The Kind-Hearted Smart Aleck

I read two quotes today which I felt the need to share and rebut. They come courtesy of former NFL head coach and current NFL analyst Tony Dungy, and former Arkansas governor and current douchebag Mike Huckabee. I'll start with Dungy's comment, as he made his thoughts known on why Pro Bowl quarterback Colin Kaepernick has yet to get signed by an NFL team: "Without that national anthem [protest], someone would have signed him by now. If you're seen as a distraction off the field, for whatever reason, you better have a lot of talent going for you. People will overlook it. They always sign talent if they think he's going to upgrade your team. Michael Vick went through a lot of that and had some teams say no [to signing him]. Andy Reid was the one coach who said, 'Hey, we'll do it. We think enough of him as a player, and we know we're going to take some criticism.' With Joe Mixon, you had the same thing. That's what happens." Really? Dung...

Throughout Golden State's record-breaking season this year, former NBA players have continually attempted to minimize the team's accomplishments. Scottie Pippen suggested his Chicago Bulls teams of the past would sweep the Warriors in a best-of-7 series. Charles Barkley has refused to jump on the Warriors bandwagon, even after the team won the title a year ago. Now it's Hall-of-Famer Gary Payton's turn, as he recently said the following about 2-time MVP Stephen Curry: "Michael Jordan, Larry Bird, Wilt Chamberlain, Bill Russell and Kareem Abdul-Jabbar were also worthy of the distinction (unanimous MVP vote) that the Curry vote was about era. I think all of those guys were unanimous decisions, too. It just happened in an era that went his way. I commend him and what he's accomplished. But you gotta think about who was voting for MJ, Kareem, in their time, why they wouldn't have given all their votes to those guys. ... If you look at LeBron, what he does for...

I stumbled across an article written by First Amendment Coalition Executive Director, Peter Scheer, today, and felt the need to respond. The article's entitled, "College Students Need Lessons in Tolerance and Free Speech." I'll share the opening two and final full paragraphs of the article, because I think they provide a clear picture of what Mr. Scheer is trying to express. "There's nothing like the massacre of 129 Parisian civilians at the hands of jihadi sociopaths, utterly convinced that their barbarism manifests the will of God, to provide some perspective on the recent whining of students at a number of America's most elite colleges and universities. For the past few weeks, students across the country -- at Yale University in Connecticut, Amherst College in Massachusetts, New Hampshire's Dartmouth College, the University of Missouri, and southern California colleges Claremont McKenna and Occidental -- have been testing the limits of academ...

I continue to be amazed by how an intelligent former neurosurgeon like Ben Carson can regularly come across as both delusional and moronic. It seems that whenever the GOP candidate gets asked about something he dislikes, he feels the need to compare it to either the Holocaust or slavery. When he was asked about the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare), what'd he compare it to? Slavery. When he was asked about gun control, what'd he compare it to? The Holocaust. Just this past Sunday, when Meet the Press host Chuck Todd asked Carson about abortion, here's what one of the GOP front-runners had to say: "Think about this. During slavery - and I know that one of those words you're not supposed to say - but I'm saying it. During slavery, a lot of the slave owners thought they had the right to do whatever they wanted to that slave, anything that they chose to do. And what if the abolitionists had said, 'You know, I don't believe in slavery, I think it's...

It's a wonder sometimes why I'm into sports as much as I am. Most times, sports are looked at from a black-and-white perspective. They're numbers-dominated, especially now in the fantasy-sports era, which leaves us with the good and the bad, the winners and the losers. However, for as much as most sports analysts and commentators like to look at things from this black-and-white vantage point, I think they often times look past the many shades of grey when analyzing a particular, sport, team, or player. Every year, especially now with the Internet and 24-hour news networks, many seemingly obsess over the concepts of legacies and how certain teams and players would rank among the very best throughout the history of the sport. The glaring problem with such comparisons and analyses is the fact sports have consistently changed over time, so it'd be virtually impossible to accurately conclude on whether a particular team or player would be less, just as, or more dominant du...

It's very commonplace for liberals or progressives to desire change, to want the country to "progress" and move forward on a number of issues. It's one reason why I believe self-described liberals to be less consistent making it to the polls on election day, because if we don't see the progress we had anticipated or been told to expect, we'll often times feel less motivation to vote the next election cycle. Conservatives, meanwhile, as the term would suggest, tend to want things to stay as they are, for things not to change too drastically. Because drastic changes aren't very common, they tend to be regularly more content come election day than progressives, which may be one factor why Republican candidates have a tendency to outperform Democratic candidates in the midterms. Going along those same lines, conservatives tend to claim that they love this country as it is or "as it was" and will even go so far as to criticize progressives for seeki...

I hate to make fun of people's addictions, however, I couldn't help but laugh at a story I read about the matter. On Monday, 23-year-old Michael Durban showed up to the Marion County Courthouse in Oregon, where he was to be arraigned on a heroin possession charge. When he went through security screening, deputies found hypodermic needles and a cotton ball which contained heroin in his pocket. He thereby went from being arraigned on a drug charge to being arrested and charged with unlawful possession of heroin. When Durban was asked about the needles and cotton ball, he said, "I got mixed up. I thought I left it in my car." No, this is not an article from The Onion , and yes, I had to double-check that too. In light of this odd event, expect the following to occur at some point in the future: - A man going to court for a DUI shows up with nothing but his car keys and a half-empty bottle of Jack Daniels - Someone charged with indecent exposure shows up to co...

On his weekly talk radio program, former Arizona State Senator Russell Pearce recently made some pretty wild remarks which forced him to resign as Arizona Republican Party's first vice chair this past Sunday. The main remark which landed him in hot water was this: "You put me in charge of Medicaid, the first thing I'd do is get [female recipients] Norplant, birth-control implants, or tubal ligations. Then, we'll test recipients for drugs and alcohol, and if you want to [reproduce] or use drugs or alcohol, then get a job." You heard it here first - a male Republican believes in birth-control! ...well, among some other things... Pearce then tried to defend his comments by telling the Washington Post  the following: "[The comments were] written by someone else. [I] failed to attribute them to the author. This was a mistake. This mistake has been taken by the media and the left and used to hurt our Republican candidates." Let's attempt to tra...

Texas Governor Rick Perry seems to have a problem with numbers. Remember what happened during the Republican Primaries in the last general election cycle? The following exchange occurred during one such debate: Perry: "It's three agencies of agencies of government when I get there that are gone - Commerce, Education, and the um, what's the third one there? Let's see. Oh five - Commerce, Education and the um, um." Romney: "The Environmental Protection Agency?" Perry: "EPA, there you go." After taking back his statement about the EPA, the lovely discussion continued: CNBC moderator John Harwood: "But you can't name the third one?" Perry: "The third agency of government I would do away with - the education, the uh, the commerce and let's see. I can't the third one. I can't. Sorry. Oops." Then this past Sunday on Meet the Press , Perry told host David Gregory that, "I'm really worried abou...

This past Saturday, a "Choose Purity" event was held at the William Pearson Center in Las Vegas (yes, Sin City). What was the ultimate goal of this "Choose Purity" event? According to Officer Regina Coward, who helped organize the event, it was to persuade girls to wait until marriage to have sex. So, what happens if girls engage in premarital sex? According to Ms. Coward, girls fall victim to sexual assault, gangs, drugs, and even prostitution. As Coward said, "Avoid sex and avoid those perils." It's just that easy! Well, so long as you're not easy, or something... Ironically enough, Ms. Coward said she's passionate about abstaining from sex until marriage because she was impregnated at 16, and has always wondered how life could have been different if she had followed through with her current pro-abstinence message. The fact of the matter is, though, that roughly 95% of people engage in premarital sex, and those whom take virginity pledge...

With regard to a new Nabisco Honey Maid commercial, which showcases a same-sex couple, anti-LGBT rights Pastor Kevin Swanson of Colorado was at it again, as he made the following statements in a Generations Radio broadcast: - "When you come down to things like axe murder or homosexuality and you say, 'We're really going to promote it and we're going to encourage everybody in America to engage in this or at least support this thing,' there will be people on the other side who will take an adamantly opposed position to your support of axe murdering or homosexuality. They will be intolerant -- they will be very intolerant of that which is evil, like axe murdering." - "Maybe they had another family where a dog is the wife with a human husband. Homosexuals love their friends and cannibals love their victims - they taste good." These quotes are so out of whack, I seriously have to wonder if Mr. Swanson was high or drunk at the time of uttering them. ...

Bud Konheim - CEO and co-founder of the luxury-fashion company Nicole Miller - had the following words for 99 percenters when speaking on CNBC's Squawk Box  yesterday: "We've got a country that the poverty level is wealth in 99 percent of the rest of the world. So we're talking about woe is me, woe is us, woe is this. [That] guy making, oh my God, he's making $35,000 a year, why don't we try that out in India or some countries we can't even name. China, anyplace, the guy is wealthy." What this delusional man is forgetting is that the numbers he mentioned don't mean a thing without context. In the countries he listed (and other unnamed ones), the cost of living is much cheaper than in the U.S. Over the past several years, the top 1-2% in this country have experienced a very large majority of the income increases, while the middle- and lower-classes' incomes have been rather stagnant - all while the costs of living have increased. In other wo...

According to a popular Christmas-time forward, which has been deemed as "partly true" by fact-checker Snopes.com (or partly false), conservative talking head and man voted to have a more boring voice than a robot by the name of Dullby - Ben Stein - had this to say about the holiday season: "I don't like getting pushed around for being a Jew and I don't think Christians like getting pushed around for being Christians. I think people who believe in God are sick and tired of getting pushed around, period. I have no idea where the concept came from that America is an explicitly atheist country. I can't find it in the Constitution and I don't like it being shoved down my throat." Like many over at Fox News, it appears as if Ben Stein feels that there's an all-out "War on Christmas" in this country. To Stein and his ilk, saying "Happy Holidays!" to a person can be translated to, "God is not present among us!" What pu...

Upon seeing self-described liberal Andy Ostroy's recent article, entitled, "Are Liberals Just as Bad as Republicans When it Comes to Rhetoric and Spin on the Affordable Care Act?," I admit it caught my attention enough to give it a gander. However, I had a gut feeling the article would leave me shaking my head, and as usual, my gut was right. Ostroy started his article by saying this: "No one's ever accused me of being a patsy for the Republican Party. To the contrary, I've been a staunch supporter of President Obama, Democrats and the liberal agenda. I've also loudly, vociferously and consistently criticized the GOP for driving a wedge into our political system with its self-serving, obstructionist tactics..." As I've learned through the years, whenever a person - particularly a writer, begins an article or a speech by saying, "As you all know, I've been an ardent supporter of X, Y, and Z through the years," expect a "bu...

While, due to some problems with the game, I recently switched to Ruzzle, I still have a handful of long-time opponents I play in Scramble With Friends. While I've made mention of a power-up called a mega-freeze, which players can pay actual money for and provides them an extra minute in a round, it appears a new such option has become available for players. At the end of each and every round now, a pop-up appears on the screen, which says, "Get 20 seconds of extra play," for, you guessed it, money. This is one reason I made the switch to Ruzzle. The game doesn't ask for money to give me or my opponent an unfair advantage. The game is void of power-ups, which can also give one player a significant advantage over the other. It also tends to play much smoother than its Zynga counterpart as well. It would really be quite something to see competitive games played in the manner Zynga offers. In baseball, a team would be afforded a 4th out in an inning if they paid some e...

An ultra-conservative acquaintance of mine posted a status on Facebook the other day which really had me shaking my head. On Monday, it was planned for President Obama to give a speech revolving around the 5-year anniversary of when the country's economic meltdown started. Then came the mass shooting in this nation's capital. Instead of postponing the speech, the president added more to it. He began the speech talking about the tragedy which occurred earlier in the day, transitioned to the situation in Syria, and then to the economy - what all we faced five years ago, how much progress we've made since that point, and what all needs to be done to complete the rebound. Having read all that, this acquaintance of mine then said Monday's speech by President Obama was far worse than former President Bush's mission accomplished banner, due to the tragedy which occurred earlier in the day. He insinuated that the president didn't mention this tragedy in the speech at ...

With Syria appearing to accept Russia's proposal to hand over its chemical weapons, it will most likely prevent any U.S. strike on the country. In my mind, this is a very good thing. Achieving what we want through diplomatic means and not military force will save us money, lives, and drastically decrease potential terrorist backlash from Syrian extremists. However, not everyone feels this way. Many bobblehead dolls over at Fox News and even some war-hungry politicians (::ahem, Senator McCain::), without the need for Viagra, seemed to get hard at the thought of war, and are beginning to go limp in light of these proposed peace talks. According to them, if President Obama doesn't follow through with air strikes on Syria, then not only will all of them go limp, so too will the Washington Monument and the rest of America! Yes, because even though using military force on Syria would increase the chance for another war, more money spent, more lives lost, and falling victim to ano...

Lately, especially after the rodeo clown incident in Missouri, I've been seeing many Facebook posts from conservative friends of mine whom have claimed, "When people made fun of Bush, it was hilarious. When people make fun of Obama, it's racist." This is a very sticky situation, one we've never dealt with before as a country, since this is our first African-American president. While there have been times when perhaps self-described liberals have been a bit too sensitive with regard to Obama jokes - construing them as racist, there have also been countless more examples of racist jokes at the expense of this president than all the others combined. It's one thing to poke fun at presidents as far as their quotes are concerned, policies, gaffes, etc., and quite another to poke fun at them via racial stereotypes. While the former has been frequented and accepted among all 44 of our presidents, we've only had to deal with the latter with #44. The Missouri ro...

A strange development has come about courtesy of the Buckeye Firearms Foundation in light of the U.S. Department of Justice asking police to "keep possession of all the evidence from George Zimmerman's second-degree murder trial," in all likelihood, so a federal investigation can take place on the matter. The Ohio gun group had an interesting response to these events, as they made the following statement: "The move to prevent Mr. Zimmerman from claiming his property is an unacceptable abuse of power. And the threats of federal charges on civil rights grounds is little more than blatant pandering for political gain. Moreover, based on statements he and others have made recently, Holder hopes to use this as the first step toward renewing this administration's attack on gun rights... George Zimmerman has every right to get his property back. And if Eric Holder chooses to deny Mr. Zimmerman that right, Buckeye Firearms Foundation will remedy the matter by pur...

I've been a tad confused in recent days since George Zimmerman was found not guilty in the Trayvon Martin case. Many people whom believe Zimmerman should have been found guilty of at least manslaughter seem to think Zimmerman's actions were at least partially motivated by racism. So in response to the jury's ruling this past Saturday night, I've read many articles and social networking posts from far-right conservatives regarding other murders which involved an element of racism and claiming that these murders and the element of racism in them were far worse than in the case of George Zimmerman killing Trayvon Martin. I'm not here to say which way I lean on whether or not Zimmerman's following and killing of Martin was at least partially influenced by racism. However, I do think it's quite ridiculous for people to write and post about these other murders and basically say, "You see? Zimmerman wasn't too bad. Look at what this guy did! Now that...