Take the Olympics, Please

I love the Olympics as much as anyone, but I'm glad they weren't awarded for several reasons. Like Coyote Blog, I don't want my tax money to go to help Chicago build new facilities. Better to make Brazilian taxpayers foot the bill. Also, Chicago is known for corruption, and you know the city's politicians and their cronies would have been skimming off the top left and right. I'd rather see corrupt Brazilians profit improperly from the Olympics.

On a related note, I ask this question after a number of events, but NBC Chicago wants to know who will take down all those "Chicago 2016" signs.

Power Line, however, says I shouldn't be pleased that Chicago lost.

Where Do They Find These People?

TLC network, the home of such characters as:

• families with too many kids,
• dysfunctional parents with too many kids,
• people who put their kids in beauty pageants,
• people who didn't know they were pregnant,
• midgets, and
  
• bridezillas,

is now home to people who raise a monkey as if it were a child.

The question in the title of this post is literal, not rhetorical. Where do they find these people?

Foreign Affairs Friday: What to do with Iran

The US and the international community have not had much luck trying to stop Iran's efforts to create nuclear weapons. The major countries can't agree on sanctions, which probably won't lead Iran to give up its uranium, and most don't really like the idea of a military strike, which would be hard-pressed to destroy all components of the program and would have significant after-effects.

I found two articles this week that propose an alternate approach: a concerted attempt to use the issues of human rights and democracy to topple the Iranian regime.

• Anne Applebaum: "...a sustained and well-funded human rights campaign must be a terrifying prospect. So what if we told the Iranian regime that its insistence on pursuing nuclear weapons leaves us with no choice but to increase funding for dissident exile groups, smuggle money into the country, bombard Iranian airwaves with anti-regime television and, above all, to publicize widely the myriad crimes of the Islamic Republic?

• Robert Kagan likes the sanctions idea, but with a different goal: "It would be better if the administration focused on the regime's instability and ignored the nukes.

  This ought to be the goal of the "crippling" sanctions the Obama administration has threatened. Sanctions will not persuade the present Iranian government to give up its nuclear weapons program. Ahmadinejad and Khamenei see the nuclear program and their own survival as intimately linked. But the right kinds of sanctions could help the Iranian opposition topple these still-vulnerable rulers.

While some people thought the US couldn't have done anything this summer to help the protesters after Iran's fraudulent election, Kagan states, "The toppling of dictators -- Ferdinand Marcos in the Philippines, Anastasio Somoza in Nicaragua, the Polish Communists -- has frequently been aided, sometimes decisively, by foreign involvement, through support to opposition forces or sanctions against the government. One of the main fears of Chinese leaders in 1989 was that students carrying replicas of the Statue of Liberty might gather support from abroad." I agree. No matter what, Iranian leaders will accuse protesters of being Western puppets, so we might as well help out. The people of Iran realize that the post-election protests were legitimate and indigenous.

Considering the apparent hopelessness of the current approach to Iran, even if Russia comes on board, I think the regime-toppling approach is worth a shot.

A Twilight-y post.

In the past week, I've read two different blog posts about Twilight. Neither woman seemed to like it much, and I can't really blame them. I think it might be expectations. Don't think this book is going to change your life, don't think it will be a good source of relationship advice, etc. No matter what the teenage girl who told you to read it said, it's not going to happen. Basically, if you want to enjoy this series, don't think - at all. With that said, you might like it.

But since I've already shared my embarrassing love of the Twilight series, I thought I would also mention one of the best parts of reading Twilight - the mockery of all things Twilight. There is so much good material out there on the world wide web that would not be as funny if you hadn't read the series (although you will probably still get a lot of the jokes). I'd thought I'd share a few of my favorites:

Normal Mormon Husbands has a number of posts written to help out the poor husbands of the world understand what their wife is reading - and address serious issues such as "Can Edward Fart?"

Go Fug Yourself has some excellent reviews of the Twilight cast. But that shouldn't be surprising considering every third post on that site will make me laugh out loud, Kristen Bell can't dress, and Rob Rob Pattinson can't shower.

This alternative Twilight Script (10x shorter, 100x more honest) will make sense (as much sense the possible, that is) to everyone regardless of their familiarity with the real script.

I was going to come up with more, but I really have to no time so your on your own. Go, search, laugh.

*Warning: some of these sites have inappropriate language. Just so you know.

Winning Streak

The last few weeks have gone pretty well, as far as my sports teams are concerned. Let's review:

• Minnesota Vikings: 3-0
• Texas A&M football: 3-0
• Minnesota Gopher football: 3-1 (with a close-fought loss to the then-#8 team)
• Minnesota Twins: surged back to within two games of Detroit in the AL Central (these two teams face off 4 times this week)
• My fantasy football team: 3-0
• Teams that I've been glad to see lose: Steelers, Oklahoma, USC
  

This play sums up how things have been going:


Of course, we know what sports do. These teams will, at some point this season, let me down. But I'll have fun while I can.