Where’s the Outrage?

The Houston Astros baseball team has introduced “All You Can Eat” Thursdays. On Thursday home games you can pay $35 and, in addition to a seat, get unlimited hot dogs, nachos, peanuts, popcorn, soda and water. Maybe this is being done in response to concern by the team that the rise in gas prices will hurt attendance this year. Another option my hometown Astros could consider is allowing fans to bring their own food in the stadium. This would lower the cost of going to a game. Other teams allow outside food. In any case, this new offer is disgusting.

Meanwhile, much of the world is being impacted by increases in the price of food. I’m not suggesting we poison the world with stadium food. Or that a person eating a meal of four hot dogs and three trays of nachos is denying a hungry person in Cameroon a meal of hot dogs and nachos. But what if the Astros donated $1 from each ticket on All You Can Eat Day to world food relief efforts? This would at least acknowledge that some people don’t have access to things like “All You Can Eat” Thursdays.

Above you see a picture of the world’s longest hot dog. Maybe instead of many hot dogs, “All You Can Eat” customers could be served a four or five foot long hot dog?

Below is a picture of Zam Zam Cola. This brand is produced in Canada and is popular in Iran and in parts of the Arab world. I would have a Zam Zam with my five foot hot dog.

Tags: Sports by Texas Liberal
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The House defeated a $162 billion proposal to fund the Iraq War thru 2009. A coalition of Democrats and insightful Republicans (is that an oxymoron?) who read the tea leaves in Mississippi and are trying to distance themselves from a President who is losing popularity by the second.

Tags: Budget, Iraq by ecthompson
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President George W. Bush was addressing the Knesset (Israel’s Parliament) today. Bush said: “Some seem to believe we should negotiate with the terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

Somebody please help me. Who said anything about appeasement? Pat Buchanan pointed out that the Bush administration negotiated with Libya’s Muammar Gaddafi. He gave up his nuclear ambitions. We tried the hard line with North Korea and they made more nuclear weapons during the Bush administration than in their history. We tried the hard line against Iran and they are clearly stronger now than since the late 1970’s.

Barack Obama had a thoughtful statement: “It is time to turn the page on eight years of policies that have strengthened Iran and failed to secure America or our ally Israel. Instead of tough talk and no action, we need to do what Kennedy, Nixon and Reagan did and use all elements of American power — including tough, principled and direct diplomacy — to pressure countries like Iran and Syria.”

It appears to me that Bush is trying to go out of his way to prove how bad his administration truly is. I’m not sure that he did Senator John McCain any favors.

Tags: Iran, Israel by ecthompson
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I guess the biggest news from yesterday was John Edwards’ endorsement of Senator Barack Obama. Edwards gave a GREAT speech.

• Nothing but ugly news is coming out of China. More and more pictures showing terrible destruction. I haven’t read any estimates of property damage but the death total continues to rise. There is significant damage to several dams which have put several cities in more danger.
• Cindy McCain sold off over $2 million in Sudanese investments. But, I prefer not to beat up Ms. McCain for being rich or even inheriting huge sums of money.
• On the other hand, I don’t mind beating up Senator John McCain for having the most incoherent Iraq policy. Just three months ago, McCain accused those who wanted to pull out of Iraq of not understanding military principles. I guess he doesn’t understand those same principles. Today, his campaign announced a plan to have most troops home by 2013. If I didn’t know better, I would say that this looks almost like a timetable.
• News from Myanmar is still awful. Farmers may miss harvest time.
• David Broder of the Washington Post has been the wise sage of journalism for a long time. Today, he waxes on West Virginia and Obama. He compares Tuesday’s contest to John F. Kennedy and Hubert Humphrey back in 1960. Although the comparison is interesting, it has nothing to do with what happened on Tuesday. Obama made a decision not to spend $15 to $30 million to educate the voters of West Virginia. Obama would have probably still lost the primary even with the expenditure, just by less. Wouldn’t the money be better spent on Oregon where it will give him a lead in elected delegates and the popular vote that can not be over come?
• Dan Froomkin had a great article yesterday on Bush’s Politico interview. Keith Olbermann’s Special Comment was on the interview.

Tags: Election 2008, Foreign Affairs, Iraq by ecthompson
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It has been a little while since Keith Olbermann had a “Special Comment.” Olbermann has four major points about an interview yesterday that President George Bush gave to Politico.com and the users of Yahoo.

• The election of a Democratic President could emboldened the enemy. This, of course, is nonsense. It is fear-mongering. It is so 2004. The country has moved past this.
• I was told they had Weapons of Mass Destruction, said Bush. This is the “It wasn’t my fault” defense that Bush has used in the past. Olbermann is not letting him get away with that weak answer because the buck stops at the President’s desk. The President is the one that appointed those knuckleheads. He was the one that didn’t ask for objective opinions.
• Finally, there was that great quote: “I don’t want some mom whose son may have recently died to see the Commander in Chief playing golf. I feel I owe it to the families to be in solidarity as best as I can with them. And I think playing golf during a war just sends the wrong signal.” President Bush has said some painfully uninformed things over the last 7 years, but this may be the worst. It seems that he gave up golf not for Lent but not for the Iraq War.  Olbermann really lets Bush have it on this one, and he should because the idea is more than condescending. Oh, but, is this just another spin job? The Associated Press has photos of President Bush playing golf after the death of the UN envoy.

Olbermann’s “Special Comment” might of been a little over the top but he was correct. Bush isn’t sprinting to the finish line like he said. He is limbing. If he were a boat he would be listing to one side. I guess the one thing that is clear is George W. Bush is the worst president in the last 50 years. In fact, he maybe the worst president, ever.

 

 Countdown - Special Comment [12:07m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Tags: Al Qaeda, Countdown, Iraq by ecthompson
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