MIA

So, the holidays and work and school have drained my batteries. The countdown from movie number 120 to movie number 1 has also preoccupied my time on the blog. But, this morning is as good a morning to give you some ramblings and tangential meanderings.

I rarely talk about sports here, in fact never. But, I am a big sports nut; for my teams, anyway. Nevertheless, you would have to have been living under a rock to not hear about Tiger Woods plowing into a fire hydrant and a tree, passing out at the wheel, having his wife break the back window of his car out to rescue him, and then Tiger canceling four straight police interviews only to be charged with some petty misdemeanor. What happened here? Was he cheating on his wife? Obviously. Was there a domestic dispute? Clearly. Was he drunk? Not likely. What can we glean from this incident. A couple of things. First of all, being a golfer certainly gives you a cushion for erratic behavior, especially the first time. If this was a basketball player with an equally clean record, the news would be on him like flies on a rib roast. Second, it raises strange questions about the PGA, advertisers, and the way capitalism works. None of the endorsements said anything negative, but expressed their support of Tiger; the PGA, sensing a "no news is bad news" approach has remained quiet because the charges were minor and the fact that one of their players has a personality beyond being a piece of cardboard is always marketable. Again, in the NBA or NFL, this would be blown way out of proportion. I'm just saying.

In other news, Palin's book has officially hit the number 1 spot on the NY Times bestseller list. Further evidence that one should not put much weight into opinion polls because the general American populace would sooner buy snake oil from a talking panda than anything thoughtful, intelligent, or critical.

Perhaps the biggest news, though, has been the troop increase in Afghanistan. My reaction: its about time. We essentially fought a quasi-legitimate war based on being attacked, and within three years, rerouted the war efforts to a place that didn't attack us. The result has been a quagmire that nobody has even paid attention to. In the meantime, the people we were fighting have gradually fortified their position around the Pakistan border because of nearly seven years of neglect. If you have a Republican friend who gets off on Dick Cheney's attacks, you should tell him/her to blow it out of their arse because it was those schmucks that got us here. In my opinion, neither war should be happening, but the Afghanistan war appears more relevant in terms of our immediate security goals. I don't believe the timetable Obama laid out will matter much, because in three years it will be reassessed anyway. But, we should pull out a large number of forces from Iraq at this point to offset the burden this is going to place on our military.

On a related note, I cannot remember a sitting president being attacked this vehemently and with this much vitriol in my life. Clinton was not liked, and the Republican forces united to uncover scandal after scandal. He was a morally flawed human, like most of us, so his skeletons were unfortunately too many to the point where even the specter of a bone was enough to get people salivating. But, I don't remember Dan Quayle, or James Baker, or Ford, or anyone who had a high ranking pummeling him. Nor do I recall Gore, Carter, or anyone attacking Dubya. Why is this not discussed? Have we really reached a point where it is ok to just question everything the president does before his mid-way point is even reached. He is elected for 4 years. He has the right to try to do everything he feels he was elected to do. Attacking him on policy is legitimate, and dissent is fine, but the level and intensity is strangely incongruous with precedent. Last month I wrote about my concerns with Obama: he was moving too slowly, too deliberately, and lacking any sense of emotion which the people do like. I also noted this might work out in the end and we should be patient. It is really the 24-hour news cycle coupled with the disinformation rampant on the internet, and the fact that every opinion seems to count today that has led to this strange situation. The best we can hope for is job creation and GDP expansion in the next three or four quarters such that the 2010 nails the coffin on the GOP for another four years.