Best TV Show

With all due respect to Lost, the best TV show going is The Office. The writing is superb, the characters are right on, and the humor is top notch.

Here's my top 5:

• The Office
• Lost
• Amazing Race
• ER
• The Simpsons

How ER and The Simpsons continue to crank out great episodes is beyond me. I've never considered myself an ER fan, but I caught an episode a few weeks back starring Ray Liotta. The episode was a real-time 50 minutes with Liotta playing a guy dying from liver failure...and anguishing over a lifetime of regrets. It was the best television I've ever seen.

Not All Bearcats Are Thugs

San Antonio Spurs guard Nick Van Exel came to San Antonio with some baggage, having been suspended for some games in the past resulting from an altercation with an NBA referee.

Now Van Exel is contributing to the team concept on the court in a Spurs uniform, and providing a helping hand to some of San Antonio's less fortunate away from SBC Center.

On Sunday, Van Exel delivered a tractor trailer full of turkeys to the San Antonio Food Bank and other area nonprofits, including the Baptist Children's Home and Antioch Missionary Baptist Church.

Spurs officials say Van Exel came up with the idea on his own and the team worked with San Antonio-based H-E-B Grocery Stores to facilitate the effort.

"This is indicative of the real kind of person Nick is," Spurs spokesman Cliff Puchalski says.
"He's been painted with a bad brush. But he did this on his own. He came to us with the idea because it was something he really wanted to do."

Puchalski says Van Exel purchased 300 of the holiday birds and H-E-B provided the rest.

Area charities like the Food Bank have had their supplies depleted after providing assistance to tens of thousands of evacuees from the Gulf South and parts of the Texas Gulf Coast who found shelter in San Antonio after hurricanes Katrina and Rita hit.

Puchalski says Van Exel, who began his collegiate basketball career at Trinity Valley Community College in Texas, said he wanted to find a way to help.

The IDers Have Won

The main push of the Intelligent Design movement, according to its proponents, is to be heard. Once given a place at the table, the truth will ultimately win out.

Well, the faculty at the University of Kansas is giving them a place at the table. While their intent is to expose the "myth" that is ID, they'll ultimately expose the shortcomings of their faith in macro-evolution.

LAWRENCE, Kansas (AP) -- Creationism and intelligent design are going to be studied at the University of Kansas, but not in the way advocated by opponents of the theory of evolution.

A course being offered next semester by the university religious studies department is titled "Special Topics in Religion: Intelligent Design, Creationism and other Religious Mythologies."

"The KU faculty has had enough," said Paul Mirecki, department chairman.

"Creationism is mythology," Mirecki said. "Intelligent design is mythology. It's not science. They try to make it sound like science. It clearly is not."

Quote of the Day

"At the end of the day when I'm standing at the golden gates, I'm sure God doesn't give a shit how many records I've sold or how many number one hits I've had. All he gives a shit about is how I behaved, how I treated people. So understanding that, and still doing my best making records, is the conclusion I've come to. I think about that more now than I used to." - Madonna

While her "theology" is still a bit screwy, at least she's finally grown up.

Zarqawi, and Al Queda, Have Lost

But will we snatch defeat from the jaws of victory.

On Friday, the allegedly explosive "Arab street" finally exploded, in the largest demonstration against al-Qa'eda or its affiliates seen in the Middle East. "Zarqawi," shouted 200,000 Jordanians, "from Amman we say to you, you are a coward!" Also "the enemy of Allah" - which, for a jihadist, isn't what they call on Broadway a money review.

The old head-hacker was sufficiently rattled by the critical pans of his Jordanian hotel bombings that he issued the first IRA-style apology in al-Qa'eda's history. "People of Jordan, we did not undertake to blow up any wedding parties," he said. "For those Muslims who were killed, we ask God to show them mercy, for they were not targets." Yeah, right. Tell it to the non-Marines. It was perfectly obvious to Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari and his missus what was going on when they strolled into the ballroom of the Radisson Hotel.

Still, Mr Zarqawi has now announced his intention to decapitate King Abdullah. "Your star is fading," he declared. "You will not escape your fate, you descendant of traitors. We will be able to reach your head and chop it off."

Good luck, pal. I don't know what Islamist Suicide-Bombing For Dummies defines as a "soft target" but a Jordanian-Palestinian wedding in the public area of an hotel in a Muslim country with no infidel troops must come pretty close to the softest target of all time. Even more revealing, look at who Zarqawi dispatched to blow up his brother Muslims: why would he send Ali Hussein Ali al-Shamari, one of his most trusted lieutenants, to die in an operation requiring practically no skill?

10 Most Inspiring Movie of All-Time

Here's my list:

• Saving Private Ryan
• Hoosiers
• Last of the Mohicans
• Rocky IV
• On the Waterfront
• To Kill a Mockingbird
• Braveheart
• Breaking Away
• The Right Stuff
• Chariots of Fire

Must Read

The Rebuke of History: The Southern Agrarians and American Conservative Thought by Paul V. Murphy. Describes the thinking of the Southern Agrarians (Alan Tate, Robert Penn Warren, Donald Davidson, etc.) through their 1930's classic I'll Take My Stand.

Interestingly, all 12 authors were either one-time students or professors at Vanderbilt University.

Cheney on Iraq

Nor is there any problem with debating whether the United States and our allies should have liberated Iraq in the first place. Here, as well, the differing views are very passionately and forcefully stated. But nobody is saying we should not be having this discussion, or that you cannot reexamine a decision made by the President and the Congress some years ago. To the contrary, I believe it is critical that we continue to remind ourselves why this nation took action, and why Iraq is the central front in the war on terror, and why we have a duty to persevere.

What is not legitimate -- and what I will again say is dishonest and reprehensible -- is the suggestion by some U. S. senators that the President of the United States or any member of his administration purposely misled the American people on pre-war intelligence.

Some of the most irresponsible comments have come from politicians who actually voted in favor of authorizing the use of force against Saddam Hussein. These are elected officials who had access to the intelligence materials. They are known to have a high opinion of their own analytical capabilities. (Laughter.) And they were free to reach their own judgments based upon the evidence. They concluded, as the President and I had concluded, and as the previous administration had concluded, that Saddam Hussein was a threat. Available intelligence indicated that the dictator of Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, and this judgment was shared by the intelligence agencies of many other nations, according to the bipartisan Silberman-Robb Commission. All of us understood, as well, that for more than a decade, the U.N. Security Council had demanded that Saddam Hussein make a full accounting of his weapons programs. The burden of proof was entirely on the dictator of Iraq -- not on the U.N. or the United States or anyone else. And he repeatedly refused to comply throughout the course of the decade.

Ouch.

Quote of the Day

"The period between 9/11 and Iraq was not a good time for America. There wasn't a robust discussion of what we were doing," Matthews said. "If we stop trying to figure out the other side, we've given up. The person on the other side is not evil -- they just have a different perspective."

And there are still some out there who don't believe the media's lost its mind.

These Guys Needed More Due Process

RABAT, Morocco (AP) - Moroccan police have dismantled a terrorist network, arresting 17 people, including two former prisoners at the U.S. base in Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, the official MAP news agency reported. At least some of the suspects were linked to al-Qaeda in Iraq.

What? Some, if not most, of the creeps we're holding are terrorists? I thought we just picked up dark-skinned males off of the streets.

Al Queda on the Move?

From StrategyPage:

The Taliban has attracted additional money, and suicide bombers, from Arabia. Two years ago, most of this support shifted to Iraq, where al Qaeda believed it had a better chance of winning some kind of victory. But too many Arab terrorist resources in Iraq produced nothing, and Iraqis have become very hostile to al Qaeda as a result of all the Iraqis killed by terrorist attacks. So now, efforts are shifting to Afghanistan. However, this is also a hostile environment for Arab terrorists. Moreover, Arabs stand out more in Afghanistan, where most Afghans are European or Central Asian in appearance (the majority Afghans belong to ethnic groups related to the ones that invaded Europe thousands of years ago.) Afghans have been quick to turn in suspicious Arabs, or any suspected terrorist activities.

Those dopes can run around Iraq and Afghanistan all they want - and get shot by US troops.

More Shame

How the Roman Catholic Church can continue to function with daily reminders of its horrific conduct over the last several decades is beyond me:

From the front page of the Los Angeles Times, a horrific story and in-depth investigation of the sexual abuse of two entire villages of children at the hands of a "volunteer" Catholic missionary.

Since [2002], 85 Alaska natives from 13 villages have filed claims against the church for alleged abuse by six priests and two lay missionaries from 1956 to 1988.

The flood of allegations has led to speculation that the Eskimo settlements were a "dumping ground" for abusive priests and lay workers affiliated with the Jesuit order, which supplied priests and bishops to the Fairbanks diocese.

The reaction from Church authorities:

Officials of the Diocese of Fairbanks and the Jesuits' Oregon Province — the two defendants in the Lundowski suits — have asked a Superior Court judge to throw out the claims.

In legal papers, they argue that the statute of limitations on the allegations has run out, and that Lundowski was an unauthorized volunteer not under the supervision of the diocese or the Jesuits.

None of the missionary's 28 accusers in St. Michael and Stebbins — nor the dozen who have filed suit from other villages in which Lundowski previously served — has received a settlement offer.

Do You Think So!

Pentagon officials say they are increasingly worried that Washington's political fight over the Iraq war will dampen what has been high morale among troops fighting a tenacious and deadly enemy. Commanders are telling Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld that ground troops do not understand the generally negative press that their missions receive, despite what they consider significant achievements in rebuilding Iraq and instilling democracy.

The commanders also worry about the public's declining support for the mission and what may be a growing movement inside the Democratic Party to advocate troop withdrawal from Iraq. "They say morale is very high," said a senior Pentagon official of reports filed by commanders with Washington. "But they relate comments from troops asking, 'What the heck is going on back here' and why America isn't seeing the progress they are making or appreciating the mission the way those on the ground there do. My take is that they are wondering if America is still behind them."

The sad thing is that the foolish pols don't care. They're concerned with only two things: power (there own) and ego (there own, too).

Ariel Sharon, Centrist

This will drive The Left bonkers:

JERUSALEM (AFX) - Prime Minister Ariel Sharon is set to quit his right-wing Likud faction on Monday, Israeli media reported, and call for a snap election which he is expected to contest at the head of a new centrist party.

In a tectonic shift in Israeli politics and a boost to the peace process, Sharon is expected to form a new centrist party with recently-deposed Labour leader Shimon Peres.

Sharon will announce Monday his resignation from Likud and ask President Moshe Katsav to dissolve the parliament for early elections, Israeli television and army radio reported.

Big Announcement

At a press conference Sunday afternoon, I officially called for the firing of Larry Coker as the head football coach of the University of Miami Hurricanes. The old goat doesn't have a clue what he's doing. Losing to Georgia Teach at home, with a BCS birth on the line, is inexcusable.

I could win 8 or 9 games a year with the talent in South Florida. But he's not being paid to win 8 or 9 games, he's paid to win National Championships.

P.S. Miami Athletic Director Paul Dee should follow right behing Coker. That fool extended his contract by 5 years - with 2 years remaining on his original deal - for no reason whatsoever. Coker wasn't going anywhere (he's a 50-something, uncharasmatic career assistant) and he hasn't proven he can win with his players.

How To Lose A War...

...according to Ralph Peters. The Baby Boomers are really good at this. Well, at least they're good at something.

This Will Be the Lead Story On the Nightly News

Sike.

"Retail gas prices continue to plunge across the country, dropping 18 cents in the past two weeks, according to a survey released Sunday."

Rove-A-Dope Part 2?

So who is Novak's source—and Woodward's source—and why will his identity take the wind out of the brewing storm? One by one last week, a parade of current and former senior officials, including the CIA's George Tenet and national-security adviser Stephen Hadley, denied being the source. A conspicuous exception was former deputy secretary of State Richard Armitage, whose office would only say, "We're not commenting." He was one of a handful of top officials who had access to the information. He is an old source and friend of Woodward's, and he fits Novak's description of his source as "not a partisan gunslinger." Woodward has indicated that he knows the identity of Novak's source, which further suggests his source and Novak's were one and the same.

If Armitage was the original leaker, that undercuts the argument that outing Plame was a plot by the hard-liners in the veep's office to "out" Plame. Armitage was, if anything, a foe of the neocons who did not want to go to war in Iraq. He had no motive to discredit Wilson. On "Larry King Live" last month, Woodward was dismissive of the special prosecutor's investigation, suggesting that the original leak was not the result of a "smear campaign" but rather a "kind of gossip, as chatter ... I don't see an underlying crime here."

Is the White House about to bitch slap the press corps....again! Is it possible the Bushies knew from the beginning who leaked what and where and under what circumstances? I'm beginning to think they did...were content to roll with the punches...only to throw a knockout punch in the last round.

Very interesting.