The Weblog awards, albeit a decent idea and was created through honest intentions, is not crucial enough to have people engaging in a blogosphere civil war.

I forgot to make my picks Saturday night.  Sorry.  I was watching the first season of Samurai Jack on DVD and got caught up.

Speaking of which, if you have never watched it, do so if you get a chance.  It's a great cartoon for all ages.  The emotion and depth that goes into it is unbelievable.  And it's not drawn out like anime.

Anyway, on to the NFL.  Once again, the top teams stay untouchable, although Pittsburgh shows signs of weakness.  It's only a matter of time before they get their second loss, and they were just wide right of a 60 yard field goal of catching it against the Jaguars on Sunday night.

The Jags showed a lot of heart in that game, but offensive consistency seems to be a problem.  Leftwich will be an NFL quarterback for a long time to come, but until he can get the ball to his receivers accurately the Jags will be on the outside looking in.  However a lot of people feel the Jags could get a wild card spot, especially since Baltimore and Denver both lost this week.

A Time Magazine press release (via Reynolds at Instapundit):

New York – President George W. Bush’s cabinet is more diverse than National Public Radio, Tavis Smiley tells TIME in an exclusive interview. “It is ironic that a Republican President has an Administration that is more inclusive and more diverse than a so-called liberal-media-élite network,” Smiley says.

Heh.

Actually Tavis, it's not ironic at all.  It's becoming the norm rather than the exception.  Most of the leftist media bastions have always been dominated by middle aged white people - from NPR to PBS to Pacifica on up.  The only ironic thing about your comment is that these organizations actually highlight diversity from organizations and criticize the ones they claim aren't diverse enough.

Hold up; that would actually make them hypocrites.  Never mind; forget I said that.

It's about damn time.

She's about a week or so late, but I'm glad she did it.

Her column is very good as well.

Not a bad week.  Not bad at all.

Thanksgiving was as good as could reasonably be expected.  We detailed that in the preview.  But as for Sunday, New England proved why they were the defending champs, Philly clinched the NFC East in November (as if that wasn't expected), and Pittsburgh is still on top of the mountain, albeit not without some challenges.

That's what Tuesday seemed like.  A lot of people either resigned or were given a pink slip.

Tavis Smiley announced that he wasn't renewing his contract with NPR and his last day is December 16th, claiming that he couldn't draw enough young people to talk radio.

Someone should ask him when has he ever drew young people to anything.  Only older folks watched his show on BET, and young people never listened to NPR or PBS before.  So I don't know what made him think he would be successful with that show.  It seems to me that Smiley and others want to force young people to accept them and follow them everywhere they go rather than actually listening to what they have to say and making decisions based on that.  But if those guys actually did that, they would have shows that are a lot different than what they have now.

Smiley is a good guy, when it comes down to it.  But he is just the same voice in a somewhat younger body (not too young...he is 40).  The fact that he engages in joint ventures with Tom Joyner, a middle-aged dj that targets older audiences, should be a testament to how out of step he is towards the younger audiences.

Next, Kwesi Mfume "resigned" as President of the NAACP, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family, and was possibly aiming for a Senate run in Maryland (good luck with that one). 

Word is that there was a rift between Mfume and NAACP Chairman Julian Bond.  A number of people blamed Bond for an IRS investigation into the NAACP's tax exempt status due to political partisanship.  At the heart of the matter was a hatchet speech that Bond made this summer, bashing Bush and the Republican Party.  Comparing the GOP to the Taliban before September 11th didn't help things either, I'm sure.

Rumors are going to start soon that Smiley might be interested in taking the NAACP post.  While that would give the NAACP a new look, and Smiley might envigorate the grassroots effort, I don't think it will solve the problems of the NAACP.  The organization is partisan, and it doesn't address the issues of African-Americans today, nor does it prepare them for the future.  Personally, I think the whole organization should be dismantled.

There was one hiring...Mel Watt will be the head of the Congressional Socialist Black Caucus.  Watt -who looks like Michael "Flash" Turner from The Five Heartbeats - said he is ready to repair relations with the Bush Administration.

Isn't it interesting how all of these organizations now claim to want to repair relations with Bush, instead of the other way around?  As I was saying earlier in the year, Bush doesn't need them, they needed Bush.  Now it seems that all of the Bush-bashing has put a lot of folks in these organizations in a pickle.

That's a shame, ain't it?  Not.

And Tom Ridge resigned as Secretary of Homeland Security this afternoon.  He will stay on until February 1st.

Not surprising, considering it's a stressful job, as the first term has been to a lot of people.  It would be nice if Bush nominates someone that wants to enforce our immigration laws and close the borders to illegal immigration, as Michelle Malkin wishes, but I guess that's asking too much.

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In sports, Ty Willingham was fired from Notre Dame after three seasons.

That sucks, but the bottom line is that he couldn't bring in the money.  Notre Dame doesn't believe in having a extensive rebuilding period.  They believe in winning NOW.  And if you don't win, you get fired.  It's as simple as that.  When a college puts the kind of money into their football programs as Notre Dame does, you better pull off that $14 million dollar BCS bid.  If not, you're assed out.

To be honest, I wouldn't envy anyone that had to coach at Notre Dame.  It's probably one of the worst situations to have in college football, because

(1) there is so much pressure to succeed and

(2) Notre Dame is an independent school, meaning they do not belong to a conference.  That means that they have a harder time getting a BCS bid because of the automatic conference championship bid clause, which I explained to a point here.  You see, the champions of the major conferences get an automatic BCS bid no matter what their records are.  Since Notre Dame doesn't belong to any of those conferences, that means they only are viable for two at-large bids.  That makes it even harder for Notre Dame to be successful.  In fact, they've been to maybe one BCS bowl since it's been implemented.

So that means Willingham didn't have a real chance unless he went undefeated.  And to make matters worse, he went 5-6 and wasn't bowl eligible last year and went 6-5 and is headed to the lowly Insight Bowl this year.  He's also been blown out by USC, a hated rival, by 31 points each of his three seasons.

While I thought he would have one more chance to save his job next season, it was obvious that he wasn't going to pull in the recruits to be able to get a BCS bid, and that's the only way his job would have been saved. 

Meanwhile, Notre Dame should seriously think about joining the Big East, who has a 7-3 team (Pitt) and a 6-5 team (Syracuse) vying for a BCS bowl bid.  Notre Dame might be salty because they would have to give up some money if they did get a BCS bid, but at least they'd be there.  And it would be a hell of a lot easier getting in through the Big East, considering that Boston College is leaving for the ACC next year and there really isn't much competition.  Do it now before the NCAA strips the Big East of it's automatic bid eligibility.

In the NFL, Butch Davis resigned from the Cleveland Browns.

I'd rather say fired.  Everyone pretty much knew this was his last year.  Cleveland hasn't been a playoff threat in about two seasons.  This would make number three.

But Davis might land on his feet like Pete Caroll did and get a decent coaching job in college football.  Davis was the coach at Miami, in which he took over a scandal-plagued football team and led them to victory against Florida in the 2001 Sugar Bowl and finishing with an 11-1 record.  Caroll is now gunning for his second straight national championship and undefeated season after being fired by the New England Patriots in 2000 for Bill Bellichek.

Some say Davis might look at the job at Notre Dame.  I doubt it, as it looks like Utah's Urban Meyer, who has Utah looking at a possible BCS bid and an undefeated season, will get the job.  He was a former assistant coach and he has said that Notre Dame is his dream job.

It's quite obvious that the 9/11 Commissioners as well as the Washington establishment are not pleased at all about a hold-up in the House of Representatives that threatens to kill the Intelligence Reform Act that would consolidate all of the intelligence agencies under the control of a new Intelligence Director.

Yesterday the chairs took aim at Sensenbrenner's provisions in particular by opposing Sensenbrenner's insistence on making driver's licenses for illegal aliens illegal. 

MR. KEAN:  We've recommended uniform systems and driver's licenses in our recommendations.  We haven't recommended the specific one that Congressman Sensenbrenner wants.  But we're very reluctant to see that whole bill held up just by this one provision.  I mean, we recognize that he wants this very, very badly.  But to hold up every single one of these other provisions to make the American people safer for this one provision or two provisions, to me doesn't make any sense.  He can put it in a separate bill.  We have no position on it under the commission because we didn't consider it.  So I just hope that he will let this bill go forward and then let us look at these provisions and maybe we'll support them as well as everybody else.

MR. HAMILTON:  It is important to have national standards on driver's licenses, passports and other identification documents.  There isn't any doubt that the hijackers use the state driver's licenses to get by a lot of checkpoints.  So standards are important here.  But the fundamental question--we can put national standards in--but whether or not, for example, you issue a driver's license, that's a state matter and ought to be resolved by the state.  And the question Congressman Sensenbrenner raises, don't give driver's licenses to illegal aliens, I think is a valid question.  It needs to be debated.  It should not be resolved, I think, in this bill.  But it should be in the future, and it certainly ought not to hang up literally hundreds of provisions, hundreds of provisions in this bill, including, for example, facilitating emergency responders' work, including improvements in American foreign policy, including border security improvements, aviation security.  We ought not to hang all of that up on a disputed provision in the immigration side.

Kean's reaction doesn't surprise me, as he is a former governor of New Jersey and has a more leftist edge in his outlook.  Hamilton's does.  To try to blazenly dismiss the importance of identification as an access tool for terrorists and illegal aliens that are breaking the laws of our country is reprehensible.

The question that should be asked to Kean and Hamilton is why wasn't this placed into their reform structure?  As Kean stated, the Commission agreed that the driver's license requirements need to be reformed, and had proposed them.  Hence, why didn't they request that those recommendations are added into the current bill?  It sounds like the Commission is interested in political lobbying rather than coming up with needed reform.

And Hamilton's reaction is especially disappointing as he infers that states should have the right to grant access to driver's licenses to those who break federal law.  To claim it would be a "national standard" is ridiculous.  That would be relevant if we were talking about U.S. citizens that were abiding federal law.  But the federal government, particularly the White House, a right and responsibility to enforce laws created by Congress as well as protect our borders from terrorist threats.

As I've stated before, the Senate, the President, and the 9/11 Commission are more interested in candy-coating this in order to make it look like they've done something rather than championing and implementing true reform that could go a long way in protecting the populace.  Sensenbrenner on Rush Limbaugh's show last week stated that the 9/11 hijackers possessed over 60 driver's licenses from five states, and all of them were illegal in accordance to those states' laws.  If the states won't do their job, what's stopping the federal government from taking care of their responsibility?

Here's what Sensenbrenner had to say on ABC's "This Week" on Sunday (via NewsMax):

"The 19 murderers on Sept. 11 got 63 separate legally issued driver's licenses from five states. They used those to open bank accounts and to get on the plane."

Sensenbrenner warned that unless the terrorist loophole was closed, U.S. law enforcement wouldn't be able to prevent another 9/11-style attack.

"The 9/11 Commission specifically recommended that aliens who are here on temporary visas, which were the 9/11 murderers, have their driver's licenses expire on the date of the expiration of their visas," he noted.

"What's wrong with having a uniform national standard to apply to driver's licenses so that people who want to commit terrorist attacks can't game the system?" the Wisconsin Republican asked. "What good is reorganizing intelligence if we don't have homeland security?"

It does no good.  Kean and Hamilton both know it.  But they will stubbornly hold on in an attempt to add on to their 15 minutes.  How dare Sensenbrenner and Hunter oppose the high and mighty Commission???

Sensenbrenner and Hunter, I say again...stand your ground and don't give in.

First, let's talk about college for a minute.  I've been watching some of the games over the weekend, and I've watched some here and there over the season.

This will be published on NorthernArc over the weekend.

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As soon as John Kerry conceded the election, the self-righteousness of the left sprang forth to insult every Bush voter in the country.  Talk about secession, inbreeding, and intelligence became normal talking points when the left would discuss the election.  By the end of the day, a graphic was being passed around on the internet where the Canada/U.S. boundary had been moved further south to add all of the states Kerry won.  The northern country was named "The United States of Canada".  The Southern one, which comprised of the Bush states, was named "Jesusland".

That's normal for them, because they can't admit to how wrong they were throughout this election.  Instead of actually looking within to see what put you in this predicament, always assign blame to others.  After all, leftists have always been good at placing accountability someone other than themselves.

Continuing with their childlike temper-tantrum, average IQ statistics of every state in the nation were being passed around, where the states Kerry won had a higher IQ than most of the states that Bush carried.  Thus, it reminded me of watching an episode of Dexter's Laboratory on Cartoon Network way back, where Dexter starts yelling at his sister, Dee Dee: "You're STOOOPAAD!!"

But in this case, it's the left that's making themselves look "STOOPAD".  Had they actually took the time to think about what they're saying, and do just a little bit more reading - they're calling themselves stupid as well.

Anyone that looks at statistics knows you can't broadbrush the whole group by targeting a majority within a minority of the group and think that's going to provide an accurate analysis.  Leftists are taking the IQ's of the whole population within the state - IQ's and all - and are trying to use that to say the majority of the VOTING populace, which is a much smaller group, is stupid, and that's why they voted for Bush.

But Bush didn't get 100% of the vote in any state he won.  Indeed; most of the voters in the Southern states - where Bush swept the whole region, and tend to be at the bottom of the statistics table - are registered Democrats.  The next time you see someone touting the "stupid" statistic, ask them whether they feel their Democratic Kerry brethern are stupid as well.  Then ask them why have Democrats dominated the state and local legislatures of those states even to this very day.

Knowing leftists as well as I'm sure I do, they'll retort that those aren't leftists, or even moderates.  That's when it's really time to make them sweat:  ask them why the three Democratic presidents after John Kennedy's election in 1960 have been Southerners, and automatically leaders of their party.  It should be fun to see them stumble.

And precisely when did the South become stupid?  After all, the South as been a Democratic stronghold since Thomas Jefferson won the presidency in 1804 (although Jefferson called himself and his followers "Republicans" back then, before Andrew Jackson took the helm and started calling them Democrats).  Despite Republicans' attempts at a "Southern stragedy" during Nixon's runs for president in 68 and 72, Democrat Jimmy Carter still carried every Southern state on his way to winning the Presidency in 1976.  Was the South stupid during all of this time?  When Democrats had an eight-seat advantage in the Southern states in 1994, were they stupid then?  Precisely when did they become stupid?

Leftists are only showing their ignorance when they try to use statistics like these, not the supposed ignorance of others.

I'm not going to say much - mainly because it's the middle of the night (I'm a vampire) and I'm on a janky, archaic computer with a measley dial-up connection.