Blogging for the Complete Idiot...

Ok, this is my third attempt at blogging and to this point I haven't found my passion, but what I have done is I've become an avid reader of other peoples blogs. You'll find links to some of them on the right hand side of the page. Give them a look. In addition to left-wing blogs I do read some right-wing stuff as well and some of it's pretty good. I don't generally agree with the content but it's put out with good intentions. Recently I've started reading Dan Riehl's blog and I must say the guy is a bit of a tool. He is certainly an active poster (several times daily) but a lot of what he posts is garbage spun in a ridiculous fashion. Take for example his latest post on Barack Obama
it's pretty silly to equate a typo in a press release with an inability to direct foreign policy. If that's there big beef with him shouldn't the right be up in arms about W's complete lack of an ability to articulate a complex thought? Or how about this story about Joe Biden
just silly. I mean is it news that Biden disagrees with his rivals for the nomination? Or is it that Riehl is implying that Joe somehow is a racist who doesn't think Blacks are clean? Ridiculous, this isn't Trent Lott we're talking about after all.

Schilling

Last week Todd Feinburg on WRKO in Boston began a campaign to draft Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling to take on John Kerry for senate in '08. This started a spate of ridiculous phone calls from a bunch of right wing morons suggesting that somehow that would be great for the state of Massachusetts. Ugg. Some of the calls were downright offensive, one caller suggested that "Kerry's two self-inflicted war wounds, and Schill's willingness to pitch with a flap of skin stitched down to hold a ligament in place tells me all I need to know about the two of them"...wow. Since when does pitching in a kids game compare to fighting an enemy in war time? That's just plane offensive and if a liberal had said something similar the right would have jumped all over it but the host of the show let it go.

Thankfully Curt has put all of this to rest by declaring this morning on the Dennis and Callahan Show that he WILL NOT be retiring after this season.

Callahan at it again

The discussion on the D&C show this morning centered around Lovie Smith and Tony Dungee being hailed as the first two black coaches to make it to the Super Bowl. Callahans stance was unsurprising in that he felt too much was being made of it and that somehow this was not a big deal. His claim was that these two didn't have to overcome anything and that the ground had been broken for them some 18 years ago when Art Shell took over as head coach of the Raiders. I suppose there is some truth to this but it's not like black head coaches have a long history in the NFL to this point, I mean we are talking about only 18 years, less than half my lifetime. Dennis was making some nice points that it wasn't about bringing focus to our racist society, but about celebrating an achievement of growth as a society.

Do I think this is a huge milestone? No. The huge milestone will be when we have a minority or a female as president. We are so far behind the curve on this one in the developed world that it should be a great source of embarrassment. That doesn't mean you do it to so it, but certainly there have been minorities and women who have been supremely qualified to be our Commander in Chief, certainly more qualified than our current president.

I missed a couple of shows last week, I wonder if Callahan has apologized for propping up the Obama "Madrassa" story. Could there be a more clear cut case of "Swift Boating"?

Ed Brown Tax Prep

Would you let Ed Brown do your taxes? The guy continues to claim there's no law that allows the feds to collect taxes on income. Now, I'm 37 years old and it's been awhile since my last civics class but as this article points out the 16th amendment was ratified in 1913 and allows for the collect of taxes from income. Pretty simple. Now I know this guy is holed up but alot of supporters are gathering, and by allowing that they are going to create a David Koresh type of martyr out of the whacko. He's on a well, has solar power and has months of food. What to do? well, how about not allowing supporters access to him, they will only manage to bring in more supplies, weapons and ammunition. Blockade him in and let him see how he likes sticking it out alone. His wife is going to be sentenced on April 24th, we'll see what kind of coward he is when he let's her go down for the both of them.

Ruby Ridge Part Deux?

Ok, so I'm sure by now many of you have heard of this NH whack job Ed Brown. So what we have here is your run of the mill libertarian/militia type. Lot's of guns, a principal to stand on and a house that can operate "Off the grid"...I'm a little surprised this hasn't been getting a ton of national play but it seems like this may be because officials are soft selling it. They don't seem to be putting any pressure on the guy even though there is a bench warrant out for him.

I grew up in NH. I can't pretend this gives me any special insight into Mr. Brown's world but I certainly knew plenty of people who shared many of his views and would clearly count themselves as sympathizers. In fact a neighbor of mine was a bit unhinged in a similar way. Needless to say we didn't knock on his door come Halloween.

I'm interested to see how this plays out. He's got support coming from all sorts of directions on this one, hell nobody likes paying taxes though some of us view it as a necessary evil while others just view it as evil. Is this the next Ruby Ridge?

In the beginning...

How to begin? I've been blogging on and off for a couple of years with little success. The chief reason for this lack of success has been, I think, my inability to find subject matter that keeps me entertained enough to stick with blogging long enough to gain an audience.

As long as I have been blogging I have been attracted to political blogs, and most recently I have become a regular reader of Callingallwingnuts.com by Mike Stark, Scoobie Davis Online and the Huffington Post. In a "know the enemy" effort I've also been a sometimes reader/commenter at right wing news and views and I often find myself at The Drudge Report.

It has been Mike Stark and his efforts in the Virgina Senate race and the plight/saga of Spocko of Spocko's brain that have inspired me to begin my own politically based blog. As I was thinking about doing this I struggled with what some of my topics might be...and it hit me...Spocko was exposing the hate speech being spewed at KSFO in San Francisco, maybe I could do something locally.

My radio listening habits have mainly been limited to the short drive taking my son to daycare in the morning and the occasional work related driving that I do. For the past couple of years I've alternated between Boston sports talk on WEEI (locally broadcast on WVEI) and Air America. Sadly in December AA ceased to exist in Boston (I really miss Stephanie Miller, that's good radio) so I am limited now to Dennis&Callahan on my morning drive. John Dennis was a local sports broadcaster for a number of years and Gerry Callahan (AKA Captain Forehead) is a writer and columnist for the local tabloid The Boston Herald.

Both men are to the right on the political spectrum (though Dennis has begun to express displeasure with W's handling of the war recently) and often the morning's subject matter turns to the topic of politics. Now you may be asking yourself "what are a couple of sports talk guys doing delving into politics"? Well your guess is as good as mine. They go off on a wide range of topics...by wide I mean sports, how much they hate liberals, how much Callahan LOVES W and their undying manlove for "24" and Jack Bauer.

What do these two boneheads have to do with this blog? Well, they (and more specifically Callahan) are my inspiration. If the hate at KSFO is worthy of being exposed, than so to are the rants that Callahan seems to go off on daily.

His current object of hate is Barack Obama. Whenever possible he refers to Senator Obama as "Barack Hussein Obama" in the Fox news mold. While I realize this is Obama's full name it's pretty clear that Callahan is only using his middle name in an effort to conflate the publics association of his name with that of Saddam Hussein.

On Wednesday January 17th the hosts of the D&C show were discussing "24" and the minor dust up of it's rightward leanings. Of course they defended the show as merely "realistic" and considered the scandal nothing. In fact they claimed that somehow the shows use of Muslims as terrorists was somehow doing real Muslims a favor by giving them jobs in Hollywood. Of course this ignores the fact that several of the actors portraying these terrorists are not actually Muslim (Kal Penn, Harry Lennix and Adoni Maropis to start).

Now in addition to this when naming the characters played by these men Callahan referred to one of the terrorists as "Obama" a clear attempt to associate Barack Obama with terrorists. Of course at every chance he gets Callahan likes to make sure everyone knows that the Democrats have no plan for Iraq and simply want to surrender.

While I may comment on a host of other issues, I will make a sincere effort to continue to bring the daily rantings of Gerry Callahan to you so you won't to listen yourself.