My Dad’s been bitching that I’m not blogging

…and I can’t disappoint half my readership. It seems like when I have a little short shot, it’s going into Facebook. So here’s a little stuff:

From the courageous and outrageous Kevin DuJan:

First off, Obama got mainly Ds and Fs in college and failed several basic courses because he was too lazy to turn in his assignments. His skin color and exotic pedigree got him his Ivy League degrees.

Produce his transcripts and prove me wrong.

About that WikiLeaks thing… I really mostly don’t give a shit, but it’s an interesting show. The government, per se, doesn’t have a right to privacy, and certainly they don’t to the extent that they deny ours. The people in government may have a right to privacy, and there are individuals who may get hurt by this. But mostly I haven’t heard anything even remotely interesting from the diplomatic dump. China might throw the Norks under the bus? Well, wouldn’t you? So why all the fuss? I suspect Denninger is right in his claim that it’s because they’re preparing to spread some dirt on a major bank. It’s about time the banksters got punished for their fraud. Beck thinks that Assange is an unprincipled punk, because it’s harder to find North Korean tattlers than disaffected gay servicemen (As Ann Coulter points out, singing along to Lady Gaga should be considered a violation of Don’t Ask Don’t Tell). He’s probably right, and Assange isn’t trying to be even-handed, because the other side doesn’t play by civilized rules of engagement. Instead, he’s getting Al Caponed by a possibly-trumped-up rape charge.

On tonight’s fun in Cleveland: Talented young black kid gets good job, gets a better job offer in another city and takes it, returns to city A on business. So why again should we care about LeBron James?

How to win at dodgeball

Damn, I wish I had thought of this.

Once in a great while I’d be one of the last two standing. The other one, of course, would be the biggest surviving mutant on the other side. And then I would do the cruelest thing I could think to do. No, I didn’t catch the ball. He expected me to catch the ball, he expected to lose. The gym teacher expected it as well, and he was my real target. I didn’t care about the boy; he was just another jock.

I would wait until he threw the ball at my chest, avoiding it if he went for my legs and waiting for the chance. This could often go on for some time, because he knew by then that to throw it at my chest or head was to lose. He’d throw it at my legs, I’d dodge out of the way and either let the ball bounce back to his side or lob it off to one side so he had to scramble to retrieve it. I couldn’t throw the ball hard enough to have any hope of actually hitting him, so I didn’t try.

Finally he’d get frustrated and throw one high. I would line myself up with the ball as if to catch it. And then I would sidestep it, reach out my hand and let it brush my fingers as it passed, then walk off the boards. Enjoy your victory, asshole.

This used to annoy the hell out of the teacher. And that was the object of the game. ;^)

Mennonites cave on Star-Spangled Banner

GOSHEN, Ind. (A Pee) — For more than a century, there was no playing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” at Goshen College — a small Christian college with ties to the Mennonite Church.

That’s about to change. For the first time in the school’s history, Goshen College will play an instrumental version of the national anthem before many campus sporting events.

They figure that since they aren’t using the words, it’s OK, and they’re following it with a prayer, and it will make the visiting team feel comfortable. But is it the job of Christians to make people feel comfortable? If comfy is good, why not join the Army with the Baptists, Catholics and everyone else?

Mennonite Church USA — which represents the largest and most mainstream group of Mennonites in the U.S. — does not specifically prohibit the anthem.

Are these guys the Anabaptist equivalent of ELCA?

Personal foul

Let’s see, we have a depression on, runaway government spending, a war against Islamic extremism…and the government has the time to decide how college football will handle its playoffs?

-2.857% ROI

That’s what I figure the folks in Pontiac got from building the Silverdome, which cost$55.7 mil and just sold at auction for a whopping $583K. It was probably even worse, as I’m sure the cost didn’t include the cost of borrowing the money. “Yeah, but consider the jobs”. Hokay, how many jobs were “saved or created” by giving the Lions a new home? For that kind of dough, we could have paid 52 guys $30K a year for 35 years to sit around and play cards. That’s even worse performance than Detroit’s housing stock, the value of which is rapidly chasing zero ($7.5K median home value, and the National Association of Realtors won’t even report sales prices.) As a commenter on Say Uncle asked, “I can’t help but wonder when it’ll be turned into a giant Military Operations on Urbanized Terrain (MOUT) facility.”

Thanks to Beck for keeping me current with my MI homies.

UPDATE: If the good citizens of SE Michigan had used that money for a solid gold statue of Coleman Young, it would be worth over $354m today

How about an antitrust investigation of the Duopoly?

I don’t know whether to be utterly pissed that Congress is meddling in the affairs of college football, a matter in which they have no Constitutional mandate, or overjoyed because they are wasting time on it instead of ruining the economy some more.

Well, they’ll probably ruin the economy of college football before they’re done, so maybe it’s a twofer.

Is it un-Christian to win too much?

This is just weird:

DALLAS — A Texas high school girls basketball team on the winning end of a 100-0 game has a case of blowout remorse.

Now officials from the winning school say they are trying to do the right thing by seeking a forfeit and apologizing for the margin of victory.

In a statement Thursday on The Covenant School’s Web site, the head of school said, “It is shameful and an embarrassment that this happened.” He went on to say that Covenant has made “a formal request to forfeit the game recognizing that a victory without honor is a great loss.”

Now, granted:

Dallas Academy has eight girls on its varsity team and about 20 girls in its high school. It is winless over the last four seasons. The academy boasts of its small class sizes and specializes in teaching students struggling with “learning differences,” such as short attention spans or dyslexia.

But clearly they were going to lose anyway. It wasn’t even sporting for the two teams to play each other. But since they did…how many times in basketball can you roll up a score like 100-0?

UPDATE 1/26: The coach has been fired. Now Covenant can hire the loser they want.

So what’s the problem?

…with the Buckeyes taking over Michigan?

COLUMBUS, Ohio (APee) — The fight is on in Ohio to save the buckeye tree from heading north to, of all places, Michigan.

Environmentalists say global warming threatens to change the habitats of many plants and trees, including Ohio’s iconic buckeye tree. They say climate changes likely will push the growing range for the Ohio buckeye tree farther north.

Now I can see why Michiganders would want to keep a poisonous chestnut look-alike out of their state. But what’s in it for Ohio? Besides a way to rope football fans into the global warming scam, I mean?

Good news for Afghans

Rohullah Nikpai brings home Afghanistan’s first Olympic medal EVER...a bronze in taekwondo.

Yay! Congratulations! It figures it would be in a martial art…

Excellence not allowed in Beachwood OH

15.5% of Beachwood residents are of Russian ancestry. Clearly, there are some unreconstructed Soviets in there.

Beachwood has cancelled its annual 4th of July Rec League All-Star Game for 9 to 12 year olds.

In a letter to coaches, Assistant Recreation Supervisor Frank Vicchiarelli announced that the decades old tradition would end because certain kids were being singled out as better players than others.

Clearly, some players are more equal than others. We can’t have that. But isn’t that the point of an All-Star Game? Maybe they should have an all-bench game, for the kids who really suck.