If the Ravens Offense can do it, so can Mike Preston

Dear Baltimore Sun Ravens Beat Reporter Mike Preston:

Sure, it's only one game, so it doesn't indicate a trend or anything, but...when I go back through the archive of articles you've written and I read how you've repeatedly denigrated Brian Billick's reputed offensive abilities, it just doesn't add up.

You've been assuming in a lot of your writings that he's been the major force behind the Raven's offense, and that obviously was not true. The Offense we saw on Sunday was night and day compared to what we witnessed under Cavanaugh and Fassel.

So why the disparity between your "know-it-all" observations and the reality of Sunday? I don't think you, or your Sun counterparts do enough homework. Your assumptions are clearly off the mark. You need to spend more time understanding the team and it's dynamics, so you can accurately report to us, your readers, what is actually going on within the organization.

Oh, and a little something I learned in my Journalism classes at Towson State was that above all, a journalist must be OBJECTIVE. You slept through that class. Do your readers a service and leave your bitter bias in your closet at home and bring some informed objectivity to your reporting.

Sunday MAY have shown signs that the Ravens do indeed have great offensive potential, but it DEFINITELY revealed your inadequacies as a reporter. You need to stop lobbying Steve Bisciotti for Billick's job and instead focus on becoming the good reporter that I know lurks inside of you.

Middle East Leadership: Silly, Barbarous, Fools

A mister Jack Rauber took exception to an article written by NPR's David Folkenflik about Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's new blog. In the article, Folkenflik offers advice that suggests that he doesn't take Ahmadinejad's blog very seriously. A link to the article is above and Mr. Rauber's letter appears here, in it's ridiculous entirety:

"I find it disgusting the way NPR and so many other news orgs attempt to marginalize or trivialize efforts made by leaders within the Arab world. It is as though they feel if they treat these leaders like children and scoff at their thoughts they can remove them from serious consideration. Not everyone shares people like Folkenflik's perspective. Not everyone throws unconditional support behind Israel and the American Jewish establishment. Now this may come as a great shock to people like Folkenflik and others at NPR because most of them are immersed in a bubble encompassing much of the media, in places like New York City and Washington D.C. It does the U.S. a great disservice to take such a stance on the Arab world. They make up a large percentage of the worlds population. They should be treated with respect and understood. Enough of this child-like behavior from those like Folkenflik. How, after all, are these apparent adolescent minded individuals assigned such weighty positions within our media?"

My Response:

Mr. Rauber, David Folkenflik is treating Ahmadinejad exactly as he should be treated, like a silly little barbarous fool. These "Leaders within the Arab world" that you defend are nothing but cowards. The recent war between Israel and Lebanon clearly demonstrated this as Hezbollah used the Lebanese people as human shields, and launched rocket attacks against civilians only. At least Israel tried to focus their efforts against non-civilians - not that they're innocent by any stretch of the imagination. Time and again, these yellow-bellied cowards launch these attacks such as 9/11 and if they ever hope to gain any respect from the rest of the world, then they're simply going to have to stop the senseless violence. If I may take it a step further, how could anyone take seriously one who has denied the Holocaust? Really?

Look, US policy (if you can call it that) in the mid-east is pathetic and deplorable (just like the idiot in the White House), but don't defend terrorists. They are nothing but cowards who attack innocent civilians and then run and hide. Too bad Bin Laden, Ahmadinejad, and the rest of the terrorist cowards won't just come out into the open and fight like men. I'm sick of these wimps talking all of their trash about how tough they are and the sword of God and blah blah blah. Come out and meet your enemy face-to-face. Look your enemies in the eyes as you vanquish them. Further, I don't see many "leaders" in the Arab world. If there were, they would have kicked the US' butt out of there long ago.

T.E. Lawrence got it right when he said: "So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are".

Conservatism Defined: Ignorance Personified

"IGNORANCE PERSONIFIED"

Are you getting the picture? I think I am. The conservative agenda is founded on fear and ignorance. Look at the face of conservatives: George W. Bush. I don't think this country has ever had a more ignorant resident in the White House, including Billy Carter (okay, I'm dating myself but, remember "Billy Beer?). When Bush stood on the podium a couple of weeks ago and claimed that we are a "decent society", I thought I would yet again die of embarrassment as an American. Given the scandels and lies that have marked republican reign and the fact that they have used anything, legal or not, to justify the war in Iraq, and maintain their power here in the United States, how can we even pretened to be a "decent society". When we kill and rape children, allow people in this country to die on our streets, cause suffering and pain where ever we go, how could he stand there and make that claim with a straight face?

Conservatism Defined: Ignorance Personified

"IGNORANCE PERSONIFIED"

Are you getting the picture? I think I am. The conservative agenda is founded on fear and ignorance. Look at the face of conservatives: George W. Bush. I don't think this country has ever had a more ignorant resident in the White House, including Billy Carter (okay, I'm dating myself but, remember "Billy Beer?). When Bush stood on the podium a couple of weeks ago and claimed that we are a "decent society", I thought I would yet again die of embarrassment as an American. Given the scandels and lies that have marked republican reign and the fact that they have used anything, legal or not, to justify the war in Iraq, and maintain their power here in the United States, how can we even pretened to be a "decent society". When we kill and rape children, allow people in this country to die on our streets, cause suffering and pain where ever we go, how could he stand there and make that claim with a straight face?

Conservatism: COME ON DAVID, THAT'S A LUDICROUS THEORY

I couldn't agree more, but when I look at their agenda (which also includes shoving their God who is bigger than my God down my throat) I'm at a loss to understand their message.

So, how does the conservative agenda define a "conservative"? Well, let's look at a couple of their brilliant contradictions:

1. Against abortion, but for the death penalty.
2. Against "the right to die" for the brain-dead and the terminally ill, but do not support a national healthcare program for the elderly or anyone else.
3. Absolutely do not want young girls to be given a vaccine against cervical cancer but they do want to force feed anyone in a coma.

Conservatism Defined: Respect Life, but Don't Nurture It

I mean, what is it with conservatives? They will do anything, and I mean ANYTHING to make sure we have as many births as possible. It's almost a locust mentality, over-tax this planet's resources as much as they possibly can by continuing to over-populate the planet at a break-neck pace. Except for one thing: they only seem to care about the physical birth or at least the process of whatever it is in there leaving it's host and then, how it exits this existance.

They absolutely do not support ensuring care for ALL mother's, specifically those without healthcare. If they were concerned with "LIFE", no one in this country, and probably on the entire planet would be without access to healthcare. So basically, the conclusion could be drawn that conservatives and zealots actually only care about the actual act of "an embryo becomming a fetus and then vacating it's host". They don't care whether it's miscarried, still born, wanted, unwanted, loved, unloved, or a happy, healthy baby.

Do NOT mistakenly assume that they approve of the act of intercourse. Sex is the greatest evil, according to their passionate rejection of Janet Jackson's nipple. This segment of the population could careless about "quality of life" and they seem especially bent on depriving everybody of anything that could bring them pleasure or in any way indicates that there is true and natural beauty in this world as evidenced by the current administration's policies on the environment. In fact, if sex were an aweful, unpleasurable act that was painful, then life as a conservative would be perfect.

Conservatism Defined: The Chicken, The Egg, The Embryo, and Moral High Ground

"EMOTIONAL BLACKMAIL"

Bush's reasoning for his stem cell research veto is more of the same old rhetoric we've come to expect from religious zealots and far right conservatives that support this ridiculous veto.

I think Harry Moore of the Center for Stem Cell Biology at the University of Sheffield in Britain summed it up best:

"Most embryos produced by a normally fertile women will fail before implantation and not go on to a pregnancy. To call it 'murder' to use embryos donated for research is just emotional blackmail," Moore said in a statement.

That seems to be the most accurate description of what the previously mentioned zealots and conservatives use to ram their morals down the rest of our throats. Thank you Mr. Moore.

Microsoft to compete with Apple, iPod, iTunes?

http://www.ilounge.com/index.php/news/comments/report-microsoft-readying-ipod-rival-music-service/

This has to be some sort of a late April Fools joke from the pranksters in Redmond. They somehow can't deliver Vista, but expect to compete in this arena?

Apple surely isn't worried about competition from a company that to date hasn't produced anything that isn't a complete P.O.S. The only thing MS has shown us it is capable of doing is making poor copies of other's work. No wonder Bill is deserting something that amounts to nothing more than a corporate stain.

I suspect that the next announcement from Microsoft will be that they are going to break into the lucrative OS Platform market and that they are going to call it "Windows", because that's what they're going to be throwing their money out of.