Nope.

Just a week or so ago, it looked like there might be some hope that the truce between Israel and the Palestinians would be sticking around for a while. Then it stopped. Great.

The anti-Israel crowd is wrong. Israel does a lot of things poorly, but Hamas is sending rockets into Israel without regard for who they kill, and the ONLY reason that people see the responses by Israel as extreme is because Israel has better weapons. Rest assured that if Hamas got their hands on larger weapons, MANY innocent Israelis would die, as Hamas does not aim for specific targets, they aim to kill innocent people in cities.

The extremists in Palestine also house their command centers in preschools and hospitals. You want to know why so many innocent Palestinian children die? It is because the only way to take out a Hamas terror cell is to destroy its base, and if its base in placed in some place with lots of kids, kids will die.

That said, Israel is equally in the wrong. The response to an attack that barely hurt anyone and killed no one should not and should never be an enormous missle strike that kills innocent people, no matter who you were actually aiming for. It is stupid and accomplishes nothing, and now innocent children are dead as a result of.. what? Responding to loud noises? That's horrific. If a bomb falls in the forest and no one is around to be hurt by it, get over it and figure out something less deadly.

Both sides are equally as wrong. Which is why both the anti-Israel group and pro-Israel group are wrong as well. Both need to stop blaming the other side - they are both to blame, and need to be treated as though they are both in the wrong. Blaming Israel for its "Atrocities" when it response to being bombed is stupid, but supporting the country for bombing the hell out of people that only really sent in a loud firecracker is equally so.

SHOCK! OBAMA TEAM HAD NO CONTACT WITH GOVERNOR

The papers are released, the research has been conducted, and the end result is scandal city:

Barack Obama and his team did not talk to Governor Blagojavich about his Senate seat.

WOW. This truly is amazing and scandalous news. I am so glad that every major news organization and every Republican ever were pushing to learn more from Barack Obama after he so emptily claimed "I had no contact with the governor."

Well, thank God they kept at it, because if they hadn't kept poking and prodding and keeping the public well aware of how there were serious holes and unanswered questions about Obama's claim, we might never have known that Barack Obama had no contact with the governor. I mean, why couldn't Barack Obama just come out and say that in the first place?

For Just 80 Cents a Day, You Can Save a Starving Child in Africa... or a Dog

The ASPCA commercials, while for a good cause, tend to offend me. There are Christian Children's fund commercials that claim they can help a starving child survive for just 80 cents a day. For 60 cents a day - 75% of the children's fund - you can help an old dog that was mistreated live a few years longer.

I <3 Animals - but I refuse to believe that it costs only 20 cents more per day to save a starving human than a dog. If I can save a child for 80 cents a day, I should be able to save a dog for 10 cents a day or less. I also am a little angry at people that refuse to fork over the extra 20 cents a day to save a child over a cat.

At the very least, I would prefer they not use the same sales tactic on their charity. If nothing else, it would make me feel as though their commercial was in better taste.

Canada is cool.

They are way too nice in Canada.

TORONTO — The federal and Ontario governments will provide the Canadian subsidiaries of the Detroit Three automakers with 4 billion Canadian dollars ($3.29 billion) in emergency loans, the prime minister said Saturday.

The announcement follows a pledge Friday by U.S. President George W. Bush to offer $17.4 billion in emergency loans to General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper said Canada's bailout plan, the equivalent of 20 percent of the U.S. aid package, will help keep the plants afloat while the automakers restructure their businesses to retain one the country's most important economic sectors.

"We cannot afford, in the United States or Canada, the catastrophic short-term collapse of the Big Three automakers. The U.S. has signaled that they are not going to allow these companies to fail, and we will do our share of the North American package to see that this doesn't happen either," said Harper speaking at a news conference in Toronto.

What a sweet holiday present.

We Need to Know the Full Extent of Shut the Hell Up

Newspapers are slowly going out of business, but it is the cable news companies that really deserve to fail.

While this may be preaching to the choir, irresponsible journalism is not just a serious problem - it is also seriously stupid. In fact, Fox News may have it right - making up news is sometimes better than the news reported on.

Every day on every channel, some Republican or news anchor says "We need to know the full extent of Barack Obama's relationship with Governor Blagojavich." Every day. And every day Barack Obama has a news conference that says "I have not been in contact with the Governor." And every day the SAME news anchors and Republicans remind the audience that there is evidence that Barack Obama had no contact with the Governor, just like he said. And then these same people say, yet again, "We need to know the full extent of Barack Obama's relationship with Governor Blagojavich."

Dude. Shut the hell up. We know the full extent - you yourself have literally said the full extent out loud to us just moments ago. If you are going to fabricate news, do some actual journalism and research things so that you have something more interesting to lie about. What the hell are you paid for? Asking stupid questions that have already been answered is for the blogs. You are supposed to report news. Rather than reporting on things that you, yourself, have already admitted [in the exact same sentence as that stupid question] to be untrue, why don't you try to see if you can find Barack Obama lying so that you can be the first one to report real news.

When Sean Hannity says Barack Obama has nothing to do with it, you either need to shut the hell up or prove he's lying. Otherwise all you are doing is wasting my time.

A Sign of Change?

If this is a sign of something new happening, then today is a good day.

GAZA — Hamas leaders in Gaza on Sunday left open the possibility of renewing a tenuous truce with Israel that is due to expire Friday, putting themselves at odds with a statement by the exiled political leader of the group in Damascus, Syria.

Khaled Mashal, the exiled leader, told Hamas’s satellite television station Al Quds in an interview broadcast Sunday that “the truce was limited to six months and ends on Dec. 19.”

They'd Take a Bullet - Just Not a Shoe

G-Dub went to Iraq for the last time today. As he was there, in the middle of doing a news conference, someone threw a shoe at him which - to his credit - he dodged extremely well. Where was the secret service?

Word is that George Bush will no longer allow shoes on planes as a result of the incident.

The Video

Stole This

Is this funny? It seemed funny.

John McCain and Barack Obama somehow ended up at the same barbershop. As they sat there, each being worked on by a different barber, not a word was spoken. The barbers were even afraid to start a conversation, for fear it would turn to politics.

As the barbers finished their shaves, the one who had McCain in his chair reached for the aftershave. McCain was quick to stop him saying, "No thanks, my wife will smell that and think I've been in a whorehouse," The second barber turned to Obama and said, "How about you?" Obama replied, "Go ahead, my wife doesn't know what the inside of a whorehouse smells like."

2 Stupid Commercials

Commercial #1: Buzz Quiz TV

He talks too fast, the commercial is not memorable, the game is low quality (in terms of graphics) and REALLY, he got the phone number? Because of the game? I don't think so. What an irritating commercial that I will quickly forget. Once it shuts up.

Commercial #2: The Whopper Virgins

They fly in 10 people that have never had a burger. 7/10 like the Whopper over the Big Mac. That's not a difference of four, that's a difference of 2. And that's an extremely small sample, in a clearly not double blind study. Even if the testing was done correctly, the chances of getting 7/10 due to chance (assuming a 50/50 split) is nearly 20%, and that does not include that most likely the McDonald's burger was ordered long before the Whopper was. Also, which did they eat first? Which one was made larger? And do you not think that the people being flown out from their home country would not have some idea which one they are supposed to pick?*

This is why I am a vegetarian.
~~~~
*no, I do not think they actually conducted this study.

Free Market Military

Of the two of these, which do you think a government would be better at regulating:

1) The military
2) Social welfare programs

I cannot imagine a military run by a business that would go into stupid, unnecessary wars, waste money on dumb strategies and go into a war totally unprepared with an inadequate number of "employees" to run its extensive programs despite ample evidence that more are needed.

Social welfare? It is not the best in terms of cost/benefit analysis, so a business would likely not do a good job, but the benefits help all of humanity. Run like a monster-sized mandatory charity, it would be helpful if 1.00 of every 1.00 went straight to the people that need it, but 80 cents a day is better than nothing.

*No, I'm not advocating the military should be run by anything other than the government.

Al Franken for Senate

Late?

I really want(ed) Al Franken to win. He's surprisingly intelligent, politically minded, but best of all he is funny. Can you imagine him on some major Senate committee grilling an old Bush appointee on his failures? He would probably be the first Senator to actually say what the country is thinking, rather than give long, boring speeches with no major content.

Senators give annoying substanceless diatribes all the time. We may as well have someone funny doing them to give them a purpose.

We Need Checks and Balances

Democrats do not have 60 senate seats. This allows Republicans to filibuster, should they see the need.

Should they see the need?

Politics, as irritating as it is, is a game. The goal of the game is to try to win reelection. It is not to make a difference. While there are some things (game marriage, abortion rights, etc.) that politicians believe in so strongly they cannot vote any other way, the general way that votes work is:

Does voting yes appease my constituents?

If yes, vote yes.
If no, vote no.
If maybe, vote with the party if and only if the measure is likely to pass anyway.

Right now, some 60% of the country approves of the majority of the Democrats' plans. If they filibuster stem cell research, any type of social program that is widely approved, an automotive bailout, healthcare, or anything else that Barack Obama has championed, they are not going to win reelection in 2010 and 2012 as long as Democrats can make sure they take the brunt of the blame.

60 seats would be nice because the Republicans suck on multiple levels, and tend to fight for things that go against the country's interests, only to find a way to blame the Democrats for its failure. But if the Democrats can make their failures public, then it shouldn't matter too much because they will either vote with Barack Obama's plans or secure their own demise.