Mestee Blogger

Today, on drive home from work, two things on the radio actually made me respond with a grunt/yell of disgust. I typically am not interested in the off-season dealings of even my most favorite sports teams. I don't get excited over rumors about off-season acquisitions until the deals actually happen. Debate over salary caps and who is making how much for what just tends to bore me. Just show me who we've got on the first day of the season and I'll deal with it then. When I go to a concert, I am not worried abou how much the band is making or debating over whether they should have been paid less or held out for more...and the same goes with professional athletes.

I understand that professional sports are a business and try not to get too disappointed when teams let go of players I like. I was a little bummed, however, when I heard a few days ago that the Patriots were getting rid of David Givens and Willie McGinest. Today, I really broke character when I shouted "Oh no!" all by myself in the car upon hearing that 1) Adam Vinatieri would no longer be playing for New England and 2) He will now be kicking for the Indianapolis Colts. Ouch. I think that might be worse than Johnny Damon playing for the Yankees. Actually, that's a tough one. I think Vinatieri will be more difficult to replace than Damon, though.

Later, I was listening to a news report on the radio, which featured Dubya speaking at a press conference. Faced with record-low approval ratings, he seems to be insisting that what he's doing is not only right, but what he had intended to do all along. On the radio, they played the clip of him saying "The terrorists still want to harm us. They have chosen Iraq as the battleground, so that's where we will fight them." This was where my second unintentional yell occured.

Is Bush trying to say that the terrorists were all just hanging out in Iraq when we showed up to seek out the Weapons of Mass Destruction? (Remember those? The "reason we went to war"?) As if, upon the hypothetical arrival of 100,000 US troops in Syria or Iran or Saudi Arabia, groups of al-qaeda fighters and Bin Laden supporters would still have gathered themselves in Iraq, ignoring the presence of U.S. soldiers elsewhere. Exluding groups of Saddam loyalists, the U.S. opposition is in Iraq because we are. First we were in Iraq to get the WMD's that posed a direct threat to the US, then we were there to give freedom to the people of Iraq, now we're there because the terrorists are there. You can't just revise your motives as they become convenient to you, but our president seems to do just that. I've kept MesteeBlogger relatively apolitical, but I can only take so much before I feel the need to rant every so often. Thanks for bearing with me.
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