Archive for August 2005

Ahhhh, the DDN’s Speak Up column: Bringing us the thoughts of idiots for many years

August 31, 2005 Dayton One comment

Today’s entry:

Maybe if George W. Bush had signed the Kyoto Accord to stop global warming, Hurricane Katrina wouldn’t have happened.
–Dayton Daily News: Speak Up

There’s really no need to say any more.

And while I’m talking about sad things…

August 26, 2005 Dayton No comments

This from the DDN’s roundup of this week’s HS Football matchups:

Both Carroll and Beavercreek are coming off great seasons, albeit by different standards. The Patriots advanced to the D-II state semifinals before losing to eventual state champion Columbus Brookhaven…. Beavercreek is coming off its best season in recent memory. The Beavers went 3-7 and lost a pair of one-point games. Creek was 2-28 the previous three years.
–Dayton Daily News

*sigh*

This is just a sad day

August 24, 2005 Cincinnati One comment
Zimpher couldn’t even handle the press conference properly. She needed to stand there, looking dour, and express the usual platitudes about wishing it hadn’t come to this. Instead she gets in front of the microphones with a Joker-like smile plastered on her face, grinning like a Cheshire Cat, acting for all the world as if it was the best day of her life.




Nancy Zimpher claims to be concerned about such things as what the University of Cincinnati stands for. Things like its image. Its integrity.
And she should be. Especially today.
Today, if you’re a UC employee, you see clearly that if a bus is coming around the corner – headed down that one-way street called Loyalty – Zimpher’s is the hand you don’t want to feel in the small of your back.
Today, if you work at UC, you understand that when the president gives you an option – like, say, you can keep your job through the final two years of your contract – you should not make the mistake of assuming she really means it.
Today, if you’re trying to do the best job you can for the University of Cincinnati, you realize that you should not take for granted that the lady upstairs will actually allow you to.
The University of Cincinnati is where, at a luncheon for academic scholarship candidates, they decorate the tickets and tables with basketballs and the front of the room with an ice sculpture of a basketball player. It’s where they hold public rallies to celebrate admission into the Big East Conference. It’s where they fire the coach that took them there.
The University of Cincinnati is where standards are so important that they’re doubled. It’s where hypocrisy holds the highest offices.
…
If the university had fired Huggins before his graduation rate began to turn for the better, we could have grudgingly accepted that. If it had fired him swiftly after the DUI, we could have grudgingly accepted that. If, on high ground, it had fired him when the Bearcats were having their way with Conference USA, we could have grudgingly accepted that.
But this is unacceptable. This is dirty. This is stupid.
This is wrong.
…
Incidentally, what must the Big East be thinking today? Would it have been so eager to bring on Cincinnati if it had known that the impresario of the university’s flagship program would be slashed before basketball season? In a bath of blood? In a barrage of bad publicity?
Would it have been so eager to bring on Cincinnati if it had known the administration was so disingenuous, so cruel, so clumsy?
And what about you, Bearcats fan? If you had known what you know now about the school in which you’ve invested your rooting interest, would you have followed it so fiercely all this while? Would you have given it so much love and money?
Probably so, because Huggins earned it over 16 years. You gave him what he deserved.
The same, sadly, cannot be said for the university.
–Lonnie Wheeler – The Cincinnati Post

Whether you think Huggs should go or not you simply cannot deny that there is no possible way Zimpher could have handled this in a worse manner.
She…
Must…
Be…
Fired…

Patti Davis on Pat Robertson’s religion…

August 24, 2005 Religion No comments

When I lived in New York City, I used to give money to a homeless man who stood on the same corner of Columbus Avenue every day, rain or shine. He was never pushy, he was always polite, and I just felt like giving him money. One day, I saw a man in a business suit getting right in this man

Words cannot adequately express how I feel.

August 23, 2005 Cincinnati No comments
The Enquirer reports that Bob Huggins is being given 24 hours to accept a $3 million buyout of his contract or he will be fired.
This is stupid. This is preposterous. This is idiotic. This is outrageous.
This is the quickest possible way for Nancy Zimpher to take a great program and run it completely and totally into the ground. YOU DO NOT GET YOURSELF INTO A NEW, MORE COMPETITIVE CONFERENCE AND IMMEDIATELY DUMP THE PERSON WHO GOT YOU THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Nancy Zimpher has done more damage to my alma mater’s prestige in two years than Bob Huggins ever has.

Oh, come on…

August 23, 2005 Religion No comments

What do you think you’re doing Pat Robertson?

Religious broadcaster Pat Robertson suggested on-air that American operatives assassinate Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez to stop his country from becoming “a launching pad for communist infiltration and Muslim extremism.”
“We have the ability to take him out, and I think the time has come that we exercise that ability,” Robertson said Monday on the Christian Broadcast Network’s The 700 Club.
–USA Today

A good look inside Iraq

August 11, 2005 War/Terrorism/Middle East No comments

Michael Yon sends back dispatches from Mosul, Iraq. It’s the type of stuff you won’t hear on the news here at home where they only take notice when good-guys are killed.

The Yarmuk traffic circle is fantastically dangerous. On the first mission I ran in Mosul, we lost two soldiers and an interpreter, all killed by a car bomb. Others were horribly burned, scarred for life. Many of our wounded and killed soldiers got it right here, or in the immediate vicinity. The ISF takes serious losses in this part of town. But it’s not entirely one-sided– the Deuce Four has killed well over 150 terrorists in this neighborhood in the past 10 months. But almost none of those made the news, and those that did had a few key details missing.
Like the time when some ISF were driving and got blasted by an IED, causing numerous casualties and preventing them from recovering the vehicle. The terrorists came out and did their rifle-pumping-in-the-air thing, shooting AKs, dancing around like monkeys. Videos went

Schmidt beats Hackett in the 2nd CD

August 3, 2005 Cincinnati, Politics/Government No comments

52-48
Yes, let’s all pretend that this is a good sign for the Democrats, that it shows they have a shot in Southwest Ohio and are strong nationally. Let’s pretend this is a portent of the Republican party’s downfall. Never mind that this was the perfect storm for them and they still failed. They had a Republican opponent with very little name recognition, an unenergized Republican base, strong support from the national party thanks to it being the only race in the country and a Democratic candidate doing his very best to hide his Democratic tendencies and present himself as a Republican… and they still failed.
(None of this is meant to take away from Hackett… he was the best candidate the Dems could put up there and he ran the best campaign he could. He just couldn’t win.)
Yeah, yeah, the Democrats’ defeat is all because of the racists and the bigots and the homophobes and the misogynists… blah, blah, blah… Is it any wonder the Dems keep losing when so many of them can’t cotton to the idea that reasonable people can oppose them and not be stupid, racist, red-necked bigots?