Philosophical Question

If you play 11-dimensional chess in the woods, but no one is around to see it, can you ever really declare checkmate?

I ask this because the latest Obama appointment held up by a Republican Senator (in this case, Tom Coburn) is... Dana Perino.

Former Dubya press secretary Dana Perino.

Could anything more perfectly encapsulate the Party of No meme? The Pubs are so disinterested in governing, and so committed to pure obstruction for political gain, that they won't even allow a vote on the appointment of a prominent former member of the Bush administration to a relatively minor post.

Of course it won't matter, if no one hears about it. If only we had some sort of profession dedicated to informing the public about such things.

(h/t BJ)

God Dammit



I was going to title this post 'We Are All Easy-E Now', but Cole beat me to the damn reference.

The video in question, which has gone semi-viral already across the political blogosphere (and on all bands of the spectrum, thankfully), was originally posted by Radley Balko over at Reason as a follow-up to an earlier piece he did on the raid before the video was available.

And yeah, the remarkable thing is not that it happened -- it happens every day in America -- but that it was caught on video at all, and that the video made it out to the public.

And yeah, whenever I hear about something like this, it makes me want to hide inside David Baerwald's Triage album, specifically the song Nobody.

This is why, when Glenn Beck or some Tea Party speaker use the word tyranny with regard to something like health care reform, they are so transparently full of shit.

Los Suns

It being Cinco de Mayo and all, Phoenix will be busting out their rarely-seen 'Los Suns' jerseys for their Game 2 matchup against the Spurs. Suns owner Robert Sarver though explicitly ties the decision to Arizona's idiotic new law.

Sarver's no Commie either. He plays both sides with his donations, as you'd expect a rich guy who made his money in banking to do, but he did drop $70 grand on McCain for President in 2008, and tossed some money McConnell and Cantor's way too.

Football Season Already?

Just finished a mock NFL auction that will be used in the Rotowire season preview mag. $100 cap, 2 RB/3 WR/1 Flex, nothing tricky in the 'scoring' (not that we'll play it out). Here's the squad I ended up with:

QB - Eli Manning, NYG $3
RB - Maurice Jones-Drew, Jac $31
RB - LeSean McCoy, Phi $13
WR - DeSean Jackson, Phi $18
WR - Michael Crabtree, SF $11
WR - Dwayne Bowe, KC $6
R/W- LenDale White, Sea $1
TE - Dallas Clark, Ind $10
K - Nick Folk, NYJ $1
DEF- Dallas $1
RES- Donald Brown, Ind $3
RES- Mark Sanchez, NYJ $1
RES- Early Doucet, Ari $1

Some thoughts:

- tight end is ridiculously deep. The bottom dropped out of the market after the top few guys (Clark, Gates and Vernon Davis) and had I waited, I could have had a guy like Brent Celek for half the price. Oh well.
- normally I do a better job of staggering my bye weeks, but given that this was a mock I was more worried about price enforcement than a playable roster, given the limited bench spots.
- I got basically no one I was targeting in my head (Frank Gore, Shonn Greene, Jahvid Best, Calvin Johnson, Sidney Rice...) going into the auction.I could have had Kevin Kolb at the same price I got Eli for, but by that time I already had Jackson and McCoy, and buying another Eagle seemed silly. I'll assume that means I did a good job of being agnostic, and just took value when it presented itself.

I Declare It... Corny!

I can't believe how bad the ads for Robin Hood make it look.

The Sheriff is a wimp with no charisma. Russell Crowe looks not so much bad-ass as tired and grumpy. The ads make the conflict look like a series of pitched battles, rather than desperate guerrilla warfare. I mean, they've got Maid Marian done up in full armor, for pity's sake! And the dialogue... yikes. "For this, I declare them... outlaws!"

Gaah. Count me out.