Why the Democrats are wrong and other meanderings

Name:
Location: Metro Phoenix, Arizona, United States

I'm too lazy to type anything about me. Read my blog and I'm sure you'll eventually learn a few things.

Monday, January 30, 2006

Simpsons Top 100 Countdown

#80 $pringfield (Or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Legalized Gambling)
Season 5, Episode 10 (Guide from the Simpsons Archive)
In an economic downturn, Springfield decides to legalize gambling. Burns builds a casino, which Homer gets a job at (naturally). Marge becomes addicted to gambling, and Homer, after being completely oblivious to it, discovers it, points it out to her and gets her to stop (though her addiction is not really cured). Memorable moments include the old-time beginning, Burns as Howard Hughes, Kissinger’s glasses, Robert Goulet, Bart’s casino, the “James Bont” deleted scene (shown in the 138th Episode Spectacular), Burns’s flashback and his enjoyment thereof, and the casino theme proposals.

Labels:

Saturday, January 28, 2006

Simpsons Top 100 Countdown

#81 Home Sweet Home-Diddly-Dum-Doodly
Season 7, Episode 4 (Guide from the Simpsons Archive)
While the kids are at school, Homer and Marge go away to a spa place for the day. However, while at school, Bart and Lisa have a series on incidents which lead Principal Skinner to call CPS. They investigate the Simpson residence, find no parents, senile Grandpa, Maggie drinking water out of a dog dish, and a stack of old newspapers Marge had acquired for Lisa. They take the Simpson kids away to live in a foster home, which just happens to be the Flanderses. Bart and Lisa think it’s a lot like their house, but with a creepy Pat Boone-ish quality, and they worry that Maggie is getting more attached to the Flanders family than the Simpson family. Meanwhile, Homer and Marge are forced to go to a parenting class, which is humiliating for Marge but informative for Homer. They pass the class, but when they go to retrieve their kids, they find that Flanders has gone to baptize them. Homer manages to intervene, but he has to take a baptismal for Bart. Everything is, once again, back to normal for the Simpsons. Memorable moments include turning the tape over, head lice, raspberry jam, the parts cut from syndication (hurray for getting the new dvd set!) – “my only son!”, stupid baby, daddily-doodily, parenting class, Marge high on LSD, and the feeling Homer gets from the baptismal.

Labels:

Friday, January 27, 2006

Simpsons Top 100 Countdown

#82 Round Springfield
Season 6, Episode 22 (Guide from the Simpsons Archive)
Bart eats a jagged-metal cereal O, and is taken to the hospital to have his appendix removed. While he’s recovering, Lisa finds that Bleeding Gums Murphy is also in the hospital. They have a jam session and he gives Lisa his sax for luck at the school concert. With a terribly depleted band (thanks to most students deciding to have their appendix out like Bart), Lisa takes over the 30-second concert and the crowd loves her. When she returns to the hospital to tell Bleeding Gums how great she did, she finds that he has died. She tries to get the local jazz station to play a tribute to him, but they lack his album. She tries to buy it from Comic Book Guy, but he marks the too-high price of $250 up to $500 when he finds out the Murphy has died. Meanwhile, Bart won a lawsuit against the cereal company, and after outrageous legal fees, has $500 to blow. Since Lisa was the only one who had truly believed he was in pain and not trying to get out of a test, he decides to buy the album for her. Lisa has it played at the station and lightening strikes the antennae causing the whole town to hear the music. Bleeding Gums then says goodbye to Lisa from the clouds, a la The Lion King, and they have one final jam session. Memorable moments include the jazz, Cosby, the hot dog vendor, the funeral, Ralph Wiggum with a flute up his nose, Faberge eggs, Dr. Nick Riviera, Krusty’s press conference (and other Krusty moments, too), cheese-eating surrender monkeys, Homer’s jazz improv, and Homer “consoling” Lisa.

Labels:

Thursday, January 26, 2006

Simpsons Top 100 Countdown

#83 Lady Bouvier’s Lover
Season 5, Episode 21 (Guide from the Simpsons Archive)
The show begins with a family party for Maggie’s first birthday. Marge realizes that her mom and Homer’s dad are both lonely and she tries to set them up. Things go well until Mr. Burns enters the picture and steals her away. He proposes to her, she accepts, and they’re almost married when Abe appears with a desperate last attempt to win her back. She turns him down, but decides not to marry Mr. Burns, either. Memorable moments include the commercially indoctrinated family, the running lawyer gag, Marge telling Homer her plan, assorted Grandpa-isms, Homer telling Grandpa how to put the moves on a woman, and assorted Burns-isms.

Labels:

Friday, January 20, 2006

Just a Reminder ...

Today is the 25th anniversary of Reagan taking office. A great day in history.

In other news, hurray for card playing.

I'll do my best to post something more substantive over the weekend.

Friday, January 13, 2006

Iran's Nukes

Whispers have increased in recent weeks about a strike against Iran's nuclear facilities. I've heard more mentions about one by Israel than one by the United States, but a strike by Israel has been complicated by Sharon's stroke and coma. There is also the problem concerning the range of Israel's aircraft -- they cannot fly to Iran and fly back to Israel. The potential use of a base in Kurdish northern Iraq has been mentioned, which I think would allow for a return flight. I don't know much about Israel's relationship with the Kurds, so I can't really comment on how plausible that is. They could use a U.S. airbase in northern Iraq, but locals work there, so it could be hard to hide Israeli aircraft. I'm also unsure of the number of aircraft necessary for the mission (four?) -- the more aircraft, the more complications, of course. The U.S., if it launched the strike, could use cruise missiles launched from their ships in the Persian Gulf (either just those cruise missiles or in conjunction with an air strike). Russia has agreed to sell Iran better air defense equipment, so the Israeli strike would have to come soon; an American strike would likely have a short timeframe as well. If a strike is coming, it would be likely by the end of March.

Also, despite the CIA's professed uncertainty about Iran's nuke program, it now appears that they were involved in giving the Iranians (faulty) nuke plans back in the 1990's. They didn't explain this well to the Russian scientist they used to give them the plans, he noticed the errors, and passed along to the Iranians that there were problems in the plans. So instead of their (already risky) plan to give the Iranians for a dud of an atomic bomb (it would explode and spread the nuclear material, but not result in a nuclear explosion), they helped the Iranians along. I really wish our intelligence services were a bit more competent.

Males and Females and Differences Therein

Everyone is familiar with "boy toys" and "girl toys". It has even been observed that at a young age, while children are unable to identify which toys boys like and which ones girls like, when asked which toys they prefer, the boys tend to choose the "boy" toys and the girls choose the "girl" ones. Recently, however, it's been shown that monkees prefer the toys assigned to their gender.

Strange Candidate

One candidate isn't afraid to admit that he's evil. He might be a bit more evil than people want, though -- maybe even worse than Ted Kennedy. Maybe.

Reagan Was Right

Trees do produce pollution.

Tuesday, January 10, 2006

Baseball Hall of Fame

The result of the Hall of Fame elections were announced today. Bruce Sutter was the lone person to receive the required 75% of the vote needed to gain entry, getting 400 votes from the 520 ballots cast. Fourteen players were on the ballot for the first time, and twelve failed to receive the 5% necessary -- only Orel Hershiser and Albert Belle will be on the ballot next year, and as their combined vote total was below 100, it's doubtful either will ever get elected. Next year, first time candidates Tony Gwynn, Mark McGwire, and Cal Ripken, Jr., are all likely to be elected (and it's unlikely anyone else will be, in that election).

A few current players on the ballot that I think merit election:
Bert Blylevin and Tommy John -- the two pitchers with the most career victories who are eligible for election but are not yet in the Hall. If they had won 13 and 12 more games, respectively, they would have reached the 300 mark, which would pretty much have guaranteed their election. Bert Blylevin was victimzed by poor run support, and Tommy John missed an entire season when he had to undergo the surgery that's named after him (and doesn't having a surgery named after you boost your Hall of Fame credentials?).

Andre Dawson -- victimized by playing in Montreal from 1976-1986, due to the low visiblity that comes with playing there, and the turf which tore up his knees. He's still one of only four players to have 300 homers and 300 steals (the others are Barry Bonds, his father Bobby Bonds, and Barry's godfather Willie Mays). He also had over 2750 hits, 500 doubles, 1500 RBI's, and 1300 runs. His 438 homers, and the other numbers, look better after some of the luster has come off recent statistics due to the steroid scandal.

Jack Morris -- had a lousy ERA by Hall Standards, which is why he's not in. He was an excellent big-game pitcher, though. It's a close call, but I think he deserves in.

Goose Gossage, but not Lee Smith -- I'm not big on relievers, usually they were mediocre (or worse) starters. Especially today, as relief has become more of a single-inning thing. Gossage was not babied like today's closers, and he was the most dominant reliever in the game for a string of years. Lee Smith holds the record for most career saves, but was not as dominating. Gossage was a close call for me, so Smith didn't make it.

I'm iffy on Jim Rice. He does have better averages than Dawson, but benefits from playing at the hitter-friendly park, a short career, and being able to DH in about a quarter of his games. He just misses for me, but that's subject to further review.

Labels:

Saturday, January 07, 2006

2008 Presidential stuff

John J. Miller has an article on NRO on what Republican presidential aspirants need to do in 2006.

In May and June of last year, I did a write-up of various names being thrown about as possible presidential contenders for each party:
Republicans (plus a mention of Huckabee here and here as I forgot him in the first post)
Democrats
These could use some updating, but I'll hold off as we're still more than two years from the first primary vote. I'll probably update in the Spring.

Back to the article, though, it mentions Tim Pawlenty (governor of Minnesota) as a potential running mate. I've seen many mentions of governors as potential running mates in 2000 and 2004, but the thought suddenly occurred to me: "When was a governor (or former governor) last a vice-presidential nominee?" Well, it turns out that in the second half of the 20th century, there were only two nominees that were governors or former governors, and, coincidently, both were in 1968. Spiro Agnew, then-governor of Maryland, was the Republican nominee, and Edmund Muskie (former governor of Maine) was the nominee for the Democrats. As Agnew won and was re-nominated in 1972, you could technically count it as three, but I'm sticking with two. Exactly how much this means, I'm not sure, but it does seem that governors are not quite the popular running mates they're portrayed as.

Also, I notice that the National Journal poll came up with the same Republican front-runner that I've been going with, which always makes me happy (the poll was of well-connected people rather than your normal telephone poll of Joe Schmoes).

Labels: