Friday, July 21, 2006

Reality Bites

I sent a link to Clicked and it got published today. Check it out. An independent minor league baseball team is allowing fans to make managerial decisions. They call it "reality baseball." The funniest thing was the fans' decision to move their catcher to third base-- where he then made a costly error.

Does the manager get to heckle the fans now?

And in political news:

Five and a half disatrous years into his presidency, George W. Bush finally met with the NAACP. George gave his best "I do care about black people," speech. He called the Republican Party "The Party of Lincoln." Which is true in name only. The reality is, the GOP became the favored party of white supremacists years ago. For example...

Emails recently revealed a GOP State Senator's racist beliefs: Check the story out here. Colorado State Rep. Jim Welker also believes gay people eat feces.

I don't know what's scarier. That this person has a position of power, or that there are people who put him in power. Actually. The second one's scarier.

Thursday, July 20, 2006

Bush Vetoes Life

As expected, George "Keg Master" Bush used his first veto, to stop embryonic stem cell research in its tracks.

"This bill would support the taking of innocent human life in the hope of finding medical benefits for others," Bush said. "It crosses a moral boundary that our decent society needs to respect. So I vetoed it."
"Crossed a moral boundary?" Like... oh.. torture? And a pre-emptive war against a country that posed no threat?

To conclude his political stunt, Bush took the stage with children who had been born from "adopted" frozen embryos.

"These boys and girls are not spare parts," Bush said. "They remind us of what is lost when embryos are destroyed in the name of research. They remind us that we all begin our lives as a small collection of cells."

Ok. Except now, instead of being destroyed in the name of research, these embryos will be destroyed in the name of clearing space at the local fertility clinic. They'll go into the trash instead of towards helping people. Very few frozen embryos left over from fertility treatments are "adopted" the way the kids Bush appeared with were. These embryos aren't becoming children. They're becoming medical waste.

All Bush's veto did was send embryos to the trash can instead of to research.

That's ok in Bush's book?

Tuesday, July 18, 2006

Viva La Mexico!

I just returned from vacation in Mexico, or as they call it, The United States of Mexico (yeah, totally trying to copy us). I spent my days on the beach and in the pool, sipping on margaritas, eating chips and salsa, and bargaining for cheap souveneirs.

When you sit on the beach in Puerto Vallarta, every thirty seconds a different vendor approaches you asking if you want to buy what they're selling. Their persistance is admirable... if a tad on the annoying side. If they catch your eye, you'll be talking to them for ten minutes, no matter how many "No, Gracias"'s you throw their way. And once you buy something... every vendor on the beach comes your way, as if they all simultaneously received an instant message on their Blackberries saying "American frivolous spender! Hurry now!"

So I bought sunglasses. And a wooden turtle. And two silver plated fish-shaped bottle openers. I passed on the henna tattoos and hair braiding-- though I was tempted to buy the hand-woven New York Yankees sunglasses lanyard (yeah, odd they're selling that in Mexico).

I didn't want to leave, but my employer doesn't have a Mexican bureau. So I flew back into Newark on Sunday. The man in front of me farted every five minutes. Damn Mexican food!

When I came up the escalator from Penn Station and emerged onto 7th Avenue, a mass of cabs jockeyed for position along the sidewalk. The usual line had broken down, people were running everywhere, so I saw a cab and took it ("You must never hesitate!" --Sean Connery, The Rock). As I got in, I heard a man yelling "Hey!" (Note to non-New Yorkers: "Hey!" will not get a New Yorker to look at you). A woman screamed as I closed the door, obviously ignorant of the twelve other empty cabs around her. "Shithead!" she squawked.

Ahhh. Home sweet home!

I'm sad to see, in my absence, Bush hasn't yet grown a brain. This is not a liberal comment... it's a fact. The evidence?

His deep thoughts about the escalating violence in the middle east?? "It's shit."

And then there was this embarassing event. Someone forgot to let Bush know that the sexual harassment he gets away with in the office is not appropriate for press conferences with world leaders.

What's next? He gives Kofi Annan a wedgie?

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