Medary.com

My wife thinks I'm weird.  You know, guy-type hobbies and interests rather than being tuned in to fashion and Hollywood gossip and the like.

Well, I'm not weird, thank you very much.  These guys are weird.

Although I do admit, once in a blue moon, I do sneak over to the airport to take a look at planes taking off and landing.  OK, maybe I take a picture or twelve.  But I don't take notes, OK?  I'm not weird.

John Stossel has the answer:

Politicians love a "crisis." John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama all think that the government should bail out homeowners who can't pay their mortgages. When they say the government should do this, they mean the taxpayers, including those who  are paying their mortgages. They also think the government should regulate the lending and investment industries further.

Why?

Because "crisis" justifies making big government bigger.

I would add to that the fact that journalists grow and flourish in the reflected power of the politicians that they cover.  I do not see any incentive today for journalists to question the sky-is-falling pronouncements of politicians.  Indeed, journalists (with some notable exceptions such as Mr. Strossel) are often out in front of the politicians, whipping up angst, unrest, and panic, preparing the battlefield for the politicians to come riding in on their white horses to save us all--again.  The journalists then get their Pulitzers and other awards for their reporting which "made a difference."  Oh, yeah, it made a difference, all right.

The thing is, those "crises" that we all get saved from in the nick of time by those politicians on their white horses and their legions of water-carrying journalists are usually caused by the unnecessary and destructive "solutions" to a previous politician- and journalist-fueled "crisis."

It's a sweet system, really. 

Evan Sayet at Sayet Right nails it:

. . . when testifying to the world about what it is like to have been "born in the USA," rather than tell the story of a country that saw a bus driver's son who never had a job becoming a superstar with, in his own words, "a life of leisure and a pirate's treasure," Springsteen instead told the world that being "Born in the USA" is a horrible curse:

"Born down in a dead man's town
The first kick I took was when I hit the ground
End up like a dog that's been beat too much
Till you spend half your life just covering up."

Kansas City Star:

Connie Roberts of Brandsville in southern Missouri was driving a Chevy Blazer Sunday night as she, her husband and foster son returned home from a fishing trip when a black bear suddenly bolted into the roadway. She estimated she was driving 60 mph.

“I hollered ‘bear,’ and that was it,” Roberts said. “After I hit it I went back but couldn’t find it.”

No immediate comment from the administration of Missouri State University in Springfield.  The Bears, of course.

South Dakota State beats Minnesota 5-4 in ten innings.

Photo credit: South Dakota State University

The Argus-Leader article, by T. Vandrovec:

It was SDSU’s first win against the Gophers (16-22) since 1966, ending a streak of nine consecutive losses in the series since moving to the NCAA Division I level, including three defeats by a total of four runs last month.

“It was just a great win,” Jacks coach Reggie Christiansen said. “This might be one of the biggest wins we’ve had in the four years I’ve been here. I can’t be more proud of our guys.”

From SDSU Sports Information, the box score:

SDSU 5, MINNESOTA 4 (10 inn.)

MINN	000	102	100	0	4-8-1
SDSU	030	100	000	1	5-7-3

 

MINN: Scott Fern, Chauncy Handran (4), Dustin Klabunde (10) and Kyle Knudson.

SDSU: Mike Robinson, Matt Spinar (4), Isaac Johnson (5), Jared Koch (6), Caleb Thielbar (7), Kirby Morsching (8) and Tony Martin.

W-Morsching (2-4). L-Klabunde (0-1)

HR: SDSU-Nick Adams (2).

 

We're planning a trip to Europe in the near future, so it's nice to see that the Euro's value fell today vs. the Dollar.

It's only one day, but it's the right direction--for us as travelers, anyway.

This one moves the BS meter:

Science Daily:  Chocolate bar shown to lower cholesterol

Why do I suspect that other dietary factors were not sufficiently controlled for in this particular study.

Oh, yeah, it was sponsored by a candy company.  Not that that would skew the results, of course.

The sample size was 49 people, divided into two groups (presumably of 25 and 24).  That's an awfully, awfully small sample size when you're dealing with something as complex as human biochemistry.  So, the BS meter twitches.

Michelle Malkin goes there.

("There" is Which Terrorist supports Which Democrat.")

I recall the saying "you can pick your friends but you can't pick your family."  It may be that Clinton or Obama have not picked the terrorists as friends, but there are certainly terrorists out there in the world that haven't quite gotten the Dear John letter from them, either. 

There's a simple way for Clinton and Obama to end this scandalous line of argument:  be much more direct in their rejection and repudiation of erstwhile "friends."

1.  Start a college baseball program.

2.  Start a FCS football program.

They'll have to add women's sports programs (swimming & diving, perhaps?) and maybe trim some men's scholarships to meet Title IX, but the net effect would be to keep UMKC Athletics' name in the local Kansas City media spotlight for the entire college sports year.  Right now, the only thing that gets covered is UMKC men's basketball, and even that gets short shrift compared to the Big XII leviathans in their back yard, not to mention the Kansas City pro teams.

Golly.  What a shocker.  I mean, I am totally stunned.

ScienceDaily:  What's not to like?  Why fondness makes us poor judges, but dislike is spot-on

People have the tendency to assume the whole world likes what we like, reveals new research from the June 2008 issue of the Journal of Consumer Research. However, we don't generalize the same way when it comes to things we hate.

Perhaps someone could commission a study to discover what color a cloudless daytime sky usually is.