The Wheels on the Bus

Wow, is it Tuesday already? Time really flies when all your fantasy football teams are losing.

Due to circumstances beyond my control (i.e. my real job), and the fact that it’s been a pretty slow news week, today’s blurb will be a short one. Short but sweet. Like Gidget.

A very angry Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas appeared on 60 Minutes this past Sunday night. It seems that among other things, Justice Thomas is still raging mad about the travishamockery that was his confirmation hearing sixteen years ago. Seriously Clarence, chill out. Have a Coke. You won man. We’ve been through three presidents and two Gulf Wars since you replaced Thurgood Marshall on the high court, and you are still there. People who liked you then, still like you now and those who didn’t, still don’t. It’s been sixteen years. Get over it.

Less than one day after the United Auto Workers went on strike last week, they struck a deal with General Motors and called the whole thing off. Just this past Monday morning the Michigan state government shut down for four hours before re-opening as the legislature finally came to an agreement to balance the state budget. I have an idea. In the future, let’s save everybody a whole lot of time and trouble by starting negotiations right at the strike or closure deadline. Nothing ever gets done until that point anyway. Why pretend that anything said up until that point is anything but media fodder.

A judge has ordered everyone’s favorite panty-less mother Britney Spears to turn full custody of her two kids over to ex-husband Kevin Federline. If anyone had told me two years ago that Federline would be the one to walk away from that relationship with his dignity intact I would have questioned his or her sanity. Looks like the joke’s on us.

The chairman of the Security Contractor Blackwater U.S.A., Erik Prince, testified on Capitol Hill today regarding the actions of his company and its employees in Iraq. At least I’m not the only one who thinks it might be a problem to have non-state actors employed by the government running around a foreign country with automatic weapons and licenses to kill, without any oversight or accountability. More on this mess in a subsequent post.

Green Bay Packers quarterback Brett Favre broke Dan Marino’s record for most career passing touchdowns with numbers 421 & 422 coming against the Minnesota Vikings this past Sunday. Football is a young man’s game, and it’s great to see an “old man” like Favre (soon to be 38) still playing the game with the same enthusiasm he played with when he was 27, and doing it better than a lot of guys ten years younger than he is. Congratulations Brett, on breaking records and a fantastic career, which now seems to be far from over. It couldn’t have happened to a nicer guy. And yes, that is Peyton Manning in your rear view mirror.

Finally, last week, Hope Solo, the undefeated – and by all accounts very talented goaltender of the U.S. Women’s Soccer Team was benched for the semi-final game at the Women’s World Cup against Brazil in favor of the much older World Cup & Olympic Champion Brianna Scurry. The U.S. went on to lose that game 4-0, and right after the match Solo found a camera and a microphone and let the whole world know just how upset she was. She explained – in no uncertain terms – that her coach was incompetent at best, stupid at worst, and that her teammate was a washed up relic of a bygone era. Later, she tried to blunt her comments by issuing an “apology” on her blog, saying it was a shame people thought she made derogatory comments about her teammate when she was clearly only referring to the ineptitude of her coach. Come on Hope. Be a (wo)man. Apologize for real. You don’t have to lie – we know you meant what you said. But instead of blaming people for “misunderstanding” you, what you should have said was “I said some things to the media that I shouldn’t have said, and I’d like to apologize to the team for that.” That’s it, end of story. Look, everything you said about your coach was true. Everyone who knows anything about goaltenders knows that you don’t screw around with a goaltender’s mojo. If they’re hot, leave ‘em in, if they’re not, take ‘em out. But if you have a problem with him or your teammates, you take it up with them in private. You do not come out on national television and throw them under the bus, then think you can make it all go away with a lame fake apology on a website. An apology IS an admission that one has said or done something one should not have said or done, and would therefore wish to express regret for saying or doing so. An apology IS NOT an explanation that some idiot took your “obviously” benign statement out of context and that you regret that anyone might have taken offense to what they were dumb enough to think they thought they heard you say.