Can we really trust a man who thought USC was Elite 8 Worthy to be President?

I mean really. John McCain's NCAA bracket does not show the kind of thoughtfulness and foresight we need in a leader.

I, on the other hand, am 16-0 so far on the bracket I filled out on Facebook (who loves Michael Beasley? I do!).

Proof below by clicking the thumbnail.

Oh, I've watched MAYBE an hour of college basketball this season, and yet I'm 16-0, which considering I live near UNC, Duke, and NC State, is quite a feat I would say. The Colin Cowherd approach to brackets and logic seems to work here: pick the higher seed usually, unless the team has Michael Beasley and the opponents have nobody even close to the guy's skill.

And don't give me that OJ Mayo crap. Just because he had a huge propaganda campaign preceding his first season at USC doesn't mean he's the best thing to happen to college basketball since Bobby Knight. Michael Beasley is light years ahead of OJ Mayo in skill, without nearly any of the ego.

Is there anyone more stupid than those who make up the 9/11 truth movement?

This comes as a result from an idiotic comment on my post dissecting the leftist legal arguments about the "suspiciousness" of the Department of Justice's revelation that Eliot Spitzer likes to lay the pipe with tricks.

Of the many words in that post, only three sentences actually dealt with the 9/11 truth movement, and even those were mildly criticized because they were simply examples of how innocuous questions soon turn into mind-numbing lunacy. Below is the comment left by "wtf."

Have you seen the 9/11 reasearch, idiot?

http://nomoregames.net/index.php?page=911

this is but a fraction of the scientific study

I went to the site, here's some of the articles on said site:

The Original No Planers: Most Witnesses at the WTC Heard And Saw No Planes

That would be fucking amazing. If of the thousands upon thousands who worked at the World Trade Center, thousands upon thousands upon thousands of people saw or heard no planes arriving, that would be news worthy. Except it isn't thousands upon thousands who heard or saw nothing.

It's 24 people, I shit you not.

Twenty-four of 39 witnesses failed to see or hear a plane. These "no planers" like so many downtown that morning failed to report seeing or hearing a plane, and some insisted that the initial explosion in each tower came from within. Many witnesses remarked that they only "learned later" that a plane had hit the tower.

Over 3000 people died. For arguments sake, we'll say the total number of witnesses that day were 3039 people. Of those 3039 people, 24 didn't see an airplane or hear an airplane. That means .79% of the so called people in this article were completely unaware of a plane being involved. I include the 3000 people who died on 9/11 as witnesses who were aware a plane was involved as they died as a result of it flying into the building.

So most people means, at best (and of course it's far smaller) .79% of witnesses on 9/11 saw or heard or were absolutely unaware of a plane being involved with the events on 9/11. I guess that 99.21% minority are liars or were easily deceived about the instrument used to either kill or attempt to kill them.

How do these people sleep at night? I mean they have got to be the most neurotic and paranoid people ever.

Candidate Profiles: Obama, Clinton, and McCain on trade

Barack Obama is probably the most uplifting speaker the Democrats have the potential to nominate since John Kennedy. It's a pity then that he uses his silver tongue to lash out against free trade policies. Trade policies which have made the country wealthier, kept costs down, and expanded the free marketplace and enhanced it with goods and services we'd otherwise only witness by going to the product's original country.

His website says he will fight for "fair trade" (re: if he doesn't like the fact that Japan makes cheaper steel than the US, he will tariff the shit out of it), renegotiate NAFTA, and punish trade partners who don't live up to what we think is adequate environmental protection.

However he does think trading with other nations will benefit America's economy.

Lately Hillary Clinton has gone to workers in the manufacturing sector and lamented the downsizing and outsourcing of factory jobs that deals like NAFTA and CAFTA have led to. Ignoring the fact her husband created NAFTA, this is a bunch of white-collar bullshit being fed to people she thinks are too stupid to remember Bill Clinton is NAFTA's daddy. She is arguing a similarly protectionist line like Barack Obama is on free trade, and she's demanding that countries without the resources or abilities to, live up to our standards with regards to environmental protection.

Finally, in a speech that probably made Pat Buchanan puke, John McCain said this: "Protectionism and isolationism are not the answer." He wants to continue opening up the trade market to less and less regulation (I mean there's a limit to deregulation of trade, but keeping markets as open as possible is good for everyone involved).

All in all, John McCain wins the trade argument. Protectionists need to understand, raise the costs of imports, you raise the price of goods. There won't be a corresponding raise in income, so you're hurting those people who you claim to speak for. And all tariffs do is put more money in the federal government's pocket.

And unless the tariff is disgustingly high, companies will still import the goods and pay such tariffs, it just means they'll have to cut domestic labor to compensate for the loss of revenue such tariffs would bring. I took a total of three economics courses my entire life and even I know this.

This is how idiocy like Bush did 9/11 starts

It begins with innocent questions: how could this possibly be done by some backwards fundamentalists against the most powerful military and country in the world? Which then goes to the more ludicrous "It's completely unthinkable the government could have something like this happen within our borders nowadays." Then it goes completely bat-shit with "only our government could possibly do something of this magnitude."

Well the Eliot Spitzer saga is slowly taking a similar road. First the story is getting waaaaaaay too much attention from the media even though, boo-frickedy-hoo, nobody paid as much attention to David Vitter being caught in the DC Madame's stable of users. Now it's not illegal to hire an escort, and nobody has said Vitter had sex with the escort. So the parallel between Spitzer and Vitter is a false one. Also, GOVERNOR SPITZER IS THE GOVERNOR OF THE THIRD LARGEST STATE IN AMERICA. DAVID VITTER IS A SENATOR FROM LOUISIANA, ONE OF 100 PEOPLE IN THE SENATE!

Anyway, within a day of the scandal being brought out into the public, we've got the Marxist legal teams of the left trying to point this as a Republican smear campaign and dirty tricks by the Bush Department of Justice.

Here's the post, my dissection afterwards:

1. Why would the bank tell the IRS and not Spitzer himself if there was a suspicious transfer? Spitzer is a longtime client, a rich guy and the governor. We’re talking thousands of dollars here, not millions. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense that they spotted a “suspicious transfer” made by the governor, and that this is how things began. It’s possible it was just ordinary paperwork the bank had to file with the government whenever some particular flag was raised, but if that’s the case, why did the DoJ go to DefCon 3?

2. What is a USA [U.S. Attorney] doing prosecuting a prostitution case? This isn’t normally what the feds spend their time with.

3. Mike Garcia is a Chertoff crony. Sources familiar with the investigation say that he sent a prosecution memo to DC two months ago asking for authority to indict a public figure (Spitzer). Which means they had their case made long before the wire tap of February 13. Why did they then include this line from that conversation in the complaint?

LEWIS continued that from what she had been told “he” (believed to be a reference to Client-9) “would ask you to do things that, like, you might not think were safe — you know — I mean that…very basic things….”Kristen” responded: “I have a way of dealing with that…I’d be like listen dude, you really want the sex?…You know what I mean.”

This salacious detail does not seem like it’s necessary to make their case, and appears to be added for no other purpose than to destroy Spitzer’s career.

1. The Department of Justice went into Defcom 3 against the prostitution ring, not Eliot Spitzer. Lots of clients have come up in this, to make it seem like "the DoJ was looking to smear or indict Spitzer" is idiotic and dishonest. Next, if the bank recognized the transfer as being something that would be untoward, they're not going to tell the person committing the untoward act "hey, why are you doing this?" because then if he engages in the crime again, he may be even more slick about what he's doing.

2. A U.S. Attorney is focused on this because this involves clients from all over the fucking country. Again, this was about prostitution not Eliot Spitzer.

3. AS. FUCKING. PROOF. HE. WAS. RECIDIVIST. And not only recidivist, but unbelievably and disgustingly brazen about his actions. Implying that this is a Don Siegelman situation is absolutely retarded.

You, I swear, will soon see posts by people like Nicole Belle implying that this is an abuse of power by the Justice Department attempting to remove a Democrat governor, and they had targeted Spitzer purely.

This will of course lead to someone on Daily Kos going "George W. Bush was the one who slept with the hooker, and the DoJ is picking on Spitzer to resign. Spitzer being a neoconservative Zionist plant took the fall so we could continue stealing Arab oil with the Jews in Israel! How come you people aren't smart enough to see this?"

Amazing hypocrisy left and right.

The Eliot Spitzer story is certainly a big story. What's noticeable is the silence from the liberals who wanted David Vitter to resign for going out with the DC Madame's escorts. Oh they'll point to Senator Vitter's standing ovation from fellow Republicans as right wing hypocrisy (which it is), but no calls from several prominent liberal bloggers that Eliot Spitzer should resign.

And of course the right is creaming itself. Little Green Footballs has several posts and updates concerning Mr. Spitzer's actions. Michelle Malkin is probably dancing in her house at this story if her posts regarding this are any indication of her position and glee at this.

Crooks and Liars has not actually condemned what Spitzer has done. A Daily Kos diarist says it's impossible for Governor Spitzer to be a hypocrite because he's a Democrat.

Kevin Drums suggests that the usual charges of hypocrisy in prostitution/infidelity scandals come into play here, but I don’t think that accusation is wuite as fair this time. As a prosecutor, it was expected of Spitzer to bust prostitution rings and it’s not as if he (like the Republicans) touts his commitment to sexual morality— over that of his political opponents— in order to get elected. He may be a hypocrite if (as is presumable) he tells his wife he’s faithful to her, and he tells people that they should stay faithful to their spouses, etc. But politically, he’s not a hypocrite, and it doesn’t have it anything to do with his politics the way it does for some others who got caught.

I chalk this event up as an (embarassing) personal failing, but as far as what the typical cheating scandal is like, to me this one is more like personal business and less appropriate as political news or a political criticism of him. You can’t even call it a double-standard for Republicans, because it’s the Republicans who make it an issue for themselves by claiming to have an iron-clad commitment to pbserving these kinds of taboos.

Bullshit. Eliot Spitzer is a hypocrite, and because he has touted himself as a tough law and order guy, to violate easily the most well known law next to murder and theft, makes him a hypocrite.

My problem isn't that he had sex with a prostitute. As George Carlin said, there are much worse things to give someone than an orgasm, and prostitution should be legalized, if only because the black market for it would be eliminated. However, I find it utterly contemptible and disgusting that he cheated. On the day before Valentine's Day. That takes an amazing amount of disrespect for one's wife.

I firmly believe, and have even when I was a militant Atheist, that cheating on one's spouse or relationship partner is one of the most vile things one can do. What he did is unconscionable. However, after coming back to the Catholic faith, I do realize he's human, and I do hope those he's hurt forgive him, but he must be sincere in his disgust with his actions.

I pray that this ends positively for all those involved. The joys I've seen from both liberals and conservatives when one of the opposite political ideology hurts their family in this manner is sickening. People are hurt, sometimes irreparably by actions such as these, and to delight in the awfulness of something like this is just as disgusting and inhuman.

I'm on the fence over whether he should resign. My libertarian streak says "he violated a stupid law." My annoyance at law and order types violating laws causes my libertarian streak to quiet down.

John McCain: Lukewarm Moron

Like I've said, I have no personal affinity for John McCain. I'll defend him when I think the attacks against him are wrong, but when he's wrong I'll be just as vicious in my attacks upon him just as I am with Hillary Clinton and dipshits like Cal Thomas.

Well after roughly two weeks of anger from Roman Catholics concerning McCain failing to repudiate the endorsement from a fat bastard bed-wetting dick head pastor from San Antonio named John Hagee, who's a rabid anti-Semite if you look at the fact he believes all Jews will either convert to Christianity or punished for eternity in the lake of fire for not converting (I'm sorry, how is believing Jews deserve to be eternally punished not antisemitism?).

Republican presidential candidate John McCain on Friday repudiated any views of a prominent televangelist who endorsed him last month "if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics."

McCain has come under fire since televangelist John Hagee endorsed him on Feb. 27, but until Friday his response had been tepid. The Arizona senator merely said he doesn't agree with everyone who endorses him. He said Friday he had been hearing from Catholics who find Hagee's comments offensive.

Hagee, leader of a San Antonio mega-church, has referred to the Roman Catholic Church as "the great whore" and called it a "false cult system" and "the apostate church" — "apostate" means someone who has forsaken his religion.

On Friday, McCain took a stronger stance on Hagee's views in an interview with The Associated Press.

"We've had a dignified campaign, and I repudiate any comments that are made, including Pastor Hagee's, if they are anti-Catholic or offensive to Catholics," McCain said.

"I sent two of my children to Catholic school. I categorically reject and repudiate any statement that was made that was anti-Catholic, both in intent and nature. I categorically reject it, and I repudiate it," McCain said.

NOW YOU DAMN KIDS GET OFF MY LAWN!! Good work grandpa, good work of offering up a tepid repudiation of his comments. How about saying "John Hagee is completely and utterly wrong in his condemnations of the Roman Catholic Church, and I find his comments calling Roman Catholics 'apostates' disgusting." That might actually be something worth saying you lukewarm ass.

Listening To: Dave Matthews Band - So Right

Stupid Headline: Time Magazine

"Does New York Have a Serial Bomber?"

One incident apparently makes someone a serial bomber.

Cal Thomas: Asshole

I've been criticized by my liberal friends and my socialist family members recently for being too eager to attack the left in my blog and my personal opinions. "You deride Barack Obama's health care plan without criticizing the American one" I've been told. Shit like that. But I digress.

While I consider myself a Catholic, though not an overwhelmingly observant one, I completely, wholesale, 100%, absolutely, and (insert any other synonym for completely) disagree with the major religion's views on homosexuals. As the Book of James says (in the New Living Translation) "Doesn’t discrimination show that your judgments are guided by evil motives?" You may hate the premarital sex homosexuals engage in, but you can't decry them having sex without being married while prohibiting them from getting married.

I am not going to be holier than thou and say I don't discriminate, because I do. Not because I hate the group, but because I have my own personal views and when a certain person or group behaves in a manner which reinforces a false stereotype, I say "OK, how am I wrong for thinking this person/these people act this way when this person/these people act this way?" I will criticize homosexuals when they engage in sexually risky behavior just like I'll criticize Catholics when they engage in behavior which seems very creepy.

However I don't think teaching people to dislike one group or another has any business being taught in public schools. If a private school wants to discriminate against homosexuals and believe the Earth is 6000 years old, let them and hope that the kids go to a college which doesn't believe in things like biology, or physics.

Well a-hole Cal Thomas has written a piece for his syndicated column criticizing California for teaching that homosexuality and homosexual behavior is not the most evil thing on the planet. They're indoctrinating children into... ACCEPTANCE. Fucking shit! People leaving other people to make choices, regardless of whether you approve of the activity or not!

He starts by pissing and moaning that some group in California is assisting kids in coming out of the closet with their "non-traditional" sexual identities. Don't these accepting degenerates know? It's better for them to be closeted homosexuals their entire lives while cheating on their spouses with crystal-meth dealing gay prostitutes and lying to the largest congregation about their morality! Or not.

For someone who claims to be pro-life (funny how he's not disturbed about killing prisoners, who despite their evil actions, are still living human beings) he seems to have no problem with forcing a psychological mind-fuck upon youngsters who often end up killing themselves because they consider themselves abominations in the eyes of their lord (the God I believe in loves everyone and considers all of his creation beautiful) for feeling the way they naturally feel. Not very pro-life to me.

We're a supposedly advanced culture. We've moved beyond the ass-backwards-ness we see in the Middle East with regards to civil rights and liberties. Why do we still have people who continue to enforce idiotic and hateful messages like this?

Rant over.

Reuters: Keeping the literate stupid for a long time

I mean really. I have no love for John McCain, and when push comes to shove I may end up writing in Barry Goldwater or something for President (which will disqualify my vote in this stupid state I think), but reading stories like this makes me believe the media think everyone is barely able to go to the bathroom without shitting their pants 2/3 of the time.

They have an article discussing the big challenge facing John McCain right now. Is the challenge substantive, like his ludicrous belief that the war in Iraq was smart and it was only because of idiot Rumsfeld it didn't go well? Is it his correct though unpopular belief that we should treat illegal aliens as human beings and not animals named Pedro? Is the challenge his hideous anti-free-speech positions when it comes to political campaigns? No, his biggest challenge is staying in the news because the poor son of a bitch has the Republican nomination.

Because we Republicans are too fucking stupid to remember who our nominee is while the Democrats are busy having a pissing match to sort out their nominee.

Now that he has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, John McCain has to figure out how to remain in the public eye while attention is diverted to the tense Democratic battle.

The danger is that the epic struggle between Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton over their party's presidential nomination will dominate the news and turn McCain into a side issue.

It is a subject that concerns McCain's advisers, but they believe they will be able to keep sufficient focus on the Arizona senator while at the same time raise some much needed campaign cash and work on bringing the Republican Party together behind him.

The epic struggle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton! Like Zeus and the Olympic gods fighting the Titans! Epic! Historic! Painfully long erection inducing!

Considering how much John McCain pisses off the Republican base when he does open his mouth, maybe it's for the best he's not the focus of the media.

Listening to: Dave Matthews Band - The Space Between

Fox News: We take the news seriously!! Honest!

While sitting in a fast food restaurant, eating a super early dinner because I felt like smoking hookah and well, it sucks to smoke without a full stomach, they had the TVs set to Fox News Channel. Well after roughly two minutes spent on the Democratic National Committee trying to figure out what the hell to do with the moron Democrats in Florida and Michigan (really, what the fuck did they achieve by pulling the bullshit they pulled?), they spent more time discussing the fashion of the candidates and their spouses (except Bill Clinton).

Honestly, how the hell does that count as news and/or anything resembling information? I know the majority of Fox News' viewers are generally dim people, and maybe some of them are dense enough to honestly care about the fact John McCain dresses like a a college professor from Norway, but is this news really worth discussing more than an actual real news story?

They even had a fucking expert. I mean seriously. Who the fuck is an expert on presidential campaign fashion? Who goes to school and says "one day I want to critique politicians on their wardrobes, not their policies?" And how the hell does Fox News find these people? Is there a posting on Craigslist?

The worst thing is whatever the hell show was airing this (it might have been Neil Cavuto's show considering the time, but I didn't see that Easter Island headed dolt talking, just some disturbingly over-makeup-ed woman) is probably viewed more than serious news shows on other cable networks like... well... shit there's no such thing anymore (and liberals, don't give me that Countdown crap, it's the O'Reilly Factor if it was being broadcast in Caracas, Venezuela).

Listening to: Shiny Toy Guns - Don't Cry Out

Take the bull by the horns and do what with it exactly?

You know every group which seems to be in a bad state has this indescribable belief that the only solution to their problems is government intervention. Yes there are times when the government intervening to solve a societal ill is necessary. The Civil Rights Act was necessary to end the ass-backwards southern program of segregation. The government finally recognizing the women's suffrage movement and getting its shit straight and giving women the right to vote was another.

However, when it comes to issues of educational and income disparity between whites and blacks, the government has NO business getting involved. This may sound racist, and I couldn't give less of a shit if it does, but you know who is responsible for the majority of the problems blacks face every day? Not the white man. Not the government. It's other blacks.

Across a range of economic indicators including measures of employment, poverty, housing, income and wealth, blacks were much worse off than whites. If whites scored 100 percent on such measures, blacks scored just 56.8 percent, a figure unchanged from last year, the National Urban League said.

On a broader index covering such issues as education, health, social justice and civic engagement, blacks stood at 73 percent, an increase of just 0.41 percentage points over last year, the league said.

Three times as many U.S. blacks as whites live below the poverty line, defined as an income of $20,000 for a family of four. The disparity between the races on unemployment narrowed slightly, but blacks were still twice as likely to be jobless.

The report, one of the most comprehensive on the subject, addresses more than 300 separate categories, which it uses to come up with an overall equality index.

"The disparities between black and white Americans remain consistent, nagging and substantial," League president Marc Morial told Reuters.

"The next (U.S.) president has to take the bull by the horns and change the nation's priorities and focus on domestic initiatives," he said in an interview.

Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton are busy signing pledges to follow some ten point program created by the Urban League to make the income gap between whites and black more narrow. Unless the ten point plan consists of these points, it's worthless government nanny-stating making the poor reliant on the government for everything.

1. Stop having kids when you're not fucking ready.
2. Stop engaging in illicit activities if you can't fucking afford to engage in them.
3. Stop spending money on stupid shit you don't need. A nice house says more about you than rims.
4. Stop expecting the government to subsidize your life. Money isn't infinite, and relying solely on government programs only creates laziness.
5. Stop making kids feel like racial traitors when they decide that getting an education in school is better for them than getting an education on the streets.
6. Stop poisoning kids' minds with idiotic notions that it's the white man keeping them down.
7. Public education is fucking free. Take full-fucking-advantage of this.
8. Stop blaming your problems on other people. Ninety-nine percent of the shit that's wrong in your life is your own god damn fault.
9. Stop this nonsensical bullshit that America's racist history is the reason you can't find a decent job. If you talk like a criminal. Dress like a criminal. Guess what? You're going to be seen as a criminal.

Guess which one would most likely be hired by a legit company and guess which one is emulated most in the inner city.
10. Stop idolizing people who promote a negative image of blacks. Al Sharpton is a lying racist scumbag. Colin Powell is one of the smartest men when it comes to foreign policy this country ever had. 50 Cent is functionally retarded. John Legend sings beautiful songs and is more educated than any presidential nominee we've had since Bill Clinton. And yet 50 Cent will sell more records than John Legend, and Al Sharpton will lead more African-Americans than Colin Powell. How shameful is that?

Hillary Clinton: Sleazy idiot

Regardless of her economic views, which really aren't dramatically further to the left of John McCain, Mike Huckabee, or nearly any other Republican's (with the exception of Ron Paul), it's the kind of sleazy campaigning she engages in. This is incredibly similar to Mike Huckabee's idiotic comments regarding Mormonism.

There is so much wrong with this. Firstly when she idiotically (though most likely innocently) says "as far as I know" to the question of whether Barack Obama is a Muslim.

Secondly she talks about how she's been the target of sleazy rumors about herself. Okay, now when the right wing calls Barack Obama a Muslim it's done to get the right wing xenophobes inspired to vote against him. But these people who actually care whether Obama is a Muslim or not aren't going to vote for him anyway, and most likely were going to vote against him come the election because he's black. However these people are a distinct minority of the American population and they probably think the Jews are controlling the media and determining American policy. They're lunatics who aren't worth thinking about.

Why is it a sleazy rumor, Mrs. Clinton, to question whether Barack Obama is a Muslim? There's a difference, Mrs. Clinton, between wondering whether Barack Obama considers Mohammed to be a Prophet, and wondering whether Barack Obama has sympathetic feelings towards groups like Hezbollah. Charging someone as a Muslim in a derogatory way is stupid and disgusting, but the modern John Birchers are the ones engaging in that, the ones who genuinely wonder aren't motivated by bigotry, but curiosity, and aren't doing it out of some misguided bigotry towards people of the Islamic faith.

She's just a revolting human being and it would be a tragedy if she becomes our president.