- If any single action or opinion can make you a total and complete idiot, this would be the one: everyone is only angry at Michael Vick and condemning his alleged role in a dogfighting ring because he’s black. That is the single most asinine, ignorant statement you can make in reference to this or any other alleged crime. To say and believe that is to ignore the detailed, disgusting and thorough indictment handed down by the feds against Vick and his cohorts, an indictment accusing them of organizing and operating a dogfighting ring in which dogs were bought, bred and trained to fight to the death and if they refused to fight, the dogs were executed by electrocution, hanging or being slammed to the ground repeatedly until dead. People, especially black people (based on those I’ve heard defending Vick, I’m not being biased, just observing what I have seen and heard) who blindly defend a person of their own race by playing the race card first and repeatedly thereafter are just plain dumb. There are situations, such as this one, when race is not a factor or at least not a factor of any significance. The federal government didn’t indict Vick because he’s black; they indicted him because he’s a scumbag who ran a dogfighting ring and brutally murdered dogs when they refused to fight. If Drew Brees or Peyton Manning did what Vick is alleged to have done, people would be just as angry and just as thirsty for justice. Playing the race card in a situation such as this shows you are either not smart enough, too blinded by racial motivations are just too ignorant to realize the truth. By so doing, you’re invalidating other times when people are being persecuted and mistreated because of their race or ethnicity and when those times occur, your false claims of bias in cases like Vick’s will have weakened the cause of people who are being treated wrongly. Oh, and it’s also interesting to note that just a couple weeks ago, ESPN was diligently reporting that Vick was extremely unlikely to be indicted in the dogfighting ring. Something has obviously changed and changed dramatically in a short span of time. Realize that the feds have a 95 percent conviction rate when they issue an indictment. In other words, they don’t indict unless they’re certain they can and will get a conviction. They don’t want to waste time, money and reputations by indicting people if those people have any chance at all of being exonerated.
- Could someone tell me if this is 1993 or 2007? I’m admittedly disconcerted after learning that this summer, at some point, Hootie & the Blowfish are going to be touring the country. Right now the tour is on hold as lead singer Darius Rucker recovers from a staph infection in his left knee (what, has he been spending a lot of time in the Cleveland Browns locker room lately, a.k.a. Staph Infection Central?). He’s hard three operations trying to clean out the knee and is hoping that the third one will get the job done. Rucker’s health problems have forced H & TB to cancel four shows and postpone eight more, to the utter disappointment of tens and tens of fans. Also, the first 13 shows of the tour, which was scheduled to begin June 29, have also been pushed back. For the two or three of you who can't wait any longer to see the band, they will be performing three songs on CBS’ The Early Show tomorrow, live from their hometown of Charleston, S.C. So dust off your copy of Cracked Rear View and practice your vocals for Hold My Hand, because one of the biggest one-trick ponies of the ’90s music scene is back and just as mediocre as ever.
- God bless firefighters. They do so much for so many people, risking their lives in dangerous situations to save people and save buildings from burning to the ground. However, being a hero doesn’t absolve you from, say, destroying the wrong house in a training exercise when the actual house you were supposed to use is two blocks away. Firefighters in Braintree, Mass. were all set for a departmental training exercise and went at it with gusto, cutting holes in the roof of what they thought was a deserted home, cutting more holes in the walls and breaking windows. Somehow, they failed to realize that the actual house they were supposed to be using, one scheduled for demolition soon, was two streets away. Now, the town will be paying for the remodeling of the house, which ironically the owners were planning on doing anyway - just not to this extent. The fire department in Braintree would do well to remember an old carpentry maxim that has held up for centuries: Measure twice, cut once. Only in this situation it would be: Check twice to make sure you’re not destroying the wrong house for a training exercise, go ahead and wreck the house once. Hope that will help avoid any further disasters of this ilk, as always I’m here for any help you all need.
- Last night was the season finale of Traveler, my favorite new summer TV show. Yes, I said “season” finale, not “series” finale, which is good news. Although no official announcement has been made about the show’s future following its successful eight-week summer run, good ratings and good reviews should give it a shot at returning to ABC’s lineup at some point in the near future. As for the finale itself, it was definitely one of the top two episodes of the season, if not the best. It began with yet another face-to-face meeting between Jay, Tyler and law enforcement, only this time Will Traveler was there to intervene. The trio obviously escaped, and over the course of the episode went after Jack Freed (Neal McDonough), a man we learned is a former FBI exec who now works for Homeland Security but has his own agenda in some sort of domestic terrorism program with participants in several branches of the government and also the private sector. Having Will, Tyler and Jay together was a good chance to see how much their characters have grown and changed during the short season. There were plenty of twists and turns, as per the season finale playbook. Kim Doherty, Jay’s girlfriend, was arrested by the FBI and taken into custody at some remote location. The agent in charge of the investigation into the Drexler Museum bombing, Special Agent in Charge Fred Chambers (Steven Culp) was revealed to be a traitor and part of Freed’s organization when he pulled Agent Jan Marlow (Viola Davis) off the case and then shot Agent Guillermo Borjes (Anthony Ruivivar), her partner as he attempted to arrest one of Freed’s men. The season ended with Will, Jay and Tyler tricking Freed and driving him in a stolen limo to the offices of a local newspaper where they left him locked inside along with video evidence of showing him admitting to being responsible for the bombing. But in another twist, Freed or someone involved with him blew up the limo right after Jay placed a call to the paper from a nearby pay phone. Thus our trio of intrepid travelers are once again involved with an explosion, one that presumably will send them on the run again for the start of next season. All told, an exciting, fast paced finale that set up season two perfectly and answered a lot of questions at the same time. If I had to give a final grade for the series, it would definitely be an A, and I’ll be eagerly looking forward to the next season.
- Chalk one up for stupidity, courtesy of the Senate Republicans. Only four GOP senators had the testicular fortitude to join the Democrats in voting to end a filibuster and allow a vote on a measure to force the withdrawal of U.S. combat troops from Iraq. Instead, the stooges, er, senators on the wrong side of the 52-47 vote sided with the Ass Clown in Chief, W., and his demand that no strategic re-evaluations on Iraq be made until his artificial, stupid September evaluation date. Well of course we should follow that logic, I mean why go ahead and re-evaluate the situation now and make changes in July if things are clearly, terribly wrong? Why deal with problems now when you can keep your head up your ass a couple more months and then allegedly deal with those problems when they’ve had two more months to fester? Hey W., if four-plus years of one failure after another is the evidence we have, how is two more months with more of your faulty, moronic logic and strategy going to help? Are you suddenly going to stop being an idiot by September? That the Senate vote fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to end the filibuster is discouraging but not surprising. Too many of these guys are party stooges who don’t have the cahones to contradict their leader, even when he’s so obviously wrong. Thanks for nothing, Republican senators, so much for you serving in the best interests of your constituents and doing what’s best for our nation.
- How do you know a potential new album is going to be awful before you’ve heard any of it or know what songs will be on it? When the mere thought of that album makes you more nauseous than an American Karaoke artist like the effeminate Clay Aiken, then you know an album is going to be mind-numbingly terrible. Just what kind of album could inspire such a reaction? How’s about a collaboration between the man perm-wearing, elevator music-crooning Michael Bolton and Desperate House-skanks star Nicollette Sheridan? The pair are already married, so I guess they felt like they needed to stop inflicting pain and auditory discomfort on one another by singing around the house and start sharing that pain with the world. Bolton has already foisted some of the most crap-tacular whiny ballads ever recorded on the world, but teaming with his wife, whose musical abilities are subpar at best, could push him over the top and lead to one of the five worst records in the history of music, right behind whatever album Macarena appeared on and a greatest hits album by Cher.
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