I always suspected that Kentucky was an odd place.

The only thing that bothers me more than scum is moronic scum. Did they really think they could get away with it?

This is pretty nasty.
This is pretty funny.
Here's a piece on DC's proposed smoking ban which is a good approximation of my views on the issue. I enjoy the fact that Boston bars no longer leave me smelling like smoke, but I hate the law.

I'm glad to see that we seem to be downsizing the operation in Iraq, but check out the comment, near the end of this article, about people jumping for joy. I take it to mean they will be shot.
Um...

I particularly enjoyed the last question of this very serious interview. Good times.
Well, it's official. Jayson Stark is an idiot. His argument as to why Alex Rodriguez doesn't deserve the AL MVP this year seems to boil down to two points: His team would have finished last with or without him, and most previous MVPs have played for winning teams.
First for the idea that ARod wasn't valuable because his team finished last. So what? There are 25 players on a baseball team at any one time. Texas was a poor team because the other 24 guys weren't good. Without ARod, they would haver lost about 100 games, instead of 91. Either way they'd still be in last place, but if Stark thinks there isn't a difference, then it's obvious why he writes about sports and doesn't play them.
Most previous MVPs have played for teams that won more games than they lost, and I imagine most of those teams made it to the postseason. This is supposed to prove that the MVP has to come from one of those teams, because that's the way it's been implicitly defined all along. There are a number of problems with this. Of course most MVPs have played for good teams, the fact that they are so good makes the likelihood of their team winning greater, and well-run teams tend to win and are better at spotting and bringing in great players. It's largely a question of where you tend to find great players, more than anything else, that drives the correlation. Besides, there have been MVPs from lesser teams, so obviously the MVP voters haven't always looked at the award the way Stark demands we all must.
At one point he compares ARod's numbers after July 1 to David Ortiz's for the same period. The implication seems to be, whatever happened before then doesn't matter, and and let's ignore position played, defense, and base running too. David Ortiz was great for the Red Sox and deserved some recognition for what he did, but he isn't nearly the player ARod is. This year the voters got it right, ARod was easily the most valuable player in the league. Here's a complete rundown of the voting.

It is a sad day indeed when I think that Hustler's publisher is morally superior to our President.

Here's a good article on why instituting a flat, low tax system would be a good idea. Good stuff.
Alright, the real return of TMQ. The host site is pretty good too from what I've seen of it.
Cool.
Very cool.

This is pretty awful. And they don't even see what the big deal is, that's the troubling thing. Read this review of Mugged by the State for more of the same.
Somewhat free trade wins a victory. So that's something.
Some people read this Robert Reich article as a lament about rising productivity. I don't see it that way. I think he's just saying it's a fact of life, so we have to figure out how to best deal with the consequences, both good and bad. Seems reasonable enough to me.

Greg Easterbrook brings a wide variety of topics into his blog, and does it pretty effectively. Oh, and here's the post that got him fired from ESPN.com. The only dumb thing I think I've ever seen him write. But they were dumber to fire him, and even dumber to give him the Stalin treatment (they took down all evidence that he'd ever worked there from the website). Clearly he isn't anti-semitic, he just didn't think about how to say what he was trying to say. It's a bad post anyway, but his phrasing/word choice makes it really bad.
Of course, throwing around charges of anti-semitism seems to have become a career for some. Stupid neo-cons. I hate them
I haven't linked to Charley Reese in a while, which is unfortunate, since he is usual dead-on.

I've seen two movies in as many days.

MATRIX REVOLUTIONS was an expected disappointment. All of the freshness and hipness of the first part of the trilogy has been swept away by indulgent seriousness. SPOILER ALERT: I would hate to ruin the ending for anyone who is reading this who hasn't seen it, because as much as I don't respect this "film" I do respect the viewers and their right to obtain closure by seeing the final installment, but the ending was rife with overt religiosity that wasn't even original. Martyring the main character has always been a tried and true ending to any hero epic, but doing so while making visual references to Christ is just overdone. There is a difference between classic and trite.

Otherwise, the movie was resplendent with somewhat overdone and cheezy special effects and portentous dialogue that turned characters that were, in the first movie, hip and exciting into ponderous downers. I've never seen less energy from Lawrence Fishburne.

Highlights included Jada Pinkett Smith - I always suspected she had some talent. She gets lost in the character and reveals a gorgeous mix of grit, vulnerability and sexiness. I am also a fan of the "Sentinals."

BUBBA HO TEP. If you see only one movie this year..... wait... I would probably say 28 Days Later, but this one is a good addition. The director, Don Coscarelli was a new name to me. He is best known, apparently, for PHANTASM (a cult favorite). With Bubba Ho Tep he leaves the genre of Sci Fi/Horror behind and enters a strange twilight zone of Horror/Camp/Absurdity. The film brilliantly stars Bruce Campbell (of, among other things, Xena, Evil Dead and The Adventures of Briscoe County Jr.) as none other than the King and Ossie Davis as JFK. Set in an east Texas Rest Home, the film depicts the heroic efforts of these two legends to save the souls of their fellow inhabitants from the evil Bubba Ho Tep. The special effects included a truly creepy mummy and scarab beetles that made me shiver. The film opens on a sickly bed-ridden Elvis describing a growth on his .... well, you'll just need to see it. Two Thumbs Up indeed.

Ok, here are more bad album covers than you probably thought possible.
As funny as it is, The Onion almost always toes the left-liberal line. What a nice change of pace: this article is one the best pieces of libertarian-influenced satire I've seen. Certainly the best they've done that I know of. I don't know if they realized exactly what they were doing, but more please....
Why is most of Africa so poor? The easy answers are war and disease, and they obviously are a big part of it. But, as usual (notice I didn't say as always), bad economic policies are at the heart of the matter.

Here you go, the worst album covers, ever. I can't decide which is my favorite, they're all so incredible.
Test your 80's lyric IQ. Don't know what I got, it was taking so long to grade I shut down.
The Return of Tuesday Morning Quarterback, sort of.