What 'Chu Talkin' 'Bout Willis?

Short update this week. I have very few thoughts right now. Enjoy it while it lasts.

This past Monday, now former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin turned over the keys to the state and officially quit her job, a-year-and-a-half before the end of her first term. Why? Nobody really knows. Even in her prepared press conference remarks she proved to be incapable of forming a complete and coherent sentence. Presumably she quit to run for president. Nothing like a three-and-a-half year head start. But who knows for sure. And who cares? I guess there are seven or eight people who do. And I feel sorry for them. Really, I do. It’s like watching ballroom dancers on the deck of the Titanic. In the Bermuda Triangle. On Friday the 13th. Unfortunately, we haven’t heard the last of Sarah Palin. She will be back. Then, hopefully, she’ll go away for good.

Remember Bobby Jindal? Republican Governor of Louisiana? Hates government, thinks things like volcano and hurricane monitoring are wastes of taxpayer money? Yes, that Bobby Jindal. Recently he wrote an article for Politico about how the useless he feels the federal stimulus bill has been in spite of its $787 billion price tag. passes out federal stimulus money. The next day Jindal was photographed handing out a giant oversized novelty stimulus check with his own name emblazoned across the top. Sigh. I guess federal stimulus money is only evil if it comes directly from Washington. If it comes from Washington through Bobby Jindal, well then it’s perfectly acceptable.

Some Republican members of the Senate Judiciary Committee have decided they cannot, “in good conscience,” vote to confirm Sonia Sotomayor. I for one am shocked. You mean there’s gambling in this establishment? I do appreciate that guys like Jeff Sessions at least feel the need to go through the charade of pretending to listen to the evidence and weighing it carefully before making a decision. If only would actually practice what they pretend to every now and then we might be better off.

Last week, Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates was arrested by Cambridge police, breaking into his own home. It seems a neighbor spotted two men totting suitcases, attempting to break into the Gates’ Massachusetts home. Cambridge police arrived and attempted to place Gates and his friend under arrest, until the professor produced identification proving he was indeed the owner of the house he had broken into. The story should have ended there. Should have. It didn’t. Angry at being detained for entering his own home, Gates got a little lippy with the primary responding officer. Instead of simply admitting that mistakes had been made and driving off into the sunset, the officer decided he needed to make an example of somebody and placed Gates under arrest for disorderly conduct. The charges were later dropped, but the damage had been done. Gates claimed he had been profiled, the officer claimed Gates was abusive, and somebody decided to make a national issue out of a local dispute by asking the first black President about the arrest of a prominent black man in his own home by a white officer. Instead of deflecting the question or simply refusing to answer, as he should have, President Obama let his guard down a little and decided to to give an honest, yet guarded answer. He said he thought the Cambridge police acted “stupidly” in arresting Professor Gates for breaking in his own home. And he was right. But, as seems to happen too often with this President, some people seemed to hear only what they wanted to hear, and not what was said. Some immediately accused Obama of labeling the Cambridge police department racist, and the arresting officer an ivy league version of Bull Connor. A few people temporarily abdicated reality in the haze of their Obama-rage. In the lead-in to his Tuesday program Sean Hannity claimed police officers were “turning on” Obama, then trumpeted former LAPD detective Mark Fuhrman as his expert guest to discuss the matter. If you’re still standing after that roundhouse of irony, conservative circus clown David Horowitz had to be reeled in by conservative ringmaster Glen Beck when he offered that being a black man in America means cutting your wife’s throat and getting away with it when everyone knows you did it. Seriously, if you need to be restrained by Glen Beck, you have far more serious issues than simply believing that black men are nothing more than murderers in training. Don’t we have enough problems responding to things people actually say and do, without fabricating controversy from things that were neither said nor done?

Lance Armstrong finished third in this year’s Tour de France. Not bad for a guy who’s been away from cycling for four years.

Brett Favre informed the Minnesota Vikings on Wednesday that he will not be returning to football this coming season, thereby failing to end speculation as to whether or not he is truly finished with professional football. If I haven’t seen Number Four in a uniform come the first week in January, then and only then will I believe he has hung it up for good.

In other football news, Michael Vick was conditionally reinstated by the commissioner earlier this week after completing his 18-month federal prison sentence for dog fighting. If he can find a team willing to sign him, Vick will be suspended for the first five games of the season, but be eligible to play by week six. Terrell Owens called the additional suspension "ridiculous." I guess he would know something about ridiculous. Speculation is that Vick will end up playing some sort of swing man role for the New England Patriots. My money is on the Oakland Raiders or the Washington Redskins. The Raiders are the reform school of the NFL, and Redskins owner Dan Snyder loves to spend exorbitant amounts of money on big name underachievers. A lot of people aren’t happy with the reinstatement and feel that Vick should be banned for life. I disagree. This country is about second chances. Vick served his time, paid his fines, lost his career, all his money and two years of his life. He has repented, and now he gets the opportunity to prove he is a better person than he was two years ago. Let’s see if he’s been rehabilitated.

Finally, two weeks ago the Sears tower in Chicago was officially renamed the Willis Tower, after the British insurance company that purchased it. That’s right. The Willis Tower. Isn’t that kinda like renaming Big Ben the Geico clock?