Crosblog

Road signs warn drivers of zombie plague up ahead.

I think we can all agree that we would not have to deal with zombies blocking traffic if John McCain were President.

In general, most defense attorneys are competent professionals who do the very best they can for their clients, and while many defendants understand this, everyone involved in the justice system understands that conflicts will occasionally arise between the defendant and his attorney, and the defendant will want his attorney removed from his case. In the unfortunate event such a conflict arises, there are proper and acceptable ways for a defendant to raise these concerns, and request the opportunity to replace his current attorney.

This is not (stress NOT) one of those ways.

Neat story about a guy who was cut by the Detroit Lions, only to catch on with the Pittsburgh Steelers, which means instead of suffering through the worst season in NFL history, he will be playing in the Super Bowl.

Funny quote:

“That’s the thing I’ll never understand,” he said. “They didn’t think I was good enough to be on the worst team in the history of the NFL, but the people here think I’m good enough to help the team out and play in the Super Bowl."

It's funny because they dance around this question several times without addressing the simple explanation, which is as follows: Matt Millen was the dumbest person to ever be allowed to run a pro football team. But, hey, this story is about triumph over adversity, so why kick a man when he's down, right?

Palestinians kill Israeli soldier - Israel responds with tanks and airstrikes.

An entertainment writer for the L.A. Times wonders if Mickey Rourke's announcement that he will be involved at Wrestlemania XXV will jeopardize his Oscar chances. When Rourke threatened Chris Jericho, I did wonder if academy voters would consider that sort of thing beneath an Oscar winner or excessively tacky or something.

It would be interesting if Rourke's association with Vince McMahon and Chris Jericho cost him support in Hollywood, given that association with Hugo Chavez and Fidel & Raul Castro doesn't seem to be any sort of giant problem.

It's all speculative until the awards are given, of course. But if Rourke ends up suffering more for doing PR for the WWE than Penn does for doing PR for Venezuela and Cuba's government, well, that would tell you something, I'd think.

Continuing a long tradition of getting stuff wrong, here is a preview of the second biggest event on the pro wrestling calendar.

ECW Title Match - Jack Swagger (C) vs. Matt Hardy
Who Should Win: Swagger needs a big win on a big stage to establish himself, and Hardy won't lose any popularity without the title.
Who Will Win: Swagger
Will it Suck? The match where Swagger won the title was quite good, so this should be good as well.

Women's Title - Beth Phoenix (C) vs. Melina Perez
Who Should Win: Phoenix is the better wrestler with the bigger upside.
Who Will Win: Probably Phoenix.
Will it Suck? It'll be fine by WWE Diva standards, so yeah, it'll kind of suck.

World Title Match - John Cena (C) vs. JBL
Who Should Win: JBL. No, really. I'll explain in a bit.
Who Will Win: Cena.
Will it Suck? Yes. JBL & Cena haven't meshed well in the past, and this is more of a story advancing match than anything else.

WWE Title Match - Jeff Hardy (C) vs. Edge
Who Should Win: Rumor mill seems to think that former Edge running buddy/TNA champion Christian Cage will show up and cost Hardy the belt. That sounds like a pretty good plan.
Who Will Win: Edge
Will it Suck? No. This should be really good.

30 Man Royal Rumble.
Who Should Win: Shawn Michaels. The best main event-level storyline is Shawn Michaels, reluctant employee of evil, rich JBL. The idea is that JBL is willing to spend a ton of money to go into Wrestlemania with the World Title and win in the main event, and Shawn Michaels winning the chance to face him and take the belt is a storyline worthy of a main event spot at Wrestlemania. Wrestling snots will carp about JBL defending a title at WM, but they carp about Cena too, so there's no gain there.
Who Will Win: Triple H has been fighting too hard to get into the Rumble on Smackdown not to win it.
Will it Suck: The Royal Rumble does not suck.

The Diesel Award: Given to a wrestler who makes a name for himself tossing a bunch of people out in a dominating fashion. They don't always use this, but I think this year you can bet on Vladimir Koslov to come in and clear the ring for a bit.

The Backlund Award: Given to a wrestler who impresses by lasting an unusually long time. I think either John Morrison or The Brian Kendrick could pull a performance of 40+minutes, but the guy I'd love to see start at #1 and still be around at or near the end (and I think could do a lot with it), is Santino Marella.

Dallas Cowboys giving a spot on their training camp roster to the winner of a reality show developed by Michael Irvin.

Hey, who knows, maybe we'll get a sequel to the movie Invincible. Or maybe the guy'll get cut the first week and wind up boxing Danny Bonaduce or something to try and stay on TV.

It's been previously mentioned here that Mexico has generally taken a dim view of captial punishment, refusing to extradite murder suspects unless capital punishment is removed from consideration and attempting to intervene on behalf of Mexican nationals in the U.S. facing death.

However, an ever-rising tide of violent crime has caused Mexico to revisit their opposition, and their Congress is holding forums to discuss the possibility of reinstating capital punishment. (Interestingly, the proposal to reinstate the death penalty is coming from Mexico's Green Party, which is a different position than many of us are used to seeing from politicians who make a point of claiming to be "green." And they have the public behind them, as polls show 70-80% of Mexicans favor the death penalty in certain cases.

If Mexico ever does reinstate the death penalty, I wonder if we will ever hear of a Mexican murder suspect fleeing to a U.S. state that doesn't have capital punishment and prompting an extradition battle.

Make no mistake, today is a day we all can be proud of. This is how a transfer of power is supposed to work. The incoming President thanks the outgoing President for his service, and the former leader bows out and allows the newcomer his day. And to be sure, today, if you are not willing to join in the joy President Obama's supporters feel, than you should at least allow them to have this one day to celebrate a truly historic accomplishment, even by the already lofty standards of American Presidents.

Tomorrow - now that's a day to nitpick the living hell of the new Leader of the Free World, because that's the day he stops being Captain Hopeandchange and starts being the guy who's responsible for everything. Of course, to be fair, we should be clear as to what we're expecting. I think Obama was pretty clear that were we to elect him President, we could expect no less than the following changes.

1. First of all, I'm getting a tax cut. Me, personally, and almost certainly you. Taxes are going down, so feel free to go ahead and spend the money. And don't let me hear anything about how the economy requires a change in plans - anyone as smart as Obama has certainly been paying attention to how things were going, and if he knew he was going to need to dial back the tax cuts, he'd have told us before the election.

Oh, heck, this one's a gimme - I've even upped my number of deductions.

2. America, having had its status in the world restored, will now be so loved worldwide that by year's end, I expect to be reading about Canadian college students pretending to be Americans so they can get laid while traveling through Europe.

3. Osama Bin Laden will be in handcuffs by year's end. If finding him were a complex and difficult task with uncertain results, Bush wouldn't have gotten so much crap for not having done it by now.

4. The US will win the soccer World Cup in 2010. OK, I'll admit Obama never said anything about this one way or the other, but if his whole internationalist bent is for real, he should be able to pull this off. And it's about time, too. If we're going to put the word out that people who come to this country illegally are going to be allowed to stay, the least we can do is put a butt whipping on the world at their own game.

I trust all of this can happen easily by the 2010 mid-term elections. (The World Cup final is on July 11.) I don't expect to hear anything about tempering expectations due to uncertain times or anything like that. Hollywood celebrities have already told me about the bright new day dawning, and if that doesn't happen in time to vote accordingly in 2010, then the only possible explanations would be:

1. Anyone who told you that any kind of grand change was coming, rather than minor modifications from politicians just like any other was full of it, or:

2. Hollywood celebrities are vacuous dipshits whose endorsement should lower your opinion of any cause their tiny little brains happen to randomly attach to.

And we all know it ain't either of those.

Israel to announce unilateral cease-fire, claim further rocket attacks will void the deal.

Fox and Warner Bros. settle, allowing the Watchmen movie to come out in March as scheduled.

Now all I need is a babysitter for the weekend of March 6.

Reading this article about the debate over who should shoulder the blame for civilian casualties in Gaza, I have a couple of questions that I don't know if anyone who blames Israel has asked:

1. What steps, if any, has Hamas taken to limit civilian casualties in Gaza? For instance, making sure that military targets are far away from civilians, dressing in uniforms so there's no chance civilians will be mistaken for fighters, things of this nature. It appears everyone agrees that Hamas does none of these things, but maybe they do something else I'm not aware of. I doubt it, but hey, anything's possible. Also, if not, I'd be more impressed with any attack on Israel's purported "disproportionality" if it acknowledged that Hamas is doing its level best to put civilians in harm's way to provoke just such an argument.

2. If Hamas is not taking steps to limit civilian casualties, and is in fact deliberately trying to get them run up to win the PR battle and compel the "international community" to restrain Israel, then it logically follows that if Israel suffers the lion's share of the outrage over civilian deaths, then Hamas' plan to run up civilian death toll will be validated as a battle tactic. Should it work? Do we really want to send this message - that if you are savage and inhuman enough to deliberately endanger the civilian population around you, their deaths are the fault of someone other than you? Do we want to send that message to FARC? The Tamil Tigers? Anti-government wackos in Idaho?

If it is in fact bad policy to let a party to a conflict benefit from its greater willingness to endanger civilians (and once upon a time, a convention was signed that suggests that a combatant who hides behind civilians is the proper party to blame if they are killed) then it would seem that defending that policy would compel anyone interested in ultimately protecting civilian lives would prevent those who are endangering them from being rewarded for their reckless conduct. Unless, of course, there is a higher priority than protecting civilians, in Gaza and elsewhere.

Like making sure to consistently apply a double standard to Israel, for instance.

University of Georgia stars Matt Stafford & Knowshon Moreno declare for the NFL draft.

I've had fun this year taunting UGA fans by declaring that Stafford is coming to save the craft factory that are the St. Louis Rams, but sadly, Stafford is unlikely to wind up in St. Louis next year, because the Rams brain trust may very well think that Mark Bulger is just fine. Meanwhile, the guy the Rams got rid of to make way for Bulger couldn't be reached for comment, because he was too busy getting ready for his playoff game this weekend. The main reason though, is most observers recognize that Matthew Stafford is the best pro prospect in the draft, and the team with the #1 pick desperately needs a franchise quarterback.

Which means Georgia fans have to accept that Stafford would rather be, of all thins, a Detroit Lion.

And, of course, a guy with somewhere in the neighborhood of $75-80 million. (Using Matt Ryan's contract as the starting point.)

The headline is my wife's comment on the following story - a man approached a pimp looking to arrange a sexual encounter with a 10 year old girl, and the pimp was so outraged by the request that he called the cops.

Tip - CrimLaw.

So, it's started - Israeli troops have entered Gaza. I wonder - do the people who object to Israel's response as "disproportionate" ever raise a complaint with Hamas' demand that Israel release hundreds of Palestinian prisoners in exchange for Cpl. Gilad Shalit?

But I digress. The real argument against the invasion is what can Israel expect to get? It's not like anyone is going to blame Hamas for any of this, even though everyone, including Hamas, agrees that Israel has the better human beings on its side. After all, the only reason to hide your weapons and fighters among the civilian population is because you believe the other side is decent enough to hold back, while you, because you are willing to risk said civilians as a deliberate part of your battle plan, are human refuse. Despite this, "Israel Rules" apply as usual.

Let's do the math - a six month truce is signed in June. The large purported Israeli violation of this truce was an attack on a tunnel designed to facilitate another attempt at kidnapping an Israeli soldier. (For which a completely disproportionate ransom would be demanded.) Digging the tunnel apparently violated nothing, but the point is this - the number of rockets fired at Israeli civilian residential areas prior to this was roughly 15-20. Which, admittedly, is substantially less than usual, but apparently, a truce under Israel rules is defined as "fewer attacks then usual, but certainly not none."

Inigo?



"You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means."

Actually, everyone agrees Israel was provoked (everyone now remembers to include a perfunctory condemnation of Palestinian rocket attacks in their statements primarily blaming Israel), "Israel Rules" mean that Israel is wrong should they actually respond to said provocation. Which wouldn't be so bad if the people blaming Israel actually included the line "Look, Israel is the only party that has a snowball's chance of having anyone capable of acting like something other than a frenzied ghoul, so of course they have greater responsibilities. After all, the best you can ask of a ghoul is that he cover his mouth after a night of dining on innocent blood causes him to belch."

Will this actually make Israel safer? If they press things hard enough to actually make a point, maybe. Nobody on the Palestinian side will seriously entertain the idea that Hamas did anything wrong, since all they did was attack a state that deserves to be destroyed anyway, and anything said illegitimate state does in self-defense is by definition immoral, so learning anything is likely out as a goal. On the other hand, the only alternative ever presented is diplomacy - and anyone who has played a role in the "international community's" handling of the Israeli-Palestinian issue up until now should look in a mirror when wondering why Israel isn't particularly inclined to wait for the UN to step in now.

They won't, of course.

"Israel Rules," you know.

Utah is your college football national champion this year.

Happy 2009, everybody.

How best to celebrate 09?



Do the Xander Dance!