- Guess what? The U.S. military is actually going to move additional combat troops into Afghanistan, where they should have been all along and not in Iraq, the biggest abortion of an invasion/war in American history! Yes, a smart leader would have poured every available resource into Afghanistan, a place where we actually should be, and not into needlessly invading a nation that posed to direct, imminent threat to us and had no WMDs, Iraq….but we had W., so smart leadership was something we had to do without the past eight years. But now, our leaders are finally getting it right (for a change) and the U.S. military now plans to move three more combat brigades to Afghanistan by summer. Defense Secretary Robert Gates made that announcement after he landed Thursday in the Afghan city of Kandahar. According to Gates, the deployment will include one brigade that was scheduled to be sent in January and two more that have to be named. As you may recall, Gates has been held over in his post by the Obama administration, so he will be around to see this plan through. Still, there’s a long way to go in order to rectify the grossly out-of-proportion troop counts in Afghanistan versus Iraq, as the U.S. military has about 31,000 troops in Afghanistan, less than a quarter of the number of troops in Iraq. Theoretically, the number of troops wrongly stationed in Iraq will dwindle to zero by the end of 2011 under the terms of the security agreement signed by the W. administration and ratified by the Iraqi government earlier this month….and with W. leaving office and a non-ass-hat as president, the U.S. may actually live up to its end of that deal. Now, just stop and think about what we could have accomplished in Afghanistan in the time period between 2002 and 2008 if we hadn’t been wasting hundreds of billions of dollars, thousands of American lives and all sorts of supplies in Iraq, where we weren’t needed, wanted or justified in being…..
- So who had the biggest tour of 2008? No, not a band that’s actually good and relevant; let’s face it, the top earners will always be “established” bands who have been around long enough to have built a fan base full of, um, older followers with lots of disposable income, a heavy dose of nostalgia and to have accumulated enough meaningless awards and successful tours to charge exorbitant ticket prices to fill up ginormous arenas. Just which of the many, many aged, bloated-rep rockers managed that feat best this year? None other than Bon Jovi, whose Lost Highway tour tops the list of the biggest tours for 2008. The tour wound through ] North America and Europe, grossing $210.6 million and drawing 2,157,675 fans. Coming in second place is Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band's Magic tour, which grossed $204.5 million for the year. What’s truly sad is that those two are actually the best of the top 10 - by wide margin. The rest of the list includes a group of artists whom I would rather shove myself into an industrial-sized paper shredder than see in concert: 3) Madonna ($162 million for the ongoing debacle known as the Sticky & Sweet tour), 4) the Police ($150 million on the second leg of their reunion tour), 5) Celine Dion ($91 million), 6) Kenny Chesney ($86 million), 7) Neil Diamond ($81.2 million), 8) Spice Girls ($70 million), 9) Eagles ($56.6 million) and 10) Rascal Flatts ($55.8 million). For concerts worldwide (the good, the bad - i.e. most of the top 10 - and everything in between), the reported grosses totaled slightly less than $4 billion, the most ever for a year and up almost 13 percent over last year. However, concert attendance remained flat, with virtually no increase, meaning that more shows and higher prices are leading to those increasing revenue numbers. Oddly enough, the best shows still tend to be those in smaller venues, with much lower ticket prices and by artists most people have never heard of, based on my experience……
- This is the type of problem you tend to run into when a bunch of broke-ass college students with a social conscience decide to take up a charitable cause. They have good intentions, but they tend to be short on means and thus their activism tends to be a bit unconventional and odd. Such is the story of students at Allegheny (Pa.) College who wanted to express the importance of the 350 project, an effort to increase awareness of carbon emission. The project received its name from the fact that 350 parts per million is the level of carbon dioxide that the earth’s atmosphere can support before it can no longer function properly and irreversible damage occurs. Working with the number 350, the students decided that a good way to raise awareness for their cause would be to 350 sheets on clotheslines to represent the number. However, once they got going on their project, they quickly realized that finding 350 sheets to hang wasn’t happening. What do to when you are both environmentally inclined and short on bedding materials? Yup, you guessed it: use socks, bras, and panties instead. one student explained the shift in materials by saying that “making it to 350 was a bit more challenging than we thought it would be.” In the end, the mixture of sheets, socks and underwear was enough to get the message across, although the students say that people “weren’t too keen on letting your borrow their underwear.” No kidding. Maybe next time, you pick something you have in abundance, say empty ramen noodle packages, pizza boxes or beer cans……
- Men like cult leader Wayne Bent help make this world what it is - a sick, disturbing place filled with pervs, whack jobs, losers and certified pieces of crap that’s getting worse every day. Personally, I’m thankful that I wasn’t in the Taos, New Mexico courtroom where Bent testified Thursday in the case against him for multiple sexual crimes involving young female followers in his cult. Bent is accused of fondling and sexually assaulting two girls who were 14 and 16 at the time of the alleged assaults two years ago. Here’s how Bent tried to defend himself against such pervy, disgusting behavior: he could not go against God even though he knew spiritual touching of two young, naked followers would get him in trouble. "She was on the left side because she got in the bed last," Bent said. "I turned on my side, and I put my hand on her sternum. We visited that way, and that was pretty much common for me to do." Ewww…..hang on while I go take about five showers to wash away this dirty, filthy feelling….okay, let’s continue. Sorry to burst your balloon, Wayne-O, but a) it is not, nor has it ever been God’s will for you to sexually assault underage girls, and b) you claiming that you could not deny the girls' wishes because God told them to do it doesn’t fly, because you’re under the jurisdiction of the state of New Mexico, you perv, and they don’t allow you to fondle young girls. Claiming that the contact was purely religious….I’m sure many of the Catholic priests convicted of molesting young boys would like us to believe the same thing. What’s even more disturbing is that Bent and his cult have so twisted, distorted and manipulated these girls’ mind that they are saying that they had lain naked with Bent so they could be closer to God. How getting fondled, er, laying in bed with a repulsive, wretched, sexual molester, er, cult leader, er….“religious figure” brings one closer to God….no idea. Not that the 67-year-old Bent has much time left on this Earth (hopefully), but here’s hoping he spends all of it behind bars and away from anything remotely female…..
- I know that MTV isn’t exactly known for creative, innovative programming that’s actually, what’s the word I’m looking for….oh yeah, good. However, I don’t believe it’s too much to ask that the network stop picking rich, random, uninteresting losers from the Laguna Beach tree for their own shows. The original LB spun off into The Hills because of ditzy, emotionally inept blond Lauren Conrad, and now two of the charcters she has encountered during the far-too-long run of her series are spinning off into their own with shows with MTV. Both Whitney Port and Brody Jenner will be starring (never has that term been more loosely applied) starting in the next few weeks on MTV. Jenner’s series is more idiotic and lame by a small margin, mostly because of it’s severely stupid name: Bromance. Ah, verrrrry clever MTV. I see what you did, combining dudes name with the word romance and using it as a play on the fact that you’ve rounded up a bunch of pathetic, no-life-having losers to compete to be Jenner’s friend in a male version of the moronic show of the same concept you’ve been airing with Paris Hilton. By comparison, following around aspiring fashionista Pratt as she moves to New York and tries to make her way in the fashion industry is intelligent, thoughtful television - okay, so not really, but it’s still not as complete a waste of time as Jenner’s show. Then again, that’s a bit like being the tallest midget. MTV, are you freaking kidding me? You’ve had some definite hits with shows like TRL (now off the air) and the early seasons of The Real World, but you are really scarping the bottom of the barrel here. Showing up on a reality TV show where you humiliate yourself to be the friend of some spoiled, rich pretty boy and end up in tears (as we saw on a preview for the show) is about as low as you can go in life….aside from watching a single second of this abortion of a show……
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