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Golf, Happy Gilmore Style

I’m in the process of picking golf back up, as if I can really believe that I had picked it up at one point previously. Regardless, I’ve made a recent habit of going to YouTube to search for golf videos. The past couple of nights, I’ve just been searching for “golf”, and I then sort the results by the date on which they were added so I can view the most recent videos.

As of the time of my writing this post, the video below has been on YouTube for eight hours. It’s a montage of various golfers trying to hit the ball Happy Gilmore style. If you remember, Adam Sandler runs up the ball and hits it in one fluid motion in that movie. The video below is priceless, literally laugh out loud funny. At least it was for me.

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Senator Vitter Was Too Vulnerable

You have probably already heard the news about Senator David Vitter, the Republican from Louisiana, being involved with the “D.C. Madam”, the woman charged with running a prostitution ring in the D.C. area. Yes, this is the same Senator Vitter who is vehemently against the idea of same sex marriage because of the harm it could wreak on “traditional” marriage. I figure a married man visiting a prostitute might also wreak harm on a “traditional” marriage, but that’s another issue.

Dana Milbank at washingpost.com wrote an article about the issue, and in it he reproduces an interesting quote:

Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.), approached by a group of reporters outside the lunch, offered an unexpected defense. “All of us have to look at it and say that we could be next,” he said in answer to a Vitter question. “We all think that we’re not vulnerable to something like that happening, but the fact is this can be a very lonely and isolating place.”

Washington D.C. can be a very lonely and isolating place, and no Congressman can possibly know if something like this is going to happen or not. They’re vulnerable, you see, and the prostitutes in that town are just too devious, such that any Congressman may unwittingly wind up in bed with such a prostitute and barely even know what’s happening.

How f***ing absurd is that. I don’t really care if these men are visiting prostitutes. If everything is consensual, and no one’s health or safety is in jeopardy, they can do whatever they want on their own time. But I do care about two things: (1) not being a hypocrite about it, and (2) taking responsibility for it when it becomes known.

Don’t waste your time talking about how defending “traditional” marriage is the single most important issue in our country today (yes, Senator Vitter said that), if you’re going to traipse around town sleeping with prostitutes. And don’t blame your visit with prostitutes on the fact that Washington D.C. is a “lonely and isolating place”. That’s bulls***. You slept with a prostitute because that’s what you chose to do.

Between Tony Snow whining like a little girl about Congress exercising it’s oversight authority and now Senator DeMint saying the prostitutes and the city, not the Congressmen, are to blame, I’m wondering when we’re actually going to actually have some adults running our damned government.

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Both Sides of Global Warming

Howard Kurtz is a media critic at washingpost.com, and he has a column up today titled “A Blog That Made It Big”. The blog to which Mr. Kurtz refers is Huffington Post, but that’s not the part of his column that caught my attention.

At the end of his column, Mr. Kurtz laments the fact that NBC spent so much time covering the Live Earth concert on Saturday. This concert was organized by Al Gore as an attempt to further publicize the harmful effects of global warming, and Mr. Kurtz thinks it’s unfair of NBC to dedicate so much programming and generate so much revenue for a partisan political purpose. Mr. Kurtz concludes his column with this bit:

Dan Harrison, an NBC senior vice president, does not back away from the message. He calls the Gore effort “an initiative we believe in,” including parent company General Electric. “I really don’t think climate change is a political issue,” Harrison says.

Really?

“Everyone agrees it’s happening. If it’s a political issue, it’s whether the political will exists to address that change. We know we need to do something, and this is a way to heighten awareness.”

I got to thinking about this, and Mr. Kurtz is right. What about the other side of AIDS in Africa? I find it a little disconcerting that the only thing I hear is about how many people are suffering and dying and how the proper medication isn’t able to find its way to the people who need it. I want to hear the other side of this issue. Or what about the genocide in Darfur? These corporate media shills keep telling me about the brutal, utterly horrifying violence that is engulfing this whole region, and I keep hearing about the innocent people who are being annihilated in the process. I want the other side of this issue as well.

Mr. Kurtz, there is an undeniable, overwhelming scientific consensus behind the idea of global warming. It’s not like school vouchers, where we need to hear a debate from both sides about the benefits of public versus private educational systems. Just like we don’t need to explore why two plus two equals three or five, we don’t need to debate whether global warming is happening. It’s happening, and what we need to debate is what we should do about it.

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Tony Snow Talking About Subpoenas

Tony Snow responded yesterday to a reporter’s question about the Senate’s subpoena for information related to the President’s warrantless wiretapping program:

At this juncture, we don’t have a formal reply, but on the other hand, it is pretty clear that, again, members of Congress here are engaged in an attempt — apparently since they have been unsuccessful in passing key legislation — to try to do what they can to make life difficult for the White House.

Would you like some cheese with that whine, Mr. Snow? There are many ways to respond to Congressional attempts at oversight. I’m not sure whining like an eight year old boy is the best option here.

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The President Is Confused Over His Own Bill

After this many years of this nonsense, I just get fed up. President Bush today tried to explain the immigration bill he supports, the bill he is trying to convince Congress to pass. Here is what happened:

“You know, I’ve heard all the rhetoric - you’ve heard it, too - about how this is amnesty,” Bush told advocates of his immigration overhaul. “Amnesty means that you’ve got to pay a price for having been here illegally, and this bill does that.”

That’s not what Bush meant. Saying that his bill included amnesty was the last thing he meant.

When word started to get out about the gaffe in media reports, the White House scrambled to fix it.

Tony Snow then had to go to the press and notify everyone that the President misspoke and meant exactly the opposite of what he said. Mind you, this is not a case of just forgetting the word “not”, or using “increasing” instead of “decreasing”. President Bush explained the fundamental premise of his bill, and he got it completely wrong.

I just get so tired of this. The leader of the free world needs to be held to a different standard. He or she can’t just have average intelligence. They can’t just be able to communicate on a so-so level. The president is a leader, a leader who has more power than any other single person on the planet. And our leader cannot even communicate the basic premise of a bill on which he hopes to pin a nontrivial portion of legacy.

Bill Maher said a while back that in the next presidential election, he’s looking for someone who is bright. And not just kind of bright. Really, exceptionally bright. Because it just doesn’t work to have someone who can’t even remember the most fundamental components of substantial issues he values. It just gets really ****ing old.

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Who Is Going To Guard Duncan?

My personal prediction before the NBA Finals began last night was that the Spurs would most likely sweep the series, and if that didn’t happen, they’d win in five games. The question I had going into the finals was, “Who Is Going To Guard Duncan?” Against what big man have the Cavs played that is anywhere near the level of Tim Duncan? The Nets’ Mikki Moore? The Pistons’ Rasheed Wallace? Yeah, right.

I don’t know why more people haven’t pointed to what happened in the second round of the Western Conference Finals. The Spurs beat the Suns in six games. Do any of the other 14 playoff teams even come close to the level of the Spurs or Suns? Probably the Mavericks. After that? If the Spurs can beat the Suns in six, I don’t see why they shouldn’t beat the Cavs in at most five.

But I’ve been wrong about these things before, plenty of times. I have to admit, though, after watching game one last night, I’m not feeling uneasy about my prediction. Who is going to guard Duncan? Drew Gooden? Zydrunas Ilgauskas? Anderson Varejao? Tim Duncan is the best power forward to ever play the game of basketball, and I just don’t see any of the Cavs really being able to do anything to stop him.

I can see the Cavs sneaking out a game on the Spurs, maybe game three, their first one at home. But they’re really going to have change things around if they hope to get two or three wins out of this thing.

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