in the US.

If you drive through the surrounding community you will see: homes, mostly of the mobile variety, in various states of disrepair, yards filled with more trash than your local dump and other eyesores I will not comment on.

But here’s the deal, (Are you listening John Edwards?), each of these residences also have: a dish for satelite TV, a relatively new pick up or other vehicle and other sundry thingumabobs...the favorite being an ATV.

Now I could care less how they spend their money. My husband and I choose to repaint our home and drive and old truck. So it is.

But Johnny...these people aren’t poor!!

I only bring this up because it is not the Democrats and their string of entitlements that will help the impoverished it is programs like this.

The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) is a United States Government corporation designed to work with some of the poorest countries in the world. Established in January 2004, MCC is based on the principle that aid is most effective when it reinforces good governance, economic freedom and investments in people.  MCC’s mission is to reduce global poverty through the promotion of sustainable economic growth.

Okay John… this is multiple choice.

This program was initiated and signed into law by…

a) the Republicans
b) President George Bush
c) the Grand ole Party
d) all of the above

Take your pick John, you jest ain’t gonna like the answer.

I have, as I’m sure many of you do, mixed feelings about all the cabbage disbursed on foreign aid. But if we continue with our charitable ways this how we should do it.

Before a country can become eligible to receive assistance, MCC looks at their performance on independent and transparent policy indicators.

A few of these seventeen indicators: Civil Liberties, Political Rights and Rule of Law.

Read more here

I Know this particular incident is overseas, but we see to much of the same thing here in the US.

AKITA, Japan, Jan. 25 (AP) - (Kyodo)—Prosecutors on Friday demanded the death penalty for a 34- year-old woman for murdering her 9-year-old daughter as well as a 7- year-old boy living in her neighborhood in a town in Akita Prefecture in 2006.
The focal point in the trial of Suzuka Hatakeyama at the Akita District Court has been whether she had the intention of killing her daughter Ayaka, since Hatakeyama has already admitted to the murder of the boy, Goken Yoneyama.

Now you just know someone here and probably in Japan will make the argument that a death sentence is just revenge. Plain and simple.

Revenge may be a motive for… well the grandparents of these children, but surely not the judge, the adovacates and the jury.

I happen to love dogs. But if a rabid one were to make the mistake of coming to close to my children I would make the humane decision to end its’ exsistance. If the danger involved another human, they would be buried under a Yucca somewhere where only rattlesnakes and illegal migrants roam.

I could never understand why the gal that drowned her kids here in the US (using the PMS defense), would even want to continue living. Would you?

There are those that are against the death penalty because of religious beliefs. I understand that. But I’ve yet to hear a reasonable secular contralateral viewpoint.

Hatakeyama is accused of murdering Ayaka by dropping her into a river from a bridge in the town of Fujisato, Akita Prefecture, in April and of strangling Goken at her house the following May.

On Goken’s death, the prosecutor said that Hatakeyama killed him to “divert suspicions from the public,” contradicting her defense counsel’s argument that she was not criminally responsible due to being in a state of diminished responsibility.

Diminished responsibity !!  Uh huh.

What about the diminished responsibility of those who don’t respond to their duty to protect other children and remove these vile people from this or any other world.