Random Thoughts

1) Go Steelers: Since the Browns lost, you have some breathing room. Forget about everything else, and BEAT the F'in Pats!

2) Geaux Tigers. Not that you should be in the championship game. I could deal with a 2 loss team in the title game, if there were not a more worthy 1 loss team. And there may not be. There is, though, an undefeated team named Hawai'i. My Dad always said that if you're undefeated, no one knows what your limits are. I officially believe Hawai'i should be in the title game. Even in a weak conference, it's hard to never slip and to therefore go undefeated. Doubt me? Ask OSU about a little game against Illinois. Ask USC to explain a loss at Stanford.

3) Republicans -- Reap what you sow. For the past 20 years, the Republicans have done a great job of getting people to put their religious convictions ahead of their economic interests (for more info, read "Don't Think of an Elephant" and "What's the Matter With Kansas?"). Now that they don't think social conservatism will win a general election, they want Republicans to vote for a fiscally conservative social moderate (Guliani), or flip-flopper (Romney) in the primary. And then along comes Huckabee, a Bible thumping tax and spender -- possibly the compassionate conservative (to some degree) that G. W. Bush claimed to be. I'm enjoying the implosion. BTW, Gov. Huckabee -- I'm glad you at least agonized over the decision to kill people by lethal injection before you determined their lives didn't mean as much as a fetus's. Hillary will have you for lunch, and Barack will just make you look LAME.

4) I'm throwing this out here for the Democrats who won't cut off funding for the war. Here's your argument: The engagement and mismanagement of the war in Iraq shows that President Bush will not act in the interest of our soldiers. Cutting off funding is therefore dangerous, because this president might leave our troops there without financial support rather than bringing them home. We can't risk that.

5) What you're going to hear about the Venezuelan election is that Chavez's referenda to remove term limits didn't pass. What will fade out is that something like 9 million people voted, out of a possible 16 million. Maybe we'll have better luck exporting democracy when we get that kind of participation in a US election.

6) Buying a house is a full time job. You should get sick leave just from the stress. I'm now in escrow, and suddenly there's a list of things my seller knew needed to be fixed, but didn't have to tell me about 'til now. If I ask them to pay for the repairs, they can nullify escrow if they got a better bid at the Open House they held today. And it all has to be done through agents -- seems like we would need Sec. Rice just to sit down together and hash it out without trading ultimatums.

Have a great night!