Some random ramblings culled from the last couple of weeks:

- Turkey has no flavor. Next year, I’m gonna ask for a bucket of the Colonel’s finest, and see which one gets eaten fastest. I’m down with the mashed potatoes and stuffing and gravy, but dammit, I want flavor with my animal carcass!

- Michael Richards now has a career as a Harassment Awareness speaker, which is more than he had before he went on his ill-advised hate spiel. If you really want to hurt the guy, cut off his Seinfeld DVD royalties and force him to give his residuals from reruns to the United Negro College Fund.

- I keep trying to cash down at Full Tilt and PokerStars and keep winning to build it back up. Case in point, I get down to < $100 at FullTilt, I win a couple of SnGs, place in a couple more, and build up my roll to around $350. I cash out for $250 and leave $100 to play with. And I win a couple of SnGs (including a $50+5 HORSE), build it back over $300, cash out for $200 more, and am currently re-re-re-building it. All in November. I’ve followed a similar pattern in PokerStars (where SharkScope has me designated as a “shark”). Not sure why all my Tilt results aren’t showing up.

- Buying the kids a PS2 for Christmas, following my long-standing policy of buying a video game system when its replacement is released. First two games for the kids are Dance Revolution (for the girl) and Guitar Hero (for the boy). The tough thing is that I prefer playing sports (Madden, Tiger Woods) and FPS (Ghost Recon, Rainbow Six, Call of Duty, Medal of Honor) on the computer rather than the TV. I prefer to play video games on the TV (Mario, DK64, Zelda). I need to figure out what the best goofy games are for the PS2. Hell, I might even turn to ebay and buy ten or twenty at a time….

Political ranting! Caution!

- Nancy Pelosi has predictably steered the Democratic Party bandwagon into oncoming traffic by appointing bootlickers, felons, and cronies to the committee chairmanships, rather than actually promoting party leaders that would actually appeal to the electorate. You axed for it, you got it. Rudy Giuliani and John McCain thank you.

- What’s with this newfound fascination with Barack Obama? How many of these so-called “supporters” know anything about his history or background? I’ll bet that most of the mob is captivated by his personality and his youthful vigor, and don’t have the faintest frickin’ clue what this guy stands for. Idiots.

- Why isn’t there a third party that has any traction in this country? Both parties have distasteful platforms and terrible leadership. I honestly believe that the majority of people in the country would vote for someone who:

o Has a strategy for Iraq specifically, and the Middle East in general – Either economic sanctions, military containment, governmental intervention, or some combination… but a detailed description of what we will do and when it will be done. The administration’s position is “stay the course or we risk the collapse of the puppet leadership and the fundamentalists will regain control”. The Democrat’s position is “the administration is wrong”. Well, WTF should we do? I haven’t seen a single fricking SOLUTION from anyone that addresses the lack of Western-friendly leadership or the abundance of Western-hating terrorists in Iraq.

o Is pro-choice and pro-death penalty. Statistics show that the majority of voters are pro-choice and the majority of voters are pro-death penalty. The question is how much do the two groups intersect. The problem is that you have Bible Belters and bleeding hearts who will never agree and never change their minds, and these are the asshats that make up the leaderships of both major parties.

o Has a strategy to handle the three topics that affect voters the most: domestic security, taxes, and crime. Bonus points for an educational policy and/or an immigration policy. Here’s a clue though, the Republicans have the inside edge on all five of these.

- And I don’t get all of you whiners who are bitching about having the Feds tapping our phone lines. If they save ONE person from dying, it’s worth it. Because law-abiding citizens aren’t giving up anything. This isn’t a slippery slope here. This is a moment in time when lunatics want to kill Americans. DON’T YOU GET THAT?

[ring]

Bad guy #1: Did you purchase the materials?
Bad guy #2: Yes, the bomb has been assembled.
Bad guy #1: Good, we will detonate the bomb at [:click:]

This interrupted, non-monitored call brought to you by the Democratic party. Enjoy your liberties. Dumbasses.

If the Feds want to hear who my son has a crush on, or what I think about the 49ers chances of making the playoffs, or my wife’s recipe for Jambalaya, FINE. Just stop the bad guys from blowing up the good guys.

- If you traveled over Thanksgiving or are planning to travel over Christmas/New Year’s, you should be glad that we have people tapping phones and torturing prisoners, because you are safer because of it. And neither of these methods started with this administration, so get your head out of the sand there. The internet-powered media is what fueled much of the outrage.

- And cut the crap about Gitmo. FDR created internment camps for US citizens during WWII and stole their property. But there weren’t blogs about it at the time. Nor did the media make a big deal about it. Why not? We were at war at the time.

- If you’re anti-Bush, fine. You have more than enough reasons to be. He’s a terrible public speaker, has no vision for the future, and doesn’t seem to know how to motivate worth a crap. He’s a lousy diplomat, has virtually no discernible skills, and isn’t very bright. He was also thrown into a crisis situation almost immediately, and has spent the majority of his time dealing with (his distorted view of) terrorism. Is the world worse off than it was five years ago? Probably, but that’s not all his fault. If you want to blame someone, blame OBL

- Are you personally worse off than you were five years ago as the result of something that GW did? Somehow, I doubt that.

Back to the old grind. I’ve been busy for the last week getting certified to deliver Leadership and Customer Service training for an international training cartel. I know this because the certificate is sitting on the shelf right in front of me and I can read reasonably well. I’m not sure I can actually train any better than I could before the seminar, but now I have a certificate.

Anyway, a lot has happened in the last two weeks since my last post. Democrats have taken control of Congress, the 49ers have won two straight, Britney Spears has filed for divorce; the world as we know it… is changing.

As many predicted, the anti-Bush brigade had their way last week, and overwhelmingly shoved aside the Republicans in both houses, leading to wild cheering from the liberal ranks. Now comes the hard part.

No, I’m not talking about passing laws or distributing chairmanships, I’m talking about controlling the liberal zealots and not doing the exact things that led to their pre-November deficit to begin with. Of course, the liberals start by putting the botox-riddled corpse of Nancy Pelosi out in front of the party, which is roughly equivalent to the Republicans trotting out Jesse Helms or Strom Thurmond. It really points out just how truly out of touch the liberals are. They have a chance to lead the country with a centrist, and claim the middle 2/3 of the electorate by steering away from their traditional tax-and-spend and social welfare, but their first step is to put the most liberal douchebag possible in charge of the House.

Pelosi is the exact WRONG choice to be Speaker with her liberal Bay Area constituency. This shows that the Democrats stupidly believe the election to be an affirmation of their “values”, as opposed to a repudiation of Bush’s policies and values. Instead of promoting a LEADER for the masses, they trot out a shrieking harpy who will immediate alienate many of the moderates for both parties. So the Democrats continue to push their extremists into the forefront, completely ignoring the thoughtful moderates.

The smart thing would be for them to NOT change much of anything, and hope that the massive failures of the Bush Administration continue through the 2008 Presidential race. My guess is that they won’t be able to help themselves, and giddy with their “mandate”, will proceed to pass incredibly stupid social legislation along with some tax-the-middle-class-to-feed-the-poor taxes. And lose any chance at the White House in 2008.

I’m hoping that the US electorate remembers what happened the last time we had a Democratic congress and a Democratic president for a full term. Do Jimmy Carter and 16% interest rates ring a bell?

And I gotta say this little bit, even though it’s rather pointed to some of my five or so readers: If you voted for a candidate purely because of the UIGEA, you’re an idiot. With all of the things going on in the world, and all of the issues that will touch our children and our grandchildren, to put ANY voting weight at all on a fricking unenforceable gambling regulation is completely stupid.