Stanley Cup Finals Preview

The Stanley Cup Finals that many expected to occur has finally arrived; the Pittsburgh Penguins vs. the Detroit Red Wings. All of the cliches apply here; youth vs. experience, dynamite offense vs. rock-solid defense, etc., etc. The trendy pick is that Pittsburgh's young guns will give it an edge over Detroit, but I don't think that the Penguins have come across a team like the Red Wings that doesn't give up the puck. EVER. There is a reason that Detroit piles up such huge edges in shots every game, and Marc-Andre Fleury is going to be tested in ways that no team up until now has tested him. In Henrik Zetterberg and Pavel Datsyuk, the Red Wings have the two best "two way" players in the game, players who are equally adept at scoring or shutting down the opposing team's best players. In people such as Kris Draper, they have the prototypical "grit" player.

I see this year's Pittsburgh team as being a lot like the 1983 Edmonton Oilers, a dynamic, young team that is one year away from being the best in the sport. Sidney Crosby, Evgeni Malkin, Fleury, Ryan Malone, et al. will win a Cup (or two, or three..........) before all is said and done......but not this year.

Red Wings in five.

Democracy, Massachussets-style

You almost have to laugh when you read stuff like this. Massachussets is the bluest of the blue states, but now now you have politicians openly manipulating the system to favour their party. It used to be the law in the Commonwealth that the Governor would make an appointment if a sitting U.S. Senator could not finish out their term. Then, John Kerry ran for President when Mitt Romney was the governor and, well, it was simply unacceptable to the Democrats running the leglislature that a Republican might appoint another Republican to serve out the term, so they changed the law so that a special election would be held to fill the vacancy. Now, there is a Democratic governor, and there is a definite possibility that Ted Kennedy may not be able to fill out his term due to his illness. No probem there for the Massachussets State Legislature, which is considering changing the law back, so as to guarantee that the seat remains in Democratic hands: http://www.eagletribune.com/punews/local_story_142002341.html.

It's both shameless and pathetic, but that's hardly a surprise these days.

Pakistan surrenders

This is a really bad development which seems as though it is being ignored by the MSM. Pakistan's new government has reached an "accord" with the terrorist elements in those infamous "border territories" which will see it pull the army out in exchange for an agreement by the terrorists to stop homicide bombings: http://washingtontimes.com/article/20080522/FOREIGN/510395498/1003/foreign.

In essence, what this means is that al Qaeda and its sympathizers now control a large swath of Pakistan adjacent to the Afghan border. If someone can tell me how this is in any way a good or even a neutral development, I'm willing to listen.

Exactly!

I have been screeching (with no one listening, apparently) about how the collapsing dollar is at the root of many of our current economic problems, the cost of oil among them. Finally, it appears as though others are starting to pick up on this idea: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121150088368615927.html?mod=djemEditorialPage.

When you think about it, it really doesn't take a genius to figure this out. As the dollar drops in vallue, it takes more of them to buy things. Pretty elementary, if you ask me. So, why isn't Barack Obama talking about this? Why isn't Hillary Clinton? Why isn't John McCain?

Let the pro-Obama spin continue

A writer in the New York Times by the name of Jodi Kantor has written a piece which supposedly talks about how Florida's Jewish voters are reacting to Barack Obama: http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/22/us/politics/22jewish.html.


Honestly, I thought that this was a ridiculous article, because it ultimately implied that if Jews don't vote for Obama, it is because they are either A) stupid and ill-informed, or B) racist. That is unfortunately the way this election is going to be spun. Every vote against Obama is going to be because the person who cast that vote was either stupid or racist (or both).

I'd like to suggest to Ms. Kantor, who wrote the article, that maybe, JUST MAYBE, there are legitimate reasons to be concerned about Obama that have nothing to do with his race, which the author of this piece either ignores or minimizes:

1) He has the most left-wing voting record in the Senate since he was elected in 2004.
2) He has advocated personal, face-to-face talks with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who on a weekly basis promises to wipe out Israel.
3) Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his spiritual mentor (who he only dumped when it became politically disadvantageous to maintain his association with the guy) is an outspoken supporter of the Palestinians.
4) Two of his initial foreign policy advisors were Robert Malley and Samantha Power, both of whom are strident critics of Israel.
5) Al Qaeda is not supporting him, but Hamas has spoken approvingly of him.
6) He has NEVER denounced Farrakhan, contrary to Ms. Kantor's representation. He has distanced himself from some of Farrakhan's views, which is not at all the same thing.

These aren't matters of opinion, they are statements of FACT. Then again, why would the New York Times want to let those pesky facts get in the way of a good slam at anyone who dares deviate from the increasingly hard left position the paper espouses..............

Just plain creepy

A company based in California (where else?) has managed to perfect a system to clone dogs: http://gmy.news.yahoo.com/v/7924569. I'm a dog owner, and while I love my dogs, I would never want them cloned. Each dog, like each person, is unique. It doesn't matter how much another dog may look like the ones I already have, it still won't be THAT dog.

Another question comes to mind. Once we start doing this, how far are we from cloning people? It can't be that far and you have to know that some company will try to do it, and soon. Not a good precedent, in my opinion............

This is the source of the bitterness

People from outside this area often wonder why Philadelphia-area area sports fans are so, well, angry. THIS is why: http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2008/more/05/14/philadelphia.drought/index.html?eref=si_topstories.

100 collective seasons of professional sports futility, with not much hope on the horizon. Contrast that with, say, a city like Boston, where in the past decade they've had three Super Bowl Championships, two World Series titles, a return to glory for the basketball team and even the woebegone Boston Bruins seem to have turned the corner.

I don't buy it

Syria and Israel have apparently been holding back door peace talks for about a year, with the assistance of Turkey: http://www.sana.sy/print.html?sid=175427&newlang=eng.

I don't trust the Syrians as far as I can throw them. This is just a ploy on their part to divert attention away from their activities in Lebanon, such as funneling Iranian arms to Hezbollah. They're also doing stuff like this: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1211288131705&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull.

No stool pigeon!

An African Grey Parrot in Japan somehow got lost before being "captured" by police: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080521/ap_on_fe_st/odd_japan_parrot_returns. The thing I love about this story, apart from the happy ending? The bird absolutely would not talk to police, but once it was turned over to a vet, it started chattering away, telling the vet where it lived.

I don't know why, but I find this story to be very funny..........

Pitchfork Pat goes off the deep end.......into an empty pool

I'm not sure who's more delusional, the far left of the Democratic Party or the the 1930's isolationist wing of the Republican Party, as represented by people such as Pitchfork Pat Buchanan. Buchanan, who's never met a Nazi he didn't want to defend, now blames the German invasion of Poland in 1939...........on Poland: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=26606. You see, those unreasonable Poles refused to give up Danzig. Imagine that. I am sure that Hitler would have been completely satisfied if Poland had turned Danzig (now known as Gdansk) over to Germany. Yup, it would have been PEACE IN OUR TIME.

Heartfelt best wishes

Senator Ted Kennedy of Massachussets has been diagnosed as suffering from a malignant brain tumour: http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,356745,00.html.

I may agree with Senator Kennedy on virtually nothing, but I wish him nothing but a speedy and complete recovery. I know all too well the havoc that the evil illness of cancer can wreak on a person, having lost both my parents, one of my aunts, and one of my grandfathers to it.

Fun and games, Palestinian-style

What's the fun thing to do in Gaza? Well, if you guessed "shooting videos of dying or dead people on your cell phone videocamera and then trading it with your buddies, you'd be right: http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,25197,23718649-15084,00.html.

How sick, how DEPRAVED, must a culture be that something like this is countenanced?

Shortsighted pandering

There is a very real reason that Congress' approval rating is lower than even that of the President. It's because it does shortsighted, stupid partisan things like changing the rules in the middle of a debate on a free trade deal with Colombia: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121124379355805567.html?mod=djemEditorialPage.

The system had worked wonderfully for over 30 years........until Nancy Pelosi and her union sycophants took the reigns of power in the House of Representatives. They've now killed the "fast track" authority that enabled the Bush 43 Administration to negotiate the free trade deal with Colombia. Why? Ostensibly, it's because of "human rights concerns", but the reality of the situation is that it has everything to do with cozying up to the Democrat's union base as we approach the November General Election. The fact that this move will harm relations with a key strategic ally in an area of the world where we don't have that many friends matters not at all to Pelosi et als.

Technically BDS.........but BDS nonetheless

Those suffering from BDS are all over the place. What's fascinating to me is that they simply can't help themselves, and ultimately, they always reveal themselves, such as the Washington Post's Tech Writer, Steve Gillmor: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/05/17/AR2008051701285.html. Get a load of this comment, which is buried within an article WHICH IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT A DISPUTE BETWEEN SOCIAL NETWORKING SITE FACEBOOK AND GOOGLE. Here he is, discussing a Facebook explanation of the dispute:

"The tortured PRspeak rivals the current Bush Administration press officer's gyrations in denying our idiot president's appeasement charges are about Obama, while John McCain drives the Straight Talk Express over the Democratic nominee as he eats a hot dog on the campaign trail."

Pure BDS.......................

The global test

Democratic Presidential hopeful Barack Obama has some words of warning to Americans who date to think that they can heat their homes at 72 degrees and (gasp!) drive SUV's: No, you can't: http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5h-wpxs1Re-8vx2Zk5xnYygW1W67w.

Here is his specific quote:

"We can't drive our SUVs and eat as much as we want and keep our homes on 72 degrees at all times ... and then just expect that other countries are going to say OK," Obama said.

Hmmm. So, other countries should have a veto over what we do?

Time to starting hating France again

That Nicholas Sarkozy honeymoon didn't last long. It turns out that his government is just as anti-Israel as any of its predecessors, as his foreign minister, Bernard de Kouchner, has been meeting with Hamas: http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1210668673709&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull. The fact that even the Arabist EU considers Hamas a terrorist organization doesn't matter to these people.

God, I HATE France.................

UPDATE (12:35 p.m.): Then again, why SOULDN'T France talk to Hamas, given that the feckless, duplicitous Olmert government is doing the same thing: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/984388.html.

I'm not sure who hates Israel the most, the Arabs, the Europeans or the Olmert government..........

Newsweek abandons all pretext of objectivity

It's a poorly-kept secret that the MSM is in the tank for Barack Obama. How bad is it? Even Saturday Night Live did a piece on it several months back. The latest fluff piece comes courtesy of Newsweek Magazine, which talks in glowing terms about how the Obama Presidential Campaign is valiantly overcoming any and all hurdles it is encountering: http://www.newsweek.com/id/136440.

Honestly, I have no idea how John McCain is going to be able to overcome Obama and his lackeys in the MSM.................

Israel's military situation: An Insider's take

This is a link to a fascinating interview in Haaretz with Major General Amos Yadlin, the head of the Israeli Directorate of Military Intelligence: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/984274.html. In it he talks of the many threats Israel faces, including Iran, Syria, and of course Hezbollah and Hamas. The long and the short ot if is that when the next war involving Israel begins--and it is a question if when, not if--it will be a very different war from the one Israel fought against Hezbollah in 2006. This time, Hezbollah has missiles that will reach Tel Aviv and beyond.............

"I hate the Jews!" "Well, I hate them MORE!"

Only in the bizarro world that is the Middle East can you have Islamofascist terrrorists accusing each other of being soft on Israel: http://ap.google.com/article/ALeqM5h0arauyjLz9xhnBdnw6pEEOpKErwD90OBAVG7. This is so bizarre that it's almost comical.

I would normally make a comment about how this story has received virtually no MSM attention, but threats against Israel aren't news, unfortunately. It's only when Israel attempts to do something about those threats that the MSM checks out the situation.

I have the answer to this question

The article asks, "What do the Saudis want?": http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/05/what_do_the_saudis_want.html. Aside from money, I think that the answer is fairly obvious. How about the death of all Americans (especially Jewish ones), or at the very least their conversion to Islam? Isn't that what Wahhabist Islam teaches?

Why the U.N. should be expelled, reason #3,894,234,623

The U.N. is appointing a special investigator to investigate racism. So far, so good. Where is this investigator being sent? Not Saudi Arabia, where all faiths other than Islam are banned. Not Iran, where calls for genocide against Israel and Jews are greeted with a collective yawn by the world community. Not France, where race riots in the infamous "banlieus" are commonplace. Not China, where the Falun Gong is being brutally oppressed. Nope, the U.N. is sending that investigator............................HERE: http://www.reuters.com/article/politicsNews/idUSL1684309820080516?feedType=RSS&feedName=politicsNews&rpc=22&sp=true.

If you needed yet another reason to hate that odious organization, there it is..........

Beware the Crazy Ants!

Seriously! There is a species of ants now infecting the Houston area which has a predilection for eating electrical equipment, or something like that: http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/front/5779654.html.

I guess that in a world that also has creatures like the Duck-billed Platypus, the Three-toed Sloth and the Walking Stick, there's room for these critters, too.............

Has it really been 10 years?

Ten years ago this coming Thursday (May 22), it will have been a full decade since one of my favourite tv shows of all-time, Seinfeld, went off the air. I really can't believe that it's been that long and to borrow an old cliche, it really does seem like it was "just yesterday". I can still spout off lines from the show ("No soup for you!"), and when you tie in the fact that Mrs. BHG and I left for Hawaii the next day, there are all sorts of emotions and thoughts running through my head right now.

A couple of other 10-year anniversaries from this year: One of my favourite movie comedies, There's Something about Mary, is also now a decade old, and was it really ten years ago that Sammy Sosa and Mark McGwire captivated the Baseball world with their assault on Roger Maris' single-season home run record? Of course, we can pretty much be certain now that their home run totals were steroid-fueled, but at that time, it was a lot of fun..............