President Corky

A lot of Democrats are still upset about something Bush did during his State of the Union speech last week. Apparently he repeatedly referred to them as the "Democrat party" instead of the "Democratic party." Quite a few of them are convinced Bush omitted that "ic" on the end deliberately just to piss them off.

So what's the big deal? Bush has repeatedly demonstrated that he can barely speak English. Entire websites are dedicated to his so-called Bushisms. So why should the Democratics--er, Democrats--feel singled out.

Quite frankly, they should be ashamed of themselves. Criticizing Bush's difficulties with human speech is kind of like making fun of the way that Corky kid from Life Goes On talks.

More On Barbaro

At the risk of dwelling too much on the Barbaro story, there was a great Appreciation in the Washington Post today, as well as a timeline of Barbaro's life and final struggle.

And Sally Jenkins has written a great column exploring why, with all the other problems in the world, so many people were so worried about an injured horse. Her conclusion makes a lot of sense: In this time of terrorism, war, and cynicism, Barbaro never once lied to us.

Her column concludes with an absolutely profound quote from one of the horse's owners that applies not only to our feelings about Barbaro, but to life in general: "Grief is the price we all pay for love."

Duh

Admiral William Fallon, who is about to become the top American commander in the Middle East, says that the U.S. experience in Iraq:

"Securing the stability of the country has been more difficult than anticipated...Our ability to correctly assess the political, economic and security situation in Iraq has been lacking."

In recognition of this brilliant tactical observation, the Admiral has been nominated for the prestigious Understatement of the Year award from the International Society of the Painfully Obvious.

A Horse Named Barbaro

Horse racing has not seen a Triple Crown winner since the late 1970's. For a brief shining moment last year, it seemed the drought might be about to end. A horse named Barbaro had not only blown away his competition in the Kentucky Derby, but his margin of victory was the largest since 1946.

Barbaro was heavily favored to win the second leg of the crown, The Preakness, until one of his hind legs was shattered mere yards out of the gate. Jockey Edgar Prado did an amazing job reigning in the stricken Barbaro, but the damage had been done.

The reason horses don't do well with leg injuries is that if they begin favoring the opposite limb, all that extra weight causes the good leg to develop a condition called laminitis. The prognosis for Barbaro in the days after his injury was not good. Yet despite occasional setbacks, he proved himself to be a fighter, and for much of the last seven months his doctors were increasingly optimistic.

Over the weekend, however, things suddenly took a turn for the worse. Earlier today Barbaro lost his fight to survive.

In With The New

If the site looks a little different, well, it's only because there's a dangerous carbon monoxide leak in your house and it's effecting your vision.

Then again, it may also be that I switched to one of the new blogger templates. With the older templates, if you clicked on a label, only the 20 most recent posts would show up. There was no way to access any older posts using the labels.

The new templates magically take care of that problem. However, they also limit how much customizing you can do with the code. I also can't seem to get it working with Haloscan, so there's no comments for the time being. Needless to say, it's pissing me off.

Either that, or there's a carbon monoxide leak in my house.

Comcast's Inferior Service

For the last three years or so I've used Adelphia Cable. As you no doubt know, Adelphia hit some hard times, what with the company's founder's getting arrested for building homes and golf courses with corporate funds. Eventually the company ended up in bankruptcy and was divide up among other cable providers. Aside from not being asked to play golf with John Rigas, I really had no particular complaints about Adelphia's service.

The Adelphia franchises in the DC area--including mine--ended up with Comcast, and boy, does Comcast suck. They're almost as incompetent as the Bush administration. On the other hand, tens of thousands of people have not died because of Comcast's incompetence, so I suppose I should give them some credit.

My first inkling of what was ahead came in late December when I received a postcard saying: "Comcast is pleased to announce the following changes to its High Definition TV level of service on Tuesday, January 16, 2007." The card then went on to tell me that they were dropping--among others--two of my favorite channels: HD Net and HD Net Movies and replacing them with Discovery HD and TNT HD.

Now I have no problem with them adding channels to their lineup. But is it necessary to drop channels and restrict your customers' choices? If nothing else, make those two HD channels part of some premium hi-def package that costs extra. But no, Comcast isn't willing to even do that.

So if I wasn't already pissed enough at losing my high definition versions of Enterprise, Boomtown, and Dead Like Me, Comcast decided to f*ck up my Internet access. When I came home Friday evening, the connection was down. And judging by my Weatherbug feed, which had last updated at 1:58 PM, it had been down a while.

I understand things happen, so I waited a while. Finally around nine I called Comcast. After fighting my way through their stupid voicemail lineup, I ended up listening to bad smooth jazz for 20 minutes before a live human picked up. He checked and finally said, yeah, there's a borderline outage in my area.

Borderline?? But I've been down since almost two o'clock.

Then the guy gives me some line of crap about a "node" that's at 81%, which is borderline bad. If it had been at 80% then it would definitely be bad.

Apparently the fact that some customers are already without service doesn't qualify this node thing as being bad.

My connection was still down yesterday morning so I went off to work thinking that a big company like Comcast would surely already be working on the problem. But when I got home around 6, there was no change. I called Comcast, fought with the voicemail, endured the smooth jazz, and again got a live human. He confirmed that yes, there was an outage throughout most of Virginia. Then he said that the problem was first reported at 3:15 that afternoon.

Huh?

I told him about my phone call the previous evening and he explained that it wasn't actually an outage then. Something about those damn percentages again. So then I just repeatedly smashed my phone against the wall. That made me feel better. The connection finally came back up sometime overnight. Two years ago Comcast was the target of of numerous complaints in Maryland because of their outages. I hope this weekend's problems aren't an indication of what we're in for here in Virginia.

It's a pretty sad state of affairs when a corrupt, bankrupt company provides a better level of service than a financially viable one. Comcast should be embarassed.

The State Of Bush's Failures

President Bush has raised some good points about Iraq, both during the State of the Union address as well as in previous interviews: The consequences of our defeat would be dire. The current sectarian violence in Baghdad and the rest of the nation would become a full scale civil war (though many would argue that it already is), instability would likely spread to surrounding countries, and terrorists would become emboldened.

What Bush neglects to mention, however, that all these consequences will be a direct result of his actions.

Virginia Senator James Webb summed it up best when he delivered the Democratic response to Bush's address: This President led us into Iraq "recklessly" and forced us to endure "a mismanaged war for nearly four years." Harsh? Rude? Not if you consider that Bush's actions have cost thousands of American lives and tens of thousands of Iraqi lives. Webb also backed up his charges (text of Webb's speech):

"He disregarded warnings from the national security adviser during the first Gulf War; the chief of staff of the Army; two former commanding generals of Central Command, whose jurisdiction includes Iraq; the director of operations on the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and many, many others with great integrity and long experience in national security affairs."

Hell, even Gerald Ford said in an interview before his death that the invasion of Iraq was a mistake.

The only thing to do now is to leave, and leave NOW. Even if you choose to blindly accept the President's reasons for the invasion of Iraq, you have to admit that the Iraqi people have been given ample opportunity to take advantage of the opportunities we handed them.

They clearly haven't, however, and there is no reason for us to continue to shed American blood in that shithole. If the Sunnis and Shiites want to kill one another because of some asinine interpretation of Islam, or who succeded Mohammad, or whatever the f*ck they're arguing about, fine, let them. Our role should merely be to try to keep the violence from spreading to neighboring countries, and the best way to do that is through diplomatic channels.

Webb concluded his response Tuesday evening with references to Presdents Theodore Roosevelt and Dwight Eisenhower, and a warning to Bush:

"These presidents took the right kind of action for the benefit of the American people and for the health of our relations around the world. Tonight, we are calling on this president to take similar action in both areas. If he does, we will join him. If he does not, we will be showing him the way."

Amen to that.

That video of the Portland ice storm I posted yesterday is kid stuff compared to this footage from a tunnel in Russia. According to the accompanying text on YouTube, "This 3150 m long tunnel in Russia is the longest in-city tunnel of Europe. There is a river running over it and water leaks at some points. When the temperature reaches -38 degrees like it did this winter, the road freezes and the result is the attached video taken during a single day with the tunnel camera."

Where's The Zamboni?

One common complaint around here is that DC motorists don't know how to drive in the snow, and I freely admit to being one of the people who bitches the loudest. However, after watching the below video of drivers in Portland (Oregon?) trying to navigate the streets during a recent ice storm, I will never EVER complain about my fellow Washingtonians again.

Credit: Link found at Law & Disorder.

Peyton Manning For President

Is Peyton Manning amazing or what? Going into halftime, Manning's Indianapolis Colts were down 21-6 against New England. But rather than roll over and die, Manning led his team in an amazing comeback. The Colts soon tied the game with a touchdown and a two point conversion.

Through most of the fourth quarter, the Patriots would score and briefly pull ahead, only to have the Colts come back yet again to tie the game. With less than two minutes to go, Indianapolis finally managed to take the lead themselves. For a moment it looked like the Patriots might tie the game and force overtime, but that hope--and their season--ended with an interception.

When all was said and done, the Colts won 38-34. In so doing, they also had completed the biggest comeback ever in an NFL conference championship game.

Those of you not familiar with American-style football may not fully appreciate the magnitude of this accomplishment. To put it in proper perspective, think of it this way: This amazing comeback is the sports equivalent of George W. Bush actually turning things around with his stupid surge idea, winning in Iraq, and going down in history as an absolute genius.

Damn Interest Rates

It's like I tell people whenever we have a stretch of nice, warm weather in the winter--ANY winter: "We always end up paying a price."

So to those of you shoveling snow in Malibu, or sitting in the dark in Texas because of an ice storm, or buying orange juice and wondering why the price has doubled, or shivering through bitter cold in new England, or enduring howling winds in Europe, guess what?

The bill just arrived.

In Case You're Counting....

A new United Nations study says that 34,452 Iraqi citizens died violently last year. This year seems to be off to a rocking start as well, thanks to a pair of car bombs that killed 60 near Mustansiriya University in Baghdad.

The 34,452 figure is somewhat more impressive than the 22,950 estimate that the Iraqi Health Ministry came up with just ten days ago.

It's always refreshing to hear good news out of Iraq, ain't it?

At Least He Wasn't Boinking The Altar Boys

Whenever I'm feeling lost or in need of spiritual guidance, I always turn to a priest. They always seem to have the right answers for what ails my soul. And while I have never sought out the Reverend Rodney Rodis for advice, I now wish I had. I would have been that much richer for the experience.... Especially since Father Rodney is suspected of embezzling $600,000 from two Virginia churches.

At first glance, that may seem shocking. But it's perfectly understandable when you consider that Rodis was also leading a double life with a wife and three daughters on the side. It's not cheap to support a family these days.