They can have my church when they pry it from my cold... Oh, wait...

So now Senator Obama gets to dust off the old Ronald Reagan classic. "I'm not leaving Trinity United, Trinity United has left me." But is that really true, I'm not so sure. In fact, I'm rather skeptical. Because really, given what we've learned about the recent history of this church in the last few months, is the latest news actually that shocking? I say know. Mr. Obama himself told us in March that this church and he were inseparable, that Trinity United and the African-American experience were one and the same. That he could no more disown Reverend Wright and his church no more than he could... you know. He wanted us to believe that from black liberation theology to "God #&%@ America," he didn't know about any of it. I do not believe. And so Senator Obama has done the only thing he can do that might get us to stop asking. I'm sure it will be enough for some people. Their business cards sport letters like NBC and CBS. I'm not sure it will be enough for normal voters though. In America, some people still believe that who you are is more important than what you say.

Fool me twice

Hmm. It's like the same... but different.

Meet Father Michael Pfleger: the latest to preach from that very famous pulpet we've all come to know over the past few months. Did I laugh at parts of this? sure. I've said that Hilary acted as if she believed that she was somehow entitled to the nomination many times before. But there's a way to say that without tacking into racism, a line which I believe is crossed here. This is not as bad as the Reverend Wright highlights we've all seen, but it does cause one to wonder exactly what the message of this church has been over the years. Is it a message of hope and togetherness or one of separation and bitterness?

Upon further reflection

So now, twenty-four hours after it happened, the NBA has finally admitted it was a fowl. The mind boggles. I could make The case that the entire game was officiated so poorly that the call at the end didn't really decide the outcome. And the band plays on.

I can't remember a month in which refereeing in general has taken such a beating. The Washington Capitals were booted from the playoffs thanks to an absurd case of goaly interference. Coincidentally, there seems to be an epidemic of missed home-run calls over the last two weeks. And the NBA playoffs has degenerated into a farce as always. The most frustrating thing is that there seems to be no solution to it all. I'm certainly not smart enough to come up with one.

It's alive!\

If the NHL could somehow bottle what happened about five minutes into the third period of game 3, namely the best stretch of uninterrupted hockey I think I've ever seen, they could draw bigger ratings than the NFL. Someday, someone should tie Gary Bettman to a chair and force him to watch that 6 minutes on a loop for about 8 hours. Then we'd get this league moving in the right direction.

Anyway, the bottom line on game 3: Pittsburgh not only scores a goal, they score three of them; Detroit doesn't look so invincible anymore; Crosby is spectacular, still waiting on Malkin though. Upward and onward.

Words fail

Mayor Miller has decided that he wants to shut down shooting ranges operating in the city of Toronto. Apparently, single-shot rifles are the newest menace on the streets of my fair city. According to Mayor Miller, "Nobody can deny that hobby directly results in people being shot and killed on the streets of our city." Oh no? Well, isn't it nice that we finally have some handy crime statistics for the last few years. In 2005, 5% of shooting related deaths in Toronto were due to the use of legally registered guns. In 2006, that number was 3%. Now who's denying reality? So lets balance things with a quote from the National Post that actually has some truth in it. "As usual, the Mayor is too timid to take honest action necessary to curb gun crime, namely beefing up police in neighbourhoods where most of the crimes occur. That might get him labelled "insensitive" or even racist, and that would never do."

Thanks to John Lott for the link to the Star article I guess our secret's out.

Minister of complex files

It's Victoria Day, do you know where your secure documents are?

No criminal investigation? Just who is the Prime Minister kidding? I don't know about you, but I'd sure like to know how a confidential NATO document--which is supposed to have even tighter security than a cabinet level document--went missing for five weeks. How the hell exactly does something like this happen? Bring on the dogs I say. Doubtless Kady, Wells, and Wherry will have coverage for the forseeable future.

Defending the defenseless: Big houses and nice suits

While giving a speech this weekend at Wesleyan University, Senator Obama tried to persuade students not to "chase only after the big house and the nice suits and all the other things that our money culture says you should buy." Elsewhere he stated that our individual salvation depends on collective salvation." As much as I'm really disturbed by that second statement, I want to focus on the first here. OK, there's also something wrong with him talking so much about "collective service" in this speech without once mentioning that military service would be an honourable pursuit, on memorial day weekend no less. Focus, focus.

What the hell is so damned wrong with holding down a job in which you make something or sell something? The people that Senator Obama is disparaging, the 'slaves' to the "money culture," these are the people who throughout time have made America great. They built the railroad. They created hotels and restaurants and auto-repair shops. They build airplanes and cars and ships. They have created and work for companies like McDonalds, and Ford, and Microsoft, and General Electric, and Starbucks, and Boeing, and AT&T, and IBM, and I could go on. These people live happy lives and through their work they make the lives of others more enjoyable to lead. This is the work most Americans do. It is honourable and noble and good, and it should never be spit upon by someone such as a United States Senator who has to my knowledge never signed an employee's paycheck. If you work in a factory to bring food home to your family every day, Senator Obama is calling your life narrow, self-indulgent, greedy. He calls starting a business and employing people "chasing the money culture." What can I say? If steam actually could pour from my ears at this moment you'd be able to boil tea with it. And finally, this is the last person who should be talking about abandoning the desire for big houses and nice suits, as he himself seems to have quite a penchant for both.

Asses on parade, literally and figuratively

...And the Republicans were no better.

There's so much I could say about that fraud which was perpetrated upon the American people this afternoon in that Senate hearing room. It was easier to find demagoguery during that hearing than it is to find swearing during Glengarry Glen Ross. That's saying something.

Hear are some actual facts, facts politicians think you are too ignorant to know. American oil companies have not been allowed to open a new domestic refinery in thirty years. Yes, you read that right. It does not now and likely will never cost more than fifteen dollars to explore for and extract a barrel of oil (about 160 litres) from the ground. If you represented the entire ANWR as a 10x12 foot rug, and then dropped a dime on that rug, that dime would represent the area of the ANWR that *has been set aside* for oil exploration and drilling. Congress forbids companies to drill there. And I haven't even talked about oil shale yet.

Here (right click) is Neil Cavuto delivering the most concise and coherent thought I've heard about this all day.

Put that coffee down!

Can we all agree that Barack Obama has been the presumed Democratic party nominee for president since at least the end of February? OK. Now given the above, will someone please explain to me how it is possible that Senator Obama has recently lost Democratic state primaries by 10 points (Pennsylvania and Ohio) and by 35 points (Kentucky and West Virginia) within the last month? How is this even possible?

If the shoe fits...

So Senator Obama wants us to 'lay off' his wife. He referred to a Republican ad which took issue with previous comments Michelle Obama has made on the cmpaign trail as "low class" and "detestable." We-he-hell... You know what I find to be unacceptable? The wife of a United States Senator going out on the campaign trail and saying that now that her husband has become the frontrunner for his party's presidential nomination, , "for the first time in my adult life, I am proud of my country." I find it detestable for a woman of Michelle Obama's background, who has received the best education money can buy, to turn around and call the United States "a country that is just downright mean." Maybe she was referring to the prominent U.S. Senator who along with his wife gave an average of only $3000 of their income per year to charity from 1998-2004. Nah, that couldn't be it, could it?

Ramblin' Gamblin' Man

Maybe it's just me, but it seems to me that the entire media is missing the boat on the new Donaghy revelations. The news isn't that he bet on games he officiated, we've assumed that for a while. The really interesting part is the news that he bet on games he wasn't calling. The question then of course becomes, what does an NBA referee know that we don't? As far as I can figure, the only thing Donaghy would have known that the general public didn't at the time was which crews would be working which games. Is it possible that just by knowing which referees are working a game you can predict the outcome of said game to a degree of certainty that you are prepared to bet on it? As far as I'm concerned, that is the scariest question generated by this whole affair.

Can you hear them? They talk about us...

Hey! Everyone knows that I'm the only candidate who's said that I would unconditionally meet with terrorists and leaders of nations which support said terrorists! That was a vicious political attack launched against me from foreign soil! Shenanigans! Shenanigans!

I want you to stare very very hard at the following paragraph until you see the word Obama.

Some seem to believe that we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: "Lord, if I could only have talked to Hitler, all this might have been avoided." We have an obligation to call this what it is--the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

Done looking yet? Aside from rallying the leftest leftest 1% of the democratic base, I don't see what exactly the point is of Senator Obama and his merry men queuing the outrage here. I'm sure on the weekend we'll here Democratic 'experts' say that Bush is so disliked around the U.S. that Obama can't possibly lose by picking a fight with him about anything or everything. This strikes me as nuts, but maybe I'm wrong. It seems to me that the only possible way to get some Republicans to support John McCain would be to attack him in the arena of foreign policy.

The Way Up

18-22 at the quarter

How exactly do you evaluate a team which has just ended a stretch in which it scored 4 runs in 49 innings? This is a team which has been so historically inept at scoring runs that it has inspired it's studio host on the radio side to describe its level of daily offensive output as its "craplitude." And yet?

And yet this team is somehow, beyond all comprehention, a really good week away from being in a somewhat good position going forward. Wow.

Hitting into an unassisted triple-play just has to be the bottom. Or that 9th inning, with the jumping stab by the catcher who just happened to be playing first base to rob Alex of a sure double.

Really! I mean, if there's any justice in baseball there won't be another game in which this team fails to score at least two touchdowns before July, right?

And can someone explain to me how Roy Halladay hasn't had a homicidal breakdown yet? Throwing 4 complete games and winning only 1 of them. Seriously! Has that happened since the end of World War II? As I say, it's hard to be a Blue Jays fan this season. But there just has to be light at the end of this tunnel. On to game #81.

Five tool player

Update: I see the killjoys have already infected the comments. Can't you $&%@s actually feel good about something for five minutes without trashing it! Sigh. Yes she is from a small school. Yes other girls from other schools in other states have put up better times than she did. Yes what she did is amazing, so amazing that it hasn't been done--at any level--in thirty years. She's an athlete that's really good at everything, which is unbelievably rare. To top it all off, she sounds like a nice girl, and isn't that refreshing?

About that no I in team thing...

There are cool stories, and then there are cool stories. Yesterday a high school junior in Texas named Bonnie Richardson won the state team track title for her school on her own. She won the 200 metres and high jump and placed in her other three events. You go girl! With the seemingly never ending torrent of bad news emanating from the sports world these days, it's always nice to get something to smile about for a change.

The axe

Breaking news this morning that Paul Maurice has been relieved of his Maple Leaf coaching duties. This is of course totally baffling to me. The general concensus is that this team won't be good for a while, so why not keep Maurice around for the lean years since he's under contract anyway? Also, what's changed in the last month? The only reason this possibly makes sense is that MLSE is much further ahead in the GM search than we think they are.

As for Maurice, I know I'm in the minority among delusional Leaf fans, but I don't think his coaching job over the last two seasons necessitated his firing. I think his team over-achieved last year when it missed the playoffs by 1 point. This year, virtually the same team had disappointing seasons from its overpaid veterans.

GAHHH!

76-72? That was after the third, right?

Thanks Celtics and Cavs, that's 10 hours I can use for something else in the next 2 weeks. I can't possibly convey in writing just how godawful that game was last night. It's hard to think of another sports league in which the level of play degenerates during the playoffs as much as it does in the NBA. Maybe the best comparison is FIFA during the World Cup. The NHL can't return soon enough.

Throw Jerry from the train

So Obama has finally gone and done it. And it seems it wasn't that hard after all. We've certainly come a long way from "I could no more disown..." haven't we? He wants us to believe that it was the remarks at the National Press Club that finally did the good Reverend Wright in. The truth is far less sorted. The truth is that there was nothing new about Wright's remarks on Monday. By speaking when and where he did, Wright has allowed Senator Obama to perpetuate this rediculous farce that he really had no idea what was being said in that church for twenty years. The difference is that we're all a little smarter than we were but 6 weeks ago, a little less trusting of the fables we've been spoon-fed for months about this man. Now we know about Chicago, and about Bill Ayers and the Woods Fund. We know about Obama's school days, when he carefully cultivated his place in the local Marxist community. And the more we learn, the less we find ourselves surprised that he and this Reverend found each other. And finally, after a lot of hard work, we know just what it is that Mr. Obama plans to do if he's elected. By now we're not surprised by that either, turns out we've heard it all before.