HONOR THIS!

Let’s see.

Those two professional nitwits, racist loony Glenn Beck and shrieking, delusional, and just plain dumb harridan Sarah Palin, hold a huge rally in D.C. this past weekend entitled “Restoring Honor,” frothing over how Americans have to repo our country and turn it back over to God, who we suspect they presume to be the original owner.

P+J will leave the weighty journalistic questions — whether the crowd amounted to 100,000 religious freaks and Tea Party “Angry Anglos,” as the aerial photos would suggest, or 500,000, as congenital fact distorter Beck claims — to the major TV networks and Rupert Murdoch’s good Germans at Fox News and the Wall Street Journal.

What we would like to know is just what honor is being restored? The honor of wars built on lies in Iraq or an untenable, uninformed and unwinnable effort in Afghanistan, both courtesy of the Bushies? The honor of Gitmo and torture at Abu Ghraib? The honor of lying about the death of Pat Tillman and rescue of Jessica Lynch by Dubya puppeteer Don Rumsfeld and his Pentagon underlings? The honor of totally corrupt and murderous private contractors (say hi, Dick Cheney and Halliburton) who betrayed our troops with corner-cutting service and propaganda-undermining killing of innocent Iraqis? The honor of the shameless buccaneers on Wall Street stealing the money of middle America so the hedge fund managers could upgrade their Mercedes model and pay the mortgage on the house in the Hamptons? The honor of lobbyists who eviscerate environmental regulations to serve the masters in Big Bidness and Big Oil so we end up with catastrophes like the BP spill? The honor of encouraging the clueless and ignorant public to call President Obama a “Nazi” or “Communist” (oops, can’t be both, kiddies, gotta settle on one) instead of “nigger,” which is what they are really thinking?

No, P+J believe the United States has honor in surplus, exhibited by our troops who put their lives on the line daily to try to help people even as they have their legs cut off by their civilian overseers. Honor exhibited in the philanthropy of the majority of Americans toward their less fortunate neighbors — unlike the GOP Party of “No” and their followers. Honor exhibited by those who have their faith and spirituality and don’t try to browbeat people into going along, or wrap themselves in the flag while saying it’s God’s will.

The Founding Fathers were courageous, open-minded and had the wisdom and strength to embrace new ideas that would serve the common weal. The people at the “Restore Honor” rally are scared, fearful, close-minded, naive, and want nothing in their little universes challenged in thought or deed. You got ‘em, Glenn and Sarah. And you can keep ‘em.

Amen brothers.  We couldn’t agree more.  These two lame brain jackasses are the epitome of what’s wrong with our country.  Fear and ignorance rule the day, instead of intelligence and leadership.  The old saying, “You can talk the talk but can you walk the walk?”, seems apropos.  Glenn, Sarah, don’t demagogue, lead by example and deed.  And until that day comes, you will remain fools and traitors to the American dream.

David Koch

Mr. Stanfill also shares an article from the New Yorker that goes into more depth about the Koch brothers.  Take some time and read the article.  It’s pretty scary stuff.  Koch Industries, their company, is the second-largest privately owned company in the US with the brothers having a combined fortune upwards of thirty-five billion dollars.  The Koch brothers are staunch libertarians who believe in drastically lower personal and corporate taxes, minimal social services for the needy, and much less oversight of industry—especially environmental regulation.  Very ironic since they are rated one of the worst air polluters in the country and Greenpeace calls them a “kingpin of climate science denial.”  Sound like any group that is politically active?

As I said before, take some time to read the article.  It’s an in-depth look at the workings of the Tea Bagger movement, a supposed movement by the People that is really being funded by billionaires.  Pass it around and get people reading it as all of America needs to understand the danger and absurdity of this extreme group’s thinking and philosophies.

The article is entitled Canned Beer Is The Future of Good Beer.  It’s a great article that touches on all the major points of why canned beer is better than bottled beer.  It also discusses the challenges that lay in front of any canned beer manufacturer in the forms of consumer and wholesaler resistance to the outdated and false “facts” that have circulated for years about cans.

I have to give credit where credit is due.  I found out about this article from my good friend Luke Livingstone, a fellow beer enthusiast and owner/founder of Baxter Brewing Company.  Check out his company and be ready for his beer to hit stores in Maine sometime this fall/winter.  Enjoy the beer for thought!

The season is due to start in a few weeks and we’re in the midst of exhibition games. Terrible displays of talent but coaches like them to tune up their teams and test out new schemes and looks.  These 4 games are important to coaching staffs and scouts so they can judge and assess where their new acquires and rookies are at in game readiness and allow their vets to start to jell as a squad.  Hence, coaches and their staffs see these four games as crucial to fielding successful teams and evaluating talent.

In case you’ve been living under a rock, the higher ups of football are contemplating expanding the regular season to 18 games instead of the current 16 games.  Not many details have come out about the plan, as I don’t really think it’s much farther along than thawing out the pizza dough prepping for a delicious grilled pie, but there have been two loud rumors moving around.

1. It’ll take away two preseason games and make them regular season games.  The schedule will include another bye week determined by the team’s other bye week.
2. It’ll take place after the lockout…how ever long that lockout is.  This is another bone of contention between the owners and the players.  The owners are for it but players are angry about it.  Simply put, this struggle is about the owners wanting the players to take a pay cut due to the economy.  The players are upset about this plan to expand to 18 games because it’ll bring more money into the teams but the owners aren’t willing to bend on their demands of pay cuts.  I’ll be discussing the lockout in more detail in the coming day.

As I just mentioned, players are opposed to the expansion of the season while their bosses are in favor but one group that has been largely silent are the bosses’ staff, coaches and scouts.  What are those fine men and women thinking? No one has been talking about it so I’ll take the opportunity to step into the gap.

They hate the whole fucking idea.  Why, you ask? Well I’ll tell you.

1. Takes away two opportunities for them to evaluate their players before it counts.  People always make a big deal about how teams look in the pre-season.  They’re correct you can see how PLAYERS look but a team, not very much.  Think about it…every snap, there are new guys on the field on defense and offense.  New running backs, new defensive backs, new linebackers, you get the point.  “But Jake, teams switch players all the time during the regular season,” you might comment.  Correct, but they’ve all MADE a professional football team trying to win a Super Bowl.  They aren’t putting any guys on the field that are in a very public try out.  You ever try out for a sport? You play hard on plays that normally you might play smart instead of hard, you take a chances, and you’re playing with guys you’ve had no time to get comfortable with.  Hence, the team work and team play is poor.  But the coaches can watch to see how their guys react at game speed not practice speed.  They’ll be losing two huge opportunities to evaluate.
2. More regular season games means that their starters will be in more danger of getting injured.  They’ll also be more banged up come playoff run.  Coaches don’t like having to tweak their teams deep in the season.  It drives them batty.
3. But the biggest reason is this…the players are opposed to it.  Vehemently opposed.  So the coaches and staff will have to be dealing with players upset about something that their bosses, the owners, are in love with.  They will be forced to walk a tight rope between the two camps.  They must have the players trust to keep winning and keep their jobs but they also need the trust of the owners to keep their jobs as coaches aren’t a union.  They can be hired and fired very easily.  These guys are in the midst of a bitter labor struggle and they might get caught in no mans land.  That’s the biggest reason they hate the idea.

But we’ll never hear from them.  The coaches and their staffs will keep their heads down and pray to the football gods they don’t get chewed up and spit out by this struggle.  Watching coaches step lightly and their politicking will make for an interesting distraction from the labor issue.  Now if we could just get the owners and players to stop being ignorant rich assholes and sit down and hammer a deal out, we could settle in for another entertaining season of football.  Do I smell a part 2 of Football Shenanigans coming up? Yes, yes you do.  Stayed tuned constant reader for I shall return.

Check in tomorrow for an official post with plenty of rambling from yours truly.

Thankfully, our photographer, Clare Norton, was great.  She was everywhere all at once and got a bunch of shots that I didn’t even realize she’d taken.  The more formal shots came out great as well…which was all due to her and my lovely wife.  Take a look at some of the best here. And yes, we know the man in the kilt, William Wallace didn’t crash the party.

Thank you Clare for the wonderful pictures and thanks to all our wonderful guests!

I don’t think I could have stood there and not shook when he is about to serve.  I would have been shaking like a leaf on a tree.  Well done, Mr. Extra.

As most of you know, I recently got married to my lovely wife Allie.  It was a wonderful experience and was an absolute joy.  Our honeymoon was fun and relaxing.  But when we returned home, my mood went south.  It was a complete surprise to me and I had no idea why.  No matter what i did, I just felt mediocre.  Not bad but definitely not good.  I try to be a pretty positive person but I couldn’t shake the doldrums.

Last night, I attempted to write a post for today and I flat ass couldn’t.  I wrote numerous first paragraphs about everything from Brett Favre, Tiger Woods, the Maine gubernatorial race, to my aunt and uncle in law’s wedding.  And they all sucked.  Not only am I down in the dumps, but my creativity is dead.

I gave up.  I just shut down the computer and went to bed.  As I lay there attempting to find sleep, it hit me.  I realized why I’ve been bummed out.

For those of you who don’t know, my fellow editor Hokie and his lovely ladyfriend are moving to California for a minimum of three years…in one week.  Hokie is probably my closest friend.  He and I lived together for a few years and we’ve spent a lot of time together.  We brew beer, run this blog, drink good beer, and have numerous other activities that we share an interest in.

I realized that I haven’t accepted the fact that he’s leaving.  I didn’t realize how much of a void it’s going to leave when they depart dear old Vacationland until I started ruminating on my funk last night.  I had been avoiding dealing with my feelings on Hokie and Kelsey’s departure because I knew I was bothered by it.  Instead of manning up and just thinking about it, I buried them away. Today, I’m starting to work on accepting it…it’ll be slow but I’ll feel better.

I know this all sounds pretty selfish.  My friend is just moving…he’s not gone.  But, we all have different feelings and emotions and this has been bothering me.  So thanks for listening to me be a whiny self centered twit, I already feel a little better.

Good luck Hokie.  Safe travels, enjoy yourself and there will be some coast to coast traveling.

For more information, head over to the project’s site: Biggest Drawing in the World