You know, the wiki feels compelled to say this about Ty Cobb, after all these years, in the intro to his biography:

"Cobb's legacy as an athlete has sometimes been overshadowed by his surly temperament, allegedly severe racism, and aggressive reputation, which was described by the Detroit Free Press as 'daring to the point of dementia.'"

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ty_Cobb

Nobody liked the guy, but they gave him his due.

When I think about the steroid era, I think of Mark McGuire. Bonds and McGuire are the same age, 43. Forty-three and still in the Majors! McGuire has been out of baseball for six years. And you look statistically at Bonds' career, you have one freak year on 73HRs and another on 5HRs. The rest is a steady progression of increasing productivity until these last couple of seasons in his forties when he's merely average.

People, you don't have to like the guy, but give him his due. Baseball's disrespect for Barry Bonds is a black eye on the sport.

The transcript is a series of images and someone's forgot to release the permissions on them:

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A military budget of how many Billion$ and troops need to buy phone cards to call their families at home?!

I think I did myself a favour by turning the picture off and listening to it as if it were a radio broadcast.

In fact, the debates should be confined to radio; it focuses the attention on the words, which are the only things about politicians that matter in the end.

After all, who really cares what colour tie Mr Thompson was wearing? How is that going to affect public policy?

In the event, what a banal pile of horse manure it turned out to be. There was virtually nothing of substance, about policy, about real issues facing voters, discussed.

The answers given by the candidates showed the format up for it's purpose...to give the candidates a chance to expound for 30 seconds or 2 minutes on any given topic. And just as often as not, the candidate dedicated five words to the question he was asked, then began speaking about something totally unrelated.

This was not a debate, this was a Sound Bite Opportunity.

I pity you poor Americans. All you have left is fashion.

Why is anyone surprised that America is planning to invade Iran?

Iran was invaded by Britain in 1921, by Britain and the USSR in 1941 and the CIA orchestrated the overthrow of it's democratically elected Prime Minister in 1951, installing the last Shah of the Pahlavi dynasty as a puppet leader in his place. Twenty-seven years later, Khomeini managed to overthrow him in a then-popular revolt. As a consequence, Nightline was born and Ted Koppel became a household name.

Thirty years later, we're back where we started.

If that play amazed you, thrilled you, made you want more...watch rugby.

Yes, airlines lie. The stewardess on a recent flight from Portland, ME, to Newark, NJ, openly confirmed it.

My boarding pass claimed the short 50 minute gate-to-gate flight was 1h40m. The extra time? Padding, in case it was required due to delays.

In the end, I was delayed in Portland. The flight was showing up on the screens as "On Time" right up to about 10 minutes past the scheduled departure time when a guy came on the PA and announced departure was delayed over 2 hours due to weather and an ATC problem in Newark.

I already knew all of this because the delay meant I would miss my connecting flight in Newark and they made efforts to find me an alternate routing at check-in time. The guy at the gate in Portland was heroic by the way and I salute him, top to bottom professional!

But unfortunately, this also masked another lie.

My connecting flight was also showing up as departing "On Time". I was checking live departure screens on the EWR website on my Nokia phone (you don't need an iPhone to check the web via GPRS peeps...any decent cellphone will do!)

Even as our 2 hour delay shortened to 90 minutes and I was getting ready to board the flight to Newark, my connection to Ottawa was still showing up as an on time departure.

In the event, as I got off the plane in Newark I was swiftly whisked to the waiting Ottawa flight, sitting waiting for me and one other passenger on my flight, and I was home and dry.

So my question is, why do flights that the airlines *know* are going to be delayed shown as on time right up until the very last second?!

Oh, the printout I received from the official in Portland with my backup reservation the next morning, "just-in-case" gave the reason for the delay: "light rain".

Sigh.

You write: The U.S. remains mired in an apparently endless struggle against jihad on multiple fronts. But if it hadn't topped the Taliban, would Afghanistan be "safe" for foreign mining companies?

Interesting comment based on today's news:

More than half of Afghanistan is back under Taliban control and the Nato force in the country needs to be doubled in size to cope with the resurgent group, a report by the Senlis Council think-tank says. A study by the group found that the Taliban, enriched by illicit profits from the country's record poppy harvest, had formed de-facto governments in swathes of the southern Pashtun belt. (http://news.independent.co.uk/world/asia/article3182330.ece)

It's worth noting, these people actually have an office in Kabul. (http://www.senliscouncil.net/)

Aren't all calls for "bi-partisanship" really, reduced to their essence, calls for single party rule? Of course, run by Republicans?

Aren't they really asking for the idea of choice at the ballot box for policy to be removed from the American electorate?

"All your Vote belong to us!"