Football...I'm outta here!

Cam Newton being allowed to play for Auburn last night was bad enough, but the "second coming" reception he got by the fans was just a bit ridiculous. (I wonder how many of those adoring fans are also fans of Beck, Limbaugh, & Palin.)

Here's the thing...anyone who thinks Urban Meyer and the gator nation would get rid of someone as good as Cam Newton if something were not terribly wrong, hasn't been watching SEC football. Yes, the charges of stealing, cheating, etc are allegations, but like Georgia and UNC, Auburn should have kept Newton on the bench or in the locker room until the mess was sorted out.

This is NOT like the Duke lacrosse scandal!!!! CBS announcers were ridiculous in their over the top effort to minimize the seriousness of the situation. If Newton had left Florida I could see how people might say this was a setup....but he was kicked out!!!!!! Mississippi State has nothing to gain by making public their belief that father Newton was shopping his son...too many people, too many allegations.

Bama better do really well next week in the Iron Bowl, especially during the first half when Auburn is crippled.

OFF Year elections...

I have many things to say about the outcome of the 2010 off year elections, but here is THE most important thing to come out of this mess...RAND PAUL. He is not really a Democrat or a Republican...HE is the one person best articulating the reason for the results. People better be paying attention. Our political system is ripe for the emergence of a third party movement like never before.

It's not 1998...

...but I still have hope that sane people will vote next Tuesday. This election will go down as one of the most complicated in our history. The polls are wack, the political parties have lost control of the process, the media is more concerned with entertaining than informing, a huge number of people will vote against their interests and not realize it.

You knew I would have something to say...

...I am not sure why I have been taken to the "Pitt" again...but here I am. As usual Katrina gets to sleep on the couch and I have to stay on the floor.

Jane keeps saying we are going on a trip but I am not sure where. I am evidently leash impaired. I got to go jogging (yes, Jane is jogging...pant) and I just cannot control myself. Bolting is my thing and no one seems to like it. I have to say that I am really tired of hearing Jane moan about her arm sockets. And she continues to gripe about my Mom's refusal to train me to walk on a leash correctly.

Well, the trip was to a wedding in Atlanta. I think that's where I used to live. Cool!! Pat put the seats down in the back of the car and Katrina and I had a really big space to lie down. But you guessed it, Katrina sprawled out right in the middle and I was crushed up against the side the whole trip.

I guess my Mom was doing all the wedding stuff since I did not see her until Sunday. Jane and Pat kept leaving us and when they would come back there was always talk about being over served...what the heck? When I am over served I don't rub my head and moan.

It must have been a good weekend because I heard Jane say "What a great diner, even though I didn't get a barn star". "It was really good to see everyone, they all looked great" while I gobbled down my breakfast and Katrina's too...he, he.

Brink & Emily T do Virlie's

A fine time was had in the "Pitt"... Brink and her pal Emily made a pit stop in THE "Pitt" on their way to Atlanta. Natch, Millie was left for us to take care of (I am sure she will have something to say about that later). Brink refused to drive Em by the really picturesque parts of town like the Wash & Fold but we did take in Virlie's for a fine breakfast. "I'll have a sausage biscuit, hash browns, and a biscuit", Em told the waitress who stared at her with a puzzled look...we just acted like all was normal.

The Clarence Thomas "thing"

Back in the Fall of 1991 when classrooms were not "cableized", I thought it was a great idea to take my US History classes to the library, oops.... media center, to witness the confirmation hearing for Clarence Thomas. Several other teachers joined in and to the media center we went....

It was a great opportunity for students to see the confirmation process as it happened. The Senate Judiciary Committee was discussed, the Constitution was consulted, i.e the students were prepared to understand what they would be observing.

It must be pointed out that the empty seat on the Court was that of Thurgood Marshall, the first Black Justice. Marshall had made a major contribution to society in his role as an attorney for the NAACP when he argued Brown v Board of Education before the Court in 1954. It seemed that he should be replaced by an equally talented and intellectual individual. George Herbert Walker Bush was President and it was taken for granted that the appointment would be an individual whose mind was to the far right of center. Woe was them...the Judiciary Committee was controlled by the Dems...Biden, Kennedy, et al. They would balk at a conservative appointment, but if Bush nominated the one Black conservative, the liberals would be in a conundrum. After all, how could they vote against a Black man? Intellect and judgement played no role in the appointment of Clarence Thomas...he was after all Black the Republicans reasoned. The American Bar did not recommend Thomas, virtually no one and no group proclaimed him qualified to fill one of the 9 most important positions in the free world.

You are wondering about taking the kids to the media center...oh yeah. Well, a woman who had worked with Thomas at the Federal Office of Economic Opportunity, Anita Hill, was testifying when we arrived and you all know what happened...coke cans, Long Dong Silver, pubic hair. YIKES! What were their parents going to say? I was freaked out but the students seemed unfazed. They watched and the committee was not swayed by Anita's testimony accusing Thomas of sexual harassment especially after a poll showed a slim majority of Americans believed Thomas over Hill. Thomas was confirmed by a very narrow majority and I realized that we had entered a new phase of decency when it came to TV. Well, the point of this is that Clarence Thomas' wife, Virginia, left Anita Hill a message on her office phone on October 9, 2010 (Hill is now a professor at Brandeis) asking Anita to apologize for what she had done to Clarence 21 YEARS AGO! What the heck? Oddly enough, on the same day, the New York Times ran a front page story about Virginia Thomas' active participation in the Teaparty movement and how absolutely unusual this is...or rather how unethical this is...or inappropriate...or how no one can recall a spouse of a Supreme Court Justice being a political activist.

We followed this confirmation in class and one of the students was the niece of Virginia Thomas. Thomas is a nonentity on the court. He has never asked a question in open court. He has ALWAYS voted with Scalia and Alito...he should never have been confirmed. Anita Hill will not apologize.

Is there a dramatic misalignment of the planets????

I have tried not to think too hard about the current political situation due to the likelihood that my head would explode...but I cannot remain silent any longer. What in the hell is going on!!!??? Christine O'Donnell makes Sarah Palin look like a Rhodes Scholar. As Christine said to her opponent Chris Coons during the Senate debate in Delaware..."The First Amendment? Separation of church and state is in the First Amendment? The First Amendment"? She has claimed in every speech she has made that she is an expert on the Constitution and will make ALL her decisions as a Senator based on the Constitution. Who is this person? And more importantly who are the people who vote for her? She defeated an intelligent, rational Republican who would have represented the interests of Delaware in the Senate.

Joe Wilson, the Alaskan Republican candidate for the Senate, has a posse of thugs to "guard" him. A journalist was "arrested" by this posse at a public school where Wilson was hosting a town hall. The implication here is that a politician can have people who wish to ask questions of a candidate ARRESTED and detained...maybe in China, maybe in some banana republic, maybe in Iran. And , oh by the way, he thinks the East German solution to immigration/emigration problems during the Cold War (aka THE BERLIN WALL) is a great idea for the US to adopt.

Sharron Angle, Republican running against Harry Reid, told a group of young latinos that some of them looked Asian to her....huh?

People better wake up before election day or they could wake up on November 3rd and find the government turned over to border line maniacs.

Some poignant thoughts for a troubled time.

The Old Spice Man !!!

My goal is to not know who Snookie is and certainly not to be able to recognize her.

Steven Slater is NOT a hero!

Just where is John Boehner's tanning bed in the nation's capitol?

Why doesn't Debbie Riddle's (member of the Texas State Legislature) upper lip not move when she talks?

I never thought I would be caught dead at...

GRACELAND! But there I was with Pat gawking at the "Jungle Room" and listening to the never ending Elvis recordings. After getting Emily settled we went to Memphis to spend the day before flying back to RDU. Did we really want to wallow in Elvis memories? Oh, why not. Expecting to see really weird people wearing sequined jumpsuits, we were very surprised at the "normal" appearance of the throngs braving the 103 degrees. Never having been a fan of "The King" I was rather complacent about the whole thing, but found myself appreciating the life and accomplishments of Elvis. There is no doubt that his existence is significant, not only musically but socially as well. The historian David Halberstam noted in his work The Fifties, that Elvis appearing on the Ed Sullivan Show and Brown v The Board of Education were the most significant social events of the 20th Century. There you have it....and the Seventies decor is really cool.

If you've never driven a large truck through Washington DC, you should!

The moving is over...and I mean it this time. Regular readers of this blog are familiar with the many moving adventures of the Serkedakis family. However, the perfect storm of moving took place last week with Em and Brink moving AT THE SAME TIME! We had to create a flow chart in order to know where we were supposed to be through the process. Pat flew to the Atl, secured a truck, loaded Brink's stuff, drove back to the Pitt...Another truck was needed for Em..."stuff" was taken off Brink's truck for Em and other "stuff" was put on Brink's truck. Second truck was loaded in Chapel Hill. Millie and I set out for DC driving the big truck after a practice run through "the Pitt" (after all, the traffic in "the Pitt" does resemble DC traffic). Meanwhile Emily, in her car, and Pat driving the other truck head back to Atlanta to spend the night. Millie and I brave I-85 north...I sitting on a large pillow and the Millster on her bed. It was a bit daunting at first, but it was pretty cool being a truck...until I had to turn left off the Key Bridge onto M Street IN THE MIDDLE OF GEORGETOWN....horns blowing and the crunch of a car and the truck. Oh well, no one stopped and the horn blowing subsided. Upon arriving at the new home of the Brink, the movers were informed that I was not backing the truck up under any circumstances...so they backed the beast up and of course wiped out some stupid mirror much to the chagrin of the building manager. Pat and Em? Oh yeah, they left Atlanta and headed for Batesville Mississippi (where the hell is that you are asking...GoogleMaps). Returning the DC truck became a real adventure since we had no idea where the place was. The GPS could not identify the location which was of little concern to Brinkley Richard Petty as she speeds through the streets of Arlington, weaving from lane to lane with me following in her car. I suspected that she was lost when we ended up in the Pentagon parking lot with signs posted everywhere..."NO TRUCKS". I knew it was only a matter of time before we were stopped for being terrorists. We finally stopped at a gas station and asked where Old Jefferson Davis Hwy was, the woman replied, "well that's complicated". Oh really!? But we did find it and you can be assured we won't be back. After "helping" Brinkley getting her place set up, I flew to Memphis, rented a car and drove to that Mississippi mecca, Batesville to assist in the settling of Emily. Pat and I then flew back to RDU to collapse for several days.