One Gigantic Full Circle

I remember the day well, Sept. 20, 1992, a beautiful day I headed over to my buddy Dave's apartment to watch the Bengals game. The Bengals had been to the Super Bowl three years ago, and had ruined the football career of Bo Jackson in the playoffs a little more than a year prior. Sunday afternoon with the Bengals is a fall ritual in these parts, which is not really surprising in metro Cincinnati. Cincinnati had a new coach and the optimism of a new season. During the game, the Green Bay quarterback Don "Magic" Majkowski was injured and in comes this back-up hardly anyone had ever heard of, Brett Favre, although we thought is was "Farve" by the way the name was being pronounced. Although the Bengals had a healthy lead in the fourth quarter, Favre led Green Bay to a come-from-behind win, threading the needle with a hypersonic throw through two defenders for the winning score. Thus began the divergence, the Bengals lost in years of malaise while Green Bay became a championship team and a contender every year. Now on October 30, 2005, with Favre still leading the Packers nearing the end of his Hall-of-Fame career, the Packers have struggled mightily this year. The Bengals seem to have finally recovered and come full circle. But for fans, it's hard to believe just how long and how hard its been.

Another Wonderful Day

You could hear the champaign being uncorked in the background at CNN when the indictment was handed down. Finally, those evil-doer Bushies were getting what they had coming to them. Meanwhile, this and this going on in the GWOT. But its more important to find out who "leaked" the name of an "undercover" CIA agent to a reporter, an agent who is not, by definition, covert but is a Democratic activist. This doesn't pass the smell test, I'm sorry. Especially since the person who supposedly told VP Cheney about Valerie Wilson was none other than the Director of the CIA himself, George Tenent. Having said that, it was foolish of Libby to contradict his own notes in grand jury testimony. His career is over and he'll be lucky to avoid a felony conviction. Perhaps he should consult with Sandy Burglar, sorry Berger on how to get out of a serious pickle.

Thoughts on the Miers fiasco

She threw in the towel (or was told too). I see the reasons that Bush nominated her and I think he had good reasons to do so. But this nomination was in serious jeopardy for a lot of reasons, and the President I think realized there had to be unity on the right in order to get a confirmation. I think he was trying to avoid the nasty fight with the left, and forgot about his base. Many, many voters chose Bush the last two elections precisely because they wanted a new direction for the Supreme Court. That the nominee would be a constructionist was a given, and pro-lifers hoped that a new balance in the Court may finally rid us of the national disgrace of abortion on demand. When Miers was nominated, many were fearful of another "Souter", a republican appointee without a long paper trail that morphs into a liberal. I understand the fear and wish for a more known quantity like Luttig or Brown, but I thought they should have given the President the benefit of the doubt. No matter now, Miers was smart enough to see the writing on the wall and gave her President a way out of this mess.
So now what? The big, knock-down, drag-em-out brawl is coming now, for sure. Bush must appoint a big-name conservative jurist, and the Democrats WILL PLAY ROUGH. They understand as well as we the stakes involved. There WILL end up being a fillibuster and the Republicans WILL be forced to use the "nuclear" option to break it. And it may take a long time and Bush may have to send up more than one such candidate. I hope Justice O'Conner lives long enough to retire.
Lord help us if Stevens retires or dies.
By the way, there are some mainstream media types figuring out all this blog stuff. Funny they didn't memtion Big Daddy's Digest. I guess I need a few more thousand hits a day.

Indict! Indict!

The lynch mob gathers, hoping to get the object of their frustrations, Karl Rove. They are convinced he is the brains of the White House, and Bush will collapse without him. And hatred for Bush comes before ALL else, even the welfare of the country.
Never mind there was no crime. Never mind the so-called conspiracy to obstruct justice essentially was one conversation from a couple of years prior that wasn't recollected. Do you remember everyone you talked to last week? Last month? Six months ago?
And never mind both Clintons conveniently "couldn't recall" over 250 times when it suited their purposes. The complicity of the mainstream press is stunning -- the relevant facts were laid out months ago, yet the central allegations are repeated again and again, as if nothing is known about Joseph Wilson, or his wife, or Judith Miller.
Oh yeah, the press doesn't like Rove or Bush, either. A lot of them probably thought Fahrenheit 911 was real investigative journalism, too.

No gloating, no crying either

Can't gloat because my team got beat. And I lost a sub sandwich in a bet. But hey, my team is still in the lead, and still is looking good for a playoff run.
Maybe it's the year of the Colts, anyway.

Football, you bet!

Bengals, Steelers
Always a big game, but not for a long time has the game meant this much. For us long-suffering Bengals fans, this is a real test. Is this team going to be for real against a team that always plays us tough? At home, in the cold drizzle, the way football should be played. Count on me to gloat when the Bengals triumph.

so much going on

There's so much going on it's hard to comment on everything.
Such as -- is Harriet Miers withdrawing (or going to be withdrawn?)
The CIA leaks info to try and get Karl Rove and the White House.
Journalists deliberately distort the burning body story and embellish for additional anti-US effect.
Republican senators can't say no to spending. (Hint: Which IN senator voted for the Coburn Amendment? It wasn't the Republican...gee I remember getting a re-election fund-raising e-mail from him just recently.)
Idiot lefties plan to celebrate milestone 2000th death of US soldier in Iraq/Afghanistan.
Yet another hurricane. (Watch out for Alpha?)
CBS news continues to be a sad joke. (not really surprising)
Bengals vs. Steelers -- finally something important!

Living in the Material World

This is too good!!!
The material girl herself, "Madonna" is now telling us we are on the fasttrack to hell. See here. I am hard-pressed to think of one single person MORE responsible for societies' going -to-hell-in-a-handbasket in the last 20 years than Madonna. From the glorification of promiscuous attitudes to the "sex" book to the relentless self-promotion to the much-publicized procreation without the benefit of marriage, Madonna used her sexuality and modest talent to make hundreds of millions dollars out of the most purient elements of society. If she really wants to impress me she should give up those millions of dollars and care for the world's destitute, ala Mother Teresa. I know better than to hold my breath waiting for that to happen.

Oh Toledo

Can you think of a better way to publicize the Neo-nazis than throw a riot in their honor? Not only do they give the nazis a national stage, they help them recruit, too. Ask Cincinnati about what to do, they've been through it recently.

Go Bengals!

Beat 'dem Titans der boy.
Also welcome RHIT Delta T brothers.
I'm no Fighting Irish fan but I'll admit I wanted to see them pull off the big upset. Anybody who really loves football had to like that game, just for the heart and soul that went into it, from both sides.

Remember the Gang of 14

It's becoming clear to me that the loud opposition on the right to the Miers nomination is mostly about the fight the conservatives have been waiting to fight for many, many years. Ever since the Bork fiasco and the Clarence Thomas/ Anita Hill soap opera, many rightward-leaning individuals have just been itching for the showdown over ideology, the fight that would restore some balance and sanity to court decisions. The main reason many conservatives supported Bush two times was the hope that the Supreme Court would get more Scalias and Thomases. After all, Ginsberg and Breyer were bitter pills to swallow during the God-awful Clinton years. For five long years the faithful of the political right waited. And waited.
And then it happened! The rapid-fire announcement of the O'Conner retirement followed by the death of the Chief Justice finally brought the opportunity to fix the Supreme Court. And when the nominees didn't have perfect conservative pedigrees the bitching began. Don't forget the Ann Coulters and others on the right were not high on Roberts, either. But remember that the President cannot be motivated so much by the ideological battle as the practical necessity to actually get confirmable Justices. So the fight that the right wanted was thwarted before it ever began by famous "gang of 14" and the Republicans who refused to enable the so-called "nuclear option," ever-fearful of not being able to use it themselves in the future. As if the Democrats would not invoke it themselves if it was in their own interest. C'mon, boys and girls, the Senate is no longer a Gentlemens club; Hardball is played there.
So the "nuclear option" is on the shelf. The Democrats have reserved the right to filibuster for essentially any reason they see fit. So what real chance would a Luttig or a Janice Rogers Brown stand in the Senate. None, of course.
So the fight cannot be now. The President knows this, so he made a choice calculated to to have a high chance of success. Look to McCain, Dewine, and the other wishy-washy Republicans if you don't really like this nominee, because its the only kind Bush could make after they stupidly scuttled the "nuclear", sorry Constitutional, option earlier this year.

Say a prayer

For those of you who pray, I ask that you say a prayer for my cousin, Devin Reid, aged 17 and a senior at Newark Catholic High School. He, like me, was diagnosed with cancer this year. Unlike me, his cancer is rare and virulent. He is a fine young man, well-liked and a track and cross-country athlete. He currently is at Sloan-Kettering in New York, receiving treatment. You can also sign his guestbook here.

The split on the right

The argument of the Miers' nomination continues. People with vastly greater educations than mine parry back and forth on the relative merits of Miers or the lack thereof. Could this be part of the plan? I doubt it. Why would the White House anticipate the bulk of opposition of this nomination would come from the right? Perhaps they were confident, arrogantly so, that the track record of the judicial nominees to date would allow the base to trust their judgment. Why shouldn't they have been confident? Most of the base had never heard of John Roberts before his nomination, and he made the Donkey Dinosaurs look stupid at the hearings. (Not that they really are stupid, just stupid by comparison.) I, for one, am glad that someone without the blazer is finally deemed worthy to sit on the Court that decides who lives or dies, which laws pass muster, and which laws are unconstitutional because of a "penumbra" that I am too stupid to see. Amonst the big bloggers only Hugh Hewitt seems to want to give George Bush the benefit of the doubt. I think his hard-earned track record deserves better.

The Miers Nomination - Hyperventilation (from the right!)

It's been really eye-opening this week to see the reaction of the Miers nomination from many of the bloggers on the right that I read and respect. There has been the type of opposition I've grown accustomed to seeing the Democrats use against Bush's nominees, except now it's coming from places like National Review and the like. I saw a great post concerning this here that says it much better than I could. (HT to HH). Those on the right like me who would have liked to see someone else, a known entity, get the nod would do well to stop the hyperventilation and really think about what a shrewd move this really is.