Dear Georgia,

WTF were you thinking?

I don't like the Russian state much either, and I know that that territory was within your borders.  Still WTF?

Outcome A:

Step 1:  Attack massive nation occupying land to the north and crush occupying forces.

Step 2:  Russia is disappointed but forgets it ever happened after a night of drinking.

Outcome B:

Step 1:  Attack massive nation nation occupying land to the north.

Step 2:  Massive nation's forces flees and is ok with looking like total wusses.

Now for all the apologists out there, I don't like Russian actions either, and I recognize that is within Georgia's border.  Still that's no excuse for American level idiotic use of military power when you are facing superior military power.  WTF Georgia!?!?

Oh Gord The Welfare

So the local Republicans in our state have decided to raise a "red flag" over welfare spending.  Apparently $10 million welfareish dollars were spent OUT OF STATE.   Most shocking of all some was spent in as far away places as Hawaii.  Big to do in the papers and so on.

O   -     M      -     G!

Now let's check some facts.  None of the items actually spent on was illegal (unless someone was defrauding the system and faking what was bought).  $10 million is about %2 of all the state welfare spending.  The vast majority of the spending was in neighboring states.

So they want an investigation. -sigh-  I was reminded of the Simpsons episode with the "OUT OF STATE" commericals...

I'd like to know exactly how much was actually spent in Hawaii.

News

I'm glad to see us focusing on what is important these days.  I don't know Bonnie Erbe much and for all I know she's one of the usual right wing echoing chambers Fox puts on TV but I'll give her credit for trying to steer the conversation in a sensible direction.

Intervention Sports and Drugs

I was watching part of a TV show called Intervention where a drug user is profiled along with their family and an intervention takes place.  The show I was watching was about a dude who was a former world class cyclist.   Apparently he had been doing drugs since he was very young and straight on thru to doate.   He's not a very nice dude when drinking it up and high and that got him kicked off Lance Armstrong's team after cycling with them for a few years....

Wait a minute?  What kind of drug testing is there if this guy has regularly been on a plethora of drugs for an insane amount of time by his own account, and what gets him kicked off a cycling team is that he gets in a fight with some teammates?

Not trying to taint any other cyclits or anything, that just struck me when I saw that part of the show.

Eggs: What the...

http://www.iloveegg.com/egg_english.htm

T. Boone Pickens

I don't know who this T. Boone Pickens guy is beyond his commercials on TV.  For all I know he will show up on Dateline NBC's "lets find a way to display hot underage text chat and find out who else likes it".   All that aside, the dude has the prefect mannerisms and accent to be president.  People in this country love that stuff.   If only they could bottle that.

Homeland Security

So we had this bridge collapse here in MN a while back.  Someone who was supposed to be an emergency manager from the department of transportation here was on a business trip in Washington.   She didn't come back to help manage the emergency for two weeks.  A closer look revealed lots of questionable travel and use of funds.  She was fired.   As a sate employee that's not easy to do and she even lost her appeal to get some compensation for being fired.

So naturally The Department of Homeland Security hired her.

The HD Olympics

I don't usually enjoy the Olympics, I just don't.  So far this year they're not so bad.  Thoughts:

Opening Ceremony

Way cool, except for the NBC guys who would not shut up.  I liked when they were blurting out nation facts, but otherwise they kept talking like it was some conversation between themselves seeming to ask for validation and such on... facts.  The ceremony itself was way cool.   It would have been neat to be there.... at the same time I was glad I was on my soft couch.

Games

Hells yay I can watch actual games!  The reason I hated past Olympics was this NBC over dramatic bull### presentation as if it was live, skipping chunks of an event... when it often IS NOT live and they just want to show you swimming and gymnastics and stuff.  I want to see crap I can't usually see.

Thank goodness NBC put a bunch of stuff on the net LIVE.  This week I was at work early in the morning and I've watched:

Badminton
Handball - Awesome match between Greece (I think) and Egypt.
Fencing
Field Hockey
Not gymnastics
Some insane horse thing where the dude trots around slowly and does NOTHING.

It is just the event streamed live with no commentary, some commentary would be nice but I'm happy to see the event.  They did have some cool tutorial videos so you could watch those and get more of a clue.

Bleeding Heart Olympics

I want to see a story about an olympic athlete who is some rich asshole who just sort of slid into an event after the rightful athlete was hit by his drunk borther's car or soemthing.   A man can only take so many of these stories.  Pertuciularly when you know the likelyhood of them being true diminishes with the number of them you see.  Locally they kept playing this report about some good old Iowan girl from West Des Moines.  Heartwarming story about the young girl next door from the heartland going to China to represent her country.   Except that she pronounced the name of her town wrong, several times.  Soemthing nobody who actually lived there for long would do, but I guess a story about a girl from the heartland sent to some sort of gymnastic training camp for years isn't all that exciting of a story to tell.

I like to think the editor was sitting there with the producer editing the story:

Hey she pronounced the name of that town wrong... should we edit that out.

#### it, i'm tired of these stories.